Racial and Cultural Skill Bonuses

[Mr. Mask]

I was thinking about how racial skill bonuses are handled in games. Where X creature gets +2 to Jumping or whichever. It made me wonder about things like what if your character is from a culture famous for its sailors? Or the best butchers in the world? Would you get a bonus to that skill, or only if you had spent time in the relevant trade? What if your race is known for a trade skill, like crafting things? Do you only get that bonus if you train it that, or do you have the bonus regardless?

So, how do you think these matters are best handled? BW's lifepath system, or DnD's static bonuses?

[Maglubiyet]

It seemed like you were asking a question about 3.x racial bonuses(?), but then you kind of sprung that BW lifepath thing in at the end. What is that?

[The Evil DM]

In my homebrew campaign I do this. All characters have a race template and a cultural template The race template is all characteristics that are derived by virtue of species. All cultural characteristics are derived by virtue of participation within a particular campaign society or subcultural unit of a large multicultural society.

What I put into the cultural skill sets are things that are somewhat universal to that culture. Does the culture include a system of education for its children. If so what is taught. What other sources of skills and knowledge is common. Think about modern culture now and what skills are common amongst adolescents today. Most kids now have some basic skills with computers, mathematics and other topics taught to them.

The variance between the characters will come into play when the player selects skills above and beyond the starting pool or starting modifiers.

I do believe this idea above can be viewed through the lens of almost any gaming system. For myself because most of my homebrew stuff is 3.x D&D the culture provides static bonuses to particular skills.

[Karl Aegis]

I prefer giving races access to more esoteric abilities that aren't available to everyone. Oni get Resonance and Zedai-Ryu, Kongohki get Overdrive and Kongoh Rakan Ken, Samurai get to unleash their bound shiki, Kugutsu get to use the Butterfly Dream, and Ayakashi get Yohjutsu. Kijin just get a heart engine and special weapons. Tiny bonuses don't really differentiate races from each other.

[Darth Ultron]

The basic d20 skill system works just fine for this: a player picks skills they wish the character to have.

Subraces work just fine for skills, like wood elves getting a bonus to nature ones.

There are feats that allow a character to have a class skill, like ''Islander'' gives ''rope use'' and ''swimming''. And regional feats too.

And Pathfinders trait system works good too.

[LibraryOgre]

When I wrote my 3rd edition (before WotC admitted were doing one), I divided racial abilities into two parts... innate racial abilities that every member of the race would have (like an elf's low-light vision), and learned abilities that were culturally appropriate (like an elf's bonus with swords).

[Gavran]

It doesn't seem unreasonable to me that in a culture with a focus on a certain craft would have a higher knowledge floor on that craft. I, as an educated citizen of a modern society have a very wide array of basic knowledge on many things that someone from a less developed culture might not. Similarly, someone in say the military probably knows a bit about a lot of things they don't actually use that someone who works in an office might have no idea about.

Now, if your Elf is orphaned as an infant and raised in the human metropolis, those "racial" skills definitely reveal themselves to be "cultural" and should probably not apply. But I'm comfortable leaving these things on a per table basis.

[Eloel]

When I wrote my 3rd edition (before WotC admitted were doing one), I divided racial abilities into two parts... innate racial abilities that every member of the race would have (like an elf's low-light vision), and learned abilities that were culturally appropriate (like an elf's bonus with swords).

Would that make a dwarf raised by elves for some weird reason combine the two?

[LibraryOgre]

Would that make a dwarf raised by elves for some weird reason combine the two?

Or a human raised by dwarves? Sure.

[Maglubiyet]

When I wrote my 3rd edition (before WotC admitted were doing one), I divided racial abilities into two parts... innate racial abilities that every member of the race would have (like an elf's low-light vision), and learned abilities that were culturally appropriate (like an elf's bonus with swords).

This is how I envision it too, to answer the OP's question. Some abilities are inborn, that manifest no matter what culture the character grew up in. Others are the product of the upbringing or environment.

[Yora]

These days I am going almost entirely with pretty rules light systems and a lot of them don't really have any nonhuman races. So usually I just don't bother with race or culture modifiers at all. Just put your characters skill anywhere you want. A little +1 or +2 there isn't really going to be noticable in actual play.
Worst case, you have a character of a goat-men race who sucks at jumping, but even then he might just be the 1 in a thousand of goatmen who isn't really good at it. If the player want to make the jumping and climbing ability of the race part of his character, he can invest points.

[Mastikator]

Depends on the culture. Some cultures are good at enabling people to become good at certain skills, some cultures make it mandatory from early childhood to learn certain skills.

As for racial bonuses, I mean they're inherited, literally.

I think it's important to keep racial and cultural bonuses/penalties separate, since a race can have multiple cultures and subcultures.

For example. It's boring when all elves are exactly the same, maybe the city elves are all academically gifted because they're forced to learn calculus from age 10 but the wood elves are good at tracking and hunting since they're forced to learn to hunt wild animals from age 10. Even though they're both technically the same race with identical racial bonuses/penalties.