Non Human and Human Character Balance

[ravenspoe]

I am thinking of running a short series of games using MRQ. I would like to have some fantasy creatures as characters (elves, dwarves, etc), but I think the Human Characters sort of get screwed since Elves, and Dwarves get traits.
I was thinking of either A. Giving Human characters 125 points instead of 100, or B. having the non human characters start with 75 points and only Humans get 100.


Any other ideas?

 

[Loz]

I'm running a campaign with a dark troll and shaman. Both have been created with the same skill point values.

To be honest, although the troll is physically more powerful, and has the Dark Sense trait, there's no perceptible imbalance. The troll is bloody mighty in combat (last session it was under the Beserk spell and faced-off against eleven archers; it looked like a pin cushion at the end of the melee, but it survived) but that's balanced by the other character's magical prowess.

Character/race 'balance' isn't something I ever worry about. Not all things, IMHO, are, or should be, equal for the sake of it.

 

[zozotroll]

I recently did a pirates of the caribean type game, complete with magic. The only non-human anybody wanted to run was a mistress race troll. Normaly that is considerd way over powered. Yet, while she certainly looked dominating in hand to hand, it didnt really turn out like that.

We kept track of kills for reputation. Against the more powerful monsters, yes the troll was bad news. but against unarmored humans, a couple others that where meant as main combatants did just as well.

 

[Rasta]

I don't use any balancing effects for character creation.

Some races are better at certain things than others. Brutes like minotaurs and trolls can be very deadly, but at the same time have other features that can be drawbacks.

They are usually the first target in combat, not as socially acceptable, mistrusted/feared, and are sure to stand out in a crowd of humans.

The only thing I have done to encourage some players to play puny races (ducks, halflings, newtlings, enlo) is to give them "mulligans" when rolling for stats.