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- Sep 6, 2013
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Warning: Semi-ranty, not intended to be inflammatory, apologies in advance.
The proficiency system as it currently stands is pretty good, but it has a few issues, mostly related to how weirdly imbalanced and forced it feels to play a non ailor.
Currently the system theoretically allows an ailor char to pick any culture boost as long as they were raised in it, doesn't matter if they're an Anglian in Ithania or a Velheim in Regalia, as long as they integrate into the society they get the boost, but when making something like a kathar that spent their whole life in Regalia you run into a problem, while the char might not have any connection to the kathar culture you're still forced to take the kathar boosts, you can always choose to take a negative in those stats, but that leaves your character at a disadvantage or you can go against the design of the char.
''Oh... I don't play non humans so this doesn't affect me'' while this is a good argument against it and it does encourage the majority ailor atmosphere Regalia should have, it does affect everybody, it reduces the char diversity in the sense that it supports certain archetypes, for example, the songaskian boost is only combat oriented and it forces chars, no matter what their background, to be automatically good or interested in basic combat, it doesn't really matter if they spent all their time in a tower sleeping around and praying, they still posses basic combat knowledge due to this issue it also ignores some lore aspects. And I largely get it, balancing and thinking of just the ailor cultures is hard enough.
How to prevent this.
There's a very simple solution to this, allow non ailor races to take ailor cultural boosts instead of their normal boosts as long as it's explained in the life story or allow them to take a reduced boost for a reduced cultural boost. How would this benefit characters, it would increase char diversity and make races that are severely underplayed more ''worth it'', hell, I want to play a cielothar but when I try to make one I feel like the meta of ''Friendly hippies'' is too ingrained for the char I want and the point system as it currently stands encourages putting chars into boxes instead of viewing them as people. As for the opposite, most of the non ailor cultures are racially homogeneous due to them being less fond of giant city states and the boosts, except for the sihai, are never presented as a cultural thing, but racial. I honestly would want an orc char that's good at preaching rather than a generic ''Smashgud'' even if that means not taking a racial boost.
Inconclusion, make cultural boosts truly cultural and not race bound.
The proficiency system as it currently stands is pretty good, but it has a few issues, mostly related to how weirdly imbalanced and forced it feels to play a non ailor.
Currently the system theoretically allows an ailor char to pick any culture boost as long as they were raised in it, doesn't matter if they're an Anglian in Ithania or a Velheim in Regalia, as long as they integrate into the society they get the boost, but when making something like a kathar that spent their whole life in Regalia you run into a problem, while the char might not have any connection to the kathar culture you're still forced to take the kathar boosts, you can always choose to take a negative in those stats, but that leaves your character at a disadvantage or you can go against the design of the char.
''Oh... I don't play non humans so this doesn't affect me'' while this is a good argument against it and it does encourage the majority ailor atmosphere Regalia should have, it does affect everybody, it reduces the char diversity in the sense that it supports certain archetypes, for example, the songaskian boost is only combat oriented and it forces chars, no matter what their background, to be automatically good or interested in basic combat, it doesn't really matter if they spent all their time in a tower sleeping around and praying, they still posses basic combat knowledge due to this issue it also ignores some lore aspects. And I largely get it, balancing and thinking of just the ailor cultures is hard enough.
How to prevent this.
There's a very simple solution to this, allow non ailor races to take ailor cultural boosts instead of their normal boosts as long as it's explained in the life story or allow them to take a reduced boost for a reduced cultural boost. How would this benefit characters, it would increase char diversity and make races that are severely underplayed more ''worth it'', hell, I want to play a cielothar but when I try to make one I feel like the meta of ''Friendly hippies'' is too ingrained for the char I want and the point system as it currently stands encourages putting chars into boxes instead of viewing them as people. As for the opposite, most of the non ailor cultures are racially homogeneous due to them being less fond of giant city states and the boosts, except for the sihai, are never presented as a cultural thing, but racial. I honestly would want an orc char that's good at preaching rather than a generic ''Smashgud'' even if that means not taking a racial boost.
Inconclusion, make cultural boosts truly cultural and not race bound.
