Dominant Strategy

"Johnny solves all his problems with a chainsaw.

It might be messy

and it might be loud

but he never has the same problem twice."


I have some posts coming up that talk about good vs. bad game balance and player options, things like that. I thought I'd go over a common thing in gaming once now instead of having to explain it in every one of the next two or three posts. Examples will be forthcoming, since this is a pretty complex issue.

Dominant Strategy is when one single way to play a game is better than any other, regardless of circumstance. It means doing a particular thing regardless of what your opponent is doing. This is usually a term used in competitive games, and there's a lot of interesting baggage to it that we don't really need to go into. In PNP games this can also mean ways to approach a challenge or situation, character building, spell selection, or class/archetype selection. We're also dealing with shades of dominant strategy a lot, more than the "weak vs. strong" used in competitive gaming. This is because we're dealing with things that are more arguable and variable than a game with simple, set rules. Keep that in mind.

Dominant Strategy is usually bad. We blur the line a little, though, because it doesn't always impact the fun of a game when it crops up. The large amount of choices in games like Shadowrun, Mutants and Masterminds or Pathfinder can make for "must-take" abilities or combinations. That can easily be called a minor dominant strategy. Things like cybernetic characters taking enhanced articulation, or superheroes taking the Luck feat don't negatively impact the game. It's a fault in game building, sure. But it could be worse.

It could be worse like Cyberpunk 2020, for example. That game's damage scale is so wildly deadly that the strategy of stacking initiative, using automatic weapons and playing a cyber-samurai(called Solos in CP2020) emerges. Other things in combat don't really work. Unless you have some kind of weird Gentleman's Agreement(more on that later) the game kind of devolves into everyone doing the same thing.

That really is the difference. You can say that Dervish Dance Magus is a broken or bad combination. Hell, I'll say that all day, my hatred for Dervish Dance is pure and well known. It doesn't really lead to a broken game, though. There are other builds that can compete, and even if there weren't, it still doesn't have the non-combat utility of other classes. Even a game full of players who are very serious about their character's effectiveness will have several classes in it. Shadowrun has several minor dominant strategy moments in it, such as layering form-fit armor and certain pieces of cyberware and bioware.

Usually when you have a major Dominant Strategy in a game, or a large set of smaller ones, there's no fixing it. Am I saying you shouldn't play Cyberpunk 2020? Kind of. Sorry. If your group enjoys all playing initiative stacking solos with automatic weapons or Toreadors, City Gangrels and Brujah with celerity 5...well, who am I to tell you what to enjoy? Just don't enter into these games thinking you're going to fix them.

There is, however, another way.

Sure, sometimes you can toss a house rule if this becomes problematic. You can tell people not to take Probability Control or bar the Magus class. I think most players are primarily interested in making a cool characters, though. I think you'll find you mostly don't need to worry about this kind of thing. Plenty of them are harmless(like armor stacking in Shadowrun) and the ones that aren't? It doesn't necessarily come up. If it IS coming up, you've got to do something about it, sure. But if none of your six Vampire PCs stacks Celerity like there was a sale at the discipline store? Maybe don't worry about it.

This probably happens the most in VtM and Mutants and Masterminds. There's so many cool options that people don't feel the need to gravitate toward the most powerful combinations. Most mature groups do this with everything. If your group needs to be reigned in, well...you need to do it. I can't give you any advice on when. I can only say to let things slide if there's no real problem.

So yeah, I probably use the term Dominant Strategy a little wrong. Really it's not a concept that's intended to port outside of competitive games, and I'm co-opting it for my purposes. So next time I discuss game design, hopefully I can just point back to this post.

EDIT: There's an extremely good example of what I'm talking about in Exalted called Paranoia Combat, or the 2-7 Filter. Here's some more information on it, but the gist of it is that two charms in a game of hundreds are the "correct" choice.

https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/10602/what-is-exalted-paranoia-combat

Thoughts on Bestiary V

"If you had an off switch, Doctor, would you not keep it secret?"


You'll notice we skipped straight to Bestiary V instead of going in order. Well, I just bought this book recently and it's 300% more bonkers than I expected. That's with already knowing there's a fucking grey on the cover. So, I have a few thoughts that are outside of my usual thing on playable monsters. We're just lumping them into the same post, or else a bunch of scattered ideas get randomly shoved into a Dumb and Wrong later on.

The Bestiary books kind of have themes, and this one's theme is apparently outer god damn space. I fucking love it, but this book is going to be pretty divisive. Plenty of people would say this stuff doesn't belong in a fantasy game, and I can't even really fault that. I like messing with genre conventions sometimes, though, and this book is a ton of great ammo for that. I apologize for kind of assuming you have the book in front of you when I make these posts, but it's either that, or these posts are a billion pages long.

Discussion of player options are in blue.


Aerial Savant. I really hate when games do this. This thing is so similar to the invisible stalker that the entry especially mentions that fact. So, why bother creating it? I know, padding, but you can come up with better padding than this. I'd absolutely take something wacky and dumb over a monster that's basically been reprinted.

Akaname. This is just a stand-in for a general statement, I really like that Pathfinder pulls from mythology a lot. Japanese myths have a ton of super neat monsters that none of the previous D20 games really went into. A lot of Japanese monsters are ultra specific, like the one who's just a wall that walks around and blocks your path. However, there are so many others that I'd love to see adapted.

Android. One of the book's solid character races, plus everyone wants to play Data. Their Constructed ability is a nice compromise to my own adaptation of Living Construct if you want something lower-key. You can easily fit this into a fantasy world, too. Wizards are always experimenting with creating life, so I don't want to hear that this is impossible to adapt.

Animate Hair. What.

Apallie. I'm not certain because ooze has some powerful immunities, but if you ever wanted a playable ooze, this is probably it. CR 2, 4 HD, and other than being an ooze and getting decent stat adjusts, it doesn't really get much.

Ape, Megaprimatus. Am I happy that King Kong is in the game? Yes. Am I irritated he's only CR 8? Also yes.

Astomoi. I'm only talking about this awful race because I told myself I'd share my thoughts on every player race in this book. They kind of set the precedence this book has for being full of "challenge" races. Races you'd only play if you wanted to deal with some sort of sucky penalty on purpose. They get nothing special that would make you want to play them, but are also blind outside of 60 feet. They don't even get blindsense, just darkvision. Blindsense would be a decent trade-off here. All the Astomoi gets are vague penalties that aren't mitigated by anything.

Bone Ship. Not that this thing isn't cool, but...can you imagine what trying to kill it looks like? Standing on its deck whacking the floor with a sword?

Clockwork Familiar. Lord help you if your GM thinks you should have to pay for one of these before taking it with Improved Familiar, because they are not worth it. The idea of stuffing a consumable inside of it is cool, but why are all of the effects completely unrelated to the contents of the scroll, potion or wand you stuffed inside it? What's the harm in letting it activate the wand you put inside it? Sure, fireball or lightning bolt would be pretty powerful...but it'd also be pretty expensive to keep stuffing those inside your clockwork bird.

Crone Queen. Another stand-in for a reoccurring issue in this book. I don't always mind when a book does this, but there are a lot of monsters with only one line of fluff. I get it, that another page might be wasted, but...I dunno, come up with something. 


Dark Folk, Caligni. These guys are basically just Double Drow. I like adding more planar races, or even just dudes who are kinda like planar races. They don't get much, but it's a dex/con race(which is really rare) and See in Darkness is super nice. Really if you want to play a Darkness Guy or Spooky Chick without the baggage of Drow, this is a good one.

Deep One Hybrid. Another really interesting character race ruined by its disadvantages. They take Wisdom Drain if they're away from the sea, ensuring you'll never actually play one of these things. Like, I get it. Innsmouth was a port town. Deep Ones are fish men. However, presenting a character race without any regard to playability is short sighted. It pisses me off. Just give them hit dice or make a note that they're intended for NPCs. Fucking Wisdom Drain. Not even damage, drain.  Oh yeah, and they explode into Deep Ones when they hit 60 years old. Nice.

Demon, Cambion. Their ability score bonuses are a bit much, but these guys are close to playable. Sin demons are a neat idea, too. Knock their ability score bonuses down a bit if you're worried, but really unless they're playing a monk or doing some weird multiclassing, I don't think they're going to come up.

Dragon. Hey, in case thirty or forty different kinds of dragons wasn't enough for you, there's like eight more in this book. Because of course there is.

Emotion Ooze. Yeah, I watched Ghostbusters II too. It's good, but it's not that good.

Firbolg. 2e's playable giant race is back. At CR 4 and 6 HD, these guys are so similar to Ogre that anything I said about them, you could also say about Firbolg. They also get Reduce Person at will. The only thing to watch out for is that they have bonuses to their mentals, not penalties like the ogre. Bumping their effective CR may be in store, depending on your game.

Ghoran. This race was also printed in Ultimate Wilderness with a special Plant type that was busted down so low that it didn't make sense any more. Here they're presented as a character race with no mention of a gimped type. So I guess it's up to you if you want to gimp out the plant type or not. Considering Ghorus Seed is really their only ability, I can't say they're unbalanced even with the full plant type.

Ghoul, Leng. Did Lovecraft need special ghouls all for himself? Couldn't we just use the regular ghouls in the Bestiary? I mean, I liked Pickman's Model too, but come on.

Gray. When I saw a little big headed alien on the cover, I thought to myself "It's gonna be really hard to present this monster in an acceptable way.". They didn't succeed. This monster is dumb, it just has a bunch of meme-worthy abilities people attribute to gray aliens.

Gray Goo. https://youtu.be/RhMsboqMMzs

Ichthyocentaur. Well, nice to know God still hates us. Remember the rainbow winged wolf creature from 3.5? Yeah, me too.

Merfolk, Deep. GUYS. GUYS! MER-DROW.

Mummy Lord. This is playable on the level of being an alternate to Lich. By the time someone in your party is becoming a Lich, Mummy Lord would be on the table too. I also love seeing mummy templates, since it never made sense to me for mummy to be a lumbering, basic CR 5 thing.

Mutant. This is a fairly playable template, and I just wanted to say I think it's really cool that they added something like this, even if these are basically radiation mutants. Radiation definitely isn't something that a party in a fantasy game should be worrying about. I guess the entry does mention "Strange magical auras" too, but...the writing's on the wall. It's really obvious where these came from. That aside, this template can make for some really memorable encounters, or even some cool player characters. This can easily be used as antagonist theming without restricting yourself to a specific type or kind of monster.

Orang-Pendak. MONKEY! Fairly playable. It's weird to see a small size race with a bonus to STR, but I can get behind that. Their disadvantage irks me since this book's races all seem to have them for no fucking reason, but it's fine. a penalty when they're riding another creature or on a vehicle isn't likely to come up that much. It's something interesting that can be roleplayed.

Plagued Beast. I fucking love this template. It's a great little monstrous template that has a lot of legs. Not literally. I mean, I guess you could use it on a spider. I'm saying it has a lot of different ways to use it in a story. There's a ton of stories and plot ideas that could include these things. I'm just upset that there's no hard rules on creating these. I never understood that: A dedicated necromancer or evil cleric is just going to look around until they find one and use Command Undead on it. At that point, just let them blow gold or something on making one.

Reptoid. Really interesting stat adjusts(STR/CHA bonus, DEX penalty), very fun idea, and pretty good racial bonuses. Reptoids are definitely this book's winner in terms of player concepts. The fact that they're inspired by real world conspiracy theories is just a bit of icing. I particularly like seeing more variation in stat adjusts, and this book in general delivered a lot of that.

Robot. This is the first time the book really lost me. We already have clockworks. There's a ton of them and I feel they were a decent addition to the game. So, now there's robots. Which are different. You can't create robots like you can clockworks...but does that really warrant these being a completely different thing? All of the aliens in this book(even the ton I didn't talk about) can be justified in some way or included as planar travelers, but unless you're running a setting like my Terra Prime world, you simply can't justify using these. The artwork, while decent, is especially egregious. This is straight up anime stuff.

Shabti. I love this idea, and this is more interesting stat adjusts with a CON/CHA race. They're playable and fun, but with a big old asterisk on that statement. Shattered Soul means that, to be raised, the caster must succeed at a caster level check equal to 10 plus the Shabti's hit dice. This is a dumb little disadvantage that just serves to steer people away from playing the race. I actually couldn't find any information on when in the casting process you pay material components. If your GM rules that the fizzled raise spell still expends its material components, nobody is going to try more than once to raise you. If your GM rules that you only pay if the spell is completed(which is the more reasonable interpretation) then this is just a really big nuisance. It stains an otherwise neat concept.

Skinwalker. Very nearly the winner for Best Playable Thing in Book, these animal shifters are pretty awesome. That's especially so, considering that their skinshifting bonuses can change every time they do it, and it's not a per-day or otherwise limited thing. People who like versatility will love skinwalker. It's a great way to play a were-creature without having to bring monster CR and Hit Dice into it.

Thriae Dancer. Don't think I don't see you. Get back to Ahn Qiraj! I don't even know how you got out!

Trench Mist. I like the concept of a gas that creates juju zombies, but I almost feel like making the gas an actual intelligent monster is a bit silly. I honestly never liked gaseous creatures to begin with, you always end up in a situation where someone's swinging a weapon at it. Calling it Trench Mist also calls to mind this being a reference to Mustard Gas, and...that's maybe a bit insensitive.

Undigested. WHAT.


Overall, this is a really solid book, even if whoever was in charge of the player races felt like they all needed some kind of big disadvantage. In terms of monsters, it's got a ton of mythological stuff in it, and I always like seeing that instead of someone inventing some random shit. It has a bend toward aliens and sciencey stuff, but I have to be honest, I liked seeing that too. It's nice to see a guideline, for if you want to muddle genres and throw some aliens into your Pathfinder game. You can even use and keep the player guessing about how they arrived on their planet and never directly say they're extraterrestrial. Depending on the tone of your game, that might be the best way to go about it. Though me, I'm the kind of person that would straight up put a crashed alien ship in a random encounter. So I guess your mileage may vary.

Defense of the Magic Shop III: Stupid Magic Items II

Let's just do it. Yeah, let's just get right into it, no god damn intro. Stupid magic items part two, here we fucking go.


Stone Horse. I talked about D20 having a history of overvaluing things and this is, weirdly, another thing it hates. Transportation. While flying certainly has implications of its own, the system seems to think magical mounts should be inordinately expensive, even though transportation's importance is wholly dependent on the individual GM. I mean, you could play a whole campaign in one city, one dungeon, or one place. You group could just walk everywhere if your game has no time-focused urgency.

But the Stone Horse still costs ten thousand gold. What do you get for that? Well, it has hardness 10. That's good, because it's hilariously expensive to heal. I mean, if it even ever gets attacked in the first place. Otherwise it...doesn't get tired? Whoopy. The fucking rider still does, so that's pointless. The Stone Horse isn't going to get used more often than a regular fucking horse unless your whole fucking group never needs to rest. Say, Mount is a first level spell, a continuous use item of that would just be two thousand gold. Is this another situation like an item of continuous Expeditious Retreat where the system is going to imply via its examples that you just shouldn't allow it to exist? A light warhorse is 110 gold, meaning for the Stone Horse to be worthwhile, it has to save you from having to buy ninety horses. Upon Dead Horse Event #91, this thing starts saving you money. Until then, you could simply ride horses until they die of exhaustion then eat the corpse and save money compared to the Stone Horse.

No, this thing and many others are a tax on people for roleplaying. It's not very much more useful than a horse, the things it's "good at" won't hardly ever come up, and the only people who buy it are people whose characters don't like animals or something similar. Things like the Clockwork Steed are basically the same, where it's not even much more powerful in a fight than a horse, doesn't go faster, but still costs twenty-nine thousand gold. In fact, as a bonus, I want you to reread this whole section, but replace "stone horse" with "mechanical steed", "ten thousand" with "Twenty-nine thousand" and my regular tone of voice with angry screaming.


Sovereign Glue. This is a classic item and, for once, I won't fault it being included. It's definitely feeling the ravages of time, though. Back in 1e and 2e, the game was less fantastical. Less big, bold and...movie-like. You can tell by the classic items in the game: Decanter of Endless Water, Heward's Handy Haversack, and yes...sovereign glue. The game's more punchy and more flashy now, and gluing stuff together...just doesn't sound as useful as it did when I was a kid. For 2400 gold, it should...I dunno, repair magic items or something.


Figurine of Wondrous Power.  I guess we're talking about classic magic items today and how they're bad. Unlike Sovereign glue, I can't imagine these things, ANY OF THEM, were ever useful. Every version in every edition have ridiculous time limits on their use, when having these to use most of the time would be the entire point of the item. Okay, the obsidian steed is like a BADASS horse with an incredible amount of spells it can use, but who the fuck only needs a horse once a week for 24 hours? It's ONE fucking horse and this is a game where you explicitly are in a party of adventurers. I can go on and dispute literally every one of these piece of shit figurines, but most of those arguments would end in the figurine doing something that would be useful if it were once a day instead of once per fucking week. And yes, if they were more usable they WOULD be more expensive. I think a lot of people would be totally fine with that, though. You could even cut down costs by not giving them a bunch of pointless spell effects we're not likely to use.

The one that's new to Pathfinder, Slate Spider, is pretty awesome, though. Once a day you can get a fight with no misfire from your gun. For 5k gold, that's alright. Now if only guns were worth using...


Folding Boat. This isn't exactly a bad item or anything, it's just that 7,200 GP isn't much more expensive than an actual nonmagical ship of the same size. By the time your group is looking at transportation, you're likely to just spring for this instead of a regular ship.


Migrus Locker. I secretly love this item. Even though 10k probably isn't worth it for what's essentially just a familiar, I like tools like this. It's neat and it's one of the reasons it was so fun in 2e to have your thief read a scroll of Summon Familiar. Even these days I'm always looking for reasons to plunk a familiar onto my rogue characters like taking the advanced talent for it.

But.

This is OBVIOUSLY someone's custom magic item, and it's gross on the level of parody. Did it have to be like this? A chained box that has a weird skinned cat with your face in it? Couldn't this be...I dunno, a cute little mechanical bunny or something? As a horror fan, this is really often the internal conversation I have with myself when watching gore movies. Sometimes it's fun and effective. Sure. I fucking love The Toxic Avenger and that's one gross fucking movie. A lot of the time, people have problems with gore not because it's gross, but because it's presented without context or reason. Something that's gross or shocking can really drive a point home, like in Evil Dead 2 or the remake. This is a pen and paper game, though, so I'm not sure what point they're trying to make here. Migrus Locker reminds me of Saw 2, when Jigsaw is getting brain surgery in his filthy trap warehouse. Instantly upon the scene beginning, you think "Okay, you're showing this for no fucking reason. You just want to gross me out.".


Elixirs. Any of them. Back in 3.0 and before, Druids had religious restrictions on weapons. This is fine, except they got club but not greatclub. It led to me imagining Archdruids walking around with measuring tape, making sure clubs weren't too long. Elixirs kind of do the same thing for me. I get that it's because these are various effects instead of potions explicitly being spells. It's a categorization thing. I get it. But, does this not imply that Brew Potion shouldn't be in the game? I can make a single use item of a spell effect with Craft Wondrous Item. I can make a liquid that causes an effect when I drink it, apparently, with Craft Wondrous Item. And actually, if I make a magic item with fifty charges of a command-word spell, it's hilariously cheaper than potions. An item of fifty charges of a first level spell at command word activation is 900gp, or 18 gold a charge. Compare to 50 gold for a single potion. You just have to put up 900 gold at once instead of 50 at a time. You might even need someone in the party to take Craft Wondrous Item. Honestly, though, neither of these two situations would dissuade most common adventuring parties.

 I mean, I guess at least wands are cheaper, at 15 gold a charge for a 1st level spell. They should be, being spell trigger items. They're more restrictive to use. Nice that something makes sense, for once.


Horn of Valhalla. Let's call a 5th level Barbarian a CR5 monster. Summoning 1d4+1 CR 5 monsters is something Summon Monster VII can do. Summon Monster VII cast once a day at Command Word activation is 32,720GP. The Horn of Valhalla functions once a week, has restrictions on who can properly use it, and costs 50k gold.

I think I've made my point.


@}-,-'--


So today ended up being a lot of bashing on classic magic items. That's going to be a trend in magic items: Sometimes things are brought forward due to nostalgia and their gold value doesn't really mesh with the new system. Maybe it never did, since I'm sure 1e and 2e D&D's developers weren't using a unified system with which to justify gold piece prices. I mean, in those games, you really weren't supposed to be buying and selling them. Games were less fantastical and magic items weren't integral to character builds, so simpler things stood out more. You'd probably think the Horn of Valhalla was really cool if you were playing 2e. We're not playing 2e, though.

But as a closer, I wanted to say something about the magic item creation rules. If you want to say that they're broken or require restrictions, I don't agree but I'm willing to have that conversation. If you're going to tell me that I'm misusing the rules to create these "more economical" magic items, I'm sorry to say that nothing in the book supports your point of view. The magic item creation rules are presented explicitly for the creation of custom magic items. They wouldn't be in the book if they weren't intended for use. Even if you weren't supposed to use them like this, they're some of the most fun in the game and help people feel like they have options, or even just neat stuff.

We even give our weapons names. Aikiyo the Mockery doesn't wield a +1 flaming katana. No, that's Blossom Thief tucked into her obi.  Letting us create our own magic items is the same feeling, only greater. It's grown integral to making characters and even whole games really memorable. We won't remember most of the crap on our character's sheets, but we'll remember those cool magic items that define them.

The problem isn't the magic item creation rules. The problem is these thoughtlessly designed items, and I'll keep proving it, over and over. I'm never going to run out.

Arrested Development and Racial Statistics

Oh boy, look at how gloriously specific that title is. It's like finding a shiny pokemon, we might never have minutiae this minute ever again. This is one of my top five gaming pet peeves though, easy.  I'm not a huge stickler for things making perfect logical sense. You guys know me, the person who rails against using "Well, logically..." as the primary factor to your decision making. However, racial stats sometimes have a really big tonal dissonance problem that we're going into today.

In a perfect world, a race's statistics inform you of their nature, and their culture. Really, you can do this a lot already. Humans are versatile and omnipresent, so they get a +2 to any stat, and bonuses that rely on varied choice: a feat and skill points. They can be good at anything and fit in anywhere. Dwarves are slow but deliberate: Literally as well as thematically. They get a dex penalty, but aren't slowed down by encumbrance. They're stoic and slow to adapt to new ideas, so they get a wisdom penalty.

But anyone who's ever turned on Fox News knows we're pretty fucking far from a perfect world.

Before I go any further, I want to make a note on theming. It means that anything a race has leads you to think about a certain thing. It doesn't mean I'm calling for it to "Make sense". When I say the theming is botched, it means that the racial statistics feel like they're chosen randomly or without regard to what the reader is going to think when he sees them.

Goblins are easily the worst ones for this. Pathfinder describes them as superstitious to an insane degree, such as thinking writing or books steal thoughts from your head. Due to being basically Paizo's mascots they're idiotic to the point of being lovably derpy, never rise above tribal society, and don't even like building their own buildings. Paizo's content is filled with hilariously stupid chants and battle-songs. They love fire to a near fetishistic degree and have incredible voracious appetites.

So what are their stats? DEX bonus, STR penalty, CHA penalty. Bonus to stealth and ride. Bonus move speed compared to other small creatures.  That's it. Their alternate racial traits are all either regional ones like City Dweller or physical in nature like Big Ears. They don't get an INT or WIS penalty or some sort of trait based on superstition. Keep in mind that some other races do: Hobgoblin and Dwarf both have alternate traits based around their mistrust of magic.

Their background information in any of the books I own doesn't even mention animals. Honestly, with the focus on them preferring a meat-only diet and seeing other intelligent races as sources of food, it kinda guides you toward thinking they don't keep livestock. For this info, you have to look up Goblin Dogs to find out they just let the things roam free in whatever community they have. It still doesn't gel with me, though. The race they describe doesn't seem like one likely to train animals for even basic riding. They also get a CHA penalty for being "generally unpleasant to be around". Put a pin in that idea for now.

It happens with hobgoblins and their militant, orderly society somehow granting them a bonus to stealth. Half Elves in 3.5 were described as standoffish loners who live on the fringes of society, then given a bonus to Diplomacy. Drow get dancing lights and faerie fire for reasons I've never really understood. Duergar can go invisible. Really, anything having to do with the Underdark is a train wreck in terms of society, but let's keep that to another day.

There's also a lot of dissonance in terms of CHA penalties. PF defines it as "Personality, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and appearance." Because I live in a world that contains Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, I vehemently disagree with the CHA being tied to appearance. This also irritates me because it became an easy "Stat dump" for every goblinoid race. If it's an ugmo like Lisa Simpson, give it a CHA penalty and call it a day.

The game's not even consistent with this. CHA is also defined as personal life force, but only if you're undead. So, a horrifying dessicated living corpse animated with unholy magical power also gets to be better at social interaction, bard spells, singing...I could go on. So the idea that nearly every undead monster gets bonuses to CHA means it holds less water that races which don't adhere to conventional human ideals of beauty all get CHA penalties. Really, when you put it like that, I guess the argument makes itself. Remember how goblins get a penalty for being unpleasant to be around? You know what's generally unpleasant to be around? A mummy. They get a four point bonus to CHA.

So, what can we do about this problem? Unless you're creating your own setting and are free to define societies and cultures as you see fit, there's fuckall you can do. Cultures are often too ingrained into settings, and mechanics should be somewhat reliable. I personally think you should try and pare down on the amount of house rules your game has, for ease of understanding and play. This means that a "Racial Rebalancing Pack" is probably a non-starter. Really, I just wanted more people to be aware of this. If nothing else, keep this kind of thing in mind when you're creating your own settings and feel free to give yourself some leeway on cultures. Everyone else seems to.