Community

My group and I are gearing up for our Playtest Campaign and are extremely excited by what we have seen so far.  I truly think that with some great feedback (thoughtful and constructive input) from the community that this could be the best iteration of the game to date!

Prior to playing however, I do have one substantial concern.  Humans.  I think in order to ground the fantasy genre any good RPG setting needs a solid human race.  Humans need to be both present in the adventuring groups we see and appealing to the players who make those groups.  For this reason I think it is important that humans, just as the other races, have some special features that make them a viable and engaging PC race.

Though it is a blow, I can understand the logic behind not giving humans any +/- to abilities.  They are after all, our baseline.  BUT, in their current state, humans as a race have three substantial disadvantages: no +/-, no second language, and zero racial features (most others have three).

There was talk earlier of giving Humans a +1 to all saving throws, but this seems to be absent.  And, would this even be enough for players to want to select human as their race when building a character?  Where are the game mechanics to represent the unquenchable human spirit that was such a defining characteristic of the race in 3 and 4E?

At present, considering you as a player have to take several hits to play a human, I fear that too many groups’ games will lack the aforementioned grounding quality a human brings to an adventuring party, and the feel of the campaign setting as a whole will suffer greatly for it.

I suggested elsewhere that humans might get an extra background and a one-off bonus to all skills. That might be worth testing.

May 27, 2012 -- 7:45AM, Ieneel wrote:

My group and I are gearing up for our Playtest Campaign and are extremely excited by what we have seen so far.  I truly think that with some great feedback (thoughtful and constructive input) from the community that this could be the best iteration of the game to date!

Prior to playing however, I do have one substantial concern.  Humans.  I think in order to ground the fantasy genre any good RPG setting needs a solid human race.  Humans need to be both present in the adventuring groups we see and appealing to the players who make those groups.  For this reason I think it is important that humans, just as the other races, have some special features that make them a viable and engaging PC race.

Though it is a blow, I can understand the logic behind not giving humans any +/- to abilities.  They are after all, our baseline.  BUT, in their current state, humans as a race have three substantial disadvantages: no +/-, no second

You need to relook over character sheets:
Humans get +1 to every stat and 2 extra at will spells.
Compare Pelor (3) vs Moradin (1) Cleric.


Since we have no fighter humans, we can't infer if they get any bonuses.

Only human have 18 in some stat. We dont know now charater generation rules, but suppose that you cannot roll/point buy more them 16 in any stat and that humans add +2 to any stat by their choice, while other races add once or twice +1 to fixed stats. There also may be other hidden featues - why human cleric have 2 orisons and dwarf only 1? Due to race or domain?

Clearly they're going back to the 2e days and having racial level caps that don't apply to humans. Humans can also choose to be any class, where the other races are restricted. We just haven't seen the level caps because dwarf clerics top out at level 10, and both elf mages and halfling rogues top out at 15.

Totally joking, but I am interested in seeing what humans do get as racial features. With only having a human cleric to look at for now, there may be things that aren't readily apparent.