Originally Posted by Sansang2
I don't want to get rid of differences between races. Multiple times I stressed how racial features were better than stats in every possible way. The weakest orc should be able to lift more than the weakest human? I can get behind that, I even agree with that. The issue is that "+2 STR" is the wrong way to do it, and I'd rather have a good game that ignores some situations, than a bad game that covers limits scenario like the one exposed by you. An orc should have "they counts as a size larger for lifting weights", "they have advantage on athletics checks", "they have proficiency in athrletics", "they have advantage in strenght checks". There are various way you can achieve that goal, but +2 STR is more limiting than meaningful. Bounded accuracy is a really delicate and strong system at the same time. the difference between 15 and 16 is just a +1, it seems small, but if you think that the most powerful weapons in the universe gives you just a +3 (which I love) it helps you to put in scale the real meaning of these numbers. The difference between the strongest human (20) and a terrasque (30) is just a +5. A +1 to hit, and to DC, is massive and changes completely your gaming experience, you can't gatekeep it behind a race or another.

True, there are multiple ways to make an engaging system that underlines racial differences, however some of them can work in a tabletop (I like your suggestion of adding some extra skills benefit) but won't work in a game. BG3, even with its lots of permutations, is still a big branched script of predesigned options, which means that character freedom lies only in using those options. Thats why you can't use skills imaginatively, you are bound to benefit from them only in rare and same cutscenes or world scenarios. Which makes skill proficiencies a bad substitute for racial differences, unless they implement some sort of universal mechanic behind every skill in the game. For example, athletics is a great skill with stellar design right now, because it not only increases your jump distance, but helps you shove, resist being shoved AND on top of that solve those rare and same cutscenes at times. This is a very high level of interactivity embedded in one skill. Then there is Survival, which is only used in dialogue, same with Nature, History, Religion, etc. If you had to make a religion check while channeling divine magic and so on, then yes, it'd be great to transition racial differences into skills. Again, everything needs to be properly though out, and for now it seems like they removed racial ASIs but we don't know if they brought something worthy in turn.

Originally Posted by Sansang2
I admit that I haven't understood a thing about what you are saying here.

Let me explain. You said that I should self-restrict myself to play as a sub-optimal character. Wanting to play that character implies that it is my idea of having fun. But DnD and BG3 (often) are played by several people at once. If there is a racial restriction of ASIs, than the attribute cap is same for everyone and racial balance is more rigid but fair. If those restrictions are removed, then the gap denoting the difference in the level of satisfaction from the game between players will grow. When we are playing tabletop, we can sort out the rules beforehand, so that everyone is happy. With a computer game this is not the case and we have to rely on inbuilt rule presets. The lease I think Larian should do is introduce customizable rules in that case.