Racial Abilities for Elven Subraces

[verðandi]

Hi all,

Since they are so long lived, elves are meant to be able to excel in different things, spending decades and centuries perfecting their craft.
I think it would be a good idea if there was more of a choice which ability an elven character had their ability bonus in.
Here's my suggestion:


Moon Elf: Dex or Int
Sun Elf: Dex or Int
Wood Elf: Dex or Str (removing Wis)
Wild Elf: Dex (staying as they are, potentially adding Str if there are no balance concerns)


Having the same ability bonus choices for sun elves and moon elves will allow moon elves to be more common, especially with moon elven wizards which are often rarer than they should be going by lore.
This would also make wisdom casters of moon and sun elves less rare than their wood elven counterparts.

Thanks for reading.

 

[Danuvis]

The general argument here applies to any race because ultimately every being is still an individual, regardless of how heavy influence their racial culture and nature brings to the table. In that sense a system allowing all races to just pick +2 to a single stat - or just stripping all racial bonuses - is more fair, I don't see why elves alone should be given more flexibility in class synergy. If anything, if changes were to be made, I'd lean on removing all mechanical incentives that dictate class options among races, as that's inherently less build and mechanics oriented.

That said I don't mind the concept of encouraging cultural norms and behaviour via racial traits and likelihoods, ingrained beliefs, and so forth, including common class paths IC. For example it makes plenty of sense that Sun Elf PCs tend toward INT favouring classes due the obvious culture involved there (though arguably they'd have STR as an addition if anything, given their lore says they're typically stronger than other subraces of elves, and then you get into arguments of overlap, etc.). Either way the main benefit of the current approach is that every subrace offers something different than the other ones do, which isn't a bad thing, what it does better than the suggested approach is enforcing cultural norms and stereotypes, if nothing else.

Overall, I don't see much benefit or return on investment in overhauling how stat allocation and racial benefits (or downsides) function. It might even be a headache to do when characters of the aforementioned already exist (either implementation wise or existing PCs suddenly wanting remakes) - as such I doubt we'll be introducing any changes on this front any time soon, if ever.