Setting and Balance and Elves, Oh My!

In which we discuss the history of AD&D through to Pathfinder and its impact on what one could play over time.

In the early days of D&D, there was no rhyme or reason about how strong one thing might be against another. In the early days you could play a 'young' balor (demon) as part of the PC party. Later, with D&D, you could play were dragons, faeries, or other creatures of all sorts (BECM), and by the time AD&D came around there were half-ogres, drow, and a variety of other creatures of varying power.

With 2nd edition AD&D, things became a bit more formalized. Level Adjustment was added to the mix, increasing the effective level of a character by their race. If you were strong enough, you were treated as one or two levels higher to determine how much XP you needed to level. This carried on into 3rd edition AD&D, which allowed players to play stronger characters at the cost of slower level growth.

Then we get into Pathfinder.
Here, level adjustment was removed, and with the coming of the advanced race guide, a formal system for constructing races was made, showing how many 'points' it would cost to make specific races, giving you an idea of the power level each of the races would have.

For races such as the drow, if you played a 'drow noble' it cost a lot of points - which indicated that the game master should probably disallow it. However, if you played a normal drow most of your innate spells and magic resistance were nerfed, and you could spend Feats to pick them up over time. Noting you get only one Feat every other level, and the 'feat chain' to become a drow noble was three or more Feats.  In other words, to be a drow noble took away a lot of your capabilities - and this isn't the same as 'it takes longer to level', because those options are permanently taken away from you, rather than allowing you to take them later.

Then you get into Pathfinder 2nd Edition, and 5th edition D&D, which both have pretty much removed any option of playing such races. Pathfinder 2e puts everything behind Feats, meaning you are missing out on options you could use for other things to get these options - or at least means that your access to them slows down. 5e? Not even on the radar, such options are simply gone.

An interesting thing happened in 3rd edition. They provided players with plenty of options for characters. One thing they provided was a form of heritage. You could have the blood of 'other things' flowing through your veins, providing you with some nifty abilities and bonuses as you levelled - slowing down your growth in your normal field, but still allowing it.  There were even rules to get rid of your level adjustments over time, allowing you to catch up to other characters as the game went on. This allowed for some incredible racial builds. Sadly, Pathfinder and 5e didn't give that kind of option.

As gaming progressed, a focus of 'mechanical balance' came to the forefront - this idea of a form of parity between characters. With this, a lot of the options players had access to disappeared. You wanted to play a drow? They're a lot weaker than they used to be. Want to play an ogre? Nowhere near as powerful as they once were. Want to play an aasimar with divine heritage and dragon lineage?  It will have no impact on what your character is capable of anymore.

Some people might think this is a good thing, that it promotes 'fairness' at the table, giving everyone equal opportunity to be on even footing. The cost however, is the sheer variety and freedom to be whatever you wanted to be. In AD&D, people just made races for the table, without any thought of the impact it would have.  In 2e, you just slapped a level adjustment on it (and the same went for 3e).  Pathfinder ... well, you could make what you wanted, but GMs are urged more to disallow some of the stronger types.  "You want to play a half-blue dragon?  No."  And 5e, there's even more restrictions than that.

Which brings us to the quandary we're facing right now. You see, we had a game world that's been in play since 2nd edition first came out. The races there had all sorts of interesting abilities due to the nature of the game world itself.

Elves? Could take a variety of animal forms. You took proficiency in which animals you wanted to be able to turn into, and made a skill check to take that form. Dwarves could shape stone and metal with their bare hands, crafting anything they wanted, while halflings were able to flit from tree to tree, bush to bush, in an instant. Pixies could shift to halfling or even human size, and disappear from view. This wasn't even an issue in 3rd edition either. 5th edition was a bit trickier, because a lot of the racial abilities from earlier editions simply vanished.

Pathfinder had the advanced race guide, for building the different races, figuring out the point values, but even looking at that, the values for these elves and dwarves and such were sky-high.  The presumption in Pathfinder, 5th edition, and later, was that fantasy races were more ... grounded.

We had a bit of a discussion about this with one or two other game designers, one being a huge fan of Pathfinder 2e, the other ... not so much. And here's some of the ideas bouncing around.

"Well, your elves transform into animals - why not put those into Feats to get as the character levels?"

So, we considered that. The player has to spend a precious resource to get to a thing that, canonically, they were able to do from puberty, and aren't good at it until later on. We sort of split the difference, breaking down the ability so that the more extreme transformations came later - but these were automatic, not Feats. Elves could transform from Level 1 on, and evolved naturally, rather than sacrificing something else to do so.

"Well, start them at higher level."

This we dismissed out of hand. Since the beginning, we always believed you should have access to all options at 1st level. Not, 'well, you need to wait until the group is Level X before you can play this race'. It would suck if everyone had to be human at 1st level, or that the group had to be 3rd or 4th level before you could play a non-human. Seriously.

We have an important rule when we run a game world or write game mechanics:
Being true to the setting is more important than game balance.

Imagine trying to play Star Wars, and the game master said, "sorry, Wookies are too powerful, you'll need to wait until the group is Level 3 to play a Wookie."  Or, "Jedi are just too much, you're not allowed to play a Jedi until everyone's Level 5, but you have to spend Feats to get any Force Powers."

(Honestly? WEG's d6 Star Wars was, we think, perhaps one of the best way for dealing with Force Powers, but we also liked SAGA edition Star Wars as well, we were able to make the kind of Jedi we wanted.)

One example we like to point out is Exalted 1st and 2nd edition. The engine had its issues, but the mechanics as a whole accepted the complete absurdity of the world. A beginning Solar Exalted could literally dodge between the individual raindrops of a thunderstorm, or deflect a meteorite with casual ease. A Sidereal Exalt could tell you a blatant truth, and make the implications of that so terrifying, your mind rejects it and convinces you that the Sidereal was flat-out lying. Other Exalt types were weaker, more limited, but you were fully allowed to play them alongside these individuals who broke reality casually.

Were they on par? Not in the slightest. In fact, two Solars could be vastly different in power, even when starting with the same options.

This was a feature, not a flaw, in our books, because it gave you a solid feel for what the world was like, what people were capable of, and accepted that no, not everyone's going to be on the same level.

Which makes us think, for our shapeshifting elves being written for Pathfinder 1e, we can accept that they're 'overpowered'. So what?  If the players are having fun, then this isn't an issue in our books. It's just a shame that games have moved away from 'play what's there' and more into 'parity, at the expense of setting'. It curtails the richness of a number of settings, limiting what you can play there, or nerfs the different races to make them 'playable'.