Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Human Kindred Modifier

HUMAN: MR 50
Humans always seem to get marginalized in fantasy RPGs, and T&T is no different. Dwarves, elves, hobbs, leprechauns, even fairies all get some nice attribute bonuses to give them an edge over their human counterparts. In earlier editions of the game (1st and 4th editions) many of these bonuses were not even balanced by penalties. I've discussed the effects of these various attribute modifiers in previous posts so I won't go into it again here.

But what about humans? Yes they are typically viewed as the standard against which the other kindred are compared. So dwarves are typically stronger and healthier than your average human while elves are smarter, more agile, and prettier if a little less robust. But don't humans bring something special to the table?

What makes humans so successful in our own world? We lack the strength, dexterity, and constitution of most other large mammals (for the most part), but we do tend to be smarter (again, for the most part). What do we use this intelligence for? We make tools; tools that allow us to survive the elements, collect food, and defeat our enemies. I think, therefore, that humans in T&T should start with more of these tools than the other kindred.

We can model this condition by simply modifying the amount of gold with which newly created humans start the game. Starting gold for humans can be determined either by rolling 4D6 and multiplying by 10 or by rolling 3D6, multiplying by 10, and then applying a 1.5 modifier (rounding up). This gives humans 40-240 gp to start using the first method and 45-270 gp to start using the second method; it all depends on how much of an edge you want to provide. Compare this to the typical starting amount of 30-180 gp. The average amounts of starting gold come to 105 (standard), 140 (4d6), and 158 (1.5 modifier). This extra gold can be used by your human character to buy better armor, weapons, and equipment than his/her non-human companions possess. This falls right in line with how humans deal with adverse conditions despite their relatively frail bodies and it is not an overwhelming advantage in terms of game mechanics. Of course if you wanted to provide more of an edge, you could increase the number of dice or increase the modifier to 2.

15 comments:

  1. What about a human getting a bonus talent? I know that is very similar to 3.5, but would make sense to me.

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    1. I like this idea as there are more poor humans than rich ones.

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  2. I think this is a fantastic idea. In D&D humans tend to be able to learn more skills. They've an innate ability to pick up skill sets... the idea being that since our life-span is shorter, generally, our minds are more agile.

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  3. I like what you're doing here. I'm going to experiment with the Human Cash Bonus thing myself.

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  4. Jerrytel, that is a good idea as well; but of course it assumes that you are using talents in your game.

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  5. Dan, yup - I am speaking purely from a 7.5 POV...not much experience for me regarding prior editions. But even in 7.5, the positives seem to outweigh the negatives in the kindred modifiers. You bring up a good topic that could be handled in multiple ways.

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  6. I always use 4 dice and discard the lowest for humans (if I'm playing vanilla T&T). Humans are so weak in T&T (any edition) that rather than being the most populous race, they would have been wiped out by a tribe of feisty hobbits at the dawn of history.

    I'm sure non-human stat modifiers were born of a desire to "play something different for a change" and back in the early days of RPG, "different" had to mean "better". Just take a look at all the fan-created alternate classes for D&D back in the day - they were all a bit like an existing class, but better!

    My house rules for non-human races calls for specific dice rolls for each attribute - so trolls (for example) roll more dice for STR and CON, less for IQ and CHA, it's likely that they will be stronger than a human but a runt is possible.

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  7. Some interesting food for thought. I actually agree with the whole 'human as standard' view, that makes outstanding human characters all the more, well, outstanding. But still, some great ideas here.

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  8. Why include humans? Because you need a baseline? Why not have a fantasy world without them as PCs?

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    1. Nice idea. How about including them, but not as PCs, but rather as NPCs instead.

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  9. That is an excellent question Saroe. It's so good in fact that I'll need a new post to give you my answer/opinion on the topic. In short, Awe and Wonder.

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  10. Saroe, if you unleashed a bunch of min/maxers on the game, you would have a fantasy world without humans because no one would play one. :-)

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  11. Humans, as a kindred, are not only accomplished tool users - we're also a herd animal with a strong sociability instinct which, in evolutionary biological terms, has driven the development of both the 'software' for intelligence (i.e. language) & the 'hardware' for it (i.e. larger brains, with more sophisticated structures like the cerebrum & neocortex). Larger brains in a bipedal sociable mammal capable of complex social behaviours, lots of which are essentially cooperative & pro-social, can reasonably be said to account not only for a human character's greater stock of wealth when starting out as a dungeon delver, but also for a greater likelihood that a wider range of experiences in that human character's formative years will manifest in more exceptional starting attribute values (I'm thinking here of someone like 'Fleet o'Feet' in Bob Liddil's 'Griswald Grimm' tales - starts out a pauper living on the 'street of dreams', by chance becomes apprenticed to Griswald Grimm, the foremost Apothecary in Belestria, & through his apprenticeship comes into contact with a host of characters & has lots of adventures which, over time, make 'Fleet O'Feet' rather exceptional in the end).

    Hogscape said he always uses 4 dice, discarding the lowest value rolled, when rolling up attributes for human characters (let's call this 'cherry picking'). If you combine 'cherry picking' with the TARO ('Triples-Add-And-Roll-Over') rule, but limit the TARO rule to human characters only, you ensure that the lowest possible starting attribute score for a human character will be 5 rather than 3 ('coz 3D6x1 = TARO = a higher score than 3), & you increase the average value of starting attributes for human characters from around 10.5 to around 13.2 (which in v5 T&T significantly shortens the odds of rolling up a human Warrior-Wizard). More starting gold + greater chance of rolling up a human character with one or more exceptional starting attribute values + greater chance of rolling up a Warrior-Wizard = more reasons to bother rolling up a human character at all!

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  12. I don't bother giving Humans any bonus modifiers. Other kindreds are supposed to be better than Humans as they tend to be more specialized at one thing or another.

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