(the title comes from this trope: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ElephantInTheLivingRoom Basicly, the elephant in the room is something painfully obvious, but people
seem to be deliberately avoiding talking about it.
In this case what I mean is: not all Traits are created equal.
Morganstern, a poster on the Spycraft boards and one of that game's designers, has expressed the view that a bonus to one Ability Score and an equal penalty to another do not actually balance out. His point was, if one creates a race called Weebils and gives them a +1 to INT and a -1 to WIS, what you have produced is a race that will mostly be taken by players who are playing Wizards and will not be chosen by players who want to play Clerics and so that penalty will almost never affect the player who has chosen to play a Weebil.
While I see his point, he is definitely in the minority on that: most game designers look at the broader picture, and how things balance for all characters, and so conclude that a +1 to one Ability and a -1 to another do balance out to a net cost of nothing.
As a side-note, if you are using Point-Buy and that +1 raises one of your Abilities above 14, then your are definitely realizing a benefit greater than the penalty, as you will effectively end with a higher point total. (Although there is not unanimous agreement among designers that Abilities above 14 should actually cost more than lower values anyway.)
So, those traits that just shift a couple of points from one Ability Score to another are not, in most designers' opinion, actually worth as much as a Feat.
BESMd20, also called Anime d20 and still available as a free SRD on the internet even though Guardians of Order has gone out of business, offered a point cost for a great many of the various powers and abilities in d20 games. They felt that a +2 to a single Ability Score was worth half what a Feat was (1 "Character Point" versus 2). So if you take the same Ability-affecting Trait twice, to get the bonus without a penalty, you have spent what should have been worth 2 Feats to get something worth half a Feat.
Again, getting 4 Skill Points to spend however you like is actually slightly more valuable than getting 4 Skill Points to spend on a specific skill, but in the long view it should not make your character more powerful than others, as all skills should be of equal power in the game. BESMd20 says that 4 skill points is worth 2 Character Points, which is equal to a Feat, and that 1 Skill Point per level is worth 1 Character Point if you have to pay for it up front, or 1/4 point if you buy it at each level (for a total cost of 5 points over 20 levels).
So, Traits like Artisan are actually worth 1 1/2 Feats (4 Skill Points now plus 1 Skill Point per level). And that's before you account for the special Trait Abilities (a +2 to Appraise ought to be worth a single point (BESM actually says one half), bringing the total value to 2 Feats).
As another note, since a Human in standard d20 games gets 1 Feat and 4 Skill Points at first level plus 1 Skill Point at each level thereafter, he's getting 2 1/2 Feats worth of stuff for being a Human, and an Iron Heroes Human (if he took 2 traits that actually are worth about 1 Feat each) will actually be less powerful.
Not that I'm worried about that: if everybody's power gets turned down, everybody's still equal, and the Iron Heroes Classes are slightly more powerful so a character with a couple of levels in him should be equal to a similar level character from another world.
I became aware of this when I first set out to design some classic non-human races for use with Iron Heroes. Rather than replace both Traits with a Racial package (as the rules suggest), I wanted to make Race a Trait, so I needed to edit the races down to where their power was worth roughly one Trait, so I started to look at just how much one Trait really was. And then I realized that almost every race in the d20 SRD has one of those Ability-swaps that Iron Heroes says are worth a full Trait, and everybody else agrees are not worth as much as a Feat if they should cost anything at all. Leaving me the quandry: is it all right to combine an Ability Swap with an existing Trait to create a Race (for example: Artisan is something every Dwarf should have, but a CON bonus is too)? What if I only give Dwarves half the bonus from Artisan (+2 to Craft skills matches the SRD)?
It seems painfully obvious that the Ability Swap Traits are underpowered compared to the others, and that several of the other Traits are significantly more powerful than a single Feat. While I don't have any specific ideas for something to be done about this, I find it hard to believe that I am the only one to have noticed it.
I've been lurking here for some time, using Search and hoping someone with more experience with the system than I might address this topic, and I have finally decided to post about it myself. If someone else has already addressed this, please aid my weak google-fu and give me a link.
In this case what I mean is: not all Traits are created equal.
Morganstern, a poster on the Spycraft boards and one of that game's designers, has expressed the view that a bonus to one Ability Score and an equal penalty to another do not actually balance out. His point was, if one creates a race called Weebils and gives them a +1 to INT and a -1 to WIS, what you have produced is a race that will mostly be taken by players who are playing Wizards and will not be chosen by players who want to play Clerics and so that penalty will almost never affect the player who has chosen to play a Weebil.
While I see his point, he is definitely in the minority on that: most game designers look at the broader picture, and how things balance for all characters, and so conclude that a +1 to one Ability and a -1 to another do balance out to a net cost of nothing.
As a side-note, if you are using Point-Buy and that +1 raises one of your Abilities above 14, then your are definitely realizing a benefit greater than the penalty, as you will effectively end with a higher point total. (Although there is not unanimous agreement among designers that Abilities above 14 should actually cost more than lower values anyway.)
So, those traits that just shift a couple of points from one Ability Score to another are not, in most designers' opinion, actually worth as much as a Feat.
BESMd20, also called Anime d20 and still available as a free SRD on the internet even though Guardians of Order has gone out of business, offered a point cost for a great many of the various powers and abilities in d20 games. They felt that a +2 to a single Ability Score was worth half what a Feat was (1 "Character Point" versus 2). So if you take the same Ability-affecting Trait twice, to get the bonus without a penalty, you have spent what should have been worth 2 Feats to get something worth half a Feat.
Again, getting 4 Skill Points to spend however you like is actually slightly more valuable than getting 4 Skill Points to spend on a specific skill, but in the long view it should not make your character more powerful than others, as all skills should be of equal power in the game. BESMd20 says that 4 skill points is worth 2 Character Points, which is equal to a Feat, and that 1 Skill Point per level is worth 1 Character Point if you have to pay for it up front, or 1/4 point if you buy it at each level (for a total cost of 5 points over 20 levels).
So, Traits like Artisan are actually worth 1 1/2 Feats (4 Skill Points now plus 1 Skill Point per level). And that's before you account for the special Trait Abilities (a +2 to Appraise ought to be worth a single point (BESM actually says one half), bringing the total value to 2 Feats).
As another note, since a Human in standard d20 games gets 1 Feat and 4 Skill Points at first level plus 1 Skill Point at each level thereafter, he's getting 2 1/2 Feats worth of stuff for being a Human, and an Iron Heroes Human (if he took 2 traits that actually are worth about 1 Feat each) will actually be less powerful.
Not that I'm worried about that: if everybody's power gets turned down, everybody's still equal, and the Iron Heroes Classes are slightly more powerful so a character with a couple of levels in him should be equal to a similar level character from another world.
I became aware of this when I first set out to design some classic non-human races for use with Iron Heroes. Rather than replace both Traits with a Racial package (as the rules suggest), I wanted to make Race a Trait, so I needed to edit the races down to where their power was worth roughly one Trait, so I started to look at just how much one Trait really was. And then I realized that almost every race in the d20 SRD has one of those Ability-swaps that Iron Heroes says are worth a full Trait, and everybody else agrees are not worth as much as a Feat if they should cost anything at all. Leaving me the quandry: is it all right to combine an Ability Swap with an existing Trait to create a Race (for example: Artisan is something every Dwarf should have, but a CON bonus is too)? What if I only give Dwarves half the bonus from Artisan (+2 to Craft skills matches the SRD)?
It seems painfully obvious that the Ability Swap Traits are underpowered compared to the others, and that several of the other Traits are significantly more powerful than a single Feat. While I don't have any specific ideas for something to be done about this, I find it hard to believe that I am the only one to have noticed it.
I've been lurking here for some time, using Search and hoping someone with more experience with the system than I might address this topic, and I have finally decided to post about it myself. If someone else has already addressed this, please aid my weak google-fu and give me a link.
However, feel free to initiate such
discussions.
