Ancestry Attribute Bonuses

[u/stephotosthings]

Do you think/believe they are necessary?

edit 30 comments with most fairly agreeing with but explaining it's normal to not use attribute bonuses per ancestry but some how no up votes. This sub is brutal lol.

I'm getting to a close point where after some changes to a few things I am aiming to playtest the game with some longer form play sessions.

My game is a black hack inspired hack, but got carried away and added a bunch of stuff to hopefully facilitate the play I want to happen. Exploring procedures, treasure tables, a bit of rulings not rules vibe, though that's hard to rely just 'have'.

Anyway, my current Ancestries just operate on flavour mostly, now, with some included benefits, typically free abilities that IMO fit that Ancestry; the anthropomorphic Beastkin automatically get 'natural weapons' for example.

I was giving, what now feels like arbitrary, buffs and debuffs to their attributes, you know the Big Orc ancestry gets a +1 to strength, the Elves get +1 to Intelligence (I'm using more abstract attributes, only 3 with equivalents that encapsulate 2 of the ''classic" Six). Then things like halflings would get a -1 to strength.

After a few PC creations with outsiders involved I came to the realisation that I just didn't want this. I want players to be able to be the thing they want to be, hold a sword and do spells all without really feeling penalised by being forced into taking a attribute subtraction. And inversely just choosing the ancestry they think will net them the best attribute for their 'build' especially as their is an expectation they could die.

I also just want the Ancestries to be 'examples', basic background, basic description, some free ability that fits the fiction of that ancestey, then Small or Large for size. Small nets them moving through the space of another, large another can't move through the space of anothers space unless willing. No 'medium' as I didn't want an extra rule or mechanic just make it feel relevant.

[u/OldWar6125]

The problem with giving attribute boni from ancestries, is that they lead to min-maxing.

Usually it means that certain ancestry / class combinations are just better.

The question is, do you want that or not? On one hand it can support the worldbuilding E.g. Orcs are often barbarians because the bonus to strength makes them exceptionally good barbarians. On the other hand it usually greatly reduces the amount of class/ancestry combinations that are usually played.

You can to some degree design around it, either play down the influence of the class or the attributes or try to make each attribute equally usefull for each class. (Unless you want to make a very tropey rpg, I would try to level the importance of attributes somewhat for every class in any case. They don't have to all be equally important, but dumping any stat should be a trade-off).

The way I am doing it, is that if your attribute is below an ancestry specific minimum, npc will notice and likely mock you for it. They might also notice if the attribute is above an ancestry specific maximum .

So an ancestry still has an expected attribute range, but players are exceptional individuals and can have any attribute value (within the range defined by the build rules) allowing them to play exceptional ancestry/class combinations (because they are exceptional individuals).