Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Racial ASIs

You still have racial traits, and all the social baggage that comes with being a member of your race in whatever setting you're playing in. That's adversity you don't need mechanical bonuses to represent. Then there's the social stigma of being say, a super smart orc from a culture where that sort of intelligence isn't valued. Or an elf who's viewed as bizarre and unsavory because of the focus she puts into honing herself for strength rather than the nimbleness that's seen as desireable. From my perspective, the adversity that comes with not getting a favorable ability score is just the least interesting kind of adversity, because it simply means that you're mechanically worse off than another option. It also denies you the ability to be BAD at something your race is seen as good at and roleplaying the results. Floating ability scores mean you can be a weak orc who had to make up for it by being clever or cunning, a tongue-tied half-elf who can't quite say the right thing when he needs to, etc.

The key point here is that the "typical racial boxes" need to be specified for you to break out of them. Which kind of necessitates that different races get different ASIs by default, at least if you want those racial boxes to include physical and mental stats. I suppose you could replaced default ASIs with "Powerful Build" and "Nimble" and other feat-esque racial abilities, but then you also literally cannot play against the type because your character will have that trait.

See what WotC is doing for seemingly all future races (disclaimer, I'm taking this info from 5e wikidot so the official rules/race description might be different);
- e.g., Owlin: "Increase one ability score by 2, and increase a different one by 1." [or +1 to three different stats]
Nowhere on that page does it mention that the typical Owlin is particularly wise or dexterous or intelligent. So an Owlin PC can't play against type or fall in line with their race, as Owlins have no (ability score) type to play against/with.

(Again, I'm an advocate for *optional* free-floating ASIs. But the default racial ASIs should very much still be included.)

Does the game have no challenge if your character is a Half-Orc Barbarian with the standard +2 STR/+1 CON? Of course it still has challenge. I don't know where people get the incredibly bizarre notion that someone putting a +2/+1 where they want is some kind of magic spell which makes that character great at everything and bad at nothing, yet in these discussions whenever the idea of floating ASI's comes up, so does this "THAT'LL MAKE THEM A SUPERMAN GOOD AT EVERYTHING" strawman.

It should not be confusing to you that different people have different opinions and thus not everyone agrees that the fun of playing against type requires having a mechanical penalty making them much less effective compared to the rest of the party. That's especially true in the pen and paper version when you can actually play a character and have a real DM to interact with to better express playing against type.



Exactly this. I have ideas for two pen-and-paper characters who are playing against type. Who are told that their desired path is wrong for one of that species. They have their own flaws and their own internal self-doubts to overcome. That is part of the challenge they face. That is the part which is interesting to overcome. Trying to overcome a -1 is not nearly as interesting.

Obviously those aspects aren’t going to be in the pre-written, artificial DM of a video game.



The kind of person who – and you may want to take a seat, because this could come as a shock – has a different opinion than you do. In fact, perhaps the person wanting to play as a race/class combination of their choice doesn’t want to roleplay adversity at all, and is just a casual who wants to play a race/class combination of their choice without a mechanical penalty?

An elf isn't just "good at dexterity." That's not how math works. They get a plus two. Which tells us that the average dexterity of all elves is higher than the average dexterity of all, let's say, githyanki.

But it doesn't tell us anything about individual elves versus individual githyanki.

An elf can roll a 3 and get a plus 2, equaling 5 in dexterity. It happens. That elf has less dexterity than the average human.

3d6 creates a bell curve. 3d6+2 creates a different bell curve. They overlap. Some elves have less dexterity than other races even if the average tends to be higher. And some githyanki have a much higher dexterity than the average elf.

A difference of opinion is resolved as easily as homebrewing your own universe. This isn't really what we're arguing though is it? You want your playstyle validated by the rules. I'm not denigrating your personal play preference, I'm questioning why you want it to supercede D&D's current status quo, which is, in it's clumsy way, an attempt at verisimilitude in a fantasy world made up of inherently different creatures.

Because you admit it's clumsy, and I've seen it done better in other games. I think there are better ways that D&D could handle this issue, and certainly better ways than what I'm suggesting. And I want D&D to embrace those better approaches.

What's clumsy about it is also an essential feature, the stats, STR DEX CON WIS INT CHA, if you want it to be less clumsy you'll have to rebuild the game from the ground up.

If you have some other systems that do it better I'm always interested in hearing about them.

edit1 I guess it's a bit unfair to ask for something without giving back even if it's extemporaneous
If I were to do it I wouldn't make it tied to a stat but to skills, so Elves don't get +2 to Dex, they get advantage to all acrobatic checks, they get a bonus on perception checks and are able to make perception rolls over great distances etc. etc. of course you see the inherent problem here, and the reason for stats in the first place, that's a lot of things to keep track of.

edit2 I'd also go for a trade ability adjustments for ability maximums, this would solve the 20 str halfling problem I have, you could also make it so every class has a stat dependent variation.