Talk:Races/@comment-98.213.217.3-20140324114108/@comment-5395153-20140325154109

There are no penalties - non synergistic hero class combinations have more skills to pick from than synergistic ones, but don't get any bonuses. So for example a Dark Elf Summoner would get a synergistic bonus of an additional +1 to Summoning, but only has 9 skills to pick from instead of 10 (though usually this is rarely a downside).