Topic: Bonuses based on race/culture

[PiXeL01]

I remember the culture package for spam/rmss gave a char free ranks in skills because of his racial and cultural background. I was wondering why the decision was made to give ranks and not a flat and constant bonus instead.

I thought about doing the culture thing for my own campaign world, but wondered if bonuses would be easier

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

Most likely the reasoning was thus:

Ranks represent a specific amount of learning that has been accomplished, while a bonus more often represents an innate ability with something.

Also, if you have no ranks in a skill, your base bonus in it is supposed to be a -25. Thus, by giving ranks you make sure that you have a positive total bonus for that skill. On the other hand, if you had only given a flat bonus, and the character had not purchased ranks in that skill, he could still end up with a negative bonus.

[Setorn]

The reason is diminishing returns.  Flat bonuses are worth more than the same amount of ranks that equal their total (+10 bonus = 2 ranks), because if you have two ranks the 9th rank will be worth two and not 5 (11 ranks = 52).  If you have a bonus of +10, your ninth rank will be worth five and not two (+10 + 9 ranks = 55).  The bonus in the aforementioned example is worth three points more.  Ranks tend to represent knowledge gained, as well, while bonuses represent innate ability or handicaps (negatives).   The two are not interchangeable.  

If I were you, I would look at whether this culture has innate abilities (racial/genetic/magical/technologically induced/divine favor/luck) or are they common knowledge passed down from generation to generation that could change if their society changed.  I would tend towards ranks and not bonuses.   Races already get stat & RR bonuses to represent racial aptitudes.  

[Marc R]

RM2 wise there were a few racial bonuses to skills, and penalties.

Elves +25 to meditation, dwarves -50 to swimming come to mind.

Those mods are signifigant, especially for the diminishing returns. . .An elf with 10 ranks of meditation has a +75 before stat or level bonus, a dwarf with 10 ranks of swimming is at +/-0. (A dwarf in that layout needs 5 ranks just to swim as poorly as an untrained human.)

IF the bonus is to reflect environment, I'd say ranks is best, as that's learning just like leveling and buying ranks. . .if it's genetic, something like "Elves meditate rather than sleep, so they have a knack for it." or "Dwarves are denser than water and their body proportions are wrong for the mechanics of swimming" then a bonus may be more appropriate.