Affording racial templates

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by ArchonShiva

That makes the template give you something you wanted anyway, but you're still paying the full point cost of the template.

I think it's a matter of perspective. "My character needs to be a Thief with DX 16 and Combat Reflexes" - if that's the case, then it doesn't matter if you're a cat-folk thief or not. It might as well be part of the non-discretionary-spending points, and to you Thief in fact only has the 7 discretionary points in the Skills list to play with. The fact that Cat-Folk effectively costs 5 points (and Elf costs 0 points) is very important.

OTOH if you need a barbarian with Discriminatory Smell and +2 HT, you really only have 14 discretionary points to work with. Dwarf, Half-Ogre, and Half-Orc cost 10 points each, and Halfling is a net -10 (although not an actual disadvantage, it's just super-cheap, and a questionable buy)