In the new paradigm, are racial ASI's unnecessary complexity?

[Witty Username]

So an angle I have heard on this that I had not considered. If racial ability scores are going to be standardized across the races like the most recent UA suggests, then it creates an unnecessary step during character creation, making it more complex for no gain, and we would be about as well served by eliminating racial ability score increases entirely.

This may necessitate some ajustments to point by, to retain the balance point. Rolled stats are probably fine since they already trended a little high.

What are your thoughts?

[MaxWilson]

So an angle I have heard on this that I had not considered. If racial ability scores are going to be standardized across the races like the most recent UA suggests, then it creates an unnecessary step during character creation, making it more complex for no gain, and we would be about as well served by eliminating racial ability score increases entirely.

This may necessitate some ajustments to point by, to retain the balance point. Rolled stats are probably fine since they already trended a little high.

What are your thoughts?

This is better than the Tasha's way.

[TyGuy]

Are they complex?
No

Are they unnecessary?
They have served their purpose of instilling flavor and distinction. But necessary... depends on the subjective objectives of the table.

In 6e, WotC will likely just copy PF2e's buffet style build-a-bear approach.

[MaxWilson]

Are they complex?
No

Are they unnecessary?
They have served their purpose of instilling flavor and distinction. But necessary... depends on the subjective objectives of the table.

In 6e, WotC will likely just copy PF2e's buffet style build-a-bear approach.

And 6.5E will just be GURPS GULLIVER, re-branded as D&D.

[J-H]

Nah, it's just an optional rule. Nobody in my circle of actual play has the slightest interest in using it.

[PhantomSoul]

This is better than the Tasha's way.

100% Agreed
(and give races with something other than a +2/+1 something to compensate, if applicable... but something with actual flavour [so another racial trait])

[PhoenixPhyre]

100% Agreed
(and give races with something other than a +2/+1 something to compensate, if applicable... but something with actual flavour [so another racial trait])

I will say that IF we want to homogenize all the ASIs, then it's better to remove them entirely from everybody and rebalance accordingly. Half measures are half-baked.

[PhantomSoul]

I will say that IF we want to homogenize all the ASIs, then it's better to remove them entirely from everybody and rebalance accordingly. Half measures are half-baked.

Oh, I'm strongly on the side of keeping them in (and non-floating unless it's very specifically suitable for the race), perhaps with a system to use ASIs to buy feats in an ideal world (for a restricted set, where it's based on race and/or ability).

But if it's gunna be Tasha's Confusion of Everything in a future edition, it can just be dumped. (And they can put an ASI into the background and/or race if they want to say it's based on learning not being completely different species).

[Anymage]

I'll also add that as long as anyone with default modifiers other than +2/+1 exists, Tasha's stat mods just create that much more mess. Standardizing the rules and avoiding abilities that are clearly more attractive to one class over another (e.g: wizards love mountain dwarven armor, fighters already have it) would help fix some of the messes.

Whether I feel confident that WotC would do a good job of this after the Tasha's rules were basically the laziest implementation possible ("Just do it yourself and pick whatever feels right!") is another issue, but one that I'm sure has been discussed to death in other threads already.

[False God]

I'm fine with the elimination of racial ASIs, or even starter ASIs at all. I think it would also help with keeping the numbers low in 5E, they seem to max out fairly quickly.

[Theodoxus]

I tend to agree OP. It does seem kind of odd (especially to new players) that when you generate a character using point buy, with maximum of 15 to a stat, and then at the end say 'ok, and now add 2 more free points to 1 stat and 1 more point to a second.'

OTOH, there's no way to create a PB chart that goes to 17 that wouldn't also make more powerful characters than with the "32 PB + 2 + 1" method. I'll leave it to others to debate whether that's "a good thing" or not.

I will note that in my own homebrew, I've moved away from bonus ASI. But then again, half the games I ran pre-Covid I just had the players pick the stats they wanted their characters to have.

[Kane0]

If you’re using point buy or an array they are fairly pointless at this stage. If you’re rolling for stats they probably still serve a function mechanically speaking.

[MoiMagnus]

Yes, floating ASI are unnecessary and awkward.

To the point of removing them in current edition? No. Additionally, peoples complain even more when you nerf them in ways they don't like than when you buff them in ways they don't like.

To the point of removing them in next edition? Yes. Going forward, the paths that make sense to me are, in no particular order:
(1) Backtrack to fixed racial ASI. Well, lineage ASI, since the removal of the word "race" is probably to be expected.
(2) Double-down on "ASI are cultural" and linking those ASI to culture (background) rather than lineage. Could be combined with the first point (physical ASI to lineage, mental ASI to culture).
(3) Remove them and adjust point-buy (and maybe rolling) accordingly.

[LudicSavant]

So an angle I have heard on this that I had not considered. If racial ability scores are going to be standardized across the races like the most recent UA suggests, then it creates an unnecessary step during character creation, making it more complex for no gain, and we would be about as well served by eliminating racial ability score increases entirely.

This may necessitate some ajustments to point by, to retain the balance point. Rolled stats are probably fine since they already trended a little high.

What are your thoughts?

I've been saying since 5e was released that ability scores are basically vestigial this edition, long since detached from the original design context that gave them purpose and left to shamble on as a sacred cow for nothing more than the warm fuzzies of familiarity.

Think about it. Were orcs really having a meaningful "flavor difference" because they have +1 Str over humans, behind the scenes, at character creation? A human Barbarian and an orc Barbarian would *both* start with a +3 Strength, and end with a +5 Strength. Was the feeling that orcs are so much stronger than humans really from the racial modifier? Or was it more from descriptions of the race and abilities like Powerful Build?

What about non-high-elves having a -1 intelligence compared to humans? Did everyone really think of elves as being meaningfully dumber than humans? Or less charismatic (if they weren't drow) or less wise (if they weren't wood elves)?

The thing about attributes is that they're all behind-the-scenes. The smartest gnome and the smartest orc have the *same* Intelligence (20). The in-world difference between those two characters is that the Gnome also got to afford an extra ASI to spend on whatever they wanted, like, say, Tough. Or +2 Strength.

5e is designed like a game that doesn't have racial attribute modifiers, then had them tacked on. Sloppily.

[IsaacsAlterEgo]

Nah, it's just an optional rule. Nobody in my circle of actual play has the slightest interest in using it.

Interesting! Nobody in my circle of play has the slightest interest in not using it. Would you say your circle skews towards long-time players, from the 3.5 era and before? Most of my groups skew towards players that started with 5e, and they all feel pretty strongly that it took Wizards too long to institute something like Tasha's rules.

Anyway, I feel like more than Racial ASIs being unnecessary complexity... Ability scores are basically unnecessary themselves. You could probably do away with them entirely and replace them with a beefed up proficiency bonus and be just fine. Would take a little bit more work than that to make sure it all maths out right but generally, ability scores don't really add much to the game.

For people who like characters having flawed, <10 stats, they could probably introduce a counterpart to the Feats system, like a Flaws system, that denotes you have disadvantage on certain kinds of checks, in return for some kind of gain elsewhere. I'm not a game designer! But I think there's certainly much easier ways to get across the flavor people want, without tricking newer/less system adept players into making less mechanically viable characters, or worse, making some people think that if a character is good mechanically, it must be poor for roleplaying purposes.

I don't think this will ever happen though because ability scores are a bit of a sacred cow and they sort of need to exist just because people expect them to exist and will probably feel like DnD isn't the game they remember without them.

[Luccan]

If they continue with their stance on racial ASIs, they'll hopefully drop it entirely next edition. I don't think it's too complex per se, but it does seem like an odd step in stat generation if it isn't in some way fixed to a particular stat. "Use this many points/roll this way, then increase two stats of your choice in an unrelated manner" just doesn't feel particularly clean. I could see them moving level 1 ASIs over to classes, kinda like in the playtest where you got one from race and one from your class. So if you're a fighter you might get +2 Strength or Dexterity, +1 Constitution, and if you're a Wizard it might be +2 Intelligence, +1 Dexterity or Constitution. I'd agree that the statement in the UA makes Racial ASIs unnecessary regardless of future ability score methods.

[Morty]

I've been saying since 5e was released that ability scores are basically vestigial this edition, long since detached from the original design context that gave them purpose and left to shamble on as a sacred cow for nothing more than the warm fuzzies of familiarity.

Think about it. Were orcs really having a meaningful "flavor difference" because they have +1 Str over humans, behind the scenes, at character creation? A human Barbarian and an orc Barbarian would *both* start with a +3 Strength, and end with a +5 Strength. Was the feeling that orcs are so much stronger than humans really from the racial modifier? Or was it more from descriptions of the race and abilities like Powerful Build?

What about non-high-elves having a -1 intelligence compared to humans? Did everyone really think of elves as being meaningfully dumber than humans? Or less charismatic (if they weren't drow) or less wise (if they weren't wood elves)?

The thing about attributes is that they're all behind-the-scenes. The smartest gnome and the smartest orc have the *same* Intelligence (20). The in-world difference between those two characters is that the Gnome also got to afford an extra ASI to spend on whatever they wanted, like, say, Tough. Or +2 Strength.

5e is designed like a game that doesn't have racial attribute modifiers, then had them tacked on. Sloppily.



Anyway, I feel like more than Racial ASIs being unnecessary complexity... Ability scores are basically unnecessary themselves. You could probably do away with them entirely and replace them with a beefed up proficiency bonus and be just fine. Would take a little bit more work than that to make sure it all maths out right but generally, ability scores don't really add much to the game.


That's my take on it as well. Ability score assignment was already mostly smoke and mirrors, shuffling numbers for the appearance of customization, but in practice a character's scores are mostly locked-in the moment you pick their race class. "Floating" ASIs just make it even more transparent.

[Kane0]

Would make sense to replace racial ASIs with Class-based ones, just follow save profs if you’re feeling lazy.

[Anymage]

For people who like characters having flawed, <10 stats, they could probably introduce a counterpart to the Feats system, like a Flaws system, that denotes you have disadvantage on certain kinds of checks, in return for some kind of gain elsewhere. I'm not a game designer! But I think there's certainly much easier ways to get across the flavor people want, without tricking newer/less system adept players into making less mechanically viable characters, or worse, making some people think that if a character is good mechanically, it must be poor for roleplaying purposes.

Mechanical flaws are pretty trivial. Point buy makes it easy to have an 8, and standard array mandates it. More than one 8 or a score below that does make me worry a bit about minmax potential, but -1 on relevant rolls does feel like a mechanical weakness.

Personality flaws and similar, something akin to fate points probably works best. And 5e did kind of flirt with the idea with inspiration. You don't want to give upfront build points for a flaw, because we've seen since the 90s just how that doesn't work. There are other options (I'm fond of making inspirations more like fate points), but that'd be going off topic.


Think about it. Were orcs really having a meaningful "flavor difference" because they have +1 Str over humans, behind the scenes, at character creation? A human Barbarian and an orc Barbarian would *both* start with a +3 Strength, and end with a +5 Strength. Was the feeling that orcs are so much stronger than humans really from the racial modifier? Or was it more from descriptions of the race and abilities like Powerful Build?

In theory, more or less synergistic racial modifiers can help balance out racial features. Mountain dwarves being the poster children for this. Having these levers available lets them experiment with abilities that might be more or less attractive to various classes by giving out synergistic stat mods.

[Theodoxus]

Ability scores are basically unnecessary themselves. You could probably do away with them entirely and replace them with a beefed up proficiency bonus and be just fine. Would take a little bit more work than that to make sure it all maths out right but generally, ability scores don't really add much to the game.

It'd be simple to re-cast abilities as skills (call them something else if it makes you feel better), removing an 'attribute' bonus from the DC factor. The problem would then be, the d20 roll becomes even that much more swingy. And people gripe about how a 5% change per attribute modifier can break the math if they go too high. :smallconfused:

I'm intrigued by this notion though. I'm kinda fed up with the concept of attributes, and which are required (most RPGs have at least 3 - Mental, Physical and Spiritual/Social. Some, like D&D split them further, others tack on different attributes; some have two synonymous attributes but have slightly different roles. 2nd Ed even split the classic 6 into 12... and then things like Dexterity were Aim and Balance which begged the question, where does 'fine manipulation' go? Am I 'aiming' my lock picks or 'balancing' them? (Not that that was a specific problem in 2E, since picking locks was a separate roll outside of the proficiency system, but it would be an issue in 5E if a similar idea were proposed.)

Thinking on this further though, it would be moving the attributes to a skill system, which doesn't alleviate the problem, per se. If your character was proficient in say, Acrobatics, Arcana and Athletics, you could say they were agile, smart and strong - but if you were asked to make a Stealth roll, the player would absolutely be in the right to try to justify they should get a bonus "I'm agile, I have Acrobatics! That should apply to moving silently and dashing from shadow to shadow, right?" And then you're back to the way 5E handles things, so why bother with the change, or you're trying to massage a system that'll end up far more complex, just for the sake of streamlining species interactions.

Of course, the whole idea of multiple disparate sapient species living in semi-harmony without one quickly becoming the dominate species - and wiping out (through slaughter or interbreeding) every other contender doesn't make any sense. Even with "the gods did it" it wouldn't last. And none of them would be remotely close to the same relative "power" level of the others. I think it'd be a much more interesting (and logical) if instead of making every species homogenous stat-wise, WotC really played up the differences. Though it would require a larger number spread to make it truly useful...

But Elves with 18+ Int at creation, but no higher than a 6 Con? Orcs with 18+ Str, 15+ Con, but no higher than a 6 Int and 10 Wis? These are what these species were bred towards; natural selection or forced eugenics by their gods - whichever way you want to go... and poor humans, all average - but cunning. Stealing elven tech and rigging it for their own use? That's classic us.

I get that based on the way the game has evolved, WotC's really only choice was to succumb to the will of the political correctness crowd - just sucks that had to happen.

[KorvinStarmast]

Re: In the new paradigm, are racial ASI's unnecessary complexity?
From a balance, perspective: Yes.

Here's the new better idea. Standard is 29 point buy, and either the +2 +1 add a language and a feature,
or,

28 point buy, +2 and a feat, and a language and a feature.

Remove all other racial things. It's more egalitarian that way.

Also, takes up less space in the PHB, fewer chances to make typos, and balance issues are Long Gone.

That's a way to avoid balance problems and allow class choices to not be burdened by racial taints.

Less complexity, not more, was allegedly a 5e design objective.

[PhantomSoul]

From a balance, perspective: Yes.

Here's the new better idea. Standard is 29 point buy, and either the +2 +1 add a language and a feature,
or,

28 point buy, +2 and a feat, and a language and a feature.

Remove all other racial things. It's more egalitarian that way.

Also, takes up less space in the PHB, fewer chances to make typos, and balance issues are Long Gone.

That's a way to avoid balance problems and allow class choices to not be burdened by racial taints.

Less complexity, not more, was allegedly a 5e design objective.


But for balance and to avoid issues that scrub posts or create optional rules altogether, why not just give everyone a 10 with no points to buy, and no proficiencies, and you never use words that were likely to cause issues eventually. Even shorterer! Backgrounds give you languages, not scrubbeds. Backgrounds and classes give you features; scrubbeds give no traits.
Blue text directed at WotC, not at KorvinStarmast.

[bid]

But for balance and to avoid issues that scrub posts or create optional rules altogether, why not just give everyone a 10 with no points to buy, and no proficiencies, and you never use words that were likely to cause issues eventually. Even shorterer! Backgrounds give you languages, not scrubbeds. Backgrounds and classes give you features; scrubbeds give no traits.
Blue text directed at WotC, not at KorvinStarmast.
Can I be half-scrubbed and gain no traits from both cultures?

Because I'd rather sing than work at the mines.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJWRhWlsD1g

[Arkhios]

Before 4th edition, no one had problems playing characters whose stats were made with 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8, a.k.a. "standard array", which is the average of the standard rolls method. All without racials, so why would there be any problems now.

Just eliminate racial modifiers to scores, and keep the traits. Point buy and rolls need not change a bit.

[diplomancer]

Before 4th edition, no one had problems playing characters whose stats were made with 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8, a.k.a. "standard array", which is the average of the standard rolls method. All without racials, so why would there be any problems now.

Just eliminate racial modifiers to scores, and keep the traits. Point buy and rolls need not change a bit.

That's not the average of the standard rolls method, it's slightly below it. Average is 16, 14, 13, 12, 10, 9. Interestingly, it's about a mixture of 3rd and 4th edition (16, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10) standard arrays.

Before 3rd edition there was NO standard array, so it does not make sense to talk about it, whether people had problems playing with it or not (also, Ability Scores had less impact on the game mechanics). And, unless I'm mistaken, 3rd edition had racial bonuses and penalties to attribute scores.

[DevilMcam]

In a mechanical point of view, I kinda like the fact that Race have flavor to them, not in the stat departments, but in the ability department. dwarves resist poison, tieflings have inate magic, half orcs are though, etc.
while flavorfull, none of these abilities seem gamebreaker (except maybe yuan ti but ugh well).

I however don't like the way that due to stats some races are more oriented towards some classes and are bound to perform better at low level in those classes.
From experience this is what lead people to prefer to roll stats so they can create something that works but not using the classical class/race combo.
this however tend to lead to unbalanced party

My take on this is that everyone has to use standard array. but once stats are attributed and racials ASI added, everyone get an extra +1 to 1 stat that can be use to get a 16 (if you already have a 16 or 17 you have to use it on a stat lower than 15).
That 1 point of stat is not going to break the game, it allows to creat functionals builds from level 1 and player like getting extra goodies

[MaxWilson]

Before 4th edition, no one had problems playing characters whose stats were made with 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8, a.k.a. "standard array", which is the average of the standard rolls method. All without racials, so why would there be any problems now.

Just eliminate racial modifiers to scores, and keep the traits. Point buy and rolls need not change a bit.

Nitpick: the average is closer to 16, 14, 13, 12, 10, 9. Ref: https://anydice.com/articles/4d6-drop-lowest/

[da newt]

If you follow the proposed logic to it's ultimate conclusion 6e should have one standard array for ability scores as the one and only option. This will create perfect balance.

Create a list of feats, backgrounds, skins, cultures, proficiencies, languages, etc and limit every PC to X # of each, or X # total - mix and match as you see fit.

Done.

This will allow purists to create traditional elves as they believe they ought to be and non-traditionalists to create the strangest mish-mash or min-max they can come up with.



For me - I'm fine w/ changes that allow for options to do what you think is right, but also keep limits/boundaries in place for balance.

[Morty]

Would make sense to replace racial ASIs with Class-based ones, just follow save profs if you’re feeling lazy.

Class-based ASIs are all well and good, but they once again make it more transparent that there's not that much choice to attribute sat the end of the day. You get what your class demands, then you have some wriggle room based on secondary skills.

[Quietus]

I think that we'll see the raw stats completely decoupled from race, moving forward. And I think that's a good thing. You'll see stats become just higher point buy, or if we get a 5.5e, I think you'll see 27 PB remain standard, with everyone getting a floating +2/+1, and all races will be differentiated by different features. I think this is overall a good thing; a slightly easier time getting a +3 dex does not make me feel like I am actively Elfing my way through a situation; using a weapon above what a class inherently offers, while only having to sleep 4 hours? That feels decidedly more actively Elfy. It would also encourage them to balance racial features against one another, and make things like a dragonborn's breath weapon worth something.

[Stangler]

The ASI change is a step in the right direction but the rest of the racial features don’t do enough to differentiate the races, and the game simply wasn’t designed for them to.

A complete overhaul to races/ancestries would be welcome in a 5.5e revamp but I doubt that will happen.

[carnomancy]

I don't think I'd miss them if they died. It would make point buy and rolls more elegant if you didn't need to account for that +2.

If they need to survive into the next edition, stick the +2s onto the classes instead.

[Tanarii]

By the time 6e comes around, this whole debate will have blown over, and we'll be back to fixed racial ASIs. And races will still be called races.

If they try to change it, they will definitely have another 4e on their hands. Or a pathfinder 2e.

Edit: edited as requested

[KorvinStarmast]

If they try to change it, they will definitely have another 4e on their hands. And 13th Age will enjoy a burst of popularity.

[Segev]

By the time 6e comes around, this whole moral panic will have blown over, and we'll be back to fixed racial ASIs. And races will still be called races.

If they try to change it, they will definitely have another 4e on their hands. Or a pathfinder 2e.

I do think, for the kinds of races they're willing to make playable in 5e, they could get away in 6e with no stat modifiers, as long as they balance the racial traits around there being no stat modifiers.

Where they'll get into trouble is the same place 5e already does: if you want to play something vastly different from the standard suite of races, you start to have the lack of racial stat modifers strain credulity. "Oh, sure, lore says illithids are terrifyingly brilliant alien intelligences, and the average one has a 20 Int... why is my starting illithid maxing out at 17 int?" "You're telling me the strongest my gargantuan storm giant can be is 20 strength, when the belt of storm giant strength gives anybody who attunes it a 30?"

[J-H]

Interesting! Nobody in my circle of play has the slightest interest in not using it. Would you say your circle skews towards long-time players, from the 3.5 era and before? Most of my groups skew towards players that started with 5e, and they all feel pretty strongly that it took Wizards too long to institute something like Tasha's rules.
...
I don't think this will ever happen though because ability scores are a bit of a sacred cow and they sort of need to exist just because people expect them to exist and will probably feel like DnD isn't the game they remember without them.
One who has played since the '80s and likes to talk about 1E magic missile, one or two with 3.5/PF experience, and I think the others started with 5e but I'm not sure.

Without ability scores, how is Peldor the halfling rogue more agile and sneaky than Thog the half-ogre barbarian? How is Thog stronger and tougher than Peldor? How is Pip the apprentice wizard more intelligent but less persuasive?

If you want to model the complexity of different characters and species without ability scores, then you move towards some sort of "point buy for features" stat... which is a hallmark of other, different game systems, and which adds complexity. One of the keys to 5e being successful is that it's very easy to build both PCs and NPCs without a ton of calculations. I never want to go back to trying to do a bunch of point buys and modifiers for NPC/monster creation, like figuring out which 7 out of 40 possible traits on the point-buy/feature table a given NPC has. Figuring out feats for NPCs and monsters in 3.5 was not fun.

[LudicSavant]

Where they'll get into trouble is the same place 5e already does: if you want to play something vastly different from the standard suite of races, you start to have the lack of racial stat modifers strain credulity. "Oh, sure, lore says illithids are terrifyingly brilliant alien intelligences, and the average one has a 20 Int... why is my starting illithid maxing out at 17 int?" "You're telling me the strongest my gargantuan storm giant can be is 20 strength, when the belt of storm giant strength gives anybody who attunes it a 30?"

Also worth noting that the better systems for playing things like Storm Giants and Illithids don't use D&D-style racial modifiers anyways. Which is why such races didn't really work in 3.5e, either.

[Sigreid]

While I'm not a fan of putting the ASIs wherever regardless of race because I like them being part of the inherent nature of the race (i.e. dwarves have an increased constitution compared to other races because the first dwarves were carved out of stone) I wouldn't have a problem if the same kind of idea were achieved with giving the races advantage on checks and saves instead. So a dwarf would have advantage on con saves and checks, an elf would have advantage on dex saves and checks but not dex based attacks, etc.

[Anymage]

I think this is overall a good thing; a slightly easier time getting a +3 dex does not make me feel like I am actively Elfing my way through a situation; using a weapon above what a class inherently offers, while only having to sleep 4 hours? That feels decidedly more actively Elfy. It would also encourage them to balance racial features against one another, and make things like a dragonborn's breath weapon worth something.

While I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment, active racial traits (or even passive ones that noticeably shift how a character plays) will be a lot harder to balance across classes. Some form of synergistic/antisynergistic stat mod can help with that, but that's a lever they threw away. I don't have much confidence in WotC right now to get this right.

And I get that none of the races really bring enough to really be worth your prime stat being one point behind until twelveth level. I still think there are better ways to patch that than giving up on stat mods entirely.


Where they'll get into trouble is the same place 5e already does: if you want to play something vastly different from the standard suite of races, you start to have the lack of racial stat modifers strain credulity. "Oh, sure, lore says illithids are terrifyingly brilliant alien intelligences, and the average one has a 20 Int... why is my starting illithid maxing out at 17 int?" "You're telling me the strongest my gargantuan storm giant can be is 20 strength, when the belt of storm giant strength gives anybody who attunes it a 30?"

The 3e line took their time until they stumbled across LA, before that the system was also hard pressed to handle PC races outside a certain band of power. I'm okay with first level illithids or storm giants being poorly handled as first level PCs, because the idea of a first level illithid or storm giant is already nonsensical. How to handle them at higher levels, if it's worth trying to handle their PCification at all, is something fifth and later editions can try tackling on their own time.

[Hael]

Yea I mean we are heading straight to GURPs land, or any number of crpg skill systems where you have an amorphous blob and point buy skills/talents/feats/proficiencies.. maybe you can take a few disadvantages and get a few more points to purchase a better proficiency. Etc

I hate that style of character creation game design (compare Pathfinder character creation to say Fallout). The optimal set of builds is invariably smaller than what standard DND outputs. There is then less much less mechanical variety and it usually leads to more character creation fights and hurt feelings when your nonoptimal character massively underperforms. To get a taste of this, ask yourself if people will ever take a playing card kit proficiency when you can swap it out for a herbalism kit.

The thing that chaps me is that we are doing this for reasons that have nothing to do with mechanics.. so we are letting outside social prejudices and mores dictate the mechanics, even if that leads to a less fun game.

[MaxWilson]

Yea I mean we are heading straight to GURPs land, or any number of crpg skill systems where you have an amorphous blob and point buy skills/talents/feats/proficiencies.. maybe you can take a few disadvantages and get a few more points to purchase a better proficiency. Etc

I hate that style of character creation game design (compare Pathfinder character creation to say Fallout). The optimal set of builds is invariably smaller than what standard DND outputs.

This exactly. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy GURPS as a game (at playtime), but I hate how easy it is to game the chargen rules (see: 50 point abilities (http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=13861) and the Totally Abusive Assassination Special), and I hate how Unusual Background is used as a kludgey ad hoc fix.

GURPS made me appreciate class- and level- based systems and how they force you to "buy" packages of abilities that make logical, in-game sense together even though they're not streamlined. The way that a 5E Charlatan Battlemaster "has" to become a better Charlatan (e.g. improved Deception and Insight) as he gains more experience, and has to get better at both archery and fistfighting, is preferable to what happens in a pure point-buy system where the Battlemaster just invests everything he's got in buying a ridiculously good Archery skill because investing in Fistfighting doesn't pay off. Being forced to have a broad range of competence makes the actual roleplaying game part more fun/interesting, and even makes the chargen part more interesting (it's more like a 0/1 knapsack optimization problem instead of a continuous knapsack).

[Morty]

Yea I mean we are heading straight to GURPs land, or any number of crpg skill systems where you have an amorphous blob and point buy skills/talents/feats/proficiencies.. maybe you can take a few disadvantages and get a few more points to purchase a better proficiency. Etc

I hate that style of character creation game design (compare Pathfinder character creation to say Fallout). The optimal set of builds is invariably smaller than what standard DND outputs. There is then less much less mechanical variety and it usually leads to more character creation fights and hurt feelings when your nonoptimal character massively underperforms. To get a taste of this, ask yourself if people will ever take a playing card kit proficiency when you can swap it out for a herbalism kit.

The thing that chaps me is that we are doing this for reasons that have nothing to do with mechanics.. so we are letting outside social prejudices and mores dictate the mechanics, even if that leads to a less fun game.


This exactly. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy GURPS as a game (at playtime), but I hate how easy it is to game the chargen rules (see: 50 point abilities (http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=13861) and the Totally Abusive Assassination Special), and I hate how Unusual Background is used as a kludgey ad hoc fix.

GURPS made me appreciate class- and level- based systems and how they force you to "buy" packages of abilities that make logical, in-game sense together even though they're not streamlined. The way that a 5E Charlatan Battlemaster "has" to become a better Charlatan (e.g. improved Deception and Insight) as he gains more experience, and has to get better at both archery and fistfighting, is preferable to what happens in a pure point-buy system where the Battlemaster just invests everything he's got in buying a ridiculously good Archery skill because investing in Fistfighting doesn't pay off. Being forced to have a broad range of competence makes the actual roleplaying game part more fun/interesting, and even makes the chargen part more interesting (it's more like a 0/1 knapsack optimization problem instead of a continuous knapsack).

How does removing racial ASIs - not even ability scores in general - lead to removing classes or backgrounds, again?

(I am also continually amazed by how GURPS is the go-to bogeyman for what D&D cannot become, as if there wasn't a myriad other systems out there. Also, GURPS has attributes that have a far stronger mechanical role than D&D's ever have).

[MaxWilson]

How does removing racial ASIs - not even ability scores in general - lead to removing classes or backgrounds, again?

WotC didn't remove racial ASIs at all. They just made them homogeneous (now they're points that you have to spend) and decoupled from the fiction. They also added a Custom Lineage option which is even more like point buy.

If they'd removed racial ASIs entirely I wouldn't draw this comparison.

But my post was less about Tasha's and more about the weaknesses of point buy chargen. I'm not claiming that WotC is going to remove classes from their designs any time soon.

[cookieface]

The thing that chaps me is that we are doing this for reasons that have nothing to do with mechanics.. so we are letting outside social prejudices and mores dictate the mechanics, even if that leads to a less fun game.

Yes, god forbid we let the real prejudices that real people experience everyday stop us from one tiny portion of a game that gets played for fun.

Like, Vumans have existed since 5e started. They're one of the most played classes in part because they get floating ASIs. Claiming suddenly that giving universal floating ASIs is going to "lead to a less fun game" is just saying that you'd rather put the tradition of racial ASIs ahead of people who truthfully feel like the language and game mechanics of them causes them to feel unwelcome.

We absolutely, 100% should let outside social prejudices and mores dictate what the rules of the game are. The whole DND world and game system is invented, a creation of people. It is not some immutable system that Must Continue On Because That Is How DND Works -- if real people are telling you that this one aspect offends them, then absolutely we should change the fictional world in order to lessen the hardships of real people.

And before anyone pops in with "well, I also have feelings about this so why are their feelings ahead of mine?" ... just, no. Your feelings are protecting a game that was created by someone else 50 years ago and are rooted in not wanting to change. Theirs are rooted in centuries old prejudices that still live on today that we should all work to erase. It's not a competition between the two.

[Quietus]

While I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment, active racial traits (or even passive ones that noticeably shift how a character plays) will be a lot harder to balance across classes. Some form of synergistic/antisynergistic stat mod can help with that, but that's a lever they threw away. I don't have much confidence in WotC right now to get this right.

And I get that none of the races really bring enough to really be worth your prime stat being one point behind until twelveth level. I still think there are better ways to patch that than giving up on stat mods entirely.

I would argue, you don't need to balance them across classes. Balance them against each other. Which, admittedly, is more difficult than "Well these guys get dex, which is a good stat, so they shouldn't have the best racial abilities" .... and then we look at Elves, and how they're just really, really good.

Do I trust WotC to get it perfect? No, but I'm willing to see what they can come up with. I am far too deep in white privilege to truly "get" why some people are upset on anything but a logical level, I wholeheartedly agree with shifting paradigms slightly to ensure everyone gets the chance to enjoy themselves. And besides that, racial abilities that do things, whether active or passive, are more interesting than +stat.

[IsaacsAlterEgo]

One who has played since the '80s and likes to talk about 1E magic missile, one or two with 3.5/PF experience, and I think the others started with 5e but I'm not sure.

Without ability scores, how is Peldor the halfling rogue more agile and sneaky than Thog the half-ogre barbarian? How is Thog stronger and tougher than Peldor? How is Pip the apprentice wizard more intelligent but less persuasive?

If you want to model the complexity of different characters and species without ability scores, then you move towards some sort of "point buy for features" stat... which is a hallmark of other, different game systems, and which adds complexity. One of the keys to 5e being successful is that it's very easy to build both PCs and NPCs without a ton of calculations. I never want to go back to trying to do a bunch of point buys and modifiers for NPC/monster creation, like figuring out which 7 out of 40 possible traits on the point-buy/feature table a given NPC has. Figuring out feats for NPCs and monsters in 3.5 was not fun.

Interesting! In my experience it seems like the newer players like the changes, and older players seem to oppose them. Not necessarily an 'age' thing, but a 'how long have you been playing' sort of thing.

As for how to model these: Peldor the halfling rogue is more agile and sneaky because he has Acrobatics and Stealth proficiencies, dexterity saves, sneak attack, various rogue abilities like evasion, etc. Thog is stronger and tougher because he has Athletics, constitution saves (Saves would have to compensate for the lack of ability scores with higher proficiency numbers, but I think its okay to keep classifying them using the current abilities even if they no longer have hard numbers tied to them) and higher HP from his class, as well as barbarian abilities like rage, etc. Thog could also have something similar to Powerful Build from his race. Pip is more intelligent because of the skills he has like Arcana and History; more skills could be added if necessary to diversify. Intelligence is an extremely hard to quantify thing, anyway; in real life there are a wide variety of different types of intelligence, such as emotional intelligence, that don't quite fit in 1:1 with an Intelligence score's usage in modern DnD. But I see no problem with simply using proficiency to show what your character is good at, and it still enables all the different character types we have now. It's pretty rare to call for a straight-up ability score check without a skill association, anyway.

Edit: Edited the first part of my post to remove a response to a now-edited post.

[Tanarii]

And 13th Age will enjoy a burst of popularity.I think that's unlikely. As much as I personally like the game. :smallamused:


I do think, for the kinds of races they're willing to make playable in 5e, they could get away in 6e with no stat modifiers, as long as they balance the racial traits around there being no stat modifiers.
They could, and it would be playable for the default PHB races. But that's unlikely to happen. Unless they were to release another edition right now under current management, with no play testing.


Yes, god forbid we let the real prejudices that real people experience everyday stop us from one tiny portion of a game that gets played for fun.


These are pretty blatantly inflammatory, they're essentially declarations of your political stance and any agreement or disagreement of these statements/classifications is inherently a political argument which seems outside the scope of the thread/forum.Allow me to courteously direct both of you to the forum rules:
https://forums.giantitp.com/announcement.php?a=1

Despite that, I will edit my post as requested.

[IsaacsAlterEgo]

I think that's unlikely. As much as I personally like the game. :smallamused:


They could, and it would be playable for the default PHB races. But that's unlikely to happen. Unless they were to release another edition right now under current management, with no play testing.



Allow me to courteously direct both of you to the forum rules:
https://forums.giantitp.com/announcement.php?a=1

Despite that, I will edit my post as requested.

I apologize if I stepped too far, but almost every single thread even slightly related to Tasha's ends up getting locked at some point or another because of these kinds of issues; I felt it was important to make a plea for a little more neutrality in terms of language so that we could hopefully avoid that fate here. I didn't mean to chastise or anything like that, and hope there aren't any hard feelings.

[TyGuy]

Like, Vumans have existed since 5e started. They're one of the most played classes in part because they get floating ASIs. Claiming suddenly that giving universal floating ASIs is going to "lead to a less fun game" is just saying that you'd rather put the tradition of racial ASIs ahead of people who truthfully feel like the language and game mechanics of them causes them to feel unwelcome.
That IS the distinction of humans in most D&D settings though. Very versatile, very diverse. They are also, in fact, the only non-fiction playable race option (though they still do fictional things)

If people want to play in a world where quintessential angry dumb orcs were created by orcus to be that way, and they're very different than the gnomes that originated from gems with souls, that's ok. It's fiction. If people think vastly different fictional creatures having very different capabilities and predispositions is fun, that's ok. If that's not for everyone, that's ok too.

[Anymage]

If people want to play in a world where quintessential angry dumb orcs were created by orcus to be that way, and they're very different than the gnomes that originated from gems with souls, that's ok. It's fiction. If people think vastly different fictional creatures having very different capabilities and predispositions is fun, that's ok. If that's not for everyone, that's ok too.

Nitpick: Orcs worship Gruumsh, not Orcus.

And can we please not go down this road? Whether gnomes are merry pranksters, inept tinkerers, or garden statuary is matter of fluff. WotC should listen if a real-world group of people has a claim of being mistreated due to being portrayed as inept tinkerers, but that's a writing thing.

The Tasha's rules are specifically about flexible stat mods. Whether my gnome has a +2 to Int or Cha might matter for whether I want to build him as a wizard or a bard, and the optimization meta does shift depending on whether you factor in complementary stat mods or just the raw racial features. Whether or not he has the Int or Cha stat boost is irrelevant to whether or not he's written as an inept tinkerer and whether or not that inept tinkerer stereotype resembles anything in the real world.

[Stangler]

One of the things that gets lost in these discussions IMO is that ASI choice and progression is a fairly weak game choice and is an example of relatively bad game design. The benefit is really just that it is a really simple way to make a dwarf seem like a dwarf and people expect it.

Having a primary attribute and a progression to it probably shouldn’t even be a choice as it is very difficult to make the decision interesting and fun. Secondary stats on the other hand are more interesting potentially. Feats are a fun choice. The levels when the only change is an asi bump are bad levels. Bad design.

5e is good design because of how simple it is to play what you want. The mechanics of the game should make a dwarf feel like a dwarf but not at the cost of pigeon holing them into a boring stereotype.

[Theodoxus]

Like, Vumans have existed since 5e started. They're one of the most played classes in part because they get floating ASIs. Claiming suddenly that giving universal floating ASIs is going to "lead to a less fun game" is just saying that you'd rather put the tradition of racial ASIs ahead of people who truthfully feel like the language and game mechanics of them causes them to feel unwelcome.


That IS the distinction of humans in most D&D settings though. Very versatile, very diverse. They are also, in fact, the only non-fiction playable race option (though they still do fictional things)

If people want to play in a world where quintessential angry dumb orcs were created by orcus to be that way, and they're very different than the gnomes that originated from gems with souls, that's ok. It's fiction. If people think vastly different fictional creatures having very different capabilities and predispositions is fun, that's ok. If that's not for everyone, that's ok too.

I don't know what tables you've been playing at, but 100% of the vuman characters I've encountered have been blatant about the fact it's the free feat they get, not the floating +1's. Trust, if that were the case, H-Elf blows vumans out of the water. You'd never see a vuman Bard, Paladin, Sorcerer or Warlock. Since that's not the case, it's mostly the feat, and a much smaller piece of the pie is what TyGuy describes.

[LudicSavant]

I don't know what tables you've been playing at, but 100% of the vuman characters I've encountered have been blatant about the fact it's the free feat they get, not the floating +1's.

It's both the free feat they get, and the floating +1s. You take out either of those, and you have a lot fewer characters for which VHuman is still a blue option.

[TyGuy]

And can we please not go down this road?
And what road would that be? Defending people's choice to play quintessential fictional creatures/characters?

[Theodoxus]

And what road would that be? Defending people's choice to play quintessential fictional creatures/characters?

Well, it's not like Tasha's is preventing you from playing what someone else thinks are quintessential elements to a fictional race.

The worst is that WotC isn't telling you what THEY think a "quintessential Dhampir, Hexblood, or Reborn" starting stats should be.

I highly doubt the new Monster Manuals will stop having 'average' stats for the NPC race examples. If the new PHB doesn't list normative stat bonuses for a specific race, if you really cared to know so you could play a 'normal' member of their species, then you could look it up in the MM. (If it wasn't totally obvious by the racial description, regardless of game mechanics.)

At worst, I think Tasha's came out 5 years too late. The concept of floating ASI should have been an option in the DMG, if not the rule in the PHB, with a "A typical Dwarf has a +2 Con" line. Of course, we'd be having arguments along the lines of "Druid's will not wear metal armor" and what that means for an adventuring druid who's not a typical nature priest in a druidic order (the exact same argument made for races using differing stats). We are an argumentative lot, I think we can all agree... (with chants from the back of "no we're not!")

[LudicSavant]

Pre-Tasha 5e's take on racial attribute modifiers doesn't defend people's choice to play quintessential fictional characters, it impedes and discourages it.

It's not just orc Wizards and gnome Barbarians that are discouraged, it's also drow Clerics, and longsword-wielding High Elves, and musclebound Hill Dwarves, or Hobgoblin Dirge Singers, and so, so many more.

And there's no good reason for any of it. Drow aren't less intelligent or wise than most other races in the lore, or in their Monster Manual statlines. Goblins don't have more Constitution than them in the lore or MM statlines, either -- just PC goblins have that. And Loxodons don't average 10 Str, or Minotaurs 12. There are countless examples like this.

Also, your racial attribute modifier is all back-end, hidden, metagame stuff. In-world, people are seeing a 20 Int gnome Wizard and a 20 Int orc Wizard. The difference between them in-world? The orc is squishier, because they didn't have the ASI space to take Res(Con). That's your so-called "flavor difference." To me, that makes the orc Wizard feel less orc-y, not more.

But of course, the effect of racial modifiers in 5e has never been to make my Orc Wizard feel more orc-y. It was to discourage me, OOC, from playing an Orc Wizard at all.

Contrast tons of other games that have long since done away with D&D-style racial modifiers. For example, one game made it so that all orcs could rage. Orc Wizards could overchannel their magic through sheer rage. That felt more orcish than "I can't afford Res(Con)."

Instead of making some races bad for some classes, I recommend making mechanics that make every race helpful to every class, but in different ways from each other. I think that's a much healthier game design.

[Tanarii]

I highly doubt the new Monster Manuals will stop having 'average' stats for the NPC race examples.Given that the PHB ability score mods apply to MM NPCs, they'd have to generate separate ones for each race. Unless all races truly were equal stats of course.

[TyGuy]

Pre-Tasha 5e's take on racial attribute modifiers doesn't defend people's choice to play quintessential fictional characters, it impedes and discourages it.
Only if you can't let go of optimizing. And it would seem, with bounded accuracy and all, that the game was actually designed to be forgiving on "suboptimal" builds like a drow cleric.

[MaxWilson]

Also, your racial attribute modifier is all back-end, hidden, metagame stuff. In-world, people are seeing a 20 Int gnome Wizard and a 20 Int orc Wizard. The difference between them in-world? The orc is squishier, because they didn't have the ASI space to take Res(Con). That's your so-called "flavor difference." To me, that makes the orc Wizard feel less orc-y, not more.

But of course, the effect of racial modifiers in 5e has never been to make my Orc Wizard feel more orc-y. It was to discourage me, OOC, from playing an Orc Wizard at all.


So, then maybe you're not the most authoritative source on orc wizards then? I know my goblin wizards have lower Int (and are less likely to max Int) and are sneakier than my gnome wizards or human wizards or yuan-ti wizards. In-world, people see that goblins are sneaky and gnomes are smart. The stereotype matches the mechanics. The flavor is accurate.

[LudicSavant]

So, then maybe you're not the most authoritative source on orc wizards then?

Huh? That quip seems rather unnecessary.

I guess you'll have to explain to me why lacking Res(Con) should make me feel more orc-y relative to my other character with the exact same Int score, o great authority on orc Wizards.


I know my goblin wizards have lower Int (and are less likely to max Int) and are sneakier than my gnome wizards or human wizards or yuan-ti wizards. In-world, people see that goblins are sneaky and gnomes are smart. The stereotype matches the mechanics. The flavor is accurate.

The difference in flavor between a 20 Int goblin and a 20 int gnome isn't that they have different Int scores, it's that the gnome is good at some entirely different, unrelated thing (like being able to pick up Res(Con) with their extra ASI).

The fact that you choose, OOC, not to max Int on your goblin Wizards doesn't somehow change the fact that that's a character that can be played, and that the gnome Wizard is not any smarter than them.

[Anymage]

And what road would that be? Defending people's choice to play quintessential fictional creatures/characters?

"These fictional races should be viewed as nothing more than fictional races and not connected to anything in the real world" vs. "these fictional races should be looked at in the light of real-world tropes" tended to be about where past Tasha's threads went off the rails and needed to be locked.


Having a primary attribute and a progression to it probably shouldnÂ’t even be a choice as it is very difficult to make the decision interesting and fun. Secondary stats on the other hand are more interesting potentially. Feats are a fun choice. The levels when the only change is an asi bump are bad levels. Bad design.

5e is good design because of how simple it is to play what you want. The mechanics of the game should make a dwarf feel like a dwarf but not at the cost of pigeon holing them into a boring stereotype.

Agreed, but I'd rather have seen work on active and balanced racial traits done before they entirely chucked out stat bumps as a factor.

Secondaries are Dex and Con in some order, assuming Dex isn't already your primary. Stats after that are down to taste maybe weighted by what saves you consider most annoying, but at that point the differences matter a lot less. There's a clear optimal stat priority for most characters no matter how you hope to build, and stats will have to be rejiggered a lot to change that.

And while I do support that most characters should be able to have a starting 16 in their primary stat (BA kind of does demand some level of prime stat normalization), Tasha's rule also lets everybody have whatever optimal secondaries they like too. And while it's easy to say that new races should be balanced on the strength of their racial abilities with no influence from stat mods, I'm not optimistic about people's ability to make racial powers that don't wind up strong in the hands of certain classes and useless in others. If the half orc wizard no longer has to worry about being outshone by the gnome with a +2 Int but now has to compete with the dwarf in medium armor or the yuan-ti with advantage on all his saves, I'm only seeing that as a lateral move.

[MaxWilson]

Huh? That quip seems rather unnecessary.

I guess you'll have to explain to me why lacking Res(Con) should make me feel more orc-y relative to my other character with the exact same Int score, o great authority on orc Wizards. :smallsmile:

The difference in flavor between a 20 Int goblin and a 20 int gnome isn't that they have different Int scores, it's that the gnome is good at some entirely different, unrelated thing (like being able to pick up Res(Con) with their extra ASI).

The fact that you choose, OOC, not to max Int on your goblin Wizards doesn't somehow change the fact that that's a character that can be played, and that the gnome Wizard is not any smarter than them.

You admitted yourself that the actual effect is to make orc wizards played by LudicSavant non-existent, which means the observed effect is consistent with the stereotype: there aren't many brilliant orc wizards out there. It's working. You contradict that observation by saying that orc wizards, if they existed, wouldn't be orcey, but not existing is perfectly orcey for a wizard.

Likewise, goblin wizards are sneaky, not often brilliant. (If brilliance were of utmost importance to me for this concept, I wouldn't be playing a goblin.)

Yes, you could theoretically have a rare orc wizard. He'd still be orcey in a sense (Aggressive, likely strong, etc.), but he'd be an outlier among the orcs. Working as intended.

[LudicSavant]

Only if you can't let go of optimizing. And it would seem, with bounded accuracy and all, that the game was actually designed to be forgiving on "suboptimal" builds like a drow cleric.

Racial modifiers do not somehow "defend your ability to make iconic characters" whether you're an optimizer or not. They provide an OOC incentive to avoid playing certain kinds of characters. You can ignore that incentive, in which case all it's doing is what I described.

For the record, I don't have any trouble letting go of optimization. I actually purposely limit or nerf myself in a lot of campaigns, except when I'm playing with hardcore veterans and optimizers.

As a result, I actually play 'wrong' race/class combinations more often than many. One of my recent characters for example was an orc Life Cleric.

Did the racial attribute modifiers help me make them feel more orc-ish? Not really. They still had 20 Wisdom. They just had less ASIs left over afterwards.

The difference in flavor when I converted that character to the Tasha's rules? They took Warcaster and started bashing people with a club. Somehow, my orcish flavor didn't evaporate. If anything, it increased.


You admitted yourself that the actual effect is to make orc wizards played by LudicSavant non-existent

There seems to be a miscommunication here. Maybe I was unclear. What I said is that the only purpose the attribute modifiers served was to discourage me from playing them in the first place (e.g. at the OOC "choose what character I'm playing" step), as opposed to making me feel more orc-y when I was actually playing them (e.g. improve my in-game experience, once I had made the decision to play one).

I play orc casters despite being discouraged from doing so, because I like orcs.

Last one I played was this lady. Her name was Sarda.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/793597245978443806/810716102488358922/orc_healer_edit.jpg

[Dienekes]

For the record, I don't have any trouble letting go of optimization. I actually purposely limit or nerf myself in a lot of campaigns, except when I'm playing with hardcore veterans and optimizers.

As a result, I actually play 'wrong' race/class combinations more often than many. One of my recent characters for example was an orc Life Cleric.

Did the racial attribute modifiers help me make them feel more orc-ish? Not really. They still had 20 Wisdom. They just had less ASIs left over afterwards.

The difference in flavor when I converted that character to the Tasha's rules? They took Warcaster and started bashing people with a club. Somehow, my orcish flavor didn't evaporate. If anything, it increased.



This actually is something I've been trying to think upon for awhile. Ways to make a character actually feel like they're playing the race without the use of ASIs. Preferably done in a way that allows them to be any class, while funneling them into playing that class like I would imagine their race would focus on the class.

For Orcs I made it so the first opponent they damage each turn gets extra damage. So if you're hitting them with a big weapon it makes you think you're hitting them harder. But it also funnels all the caster Orcs into being a bit more blast-y which I thought seemed the aggressive Orc-y way to play a caster.

Elves I gave a Reaction ability to move without provoking Opportunity Attacks when wearing no more than medium armor. One because it emphasizes the graceful speed of an Elf. But also because it allows the caster and warrior to get away from combat and go to range which is the stereotypical elven battle strategy, while it is also still useful for melee characters who just want to reposition as well.

I will say though, it can be fun but hard to think up such abilities. Especially for some of the races that don't quite have as much a defined core identity to them.

[bid]

I play orc casters despite being discouraged from doing so, because I like orcs.
But you're having wrong fun and I have to gatekeep you out of it.

Frankly, nobody cares about dog whistles.
I don't care if others can 13th Age their starting stats or not.

[LudicSavant]

This actually is something I've been trying to think upon for awhile. Ways to make a character actually feel like they're playing the race without the use of ASIs. Preferably done in a way that allows them to be any class, while funneling them into playing that class like I would imagine their race would focus on the class.

Yeah, this is what I'd like to see: features that make the races feel unique in-game, while making them useful for as many classes as possible. Just making them useful in different ways.


I don't care if others can 13th Age their starting stats or not.

How do 13th Age starting stats work?

[TyGuy]

Racial modifiers do not somehow "defend your ability to make iconic characters" whether you're an optimizer or not. They provide an OOC incentive to avoid playing certain kinds of characters. You can ignore that incentive, in which case all it's doing is what I described.

That's the point. You call it an incentive, but it's only an incentive under certain conditions. If the condition (goal to optimize PC) is not met, then the incentive isn't even ignored, it's non-existant.


For the record, I don't have any trouble letting go of optimization. I actually purposely limit or nerf myself in a lot of campaigns, except when I'm playing with hardcore veterans and optimizers.

As a result, I actually play 'wrong' race/class combinations more often than many. One of my recent characters for example was an orc Life Cleric.

Did the racial attribute modifiers help me make them feel more orc-ish? Not really. They still had 20 Wisdom. They just had less ASIs left over afterwards.

The difference in flavor when I converted that character to the Tasha's rules? They took Warcaster and started bashing people with a club. Somehow, my orcish flavor didn't evaporate. If anything, it increased.

Could have let go of the "need" to have a +5 and went with warcaster for theme anyways. That's the point we're failing to get across to you.

[Witty Username]

Don't all racial features encourage avoiding of archetypes in favor of others?
Take the mountain dwarf for example, the asi's changes didn't expand its options so much as gave large benefits to playing light or no armor classes. Even taking into account tool swapping a dwarf wizard still gains more than a dwarf fighter.
Goblin's players are regularly told to avoid rogue because of the ability overlap with nimble escape and cunning action.

Whether this is good or bad is irrelevant to me, I just don't think fixed racial ability scores is the sole cause of this.

[Dienekes]

Don't all racial features encourage avoiding of archetypes in favor of others?
Take the mountain dwarf for example, the asi's changes didn't expand its options so much as gave large benefits to playing light or no armor classes. Even taking into account tool swapping a dwarf wizard still gains more than a dwarf fighter.
Goblin's players are regularly told to avoid rogue because of the ability overlap with nimble escape and cunning action.

Whether this is good or bad is irrelevant to me, I just don't think fixed racial ability scores is the sole cause of this.

I don't think they have to necessarily. But it is harder to design for it.

Take Mountain Dwarf.

Gaining Medium Armor favors basically playing any non-martial class. But what if we redesigned it as: You may choose to gain proficiency in Light Armor, Medium Armor (provided you are otherwise proficient in Light Armor), or Heavy Armor (provided you are otherwise proficient in Medium Armor), or you can choose to gain the Defense Fighting Style.

Is this a little more complicated? Yes. But provided a good editor can slim it down a bit it's pretty easy to parse. And as a bonus it provides a pretty consistent benefit for all classes.

But this stuff needs to be designed with the framework of "fair for all classes" in mind first. And it is harder to do.

[Arkhios]

Previous nit-pickings (that I can't be arsed to quote) aside, I honestly don't think that eliminating racial bonuses (and, in some cases, penalties) to ability scores would make a huge difference in the end.

Racial traits on their own are flavorful enough to make different races stand out from each other. Or rather, they should be enough.
Even in those cases where your race gives you a trait that requires a certain ability score to determine a saving throw DC, the trait alone should be incentive enough to pay attention to that score in question. If for some reason you didn't want to use that trait, any bonus or lack thereof would hardly matter anyway.


That said, I find the moral panic that is the cause of this current approach to race design to be utterly ridiculous.

[LudicSavant]

Don't all racial features encourage avoiding of archetypes in favor of others?

To some extent. There's no such thing as perfect balance in a complex game, after all.

What can be varied is the degree.

[Morty]

Trying to get the highest possible modifier in your class' key attribute barely counts as optimization, frankly. It's basic character building and a logical conclusion of how D&D attributes work. If there was more variety in attribute assignment, letting racial modifiers affect them might have more of a point. As it is, I see little point in blaming people for playing the game as it's presented to them.

When I played a dwarf rogue a few years ago, the GM let me swap my Constitution modifier for a Dexterity modifier. I didn't feel like she was less of a dwarf this way, but it helped me do my actual job properly. I kept the hill dwarf Wisdom modifier, but the Wisdom modifier was the reason I picked a hill dwarf, as opposed to a mountain dwarf, to begin with. The mountain dwarf's strength modifier would have been staggeringly useless to me - on the occasions I had to fight in melee, I used a finesse weapon.

Of course, a hill dwarf worked only because I was going for a good proficiency in survival and perception to begin with - if I'd wanted to play a more conventional rogue with social skills, it would have been as useful to me as a toothpick to a mind flayer. Thus the supposed "dwarfiness" of the racial modifiers would have been barely felt at all. But I would have been worse at several tasks than a human or elf rogue for no good reason.

[cookieface]

You admitted yourself that the actual effect is to make orc wizards played by LudicSavant non-existent, which means the observed effect is consistent with the stereotype: there aren't many brilliant orc wizards out there. It's working. You contradict that observation by saying that orc wizards, if they existed, wouldn't be orcey, but not existing is perfectly orcey for a wizard.

Likewise, goblin wizards are sneaky, not often brilliant. (If brilliance were of utmost importance to me for this concept, I wouldn't be playing a goblin.)

Yes, you could theoretically have a rare orc wizard. He'd still be orcey in a sense (Aggressive, likely strong, etc.), but he'd be an outlier among the orcs. Working as intended.

What you are effectively saying here is "Some races are not capable of doing certain things, because they are inherently less talented than other races."

Within the DND world, that's a bit frustrating. There are elves who fight in melee, or dwarven bards, or even orc magic users. Saying that these things don't exist strains credulity from a world-building standpoint and limits player choice from an RPG mechanics standpoint.

But more importantly, in the real world, that sentiment is absolutely abhorrent and has no place in any conversation. It is simply unacceptable to make an argument similar to "some races are simply smarter/tougher/more good than others" regardless of the context, even if the context is a game.

[LudicSavant]

Trying to get the highest possible modifier in your class' key attribute barely counts as optimization, frankly. It's basic character building and a logical conclusion of how D&D attributes work. If there was more variety in attribute assignment, letting racial modifiers affect them might have more of a point. As it is, I see little point in blaming people for playing the game as it's presented to them.

Indeed. But also:


Could have let go of the "need" to have a +5 and went with warcaster for theme anyways.

You seem to be assuming that investing in high Wisdom isn't also "for theme" for an Orc Cleric. "I'm one of the wisest orcs" is as much a valid concept for an orc as "I'm one of the wisest humans" is for a human Cleric.

It isn't "more thematic" for a human Barbarian to have 18 Strength instead of 20 Strength just because it's closer to an average human.

[KaussH]

But more importantly, in the real world, that sentiment is absolutely abhorrent and has no place in any conversation. It is simply unacceptable to make an argument similar to "some races are simply smarter/tougher/more good than others" regardless of the context, even if the context is a game.

I think there is come confusion here between races (a difference in appearance, but human) and races (game term, creatures that are substantially different in physical and magical ways) . If you play a race with wings, you fly better than a race with no wings. Elves can see better in the dark then humans. You may have horns due to having literal infernal blood in your bloodline , ect. These are not ethical or moral differences, these are actual solid mechanical differences.
Now personally I think the logic behind tasha's is dodgy and off target at best, but I can see why it was tried. It is cultural issues that need to be addressed not if bob the orc gets a +2 to a stat for being an orc.
If you want to make it that all the game races are equal, then you would need to remove all race mods as a default. Everything would have to be boght with points and every race would just be a skin and name with access to all abilities. (I think this is silly as well, but it would do the trick)

[Morty]

You seem to be assuming that investing in high Wisdom isn't also "for theme" for an Orc Cleric.

It isn't "more thematic" for a human Barbarian to have 18 Strength instead of 20 Strength just because it's closer to an average human.

There is also the rather pertinent question of what a racial Wisdom modifier is even supposed to mean. Wisdom doesn't make a lick of sense even without racial modifiers, but it gets worse with them. Intelligence and Charisma modifiers also get slippery. How is one race more charismatic than any other, exactly?

[cookieface]

I think there is come confusion here between races (a difference in appearance, but human) and races (game term, creatures that are substantially different in physical and magical ways) . If you play a race with wings, you fly better than a race with no wings. Elves can see better in the dark then humans. You may have horns due to having literal infernal blood in your bloodline , ect. These are not ethical or moral differences, these are actual solid mechanical differences.
Now personally I think the logic behind tasha's is dodgy and off target at best, but I can see why it was tried. It is cultural issues that need to be addressed not if bob the orc gets a +2 to a stat for being an orc.
If you want to make it that all the game races are equal, then you would need to remove all race mods as a default. Everything would have to be boght with points and every race would just be a skin and name with access to all abilities. (I think this is silly as well, but it would do the trick)

I'm not saying that all races are equal in everything. For one thing, no race, in literal parlance, has wings while another race does not. You're talking about species then. (Changing just that word fixes at least 50% of the issue, IMO, but it will be difficult to erase it from every table that has gotten used to the term over five editions of play, meaning POC players still might hear it and be discouraged from joining the hobby. But still, removing the word "race" from 5.5/6e will be a major step in the right direction and one that is worth making.)

All that said, I am not for making every race/species just a cookiecutter skin to be applied over chosen game mechanics. Two things specifically are problematic: Racial ASIs, and racial alignment. Saying that a drow elf (literally, a dark-skinned elf) is, by blood, less intelligent than a high elf is pretty bad. Saying that they are predisposed to be "evil" is worse (thankfully, that is no longer part of the PHB drow in 5e, but similar issues arise with other races/species).

Saying a drow is able to see better in darkness than other elves is not. That's a function of them living underground -- not the same as saying "they are born less intelligent than high elves". Saying that their magic is slightly different from a high elf's magic is also perfectly fine -- again, drow live underground and getting light-based cantrips (rather than any cantrip) is fitting given their backstory.

Changing the word "race" in DND to "species" would be a step in the right direction, but due to the history of that mechanic (here talking about the in-world appearance and cultural/biological traits of your character) it will be hard to fix entirely. I'd prefer that they err to the end of making fewer things be affected by race/species in future editions -- but I still enjoy the appeal of orcs having some different capabilities than aaracokra than aasimar, etc. They are different, and that's to be celebrated, not punished. And ASIs tend to punish orcs that want to be wizards or tieflings that want to be barbarians. Hope that makes sense.

[Theodoxus]

That's just splitting hairs.

In the real world. there's only 1 race - the human race. To subdivide along ethnicities is insulting and leads to these kinds of absurd discussions. You'll note the various ethnicities listed in the PHB don't have any mechanical differences. That's how it should be.

Race in D&D takes this into consideration.

[TyGuy]

You seem to be assuming that investing in high Wisdom isn't also "for theme" for an Orc Cleric. "I'm one of the wisest orcs" is as much a valid concept for an orc as "I'm one of the wisest humans" is for a human Cleric.

It isn't "more thematic" for a human Barbarian to have 18 Strength instead of 20 Strength just because it's closer to an average human.

Opportunity cost is a foundational aspect of games.

And I agree that an 18 str human barb isn't more on-brand than a 20. Because as I stated previously, the theme of humans in D&D is that they're versatile and varied. But an 18 str instead of 20 kobold or halfling barbarian... yeah that tracks.

[Dienekes]

There is also the rather pertinent question of what a racial Wisdom modifier is even supposed to mean. Wisdom doesn't make a lick of sense even without racial modifiers, but it gets worse with them. Intelligence and Charisma modifiers also get slippery. How is one race more charismatic than any other, exactly?

Pheromones.

As to Wisdom, considering the 5e description has little at all to do with being wise, instead focusing on your perceptiveness and attunement to the world around you. Basically any species with a keen sense that would allow them to more easily understand their surroundings should have a Wisdom bonus.

On that note, did you know Hill Dwarf beards quiver when they sense a lie?

[stoutstien]

If any, tasha has be the final push for me to finally finish my redux of ability scores and races. I'm about to just go Lizzie borden and cut it all out and start fresh.

[TyGuy]

Two things specifically are problematic: Racial ASIs, and racial alignment. Saying that a drow elf (literally, a dark-skinned elf) is, by blood, less intelligent than a high elf is pretty bad. Saying that they are predisposed to be "evil" is worse (thankfully, that is no longer part of the PHB drow in 5e, but similar issues arise with other races/species).


If you're making the connection between skin color and intelligence & alignment that sounds like a you problem. Honestly it sounds like you need to educate yourself on Elf canon before accusing it of being problematic. Drow are tied up with the Dark Seldarine. And if they weren't mostly evil, then what's so special about Drizzt or Eilistraee and her disciples? Nothing.
And why do you have a problem with baseline averageness? Why is drow (and all the other elf subs) having less int than the above average int subrace pretty bad?

[Trafalgar]

One idea that I like, though I haven't tried it, is tying ASI to background, race, and a remaining +1 to players choice. And no total ASI greater than +2. For Example, a High Elf Soldier:
High Elf: +1 to Dex or Int
Soldier: +1 to Str or Con
Player's Choice: +1 to any stat

This gives choices to players, which I think is a good thing. So the above example could be a Rogue with a +2 Dex and a +1 Con or a Wizard with a +2 Int and a +1 Con or an Eldritch Knight with a +2 Str and a +1 Int. But the character will still feel Elvish because they have some Elvish quickness or some Elvish IQ.

I think taking away racial +2 ASI prevents certain races from being pigeon holed into certain classes. But I like my races feeling distinct so a +1 with a chance of +2 makes sense to me.

This is just me spit-balling ideas for 6e. I am not sure what humans would look like in the above scenario.

[TyGuy]

One idea that I like, though I haven't tried it, is tying ASI to background, race, and a remaining +1 to players choice. And no total ASI greater than +2. For Example, a High Elf Soldier:
High Elf: +1 to Dex or Int
Soldier: +1 to Str or Con
Player's Choice: +1 to any stat

This gives choices to players, which I think is a good thing. So the above example could be a Rogue with a +2 Dex and a +1 Con or a Wizard with a +2 Int and a +1 Con or an Eldritch Knight with a +2 Str and a +1 Int. But the character will still feel Elvish because they have some Elvish quickness or some Elvish IQ.

I think taking away racial +2 ASI prevents certain races from being pigeon holed into certain classes. But I like my races feeling distinct so a +1 with a chance of +2 makes sense to me.

This is just me spit-balling ideas for 6e. I am not sure what humans would look like in the above scenario.
I'm getting good reception and mileage out of a house rule that involves RAW racial ASI but with a floating +1 that can be taken from any racial ASI and placed anywhere else provided there's no going beyond +2.

I think it's a great compromise as it retains racial distinction while opening up diversity without throwing the baby out with the bath water.

[Xervous]

Now if there was only a way to get every class to be MAD and to remodel ASIs to follow the same patterns set by point buy. Just about every edition of D&D offers only linear progression on ability scores, not accounting for how it initially weighs high scores more heavily. Probably not going to change, that would be too much effort/complexity and wouldn’t market as well as checking off buzzwords on their bingo card.

[Morty]

Pheromones.

As to Wisdom, considering the 5e description has little at all to do with being wise, instead focusing on your perceptiveness and attunement to the world around you. Basically any species with a keen sense that would allow them to more easily understand their surroundings should have a Wisdom bonus.

On that note, did you know Hill Dwarf beards quiver when they sense a lie?

I'm not entirely clear if this is supposed to be sarcasm or not.

Also, even putting aside the long, ugly history of declaring certain groups of people "less intelligent", a racial modifier to intelligence just doesn't hold up. There's no such thing as a single "intelligence score". It's a mechanical abstraction applied to a certain group of aptitudes. Mostly arcane magic and knowing things. Thus declaring a race/species to be "smart" makes as little sense as declaring it to be "charismatic" or "wise". Physical attributes are more concrete, if still abstracted. Strength is probably the most "objective" because it can be measured - probably why it comes up so much when defending ability score modifiers.

[stoutstien]

I'm not entirely clear if this is supposed to be sarcasm or not.

Also, even putting aside the long, ugly history of declaring certain groups of people "less intelligent", a racial modifier to intelligence just doesn't hold up. There's no such thing as a single "intelligence score". It's a mechanical abstraction applied to a certain group of aptitudes. Mostly arcane magic and knowing things. Thus declaring a race/species to be "smart" makes as little sense as declaring it to be "charismatic" or "wise". Physical attributes are more concrete, if still abstracted. Strength is probably the most "objective" because it can be measured - probably why it comes up so much when defending ability score modifiers.

In the reality of the framework of the dnd rules, intelligence does exist as a single guilding factor for all memory and reasoning. It's clunky and very simplest but that what it is.

Same vien why you can't make a watch mender who can fix fine machinery and pick any lock while also not making them better at walking on a tightrope regardless on how you invision said character. Big sweeping general abilities are just that.

[LudicSavant]

We frequently do not make “unusual” characters weaker overall in the first place. For example, we don’t make Dragonmarked Humans weaker than normal humans just because they’re much rarer than normal humans. Why on earth would we?



Opportunity cost is a foundational aspect of games.

Yes, and? Tasha’s characters don’t somehow lack opportunity costs. There’s an opportunity cost of being an orc cleric instead of a hill dwarf one.

The difference is that the opportunity cost before Tasha’s is so large it just makes a character flat out mechanically inferior by an unnecessary degree, because they’re not just trading one feature for another, they’re *also* paying significantly extra for an *identical* feature.

If for example, you made an ASI give +1 Wisdom for a drow but +2 for everyone else, you’re not improving the game by making a more interesting opportunity cost. You’re just making 1 ASI not worth 1 ASI.

___

The phenomenon I discussed in previous posts doesn't just occur if they take 20 Wisdom. It occurs if they have 16, or 18, too.

A character who paid more to have 16 Wisdom doesn't have the flavor of being anything other than 16 Wisdom. They just sacrificed some other, entirely unrelated feature, and in doing so became less balanced.

[Morty]

In the reality of the framework of the dnd rules, intelligence does exist as a single guilding factor for all memory and reasoning. It's clunky and very simplest but that what it is.

Same vien why you can't make a watch mender who can fix fine machinery and pick any lock while also not making them better at walking on a tightrope regardless on how you invision said character. Big sweeping general abilities are just that.

Right, because ability scores are mechanical abstractions and should be judged accordingly - they don't actually meaningfully model reality. Whether or not they're good mechanical abstractions is another question. I don't think D&D attributes are any good and I've grown increasingly sceptical of "traditional" attributes in RPGs in general. But as pertains this particular topic, I don't see a particularly good reason to keep racial ASIs because of that.

[stoutstien]

Right, because ability scores are mechanical abstractions and should be judged accordingly - they don't actually meaningfully model reality. Whether or not they're good mechanical abstractions is another question. I don't think D&D attributes are any good and I've grown increasingly sceptical of "traditional" attributes in RPGs in general. But as pertains this particular topic, I don't see a particularly good reason to keep racial ASIs because of that.

Aye. The standard ability array is a sacred cow ready for slaughter. Keep it as an alternative rule but really it's holding back the game in more ways than one.

[LudicSavant]

And I agree that an 18 str human barb isn't more on-brand than a 20. Because as I stated previously, the theme of humans in D&D is that they're versatile and varied. But an 18 str instead of 20 kobold or halfling barbarian... yeah that tracks.

Is a +5 Wisdom Drow Cleric character not "on theme" for a Drow Matron, just because drow PCs don't get a Wisdom bonus?

Note that the actual monster stat block for a drow matron has a +5 Wisdom. Because of course they do.

[bid]

How do 13th Age starting stats work?
There's a pair of racial stats, there's a pair of class stats. You pick one of each.

This means every cleric will have Wis16 and the racial impacts secondary stats only. Even if your race is known for grace, you can dump Dex.

Of course, if you pick gnome (Dex-Int) wizard (Dex-Int) you don't have much choice.

[TyGuy]

Is a +5 Wisdom Drow Cleric character not "on theme" for a Drow Matron, just because drow PCs don't get a Wisdom bonus?

Note that the actual monster stat block for a drow matron has a +5 Wisdom. Because of course they do.
I get it. You want your cake and to eat it too. Just implement or ask for a house rule where every class gets an automatic 18 at level 4 and 20 at level 8 in their primary stat of it means that much to you.

[Sigreid]

I kind of like the dual stats in the old Star Frontiers game. So you had, for example Strength/Stamina that were one roll and you could shift some points from one to the other so you could, for example have more strength than stamina or faster reflexes than your hand/eye coordination.

I also liked the WEG Star Wars stats where the core stat represented competence in an area of sapient endeavor and skills added dice to that. So someone with a high mechanical attribute had a lot of experience and training in using a wide variety of machinery. So much so that they were likely to be able to competently use nearly any machine they came across. And then may have additional development in the use of space transport vehicles, and an extreme amount of specialized competence with the YT-1300 for example.

[Trafalgar]

One idea that I like, though I haven't tried it, is tying ASI to background, race, and a remaining +1 to players choice. And no total ASI greater than +2. For Example, a High Elf Soldier:
High Elf: +1 to Dex or Int
Soldier: +1 to Str or Con
Player's Choice: +1 to any stat

This gives choices to players, which I think is a good thing. So the above example could be a Rogue with a +2 Dex and a +1 Con or a Wizard with a +2 Int and a +1 Con or an Eldritch Knight with a +2 Str and a +1 Int. But the character will still feel Elvish because they have some Elvish quickness or some Elvish IQ.

I think taking away racial +2 ASI prevents certain races from being pigeon holed into certain classes. But I like my races feeling distinct so a +1 with a chance of +2 makes sense to me.

This is just me spit-balling ideas for 6e. I am not sure what humans would look like in the above scenario.


I'm getting good reception and mileage out of a house rule that involves RAW racial ASI but with a floating +1 that can be taken from any racial ASI and placed anywhere else provided there's no going beyond +2.

I think it's a great compromise as it retains racial distinction while opening up diversity without throwing the baby out with the bath water.

So for me, this is really a "Fantasy Nature vs Nurture" debate. in the current 5e Rules Nature or Race is everything. But it doesn't always make sense in universe. If a Half Orc baby is raised by wealthy human parents where every whim is catered to, why would she get a +2 to strength. I can see a +1 Str because Half Orcs are physiologically a little stronger than humans. But if she never works out, why would she get +2 strong? But if ASIs come from Race, Background, and Personal Preference, things are more interesting:
Half Orc: +1 Str or +1 Con
Noble: +1 Int or +1 Cha
Player's Choice: +1 to any stat

So in this example, maybe she has a +1 Str because she is a half orc and a +1 Str because her palace had a gym in the basement with a personal trainer on staff.

One problem I see with 5e is that I have never seen anyone play a strength based elven fighter or an orcish caster. But Player Characters are supposed to be exceptional, not average members of their race. So you should be able to build an intelligent orc or a quick dwarf without being nerfed. And on the flip side you should have some slow elves, unhealthy dwarves, and weak Half Orcs.

[Sigreid]

So for me, this is really a "Fantasy Nature vs Nurture" debate. in the current 5e Rules Nature or Race is everything. But it doesn't always make sense in universe. If a Half Orc baby is raised by wealthy human parents where every whim is catered to, why would she get a +2 to strength. I can see a +1 Str because Half Orcs are physiologically a little stronger than humans. But if she never works out, why would she get +2 strong? But if ASIs come from Race, Background, and Personal Preference, things are more interesting:
Half Orc: +1 Str or +1 Con
Noble: +1 Int or +1 Cha
Player's Choice: +1 to any stat

So in this example, maybe she has a +1 Str because she is a half orc and a +1 Str because her palace had a gym in the basement with a personal trainer on staff.

One problem I see with 5e is that I have never seen anyone play a strength based elven fighter or an orcish caster. But Player Characters are supposed to be exceptional, not average members of their race. So you should be able to build an intelligent orc or a quick dwarf without being nerfed. And on the flip side you should have some slow elves, unhealthy dwarves, and weak Half Orcs.

Because they'd be +2 strength compared to an equally pampered human though they still may be a weakling compared to a human mason or blacksmith?

[TyGuy]

So for me, this is really a "Fantasy Nature vs Nurture" debate. in the current 5e Rules Nature or Race is everything. But it doesn't always make sense in universe. If a Half Orc baby is raised by wealthy human parents where every whim is catered to, why would she get a +2 to strength. I can see a +1 Str because Half Orcs are physiologically a little stronger than humans. But if she never works out, why would she get +2 strong? But if ASIs come from Race, Background, and Personal Preference, things are more interesting:
Half Orc: +1 Str or +1 Con
Noble: +1 Int or +1 Cha
Player's Choice: +1 to any stat

So in this example, maybe she has a +1 Str because she is a half orc and a +1 Str because her palace had a gym in the basement with a personal trainer on staff.

One problem I see with 5e is that I have never seen anyone play a strength based elven fighter or an orcish caster. But Player Characters are supposed to be exceptional, not average members of their race. So you should be able to build an intelligent orc or a quick dwarf without being nerfed. And on the flip side you should have some slow elves, unhealthy dwarves, and weak Half Orcs.

That's fair and I think your proposed method would work. It would just take a bit more effort to create than 1 floating ASI. And as a busy guy, I'm all about reducing the amount of prep work.
The floating ASI does allow for the half orc wizard with a +16 starting int.
Linking an asi to the background does add complexity for better or for worse. But I do like adding relevance to the backgrounds. Once you bring in custom backgrounds though... your essentially making it two free +1's

[MaxWilson]

What you are effectively saying here is "Some races are not capable of doing certain things, because they are inherently less talented than other races."

Within the DND world, that's a bit frustrating. There are elves who fight in melee, or dwarven bards, or even orc magic users. Saying that these things don't exist strains credulity from a world-building standpoint and limits player choice from an RPG mechanics standpoint.

But more importantly, in the real world, that sentiment is absolutely abhorrent and has no place in any conversation. It is simply unacceptable to make an argument similar to "some races are simply smarter/tougher/more good than others" regardless of the context, even if the context is a game.

I just want to point out here that there are no orcs in the real world, but if there were it would in no way be abhorrent to notice their differences from humans.

Edit: orcs would excel at football defense, wouldn't they? Because you're always running towards an enemy.

[LudicSavant]

I get it. You want your cake and to eat it too. Just implement or ask for a house rule where every class gets an automatic 18 at level 4 and 20 at level 8 in their primary stat of it means that much to you.

It would be an extreme misrepresentation of my position to suggest that I think everyone should always max their ability scores, let alone do so for free. It directly contradicts the game design principles I've advocated for.

I don't think you should get any attribute for free. I think that if you wish to raise an attribute, you should pay a cost commensurate to its value. You do not "need" to raise an attribute, but it is also not somehow "against theme" or "less flavorful" to do so.

A 20 Wisdom Drow Cleric is thematic for a drow matron. A 20 Wisdom orc Druid is thematic for a Gatekeeper. A player isn't "playing against theme" or "sacrificing flavor" for making such character choices. On the contrary, those are iconic D&D characters to a great many players.

Earlier, you said:

Could have let go of the "need" to have a +5 and went with warcaster for theme anyways.

The possibility I wish for you to consider is that spending your ASI on +2 Wisdom is also a thematic choice for a Cleric, regardless of whether their race has a Wisdom modifier.

[Segev]

They are also, in fact, the only non-fiction playable race option

I demand more non-fiction playable race options!

What sorts of racial features do you suppose the Indie 500 or the Kentucky Derby would have?

[MaxWilson]

Now if there was only a way to get every class to be MAD and to remodel ASIs to follow the same patterns set by point buy. Just about every edition of D&D offers only linear progression on ability scores, not accounting for how it initially weighs high scores more heavily. Probably not going to change, that would be too much effort/complexity and wouldn’t market as well as checking off buzzwords on their bingo card.

Do you mean "every WotC edition"? Ability score progression in AD&D is sublinear at best even with multiple Wish spells, and usually nonexistent.

[Trafalgar]

That's fair and I think your proposed method would work. It would just take a bit more effort to create than 1 floating ASI. And as a busy guy, I'm all about reducing the amount of prep work.
The floating ASI does allow for the half orc wizard with a +16 starting int.
Linking an asi to the background does add complexity for better or for worse. But I do like adding relevance to the backgrounds. Once you bring in custom backgrounds though... your essentially making it two free +1's

I like lots of options or complexity in character creation. But I don't like too much complexity in gameplay. I think this is why the 6 D&D attributes have been around in some form for almost 50 years.

As far as custom backgrounds go, you would need a ruleset for designing them kind of like custom races in the DMG. I think a choice of a single +1 in one of two separate stats for a background is fair. In reality, since the player choses the background and can chose one of two ASIs in each background, it will be pretty easy for any player to get +2 in whatever stat they want. Custom backgrounds may not be necessary other than creating ones that hadn't been thought of before.

[KyleG]

If the racial attribute was applied at the other end would it make any difference. Eg. Whilst humans and orcs can spend most of their career at the same strength. Only orcs can ever push to 20 (or you make this goal 22).

[cookieface]

That's just splitting hairs.

In the real world. there's only 1 race - the human race. To subdivide along ethnicities is insulting and leads to these kinds of absurd discussions. You'll note the various ethnicities listed in the PHB don't have any mechanical differences. That's how it should be.

Race in D&D takes this into consideration.

In the real world, there is not only one race. Saying otherwise is reductive and blind to the realities of the world. People of different races exist. Race is a social construct, but it is a construct nonetheless.


If you're making the connection between skin color and intelligence & alignment that sounds like a you problem. Honestly it sounds like you need to educate yourself on Elf canon before accusing it of being problematic. Drow are tied up with the Dark Seldarine. And if they weren't mostly evil, then what's so special about Drizzt or Eilistraee and her disciples? Nothing.
And why do you have a problem with baseline averageness? Why is drow (and all the other elf subs) having less int than the above average int subrace pretty bad?

The game of DND is making a connection between elven skin color and intelligence/alignment.

Educating yourself on real-world racial issues is a bit more important than being aware of the full (invented) history of elves in DND. Using their (invented) history, which was created by a whole lot of white men living in our real world, as a cudgel to show that these things about (invented) races are immutably True is to disregard the hundreds and thousands of POC who are smarter than me who have discussed why they are problematic.

There is a problem when a game says "One race is less intelligent than another." There is a HUGE problem when a game says "One race is more evil than another." These problems compound when, lo and behold, the races that have darker skin (orcs, goblins, drow, etc) do not receive INT bonuses and are often the ones that have evil alignments.

And finally, the whole problem is that we are not talking about "baseline averageness". Average stats are what you use for an army of drow, or humans, or dwarves. The PC adventurers are, by definition, special characters in this world. They should not be confined to having the same INT as your run-of-the-mill member of the same race, because variation within races is a thing. My special drow wizard is smart. That's why he's a wizard, and that's why I want to play him instead of that drow archer two doors down. I should have the option to bump his INT rather than his DEX. Disallowing floating ASIs is saying "every member of this race has the same basic skills". And a lot of those skills have nasty implications, like how dark-skinned drow are less intelligent than other elves. It's gross, and it is not something I want in my games.

[LudicSavant]

If the racial attribute was applied at the other end would it make any difference. Eg. Whilst humans and orcs can spend most of their career at the same strength. Only orcs can ever push to 20 (or you make this goal 22).

Yeah, it'd make a difference if we were talking about stat caps, rather than stat costs. Different stat caps are fine, IMHO.

The range of what is possible for a member of your race is important, in a way that the "averageness" of a trait for a member of your race is not (http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=72409).

Statistical deviation from a theoretical average person of your race should not determine how many points a feature costs. Superman is a relatively average Kryptonian, and he still generally costs more to build in a Superheroes game than Batman, an incredibly unusual human.

Whether or not it is possible for your race to have a dragonmark matters. Whether or not it is unusual for your race to have a dragonmark does not matter -- the House Cannith guy is still thematic and iconic, and still should not be intentionally underpowered.

Likewise, whether or not it is possible for a drow to be very wise matters. Whether or not it is unusual for a drow to be as wise as a matron mother does not matter -- the matron mother is still thematic and iconic, and should not be intentionally underpowered.

[MoiMagnus]

In the real world, there is not only one race. Saying otherwise is reductive and blind to the realities of the world. People of different races exist. Race is a social construct, but it is a construct nonetheless.

I'd suggest not continuing this debate on this forum, as this clearly about real world notion which is heavily politicised.
While not an absolute source, the reading of the wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization)) can be very instructive at this subject if anybody is unsure about what is the current academic consensus, and what is still debated.

[Witty Username]

Is a +5 Wisdom Drow Cleric character not "on theme" for a Drow Matron, just because drow PCs don't get a Wisdom bonus?

Note that the actual monster stat block for a drow matron has a +5 Wisdom. Because of course they do.
I think drow might be the best argument for the Tasha's changes. That being said it is less encouraging diversity and more fixing design mistakes, what with the whole drow have a proud tradition of wizards and clerics ignored by their stat block because their are three elves in the phb and the other two get those bonuses.

Stats causing rifts in archetypes I think is more how the scores themselves are set up, and associated rules. Finesse weapons being the most frustrating in my mind, since it is the biggest call on str being a lesser stat.

[cookieface]

I'd suggest not continuing this debate on this forum, as this clearly about real world notion which is heavily politicised.
While not an absolute source, the reading of the wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization)) can be very instructive at this subject if anybody is unsure about what is the current academic consensus, and what is still debated.

Discussing race is not inherently political. Otherwise you are saying people's lives are political. Millions or billions of people must live with the consequences of race each day, discussing race is to discuss their well-being.

If you want to learn about race, I recommend looker a bit deeper than a Wikipedia article. Here's what I would recommend:
- So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo (https://www.amazon.com/You-Want-Talk-About-Race/dp/1580056776)
- Biased by Jennifer Eberhardt (https://www.amazon.com/Biased-Uncovering-Hidden-Prejudice-Shapes/dp/0735224951/)
- Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram Kendi (https://www.amazon.com/Stamped-Beginning-Definitive-History-National/dp/1568585985)

There's also plenty of reading about Race and D&D that will help elucidate the problematic nature:
- https://www.wired.com/story/dungeons-dragons-diversity/
- https://medium.com/grinning-rat-blog/the-problem-of-race-in-dnd-e8db4d00f24c
- (many more but I can't find them now and 5 min of Googling will open up new worlds to you)

This is directly related to D&D and has nothing to do with politics. Claiming that any conversation that relates to race is immediately politic is more of the same issue -- it means that people of the non-majority race are swiftly pushed out of the conversation, because their own experiences are somehow "more political" than those of the majority race.

[Morty]

Aye. The standard ability array is a sacred cow ready for slaughter. Keep it as an alternative rule but really it's holding back the game in more ways than one.

Unfortunately, attributes have become an institution for some reason. We can see how controversial something as ultimately minor as decoupling them from race is. Any deeper changes would go over worse. Even 4E, the supposedly iconoclastic edition, did pretty much zilch with them. Other than let some characters cast with Constitution, I guess.

[Witty Username]

In the real world, there is not only one race. Saying otherwise is reductive and blind to the realities of the world. People of different races exist. Race is a social construct, but it is a construct nonetheless.



The game of DND is making a connection between elven skin color and intelligence/alignment.

Educating yourself on real-world racial issues is a bit more important than being aware of the full (invented) history of elves in DND. Using their (invented) history, which was created by a whole lot of white men living in our real world, as a cudgel to show that these things about (invented) races are immutably True is to disregard the hundreds and thousands of POC who are smarter than me who have discussed why they are problematic.

There is a problem when a game says "One race is less intelligent than another." There is a HUGE problem when a game says "One race is more evil than another." These problems compound when, lo and behold, the races that have darker skin (orcs, goblins, drow, etc) do not receive INT bonuses and are often the ones that have evil alignments.

And finally, the whole problem is that we are not talking about "baseline averageness". Average stats are what you use for an army of drow, or humans, or dwarves. The PC adventurers are, by definition, special characters in this world. They should not be confined to having the same INT as your run-of-the-mill member of the same race, because variation within races is a thing. My special drow wizard is smart. That's why he's a wizard, and that's why I want to play him instead of that drow archer two doors down. I should have the option to bump his INT rather than his DEX. Disallowing floating ASIs is saying "every member of this race has the same basic skills". And a lot of those skills have nasty implications, like how dark-skinned drow are less intelligent than other elves. It's gross, and it is not something I want in my games.

If this is the stance you take, should we just take out the race section of d&d? Since as long as we have at least two races with any mechanical difference this problem will exist.

[MoiMagnus]

Even 4E, the supposedly iconoclastic edition, did pretty much zilch with them. Other than let some characters cast with Constitution, I guess.

Yeah, I'm very surprised that 4E, between all the sacred cows it chose to kill, did not at least made the jump from ability score to "only modifiers".

They did make some experimentations with ability scores, to be fair. By putting every defence on a "max between two abilities" (so Int-based reflexes and AC), they were heavily encouraging dumping abilities much more than any other edition.

[Dienekes]

Discussing race is not inherently political. Otherwise you are saying people's lives are political. Millions or billions of people must live with the consequences of race each day, discussing race is to discuss their well-being.


{scrubbed}

[Peelee]

The Mod on the Silver Mountain: Several threads on racial ASI changes have gotten permanently closed. We do not wish to stifle discussion, especially on a major game mechanic, but please keep discussion productive.

[greenstone]

This may necessitate some ajustments to point by, to retain the balance point. Rolled stats are probably fine since they already trended a little high.
Agreed.

In my next game, I'm going to make it very, very simple.

You get 27 points to spend, all ability scores must be in the range 8 to 15. After you have spent points, you gets one +2 and one +1, to go wherever you want (except that they must be two different abilities - not a +3 to one ability).

If you want your character to be an elf then write "elf" on your character sheet. Excellent, they are an elf.

Done.

Now pick background and class.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Agreed.

In my next game, I'm going to make it very, very simple.

You get 27 points to spend, all ability scores must be in the range 8 to 15. After you have spent points, you gets one +2 and one +1, to go wherever you want (except that they must be two different abilities - not a +3 to one ability).

If you want your character to be an elf then write "elf" on your character sheet. Excellent, they are an elf.

Done.

Now pick background and class.

I'm planning to go the entire other direction.

There are races (ie species). These give two traits + one +1 ASI (usually choice-of-two). These are fixed things in the setting, and the traits are entirely biological in origin.

There are cultures. These give one trait and +2 ASI (either +1/+1 or +2), plus some proficiencies (including languages). Any race can take any culture, some are more generic than others. However, taking a culture implies things about your heritage and will mean things in game. Some race/culture pairings are rarer (and NPCs will remark more), but any is available to any, as adventurers are already outside the norm in many ways.

A lot of the cultural traits are shared, and they're based on descriptors. So a "crafty, martial, mountainous" culture might have overlap in either proficiencies or traits (or both) with a "self-sufficient, nature-obsessed, mountainous" culture. Specifically, they'd probably have the "Mountain-walk" trait (the details of which are yet uncertain, but it'd be benefits when you're in or under mountainous terrain.

[Witty Username]

Agreed.

In my next game, I'm going to make it very, very simple.

You get 27 points to spend, all ability scores must be in the range 8 to 15. After you have spent points, you gets one +2 and one +1, to go wherever you want (except that they must be two different abilities - not a +3 to one ability).

If you want your character to be an elf then write "elf" on your character sheet. Excellent, they are an elf.

Done.

Now pick background and class.

Why not 30 points with no +2/+1?

[bid]

Why not 30 points with no +2/+1?
Because 16/17 are worth 3 points each.


Now if you want to clean this up, realize that your total mods will always be +7/+8. You could dump the entire standard array and use a +3/+3/+2/+1/0/-1 mod distribution.

[KaussH]

I'm not saying that all races are equal in everything. For one thing, no race, in literal parlance, has wings while another race does not. You're talking about species then. (Changing just that word fixes at least 50% of the issue, IMO, but it will be difficult to erase it from every table that has gotten used to the term over five editions of play, meaning POC players still might hear it and be discouraged from joining the hobby. But still, removing the word "race" from 5.5/6e will be a major step in the right direction and one that is worth making.)

All that said, I am not for making every race/species just a cookiecutter skin to be applied over chosen game mechanics. Two things specifically are problematic: Racial ASIs, and racial alignment. Saying that a drow elf (literally, a dark-skinned elf) is, by blood, less intelligent than a high elf is pretty bad. Saying that they are predisposed to be "evil" is worse (thankfully, that is no longer part of the PHB drow in 5e, but similar issues arise with other races/species).

Saying a drow is able to see better in darkness than other elves is not. That's a function of them living underground -- not the same as saying "they are born less intelligent than high elves". Saying that their magic is slightly different from a high elf's magic is also perfectly fine -- again, drow live underground and getting light-based cantrips (rather than any cantrip) is fitting given their backstory.

Changing the word "race" in DND to "species" would be a step in the right direction, but due to the history of that mechanic (here talking about the in-world appearance and cultural/biological traits of your character) it will be hard to fix entirely. I'd prefer that they err to the end of making fewer things be affected by race/species in future editions -- but I still enjoy the appeal of orcs having some different capabilities than aaracokra than aasimar, etc. They are different, and that's to be celebrated, not punished. And ASIs tend to punish orcs that want to be wizards or tieflings that want to be barbarians. Hope that makes sense.

In this case i use the term race since its ths game term. Changing it to bloodline, species, kinder, kind,ect wouldnt bother me at all, and in fact might make things easier.

That said ASI are not meant to punish, they are supposed to represent part of what makes one group diffrent than another. And yes, this did tend to make some species /class options sub optimal.

That said, sub optimal does not always mean bad, but thats a whole other issue.

Making asi cultural comes off as silly, a line drawn for purely ooc reasons. Elves can see in the dark due to cool eyes, but cant have a higher dex due to nerves and muscles that react faster due to the touch of magic in fey blood. For example.

The issue seems to be a confusion between racist pseudo science and classification between fantasy species. Mountain dwarves from the del empire and mountain dwarves from the foom valley should have the same species templates. Gnomes and humans from the city states of gwan shouldn't.

The other issue is, this is supposed to all be optional and based on the cultures of the setting. Giving the floating asi tools to gms would have been fine, but making it optional/not really optional seems to both encourage min max optimisation, as well as charicters that dont fit the setting at all.

As a side note the dark elf stuff is and has been a mess forever. The original dark elves not only rang of racism, but also were made as a super villain race. Not just dark skin, but a "strange" structure, exposed to magic radiation to give them super powers, super magic items that disolved in the sun, ect. They were far far from a playable race. Once they were weakened to playable, their problematic nature really got clear.

[greenstone]

Why not 30 points with no +2/+1?

Because I want to see level 1 characers with at most 2 scores above 15, and it seems like +2 and _+1 is the simplest way to desribe this.

[Kane0]

If 4d6b3 is standard and results in close enough to the standard array which is also worth the standard point buy, can someone calculate what 4d4b3 and 4d8b3 would equate to?

[TyGuy]

If 4d6b3 is standard and results in close enough to the standard array which is also worth the standard point buy, can someone calculate what 4d4b3 and 4d8b3 would equate to?
19 and 35 points

[Theodoxus]

In my homebrew game, I yanked the PF2 style of backgrounds. So you pick a background and it provides a +1 to one of two specific attributes that would naturally be increased if you spent your early adulthood doing that work - Sailor gets a choice of Dex or Wisdom; Farmhand Strength or Con, etc. and then +1 to any other attribute.

For 'races', I use breeds, because my progenitor race were 'super changelings'. The campaign is in it's 12th iteration, and humans are dominant. In fact, other pure breeds have been wiped out nearly completely and aren't seen in human lands. However, the genetic material lingers, so some humans are born with the genetic traits of other breeds. They might be of elven stock and have Darkvision, obviously pointed ears and only require 4 hours of sleep per long rest. Each "lineage" has a trait that makes it obvious they're not fully human (size, ears, hairy, skin color); and then two additional traits common to the breed. Except for pure human, they gain a feat.

I also yanked the Fantasy AGE style of race:
Playing a HumanIf you choose to play a human, modify your character as follows:


Pick one feat from the Breed feats listed below. (the Lineages described above)
Pick one of the following ability focuses: Dexterity (Riding) or Strength (Athletics).
Your base Speed is equal to 30
You can speak and read the Common Tongue.
Roll twice on the Human Benefits table for additional benefits. Roll 2d6 and add the dice together. If you get the same result twice, re-roll until you get something different.

Human Benefits

2d6 Roll

Benefit



2

+1 to an attribute of your choice



3-4

Skill: Constitution (Stamina)



5

Skill: Wisdom (Perception)



6

Skill: Charisma (Persuasion)



7-8

+1 to an attribute of your choice



9

Skill: Charisma (Deception)



10-11

Skill: Dexterity (Sleight of Hand)



12

+1 to an attribute of your choice




This does potentially allow for a total of +4 to attributes, but it'd require a pretty lucky roll to do so. OTOH, it would still be a maximum of +3 to any stat if the player pushed then all into one...

I called the races 'breeds' not out of some PC pressure, but because I wanted CharGen to follow the ABCs: Attributes, Background & Breed, Class... which, I confess, I got from PF2 with their Ancestry, Background, Class structure...

[Millstone85]

As a side note the dark elf stuff is and has been a mess forever. The original dark elves not only rang of racism, but also were made as a super villain race. Not just dark skin, but a "strange" structure, exposed to magic radiation to give them super powers, super magic items that disolved in the sun, ect. They were far far from a playable race. Once they were weakened to playable, their problematic nature really got clear.A big part of racism is dehumanizing people. What you are describing here is the humanization of a monster.

This is bound to happen when anything becomes playable, as are subsequent parallels to racism. Your character is an illithid who has escaped the control of their elder brain and found a way to survive without cracking skulls? They will face "prejudice" wherever they go, until they find a whole colony of like-minded flayers (but don't call them that, it is rude).

Eh, I am even writing (or well, struggling to write) a setting with just such a colony. Technically, they are gith trained in slowing down ceremorphosis for years and making sure their indentities make it through. I call them ghaikesvi.

[Theodoxus]

As a side note the dark elf stuff is and has been a mess forever. The original dark elves not only rang of racism, but also were made as a super villain race. Not just dark skin, but a "strange" structure, exposed to magic radiation to give them super powers, super magic items that disolved in the sun, ect. They were far far from a playable race. Once they were weakened to playable, their problematic nature really got clear.

Given that dark elves come straight out of Norse mythology - and then given a massive twist to keep them from being literal svartalfs, the fact that they were ever allowed to be PCs has felt odd to me.

[Xervous]

What degree of complexity will 6e be targeting anyways? As things currently stand I don’t see major revisions driving a new edition. Will that leave us with more of the same layered on top the latest factors pushing marketing?

[Theodoxus]

What degree of complexity will 6e be targeting anyways? As things currently stand I don’t see major revisions driving a new edition. Will that leave us with more of the same layered on top the latest factors pushing marketing?

My hope is that 6E actually has all the knobs we were promised for 5E to make it as simple or complex as a table would like - with whatever incarnation of AL it has using something in the middle.

[Xervous]

My hope is that 6E actually has all the knobs we were promised for 5E to make it as simple or complex as a table would like - with whatever incarnation of AL it has using something in the middle.

Now I think that last bit is rather far fetched. AL is bound to end up as some lowest common denominator format with a few convoluted restrictions tacked on. All it takes is one controversial option and you’ve split the player base on AL. I’d consider even 25% of people looking at AL and being happy with its rule set nothing short of a miracle.

[stoutstien]

Now I think that last bit is rather far fetched. AL is bound to end up as some lowest common denominator format with a few convoluted restrictions tacked on. All it takes is one controversial option and you’ve split the player base on AL. I’d consider even 25% of people looking at AL and being happy with its rule set nothing short of a miracle.
AL is just not compatible with the 5e system. Realistically we just have a loosely organized local groups that still has their own style that isn't 100% compatible with the neighboring groups.
At best AL is a good way to find others who enjoy similar style games and at worse it's purgatory for those who can't find a group.

[bid]

19 and 35 points
The average of 3d8 is 13.5, either 5 or 7 point buy for a total of 36 without the drop lowest.
The average of 4d4 is 10 for a total of 12 point buy using all 4 dice.

It's not even close.


If 4d6b3 is standard and results in close enough to the standard array which is also worth the standard point buy, can someone calculate what 4d4b3 and 4d8b3 would equate to?

4d6b3 ~ 12.24 ~ 25.5 point buy.
*average of the lowest die is (1^4 + 2^4 + 3^4 + 4^4 + 5^4 + 6^4) / 6^4,
* 2275/1296 ~ 1.75

4d4b3 ~ 8.61 ~ 4 point buy.
* 354/256 ~ 1.38

4d8b3 ~ 15.8 ~ more than 54 point buy.
* 8772/4096 ~ 2.14

[MoiMagnus]

4d6b3 ~ 12.24 ~ 25.5 point buy.
*average of the lowest die is (1^4 + 2^4 + 3^4 + 4^4 + 5^4 + 6^4) / 6^4,
* 2275/1296 ~ 1.75

4d4b3 ~ 8.61 ~ 4 point buy.
* 354/256 ~ 1.38

4d8b3 ~ 15.8 ~ more than 54 point buy.
* 8772/4096 ~ 2.14

Mostly right, but you're giving the point-buy of the average, which is not exactly the same as the average point-buy. (Because the cost is non-linear).

I've made some simulations, with actual points and obtained:

4d6b3 = 5 pts in average => 30 pts in total.
4d4b3 = 0.6 pts in average => 3.5 pts in total.
4d8b3 = 11 pts in average => 66 pts in total.

I've used the following extended table for values outside of the usual scope:

N<8 => N-8 pts, which is negative
8 to 15 => from 0 pts to 9 pts as usual
Each increment after that increase the total of pts by 2, so 11pts for 16, 13pts for 17, etc


Since there is no official extended table, I've also computed for a an increment of the modifier, so 12pts,15pts,19pts,23pts,28pts,... in other words the total formula is for even scores "3+mod*mod" and for odd scores "3+mod*(mod+1)". The results are mostly the same except for 4d8b3 where we obtain 85 pts in total.

[Amechra]

Honestly, one of my biggest issues with the new paradigm is that it is a fundamentally boring approach to the idea of reducing pigeonholing.

Part of me wants to see what it'd look like if you used the original ability score bonuses with point-buy, and then capped everyone's starting ability scores (after feats and such) at 15.

[Xervous]

Honestly, one of my biggest issues with the new paradigm is that it is a fundamentally boring approach to the idea of reducing pigeonholing.

Part of me wants to see what it'd look like if you used the original ability score bonuses with point-buy, and then capped everyone's starting ability scores (after feats and such) at 15.

On seeing what it would look like, how many sessions would someone have to sit in on to get a decent chance at guessing each character’s ability scores if all mention of race was stripped out and the observer could only see monster stats and the raw results of dice rolls? (Monster health is hidden to the observer since that would make bonuses too obvious)

[Theodoxus]

I suppose at that point, the question boils down to "why did you pick the race you did for your character?"

Not all non-ASI racial traits are equal, this is known. So, if the ASIs are standardized (outside of outliers like M-dwarves and H-elves), one would posit that it's the other traits that were looked at when picking a race (again, outside of those folks who just like elves, or halflings or orc, etc.).

So, do you pick a complementary race? You want another cantrip on your wizard to provide either another elemental attack or perhaps a useful utility? You just <have> to have darkvision, so non-DV races are right out? You like the medium armor boon of M-dwarves to make you slightly less squishy when combat comes a callin'? Maybe you want the most magical protection you can get, so you go with gnome or yuan-ti...

I'm just curious what factors you're looking at now. As for me, I'm quite happy that halflings can now be any class without worry about being left behind. I always start one with a new DM, as I never know if they use critical fumbles - which I loathe with the heat of a thousand suns. Halfling Luck is my #1 favorite racial ability. And now I can play a wizard or a plate wearing paladin without worry (or a druid without having to resort to ghostwise and being stuck with SCAG in an AL game)...

[Amechra]

On seeing what it would look like, how many sessions would someone have to sit in on to get a decent chance at guessing each character’s ability scores if all mention of race was stripped out and the observer could only see monster stats and the raw results of dice rolls? (Monster health is hidden to the observer since that would make bonuses too obvious)

It depends — what other information does the observer get? Do they...

Know what level all of the characters are at?
Know what ability score corresponds to each roll?
Get to know everyone's current HP?

[Anymage]

Given that dark elves come straight out of Norse mythology - and then given a massive twist to keep them from being literal svartalfs, the fact that they were ever allowed to be PCs has felt odd to me.

It's a relatively simple cycle. Some monsters catch someone's eye, so they go about making them cool. (If you can get tie in novels you might also have one in a book, which can make them extra cool. Let's not forget how many drow were dual wielding rangers.) Players think it's cool so they want to be one. Rules towards that end were made, and now you have to expand the monster society beyond "they're evil" because that gets boring and can sound uncomfortably close to how real-world racists tried to malign and dismiss others.

Incidentally, let's also remember that drow in 3.5 had +2 to Int and Cha, while dwarves in 3.5 had a Cha penalty. "The dark skinned elves are the evil ones" did draw comments back then, while I didn't hear a peep about dwarves being maligned. And to this day, it's very rare to hear that dwarves or wood elves or aasimar are being portrayed as offensively stupid because they don't have an Int boost. How to better write races and how to navigate that awkward transition from "they're monsters, what else do you need to know" to "even if they're generally antagonistic, they have a society that makes sense and that allows for meaningful engagement" are both interesting topics for discussion (although maybe a bit closer to political talk than is ideal here), but fixed racial ASIs aren't that much of a factor there.

And having read through this thread, something else stood out to me.

An orc bard should have a +3 Cha modifier at first level. That's just system math and bounded accuracy leading to certain assumptions. Which does mean that a lot of ability score choices wind up becoming no brainers, but that's going to be hard to fix without a serious rewrite of the system and frankly I don't know how much it's worth the bother.

An orc bard, as it stands under Tasha's, has no reason not to go +2 Cha/+1 Dex, dump strength, and only use Aggressive to move within range of an enemy before shooting off an arrow or a spell and then using their normal move to back off again. In fact that would arguably be more optimal than the traditionally orcy maneuver of making sure your instrument is sturdy so it can also be used to bash the enemy's head in.

People say that things like that would be better served through active racial features than passive stat mods. And while I agree, I haven't noticed much effort placed into trying to make better active variants of races and the spooky UA inclines me to believe that WotC is only just trying to make sense of this instead of having thought it over thoroughly before instituting a pretty major rules change. Give me confidence that you have good alternatives lined up before making a controversial rule mandatory.

Until then, though, I want something - whether a simple ASI or abilities that actively encourage meeleeing or something - that would encourage your orc to consider strength more attractive as a secondary or tertiary stat than a vanilla standard human would. I'm totally down with your orc being intelligent, wise, and/or charismatic. Both for in-universe logic, and because the game math demands it. If your orc has no incentive to be strong, you might have goofed something somewhere.

[Morty]

Honestly, one of my biggest issues with the new paradigm is that it is a fundamentally boring approach to the idea of reducing pigeonholing.

Part of me wants to see what it'd look like if you used the original ability score bonuses with point-buy, and then capped everyone's starting ability scores (after feats and such) at 15.

There's only so much interesting interaction you can squeeze out of attributes. They are, at the end of the day, a numbers game with some very clear optimal solution.

[bid]

Mostly right, but you're giving the point-buy of the average, which is not exactly the same as the average point-buy. (Because the cost is non-linear).
Ah yes.
Nice simulation too.:smallsmile:

Isn't that progression the same as 4e?

[Theodoxus]

An orc bard should have a +3 Cha modifier at first level. That's just system math and bounded accuracy leading to certain assumptions. Which does mean that a lot of ability score choices wind up becoming no brainers, but that's going to be hard to fix without a serious rewrite of the system and frankly I don't know how much it's worth the bother.

An orc bard, as it stands under Tasha's, has no reason not to go +2 Cha/+1 Dex, dump strength, and only use Aggressive to move within range of an enemy before shooting off an arrow or a spell and then using their normal move to back off again. In fact that would arguably be more optimal than the traditionally orcy maneuver of making sure your instrument is sturdy so it can also be used to bash the enemy's head in.

People say that things like that would be better served through active racial features than passive stat mods. And while I agree, I haven't noticed much effort placed into trying to make better active variants of races and the spooky UA inclines me to believe that WotC is only just trying to make sense of this instead of having thought it over thoroughly before instituting a pretty major rules change. Give me confidence that you have good alternatives lined up before making a controversial rule mandatory.

Until then, though, I want something - whether a simple ASI or abilities that actively encourage meeleeing or something - that would encourage your orc to consider strength more attractive as a secondary or tertiary stat than a vanilla standard human would. I'm totally down with your orc being intelligent, wise, and/or charismatic. Both for in-universe logic, and because the game math demands it. If your orc has no incentive to be strong, you might have goofed something somewhere.

I'm not sure what you mean exactly re: the bolded part. But, I also have zero compunction about, instead of a +2/+1 split, just saying "you have 3 points to allocate after building your point buy array." If you went 15/15/15/8/8/8, you could go 16/16/16/8/8/8 or 18/15/15/8/8/8 if you want. it's very min-max-y, but point-buy tends to be, especially if there are no downsides outside of not being the best at whatever 3 stats you tanked.

As for giving orcs something to emphasize strength, modify Savage Attacks to only work when used with a melee attack that uses strength. Orc wizards probably won't care... an orc rogue might. It doesn't have to be an active benefit for every class, but some players will try to maximize each racial trait. I know I tend to... I think it'd be pretty fun to (and very MAD) to play an orc bladesinger that emphasizes strength over dex... running around with a broadaxe or warhammer... when asked why, the very intelligent orc says "I'm playing up the natural traits of my race. Bite me."

[Amechra]

There's only so much interesting interaction you can squeeze out of attributes. They are, at the end of the day, a numbers game with some very clear optimal solution.

And that's why you eliminate those optimal solutions, and laugh.

[Telwar]

I really, really like build diversity. I'd like to be able to make a dwarf sorcerer or half-orc monk who works mechanically and doesn't sacrifice a significant percentage of ability to Do Things.

As long as you can, with a point buy or priority system, get enough of the appropriate attributes to make your character mechanically effective for their focus, without having them attached to the race/species/lineage/ancestry/whatever, I'm perfectly fine with it.

I'm *assuming* you'll still have racial/speciesistic*/lineal/ancestral abilities that are going to reflect the normal physiological traits (dwarves being tough, elves being nimble, gnomes clever, halflings being hungry, etc).

[PhantomSoul]

And that's why you eliminate those optimal solutions, and laugh.

It is known that orc barbarians are to be hanged on sight.

[Theodoxus]

I'm *assuming* you'll still have racial/speciesistic*/lineal/ancestral abilities that are going to reflect the normal physiological traits (dwarves being tough, elves being nimble, gnomes clever, halflings being hungry, etc).

Why are those particular stereotypes any less controversial than ASI?

I'm genuinely asking (hence the lack of blue). If it's problematic that something as ephemeral and subjective as being 'less intelligent' than another sapient fantasy creature, how can toughness, nimbleness or hungry-ness not be?

I guess this is directed at anyone who feels uncoupling specific ASI from races was a 'good start' towards whatever controversy it was trying to overcome or prevent or whatever.

[Tanarii]

I really, really like build diversity. I'd like to be able to make a dwarf sorcerer or half-orc monk who works mechanically and doesn't sacrifice a significant percentage of ability to Do Things.

Since you like build diversity, I take it that means you're anti-Tasha's and pro fixed race ASIs?

Because that's what promotes build diversity.

[Anymage]

I'm not sure what you mean exactly re: the bolded part.

A score of 16 or 17, for a +3 attribute modifier. I'm okay making the 17 only available to certain races since they both add the same thing to all relevant d20 rolls and can both reach 20 at the same time, but the system math is really tight and I've come around that someone's oddball combination should not be -1 to all their most important rolls for a good chunk of their career.

[PhoenixPhyre]

A score of 16 or 17, for a +3 attribute modifier. I'm okay making the 17 only available to certain races since they both add the same thing to all relevant d20 rolls and can both reach 20 at the same time, but the system math is really tight and I've come around that someone's oddball combination should not be -1 to all their most important rolls for a good chunk of their career.

In the games I've run, I find no substantial difference between +2 and +3 until about level 8. But then I prefer the more lower CR model of combat and rarely push them to the very edge on any given combat.

[LudicSavant]

Since you like build diversity, I take it that means you're anti-Tasha's and pro fixed race ASIs?

Because that's what promotes build diversity.

With fixed racial ASIs, there were about 5 races that optimizers would choose for a Monk for mechanical reasons.

With Tasha's, there's over 20.

[Tanarii]

With fixed racial ASIs, there were about 5 races that optimizers would choose for a Monk for mechanical reasons.

With Tasha's, there's over 20.
Nah, with Tasha's, there's one. And that one has +2 Dex and +1 Wis for 16/16.

[Evaar]

There's a case to make for racial ASI's in a system where you care about all of your stats. If a Paladin has a good reason to care about Intelligence, then that's a choice the player is making to focus on it. If a Paladin has no good (or, rather, sufficient) reason to care about Intelligence, then it's a mistake to focus on it.

5e has the latter situation, for better or worse. Some stats are just mechanically inconsequential to a given character, whereas others are absolutely critical. A Paladin with an Intelligence of 8 will very rarely wish he had a higher Intelligence score, because he will almost never face consequences for that decision. It's just the right choice. Moreover, the system is designed so that you can't afford to shore up weak stats without huge opportunity cost, because after character creation any ability score increase costs the same as any other. And finally, the different abilities are not equal in 5e; a race with a 2Wis/1Cha bump does not have nearly as many options as a race with a 2Dex/1Cha bump. You can account for that by giving more powerful traits but... let's be real, they mostly didn't.

Thus, fixed racial ASIs limit your realistic choices. Flexible racial ASIs are basically vestigial, functionally equivalent to removing racial ASIs from the game. Given the system we have, I see that as a band-aid fix, but still a fix.

My ideal system removes racial ASIs entirely and instead uses traits to make the different lineages feel interesting. Those traits need to be more interesting than most of 5e's traits - no one's hair is being blown back by a bonus cantrip and a daily 1st level spell. The design needs to be more ambitious than that to be an interesting decision. Those traits can favor the design of a specific class or two, but should have general utility across all classes.

But that's something for 6e.

[Dienekes]

Nah, with Tasha's, there's one. And that one has +2 Dex and +1 Wis for 16/16.

Eh. Even if we agree that non-ASI racial abilities aren't differentiated enough as they could be. And I certainly completely agree on that. Claiming that all races are the same just because they can now get the same modifiers is a bit disingenuous isn't it?

Yuan-Ti do have different capabilities than a Orc or a Halfling with or without ASIs.


My ideal system removes racial ASIs entirely and instead uses traits to make the different lineages feel interesting. Those traits need to be more interesting than most of 5e's traits - no one's hair is being blown back by a bonus cantrip and a daily 1st level spell. The design needs to be more ambitious than that to be an interesting decision. Those traits can favor the design of a specific class or two, but should have general utility across all classes.

But that's something for 6e.

So I've mentioned my own attempts to do exactly this before. Would anyone be opposed to just discussing what we'd think such abilities might look like. Or would any follow me if I open a separate thread to discuss it?

[LudicSavant]

Would anyone be opposed to just discussing what we'd think such abilities might look like

Go for it.

[Kane0]

My ideal system removes racial ASIs entirely and instead uses traits to make the different lineages feel interesting. Those traits need to be more interesting than most of 5e's traits - no one's hair is being blown back by a bonus cantrip and a daily 1st level spell. The design needs to be more ambitious than that to be an interesting decision. Those traits can favor the design of a specific class or two, but should have general utility across all classes.

But that's something for 6e.

Quickly, to the homebrew laboratory!

[Anymage]

So I've mentioned my own attempts to do exactly this before. Would anyone be opposed to just discussing what we'd think such abilities might look like. Or would any follow me if I open a separate thread to discuss it?

I've also tried a couple of times. I fully encourage you to try again, and I hope the idea gains more traction this time. I'm just not super optimistic you'll get people backing the thread strongly enough to get multiple pages.

[MaxWilson]

With fixed racial ASIs, there were about 5 races that optimizers would choose for a Monk for mechanical reasons.

Goblins, Aarakocra, Githzerai, VHumans, Elves, Halflings, Bugbears, Gnomes, Yuan-ti, Tabaxi, Tiefling, Tortle, Triton, Shifter, Warforged were all viable before. (Even some outliers like Goliath were justifiable at certain levels.)

All Tasha's does is make the choice less painful, to my mind therefore less interesting.

[LudicSavant]

Goblins, Aarakocra, Githzerai, VHumans, Elves, Halflings, Bugbears, Gnomes, Yuan-ti, Tabaxi, Tiefling, Tortle, Triton, Shifter, Warforged were all viable before. (Even some outliers like Goliath were justifiable at certain levels.)

I definitely don't agree that, for instance, Triton Monk is competitive with Aarakocra Monk.

[Dienekes]

Well here's what I've got.

Elves

Graceful Step While wearing no heavier than Medium Armor, if you are the target of an attack or within the area of effect of a spell or ability you may spend your Reaction to make a Dexterity (Acrobatics) check DC equal to the spell save DC or attack roll. If successful you can move 5 feet, if this movement would bring you out of the range of the attack or area of the effect the attack is negated and the spell or ability has no effect.

This movement does not provoke Opportunity Attacks. You can use this ability a number of times per day equal to your Dexterity modifier.

When making this movement you can move an additional +5 feet at 5th, 11th, and 17th level.

Fey Charm As a Bonus Action, you can grant yourself +1d4 on your next Charisma (Persuasion) or Charisma (Deception) check or make an opponent within 30 feet with an Intelligence of 5 or higher Disadvantage on their next Wisdom saving throw.

Once you use this trait, you cannot use it again until you finish a Short or Long Rest.

Knowledge of the Ages During your Trance you can think back to the knowledge picked up and forgotten over your long centuries. You gain proficiency in any one language, weapon, or Intelligence skill of your choice. You can only gain one extra proficiency in this way. It lasts until you focus on remembering a different skill, weapon, or language.


Dwarves

Dwarven Resilience As a reaction you can increase your Constitution saving throw or decrease damage taken by 1d6.
This increases to 1d8 at 5th level, 1d10 at 11th, and 1d12 at 17th.

Stable You gain Advantage on all saving throws to resist being knocked prone or moved.


Orcs

Orcish Fury After making a successful melee attack or casting a spell against an opponent that is within your Reach you deal an additional +1d4 damage. If the spell would not normally deal damage this damage is considered bludgeoning damage. If the spell or attack would damage more than one target only one is dealt this additional damage.

You may use this ability a number of times equal to your Strength modifier. You regain all expended uses on a Short or Long Rest.

This number increases to +1d6 at 5th level, 1d8 at 11th level, and 1d10 at 17th level.

Keen Smell You have Advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on smell. In addition, you know the location of all creatures within 10 feet of you, provided they would have a scent.

[MaxWilson]

I definitely don't agree that, for instance, Triton Monk is competitive with Aarakocra Monk.

The potential mechanical reason to take Triton is water breathing. Which one is better (flying or water breathing) is campaign dependent.

Tasha's actually doesn't change that particular relationship. Campaigns where Tritons were bad before will still think Tritons are bad.

[LudicSavant]

The potential mechanical reason to take Triton is water breathing. Which one is better (flying or water breathing) is campaign dependent.

Even if you are specifically in a campaign that puts an unusually high emphasis on Water Breathing (a higher emphasis than any published campaign has), it's an easy feature to come by, for less investment than what Triton costs (e.g. putting yourself behind on ASIs etc).

[PhoenixPhyre]

I've also tried a couple of times. I fully encourage you to try again, and I hope the idea gains more traction this time. I'm just not super optimistic you'll get people backing the thread strongly enough to get multiple pages.


Well here's what I've got.

Elves

Graceful Step While wearing no heavier than Medium Armor, if you are the target of an attack or within the area of effect of a spell or ability you may spend your Reaction to make a Dexterity (Acrobatics) check DC equal to the spell save DC or attack roll. If successful you can move 5 feet, if this movement would bring you out of the range of the attack or area of the effect the attack is negated and the spell or ability has no effect.

This movement does not provoke Opportunity Attacks. You can use this ability a number of times per day equal to your Dexterity modifier.

When making this movement you can move an additional +5 feet at 5th, 11th, and 17th level.

Fey Charm As a Bonus Action, you can grant yourself +1d4 on your next Charisma (Persuasion) or Charisma (Deception) check or make an opponent within 30 feet with an Intelligence of 5 or higher Disadvantage on their next Wisdom saving throw.

Once you use this trait, you cannot use it again until you finish a Short or Long Rest.

Knowledge of the Ages During your Trance you can think back to the knowledge picked up and forgotten over your long centuries. You gain proficiency in any one language, weapon, or Intelligence skill of your choice. You can only gain one extra proficiency in this way. It lasts until you focus on remembering a different skill, weapon, or language.


Dwarves

Dwarven Resilience As a reaction you can increase your Constitution saving throw or decrease damage taken by 1d6.
This increases to 1d8 at 5th level, 1d10 at 11th, and 1d12 at 17th.

Stable You gain Advantage on all saving throws to resist being knocked prone or moved.


Orcs

Orcish Fury After making a successful melee attack or casting a spell against an opponent that is within your Reach you deal an additional +1d4 damage. If the spell would not normally deal damage this damage is considered bludgeoning damage. If the spell or attack would damage more than one target only one is dealt this additional damage.

You may use this ability a number of times equal to your Strength modifier. You regain all expended uses on a Short or Long Rest.

This number increases to +1d6 at 5th level, 1d8 at 11th level, and 1d10 at 17th level.

Keen Smell You have Advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on smell. In addition, you know the location of all creatures within 10 feet of you, provided they would have a scent.


Here's my initial attempt at a broader overhaul. It keeps fixed (or semi-fixed, as some have choice) racial ASIs but splits race from culture (using cultures in place of subraces, but any racecan take any culture).

https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?627166-Cultural-Racial-Overhaul-Project-Part-1-Traits-v0-1-alpha

[Witty Username]

With fixed racial ASIs, there were about 5 races that optimizers would choose for a Monk for mechanical reasons.

With Tasha's, there's over 20.

Yes, now there is custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, and custom lineage. :smallwink:

In seriousness, I think whether or not you agree with the change, it can still be argued that the current implementation is clunky. Eliminating racial pluses and switch to 3.5's point buy system could serve us about as well.
And this whole argument supports the idea that point buy is fundamentally flawed in comparison to rolled stats, which tend to allow for more freedom in race/class choices.

[MaxWilson]

Even if you are specifically in a campaign that puts an unusually high emphasis on Water Breathing (a higher emphasis than any published campaign has), it's an easy feature to come by, for less investment than what Triton costs (e.g. putting yourself behind on ASIs etc).

If you get it from spells, you won't have a swim speed and you'll be vulnerable to Dispel Magic. If you get it from wildshape you won't be able to spellcast underwater.

[LudicSavant]

If you get it from spells, you won't have a swim speed and you'll be vulnerable to Dispel Magic. If you get it from wildshape you won't be able to spellcast underwater.

It's not difficult to get a swim speed either, from a variety of sources.

For example, there are races with bonuses to stats a Monk actually cares about that grant it. There's also an Uncommon, non-attunement magic item that grants it.

[Theodoxus]

Yes, now there is custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, custom lineage, and custom lineage. :smallwink:

I know you were kidding, but I think custom lineage, with 3 small changes, would be exactly what I would want to see in a future edition and remove 'races' completely.

The first change would be to the ASI, where I'd grant +2/+1 (or really, +3 as I noted up thread)
The second change would be to the Variable Trait. (a) Darkvision 60'; (b) Skill choice or (c) Proficiency in 1 martial weapon or gain access to the next best armor your class normally allows.
The third change is with feats. I'd change it to: "Pick one feat from the lineage feats listed below:"

Changeling Lineage
Your ancestors have a direct line of descent from changelings and you have inherited their genes.


You can change your appearance, appearing as another lineage. The appearance is superficial and provides no other benefits.
You have advantage on Charisma (Deception) checks.


Dwarven Lineage
Your ancestors descended from dwarves and you have inherited their genes.


Your height is between 3’8 and 4’8.
You gain either +1 Hit Point per level or have Resistance to Poison.


Elven Lineage
Your ancestors descended from elves and you have inherited their genes.


You have obviously pointed ears.
You only require 4 hours of sleep per long rest.


Gnome Lineage
Your ancestors descended from gnomes and you have inherited their genes.


Your height is between 3’2 and 4’ and you have a large nose.
You have advantage on saving throws to resist Spells targeting Charisma, Intelligence or Wisdom.


Goliath Lineage
Your ancestors descended from goliaths and you have inherited their genes.


Your height is between 6’ and 7’ and you have a rocky hue to your skin.
You can shrug off damage. Once per rest, when you get injured, you can take an immediate Reaction to reduce the damage by 2d6 + Constitution.


Half-Elf Lineage
Your ancestors descended from half-elves and you have inherited their genes.


You have obviously pointed ears and an air of otherworldliness.
You have advantage on Charisma checks.


Halfling Lineage
Your ancestors descended from halflings and you have inherited their genes.


Your height is between 2’6 and 3’6.
You are preternaturally lucky. When you roll a 1 on the d20 for an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, you can reroll the die and must use the new roll.


Human Lineage
Your ancestors descended from humans and you have inherited their genes.


You gain one non-lineage feat you qualify for.


Orc Lineage
Your ancestors descended from orcs and you have inherited their genes.


You stand between 5’10 and 6’10, and have greenish skin.
When you are reduced to 0 HP but not killed outright, you can drop to 1 HP instead. You can't use this feature again until you finish a long rest.


Yuan-ti Lineage
Your ancestors descended from yuan-ti and you have inherited their genes.


You have reptilian scaly skin; either green, brown, or mottled.
You have advantage on saving throws against magic and poison.


This lets players keep the flavor of the major races while customizing their character to their liking. This is specifically for a more humancentric game... but as one of the the lowest settings on the complexity dial, I think this would work.

[MaxWilson]

It's not difficult to get a swim speed either, from a variety of sources.

For example, there are races with bonuses to stats a Monk actually cares about that grant it. There's also an Uncommon, non-attunement magic item that grants it.

So... is this just about stat bonuses then? If Tasha's homogenizes the bonuses, are these other races (are you thinking of sea elves maybe?) really providing build diversity, or just multiple ways of creating the same build?

[LudicSavant]

If Tasha's homogenizes the bonuses, are these other races (are you thinking of sea elves maybe?) really providing build diversity, or just multiple ways of creating the same build?

It's creating actual build diversity, because the races have different non-attribute racial features (and in some cases, access to different racial feats).

[Dienekes]

Here's my initial attempt at a broader overhaul. It keeps fixed (or semi-fixed, as some have choice) racial ASIs but splits race from culture (using cultures in place of subraces, but any racecan take any culture).

https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?627166-Cultural-Racial-Overhaul-Project-Part-1-Traits-v0-1-alpha

I actually also split Race/Culture in my bigger rework and tried to come up with a roughly Cantrip level ability for each and a selection of proficiencies. But it quickly grew a bit out of control as I started making every race have 3/4 cultures. Having a narrower list of abilities like you have may help out a bit.

Though I will say not all your traits here seem even. "Shared Memory" seems incredibly niche compared to the traits that give some spells.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I actually also split Race/Culture in my bigger rework and tried to come up with a roughly Cantrip level ability for each and a selection of proficiencies. But it quickly grew a bit out of control as I started making every race have 3/4 cultures. Having a narrower list of abilities like you have may help out a bit.

Though I will say not all your traits here seem even. "Shared Memory" seems incredibly niche compared to the traits that give some spells.

Yeah. They're not balanced yet (although blanket advantage on most int checks isn't that narrow, as "remembering stuff" is most of what int does, and I roll a lot of int checks). That particular race also gets the tactics one. The spell choices are first draft so far (heck, most of it is first draft right now).

I'm not so worried about having a broad selection of cultures as having cultures that represent specific ones in the world. That's a large part here--tying race and culture deep into the world itself. For example, there isn't 1 elven race. And not all elves are fey.

[Xervous]

It depends — what other information does the observer get? Do they...

Know what level all of the characters are at?
Know what ability score corresponds to each roll?
Get to know everyone's current HP?


Yes, yes and no.

To keep things clear here’s a better list of the only things the observer would get.

• level of all player characters
• classes of all player characters
• full stat blocks of monsters
• full knowledge of skill check DCs, like climbing that tree...
• pre-modifiers result of every roll
• actions characters and creatures take during combat, statuses incurred, etc. You will know exactly how much damage monsters do generally, but never how much HP the players have except when they hit 0. You will know vaguely how much damage players do, but again not know monster HP state unless they’re at 0, obviously.

Absent the few specific examples that would give away exact scores immediately you’re mostly dependent on a character rolling a minimum threshold success and a minimum threshold failure, roll = DC and roll = DC-1. This should take on average 30 rolls, though combat with low hp creatures may reveal DEX and STR earlier due to a blend of one and twoshots.

In that context how big is an extra +1, do you consider that hard to notice it if you aren’t being given all the numbers up front?

[Amechra]

Exact scores? It's actually impossible, given those conditions - after all, odd and even scores give you the same mod.

If you're trying to prove some kind of point about how starting with a 15 vs. starting with a 17 barely matters... I'm the wrong person to bait.

[Evaar]

Well here's what I've got.

Orcish Fury

I'd rename this. Calling it "Orcish Fury" suggests something about the personality of the Orc PC when that should really be up to the player to choose. Maybe there's a physiological or spiritual (i.e. divine) cause for this effect? "Blood of Gruumsh" or something?

[x3n0n]

Yes, yes and no.

To keep things clear here’s a better list of the only things the observer would get.

• level of all player characters
• classes of all player characters
• full stat blocks of monsters
• full knowledge of skill check DCs, like climbing that tree...
• pre-modifiers result of every roll
• actions characters and creatures take during combat, statuses incurred, etc. You will know exactly how much damage monsters do generally, but never how much HP the players have except when they hit 0. You will know vaguely how much damage players do, but again not know monster HP state unless they’re at 0, obviously.

Absent the few specific examples that would give away exact scores immediately you’re mostly dependent on a character rolling a minimum threshold success and a minimum threshold failure, roll = DC and roll = DC-1. This should take on average 30 rolls, though combat with low hp creatures may reveal DEX and STR earlier due to a blend of one and twoshots.

In that context how big is an extra +1, do you consider that hard to notice it if you aren’t being given all the numbers up front?

Maybe my head is just shaped wrong from having been exposed to pre-Tasha's 5e, but I really do dislike playing a point-buy character that can't start at 16 in primary stat. It's not so much the effect in tier 1 as it is that it will take at least 3 ASIs to bring that key stat to 20 (vs only 2 if you can start at 16), so there's a clear power curve, and the character is going to be behind it, likely for its entire career (assuming retirement in early tier 3).

The game system is clearly telling me that (e.g.) a Rogue progression "wants" 20 Dex, and sooner rather than later. Pre-Tasha's point-buy characters can only do that "on schedule" with a Dex-boosting race.

I definitely see the ability score part of this as an attempted fix for the build limitations imposed by PHB point buy (27 points, max 15) with fixed-by-race AS mods. In that role, it's better than nothing. The fact that it aligns nicely with real-world political posturing is a distracting "bonus".

I don't know how well the published adventuring and CR material figures it in, but they do assume that characters are built to some base level of competence. Tasha's change should keep point-buy characters in the same general power band, just with more viable races in the middle cluster.

The abovementioned "everybody gets 3 points arranged as desired" sounds fine too, except for the mechanical overpowering of v.human and custom lineage unless you cut them down to 2 points (or just give everybody a feat).

If you give everybody a feat, that definitely bumps up character power level, potentially invalidating the existing difficulty/challenge assumptions, especially in tiers 1 and 2, where most people play anyway.

If there were new baseline assumptions for character competence (+2 is the new +3), that's fine, but that's not where published material has been targeted for the past 6 years.

[Arkhios]

The more I read people wanting to have a lineage approach rather than actual races, the less I find myself able to resist recommending Pathfinder 2nd Edition to them. Really, if that's what you prefer, maybe play a game that already has this kind of method, and let D&D have its own system.

My personal opinions towards PF2E aside, we're living in 2021. I'm pretty sure we can as a society make a distinction between fantastical races and real world people. They are not, and never have been, meant to resemble each other by name, by appearance, or otherwise. It's not racist to use a term race when they are clearly something different from each other. An elf or a dwarf, for example, are nothing alike, except that they are bipedal humanoids.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I don't know how well the published adventuring and CR material figures it in, but they do assume that characters are built to some base level of competence. Tasha's change should keep point-buy characters in the same general power band, just with more viable races in the middle cluster.


The base level of competence is low. As in
* no multiclassing or feats
* +2 primary stat until around level 8, +3 until low-mid T3, +4 after. +5 is never assumed.
* CON mod > 0.
* Using weapons and armor you're proficient in and are not taking penalties for (ie no heavy weapon halflings or STR 8 heavy armor clerics).

That's about it.

[x3n0n]

The base level of competence is low. As in
* no multiclassing or feats
* +2 primary stat until around level 8, +3 until low-mid T3, +4 after. +5 is never assumed.
* CON mod > 0.
* Using weapons and armor you're proficient in and are not taking penalties for (ie no heavy weapon halflings or STR 8 heavy armor clerics).

That's about it.

Thanks! Just so I can find it in the future, do you know where that info is?
I've started playing through some solo adventures, at least one series of which is tuned to medium-high difficulty and specifies point-buy/standard array so DCs and combat will be level- and score-appropriate, so my yardstick may be set wrong.

(That said, bad initial ASIs with point buy are still a pain point for Monks, which I really enjoy playing and building: having AC in specific tied to 2 stats and below-average if they're not both on-curve is a risk that other classes don't incur.)

[PhoenixPhyre]

Thanks! Just so I can find it in the future, do you know where that info is?
I've started playing through some solo adventures, at least one series of which is tuned to medium-high difficulty and specifies point-buy/standard array so DCs and combat will be level- and score-appropriate, so my yardstick may be set wrong.

(That said, bad initial ASIs with point buy are still a pain point for Monks, which I really enjoy playing and building: having AC in specific tied to 2 stats and below-average if they're not both on-curve is a risk that other classes don't incur.)

It's actually derived from a long series of analyses of published monsters and encounter building. I'll note that I don't know if published adventures hew to this strictly (they're pretty bad about following any guidelines, honestly, but I've only played one + a little AL[1]), but it's matched my experience playing pretty close to stock (ie with new players with little optimization focus, using the CR guidelines) and it makes the numbers (to hit/to-be-hit/hits-to-live) work out real pretty.

And yes, monks are particularly hurt by bad ASIs. Especially if you're trying to do it all.

[1] specifically I've played through Princes of the Apocalypse with an unoptimized group and it went fine. A bit easy in fact. Also played one AL module (don't remember which, but it was T1) that went just fine, despite having pretty bad characters at the table. And DM'd one of the underdark modules where they went in underleveled (expected 8, had 6) and undermanned (like a total of 3 of them) and it was within the norm without any particular modifications.

[Dienekes]

I'd rename this. Calling it "Orcish Fury" suggests something about the personality of the Orc PC when that should really be up to the player to choose. Maybe there's a physiological or spiritual (i.e. divine) cause for this effect? "Blood of Gruumsh" or something?

I take it you’re against the Burning Wheels method of creating inhuman races by mechanically incentivizing specific characterization qualities like an elf’s grief and tiredness of life and an orc’s innate anger and hatred?

Anyway I might switch to Orcish Might because many setting (including my own) don’t have a Gruumsh. And Blood of Gruumsh doesn’t really carry the flavor of the Orc getting to hit things more.

[Tanarii]

It's actually derived from a long series of analyses of published monsters and encounter building. I'll note that I don't know if published adventures hew to this strictly (they're pretty bad about following any guidelines, honestly, but I've only played one + a little AL[1]), but it's matched my experience playing pretty close to stock (ie with new players with little optimization focus, using the CR guidelines) and it makes the numbers (to hit/to-be-hit/hits-to-live) work out real pretty.

Also from system math is shown by the DMG monster CR stats, as long as you don't make the mistake of assuming PCs will face CR = APL. About Cr-3 is right.

[Amechra]

Burning Wheel is an interesting comparison, actually.

If you play an Elf in Burning Wheel, you have an entirely different set of choices than you would have if you were playing a Dwarf (for example) — you have different lifepaths, different skills, and different stats. You can make a much stronger case that there are more than just cultural differences between them than you can with D&D, where your choice of race boils down to slightly more than an ASI and a few minor features.

If Orcs were a group of fungus-people who are habitually violent because that helps them reproduce, and they got extra strength because they were all football hooligans, well... let's just say that I don't think I've ever seen any complaints about Warhammer Orcs.

(Also, honestly, maybe just rename Intelligence? Call it Memory or something. I dunno.)

[Tanarii]

If Orcs were a group of fungus-people who are habitually violent because that helps them reproduce, and they got extra strength because they were all football hooligans, well... let's just say that I don't think I've ever seen any complaints about Warhammer Orcs.Warcraft Orcs otoh ...

It does seem the more humanized an "always evil" race is, the more it's prone to being compared to real world cultures, which invites real world politics to follow.

[MaxWilson]

Would it increase build diversity if everyone got 9th level spells? That way high-level campaigns wouldn't just have wizards and bards, etc. in them, they would have Fighters, Barbarians, and Rogues too. That's more diverse, right?

Meaningful choice isn't just about the number of different options you can choose between. It's about how different those options are from each other.

[Morty]

Meaningful choice isn't just about the number of different options you can choose between. It's about how different those options are from each other.

And racial ASIs provide little to no difference. If a dwarf archer rogue plays differently than a halfling, it has nothing to do with their ASIs - the dwarf is just worse at the tasks rogues care about the most.

[MaxWilson]

And racial ASIs provide little to no difference. If a dwarf archer rogue plays differently than a halfling, it has nothing to do with their ASIs - the dwarf is just worse at the tasks rogues care about the most.

I'm not even sure that dwarf and halfling rogues are meaningfully different even with PHB rules, but Tasha's rules indisputably makes them even more similar than PHB rules.

[x3n0n]

Goblins, Aarakocra, Githzerai, VHumans, Elves, Halflings, Bugbears, Gnomes, Yuan-ti, Tabaxi, Tiefling, Tortle, Triton, Shifter, Warforged were all viable before. (Even some outliers like Goliath were justifiable at certain levels.)

All Tasha's does is make the choice less painful, to my mind therefore less interesting.

(Original context: Monk races.)

Do you actually think that all of your first list are "viable" competitors to the top choices under PHB point buy with fixed ASIs across the whole gamut of levels?

I think I'd find it frustrating to play Monk levels 1-3 with a race that doesn't offer both Dex and Wis, and for what benefit?
It helps a lot to start at level 4 (and having a bonus of +2 to one or the other) *or* to have more generous point buy *or* to have floating stats.

Monk is probably the worst case here, because to a large extent successful Monks *do* need to look similar in ability scores: one of Dex/Wis needs to be VERY high, and the other needs to be pretty high (or have some alternate way to generate significant AC).

As a patch to PHB point buy, I think it's pretty successful. Whether point buy is worthwhile is another question. (I actually really like your off-hand suggestion from an earlier thread: propose a stat array to the DM and the other players. If they accept it, you're good, and if not, you change it or find another table. PHB standard array and point buy seem like an attempt to codify WotC's opinion: "if you can get there from point buy, then your DM has no reason to complain about your scores being too high, and your character is probably in an appropriate power band for published material". Tasha's widens that window somewhat, and I don't find that widening harmful.)

[MaxWilson]

(Original context: Monk races.)

(A) Do you actually think that all of your first list are "viable" competitors to the top choices under PHB point buy with fixed ASIs across the whole gamut of levels?

I think I'd find it frustrating to play Monk levels 1-3 with a race that doesn't offer both Dex and Wis, and for what benefit?
It helps a lot to start at level 4 (and having a bonus of +2 to one or the other) *or* to have more generous point buy *or* to have floating stats.

Monk is probably the worst case here, because to a large extent successful Monks *do* need to look similar in ability scores: one of Dex/Wis needs to be VERY high, and the other needs to be pretty high (or have some alternate way to generate significant AC).

(B) As a patch to PHB point buy, I think it's pretty successful. Whether point buy is worthwhile is another question. (I actually really like your off-hand suggestion from an earlier thread: propose a stat array to the DM and the other players. If they accept it, you're good, and if not, you change it or find another table. PHB standard array and point buy seem like an attempt to codify WotC's opinion: "if you can get there from point buy, then your DM has no reason to complain about your scores being too high, and your character is probably in an appropriate power band for published material". Tasha's widens that window somewhat, and I don't find that widening harmful.)

(A) In the context of this conversation:


With fixed racial ASIs, there were about 5 races that optimizers would choose for a Monk for mechanical reasons.


Goblins, Aarakocra, Githzerai, VHumans, Elves, Halflings, Bugbears, Gnomes, Yuan-ti, Tabaxi, Tiefling, Tortle, Triton, Shifter, Warforged were all viable before. (Even some outliers like Goliath were justifiable at certain levels.)

All Tasha's does is make the choice less painful, to my mind therefore less interesting.

I truly believe that there are viable, mechanical (non-RP) reasons to choose any of the races I named, if you're playing a monk. I didn't say anything about point buy specifically--I tend to forget that point buy even exists because I don't use it.

The list of truly "top tier" options that will get used 80%+ of the time is smaller than that, and IMO honestly it's hard to (mechanically) beat Aarakocra, period. But there are other viable combos. If you were in a cramped dungeon crawl and knew you were never going to reach Tier 2 for example***, Goliath might be more tempting than Wood Elf because d12+CON extra HP every short rest is actually quite a lot at levels 1-4. Yuan-ti would be attractive if you know your DM loves to use monsters that cast Hold Person.

To answer question about point buy specifically: I don't know, but I think the mechanical reasons that make e.g. Tabaxi attractive would still hold under point buy. Instead of vhuman Dex 16/Wis 16/Con 14 you'd have Dex 17/Wis 15/Con 14, but that hyper-movement should make up for the temporary AC 15, which rises to AC 17 at level 4 just like a human's would. You miss out on a feat, but hey, that's why you picked Tabaxi in the first place, and you must have a good reason for it or you wouldn't be playing a Tabaxi. (E.g. you're planning on a cheese grater combo with the party druid and Spike Growth, or you're a Shadow Monk and want to be able to Silence + stun enemy mages on round 1.)

*** E.g. you're only planning on playing 3-4 sessions with this group before you deploy to Afghanistan, so you'll probably only reach level 2-3.

(B) Yes, I think it's best to think of Tasha's rules as a point buy variant, or a rules patch oriented towards point-buy-only tables. In the context of rolled stats it looks quite different because there's already a lot of variation between PCs, especially if it's a table with high PC turnover (due to backup characters or high lethality or whatever).

[LudicSavant]

And racial ASIs provide little to no difference. If a dwarf archer rogue plays differently than a halfling, it has nothing to do with their ASIs - the dwarf is just worse at the tasks rogues care about the most.

Adding to this: It's not only the degree of difference, but the kind of difference.

It's one thing to make a choice between a teleport and a bonus action hide. It's another to make a choice between a +1 sword or a +3 sword. For one thing, that second choice is much, much easier. For another, it doesn't actually create a new playstyle... it just makes you superior at the same playstyle.

Like, it's really easy to make a merely different option. Add a spell that's like Witch Bolt, but it deals 1d6 fire damage instead of 1d12 lightning damage! Bam! New option! But that option probably isn't going to see a whole lot of play.

When game designers talk about doing a good job of creating build diversity, it's not sufficient to just create new options -- it helps if they are also on the competitive curve (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3b3hDvRjJA).

[Tanarii]

I think I'd find it frustrating to play Monk levels 1-3 with a race that doesn't offer both Dex and Wis, and for what benefit?
Really? So Hill Dwarf, High Elf, Halflings, Forest Gnomes would all be right out for you? Some of those are very viable Monks, especially Stout Halfings.

OTOH I'd be fine with a Rock Gnome Monk Dex 15, Con 14, Wis 14, Int 14, playing up the technical tradesman or esoteric scholar side of things. So different strokes I guess.

[MaxWilson]

Really? So Hill Dwarf, High Elf, Halflings, Forest Gnomes would all be right out for you? Some of those are very viable Monks, especially Stout Halfings.

OTOH I'd be fine with a Rock Gnome Monk Dex 15, Con 14, Wis 14, Int 14, playing up the technical tradesman or esoteric scholar side of things. So different strokes I guess.

Monk is practically the only class besides Wizard for which I WOULD be willing to play a gnome, because it mitigates the gnome's movement issues. Having 25' move feels to me like an elaborate way of committing suicide.

[PhoenixPhyre]

When game designers talk about doing a good job of creating build diversity, it's not sufficient to just create new options -- it helps if they are also on the competitive curve (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3b3hDvRjJA).

Although I personally hate the idea of a "meta" for TTRPGs[1], I basically agree here. If the options presented are too far off from what's being played in the community, they don't actually add diversity.

It's one reason why I'm not impressed by the claimed diversity of builds in 3e/PF. Sure, you can make all sorts of them. But the ones that can actually keep up are much more limited in number. Especially at higher optimization.

Of course, one reason that people focusing on optimization and optimization-requiring play-styles annoys me is that it inherently narrows the acceptable band of options.

If all you need to be "competitive" is to not anti-optimize (ie biggest stat in your main stat, don't intentionally hobble yourself by using non-proficient weapons and armor, etc), then the number of builds is much larger than if the expectation is "can kill an enemy of CR = level + 5 in one turn" or "can survive against <super ultra deadly threat>" (to exaggerate a bit). When the minimum benchmark is already heavily optimized, the margin of acceptability is much narrower than when it's set much lower.

[1] metas are for competitive games. D&D is not a competitive game. Meta chasing is out of place IMO.

[Tanarii]

Monk is practically the only class besides Wizard for which I WOULD be willing to play a gnome, because it mitigates the gnome's movement issues. Having 25' move feels to me like an elaborate way of committing suicide.If you want lined up stats, Rock Gnomes make decent EKs and Forest Gnomes great ATs.

OTOH I know you're a huge fan of kiting parties, so I can see the loss of 5ft of movement would be a big deal. So how about a Barbarian Gnome? :smallamused:

[x3n0n]

Really? So Hill Dwarf, High Elf, Halflings, Forest Gnomes would all be right out for you? Some of those are very viable Monks, especially Stout Halfings.

OTOH I'd be fine with a Rock Gnome Monk Dex 15, Con 14, Wis 14, Int 14, playing up the technical tradesman or esoteric scholar side of things. So different strokes I guess.

This is probably finding a personal weakness of mine. :) As a martial, I figure that my party needs me to hit things hard and not die. Otherwise, why bother being a Monk instead of something that benefits from my ability scores?


I am missing the mechanical case for High Elf here vs Wood Elf. What cantrip and languages are worth the point off for a Monk?

Ditto Stout Halfling. I'm hoping to be immune to poison "soon" anyway.

[Tanarii]

This is probably finding a personal weakness of mine. :) As a martial, I figure that my party needs me to hit things hard and not die. Otherwise, why bother being a Monk instead of something that benefits from my ability scores?


I am missing the mechanical case for High Elf here vs Wood Elf. What cantrip and languages are worth the point off for a Monk?

Ditto Stout Halfling. I'm hoping to be immune to poison "soon" anyway.
Because you like the idea of a Monk of that Race? Ability scores don't have to line up at all to play them. A Tiefling Thief Criminal is iconic, but it's ability scores don't line up at all, except for skill use.

I've long had a hankering to play a Hill Dwarf Rogue Sage (professor) with a whip, or a Halfling Berserker Barbarian Sailor (Viking).

You're not missing a mechanical case for High Elves et al. over Wood Elves for monks. I was listing races with either Dex or Wis. Because IMO that's plenty of mechanical lining up of ASIs.

[Evaar]

[1] metas are for competitive games. D&D is not a competitive game. Meta chasing is out of place IMO.

But it is in general more fun for your character to be good at the thing you imagine them to be good at. I've seen a lot of new players get pretty frustrated with their unoptimized characters when they are out of room for prepared spells or they keep missing.

[Zhorn]

But it is in general more fun for your character to be good at the thing you imagine them to be good at. I've seen a lot of new players get pretty frustrated with their unoptimized characters when they are out of room for prepared spells or they keep missing.
That's more a function of power expectations of the player and DM not aligning, or the players not aligning with each other and the DM is balancing around a different character's expected capabilities.
Davvy Chappy had a video on this recently

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Q3uIPqWtGs

[x3n0n]

Because you like the idea of a Monk of that Race? Ability scores don't have to line up at all to play them. A Tiefling Thief Criminal is iconic, but it's ability scores don't line up at all, except for skill use.

I've long had a hankering to play a Hill Dwarf Rogue Sage (professor) with a whip, or a Halfling Berserker Barbarian Sailor (Viking).

You're not missing a mechanical case for High Elves et al. over Wood Elves for monks. I was listing races with either Dex or Wis. Because IMO that's plenty of mechanical lining up of ASIs.

Yes, this is definitely my problem. :)

At this point, I think of D&D as a team sport vs the environment (a la Pandemic or Forbidden Island). *Under that assumption*, I'm letting my teammates down if I don't do what I can to help the team succeed. Role playing is a fun side benefit.

With floating mods, it feels like I could have both: a fun concept *plus* mechanical effectiveness that won't pull my team down.

(A proficiency swap even offers the hypothetical Dwarf Rogue professor the whip proficiency he's been building in his pre-adventuring days.)

Am I doing it wrong?

(Edit: if the party are the heroes in their story, they should try to be good at their jobs, or they'll fail to save the world; sidekicks and NPCs don't have that burden.)

[Dienekes]

That's more a function of power expectations of the player and DM not aligning, or the players not aligning with each other and the DM is balancing around a different character's expected capabilities.
Davvy Chappy had a video on this recently

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Q3uIPqWtGs

Here's the thing, in a scenario where your GM can make mistakes or you do not know the power of your allies the best practice to be effective is still to make your character as optimized as it can be.

It is only when you get a group of players who have a competent GM who knows how to finagle the system to get the desired effect and every player understands the optimization levels so they know not to go over and under that you reach a point where optimization doesn't really matter. Except to either avoid the best options or take them depending on the agreed upon terms.

I think that's a tall order, especially for a game that was supposed to be streamlined to allow new players to play. And that sells adventures to remove the GM from a lot of the challenge decisions. And while some premade Adventures do hold players hands and don't punish them for making unoptimal choices. Others apparently send you against three hags at level 1.

[PhoenixPhyre]

That's more a function of power expectations of the player and DM not aligning, or the players not aligning with each other and the DM is balancing around a different character's expected capabilities.
Davvy Chappy had a video on this recently

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Q3uIPqWtGs

Agreed. I mean, there's a small amount of optimization required--don't be like one player I had and make a halfling cleric 2/barbarian 3 wielding a greatsword with (relatively) low WIS and STR. That was...unimpressive.

But beyond that, if you follow the "Quick Build" section you'll generally do fine. Even if your racial ASI's don't line up at all and you're using the Standard array.

[Witty Username]

I would argue that optimization is required if one wants to determine how they succeed, but it will not factor much into whether or not they will succeed.
Also, because I am pedantic as hell, I would point out that choosing role play over mechanics is optimization, you are optimizing your role play.

But in either event, the Tasha's changes are less about mechanics or role play so much as game feel I think. Pre-tasha's race/class would create a bit of archetype. An Orc wizard was likely stronger and better with hitting things than the norm, while a goblin was better at being slippery, and the gnome better at casting spells. To some this is good because the flavors combine to make a more specific kind of character, to others it conflicts with their idea of what a wizard should be or be able to do. The tasha's rules don't so much expand the options so much as make them all more similar. But if it is your jam, go for it, not really my problem.

I actually like the proficiency swapping though, since it allows for weapon training and such to have some effect on martial characters and most races have tools that are on theme.

Also, I will defend the ability to fix design mistakes, like elves being able to swap long sword for the rapier in a post finesse world, and drow being able to take mental scores that actually fit there culture, gender roles, and diversity in lore.

[LudicSavant]

Although I personally hate the idea of a "meta" for TTRPGs[1], I basically agree here. If the options presented are too far off from what's being played in the community, they don't actually add diversity.

It's one reason why I'm not impressed by the claimed diversity of builds in 3e/PF. Sure, you can make all sorts of them. But the ones that can actually keep up are much more limited in number. Especially at higher optimization.

Of course, one reason that people focusing on optimization and optimization-requiring play-styles annoys me is that it inherently narrows the acceptable band of options.

If all you need to be "competitive" is to not anti-optimize (ie biggest stat in your main stat, don't intentionally hobble yourself by using non-proficient weapons and armor, etc), then the number of builds is much larger than if the expectation is "can kill an enemy of CR = level + 5 in one turn" or "can survive against <super ultra deadly threat>" (to exaggerate a bit). When the minimum benchmark is already heavily optimized, the margin of acceptability is much narrower than when it's set much lower.

[1] metas are for competitive games. D&D is not a competitive game. Meta chasing is out of place IMO.

I’m using the word competitive in a different sense than “competitive game.”

The sort of curves I’m talking about are a part of game design for all games that involve strategic decisions, including single player ones. That’s because it’s referring to how competitive a decision is with another decision. Not another player.

Ex: Players in single player games will tend to drop a +1 sword when they find a +3 one.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I’m using the word competitive in a different sense than “competitive game.”

The sort of curves I’m talking about are a part of game design for all games that involve strategic decisions, including single player ones. That’s because it’s referring to how competitive a decision is with another decision. Not another player.

Ex: Players in single player games will tend to drop a +1 sword when they find a +3 one.

Right. I understood that. But it's often understood as being some sort of "meta"--play XYZ or you'll lose. Or looking down at people for not doing the strongest thing. Or, just as annoying, looking down at people because they chose to prioritize power.

So it was sort of an associated rant.

But the underlying point (that if, given a spectrum of choices, one option is substantially and uniformly inferior to another, the weaker is basically a waste of space) is something we agree on. I have a personal hatred for intentional trap options. Reward system mastery if you want, but intentionally making things weak to trap newbies is both a waste and bad design. I'd rather have 10 reasonably-well balanced, thematic choices over 100 options, of which 80 are trash and 20 are good.

[Theodoxus]

Also, because I am pedantic as hell, I would point out that choosing role play over mechanics is optimization, you are optimizing your role play.

This smacks of Stormwind Fallacy-ism... Being mechanically optimized =/= deficient in roleplaying capability and vice versa. I don't need to be a halfling cleric/barbarian with a greatsword and low Wis and Str to prove how great I am at RP... Or to quote the author of Burning Wheel referenced before:

"My favorite nights around the table are the nights when we don’t roll any dice, the nights where all the hurdles are overcome with a little discussion, a little teamwork and a lot of roleplaying. Trust me, these nights are not just “sit around the campfire and talk about our adventure” nights. I have run whole rebellions without touching the dice. The inspiring words of a commander are far more important to the game and to the players than a roll of the dice." - Luke Crane, Burning Wheel Corebook, pg 230.

Mechanics be damned on a roll-less night.

[Tanarii]

Am I doing it wrong?
I mean, when you put it that way, I'm kinda forced to say no.

But only because I'm not feeling combative right now. Just to be clear. Got to keep up a reputation. :smallamused:


This smacks of Stormwind Fallacy-ism... Being mechanically optimized =/= deficient in roleplaying capability and vice versa. I don't need to be a halfling cleric/barbarian with a greatsword and low Wis and Str to prove how great I am at RP... Or to quote the author of Burning Wheel referenced before:
Right. Also to be clear, I'm saying I pick my race based on what race I want to play*, then possibly optimize my build a little bit around that if possible. Because a +1 mod in the primary stat just isn't that important game math wise, a 14 primary is fine to start, so I can afford to do something with a tertiary stat. 15/14/14/14/10/8 (standard array base) is perfectly fine.

Also: voila. Variety! Or at least a slightly less cookie cutter character of class x. (Not really all that, because as I said, +1 isn't really all that, and that applies to that 4th 14 as well. But still.)

I consider that perfectly fine within the space I want to spend time optimizing within and meeting my preference for playing a character. It's not about "I'm suboptimal so I'm an RP Elite hur hur"

*full disclosure it's been a long time since I played instead of DMd

[LudicSavant]

But the underlying point (that if, given a spectrum of choices, one option is substantially and uniformly inferior to another, the weaker is basically a waste of space) is something we agree on. I have a personal hatred for intentional trap options. Reward system mastery if you want, but intentionally making things weak to trap newbies is both a waste and bad design. I'd rather have 10 reasonably-well balanced, thematic choices over 100 options, of which 80 are trash and 20 are good.

Yep! :smallsmile:

[Theodoxus]

Right. Also to be clear, I'm saying I pick my race based on what race I want to play*, then possibly optimize my build a little bit around that if possible. Because a +1 mod in the primary stat just isn't that important game math wise, a 14 primary is fine to start, so I can afford to do something with a tertiary stat. 15/14/14/14/10/8 (standard array base) is perfectly fine.


Oh totes. I think the primary drawback of the halfling cleric/barb was the use of a greatsword as a small humanoid, having disadvantage in its use coupled with a low strength...

I think the combination, while never ideal regardless of race or Tasha's stat modification, would actually work decently if they played up the relative strengths (no pun intended) of the build - Pre-Tasha's, either S&B or TWF with short swords or scimitars; foregoing rage except in dire life and death moments and depending on cleric domain, standing back and blasting primarily, or wading in and going melee monster with finesse weapons. (I think this combo could be quite effective with the Arcane domain, using GFB, medium armor and a rapier/shield combination.) Post Tasha's, heck, I'd still probably keep the +2 Dex, but the +1 Con or Cha (they didn't note if it was Stout, Light or Ghost) would go to Wisdom or possible Con, depending...

It's not something I'd ever play, but I can see a way of making it roleplay heavy AND useful.

[Luccan]

Generally, the low stat issue could be solved if the non-casters and half-casters had as many options as casters do for contributing without relying on their attributes. Arcanists especially have a number of spells at low level that don't rely on your casting stat and can be used on foes, not just as utilities or buffs, but Clerics and Druids have plenty of support options as well. Meanwhile, Barbarians, Fighters, Monks, and Rogues have few to no options to contribute that won't be impacted by a bad stat, and while Paladins and Rangers do have spells they can make fine use of with low stats, their spell slots are more limited and while level 1 is short, they've got nothing during that time. If classes other than full casters had more options that didn't rely on their stats, having a 15 or even a 13 in an important ability score (at low levels) due to race choice would be much less of an issue.

This doesn't address non-mechanical issues people have with racial ASIs, though, so you're still running into issues there.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Oh totes. I think the primary drawback of the halfling cleric/barb was the use of a greatsword as a small humanoid, having disadvantage in its use coupled with a low strength...

I think the combination, while never ideal regardless of race or Tasha's stat modification, would actually work decently if they played up the relative strengths (no pun intended) of the build - Pre-Tasha's, either S&B or TWF with short swords or scimitars; foregoing rage except in dire life and death moments and depending on cleric domain, standing back and blasting primarily, or wading in and going melee monster with finesse weapons. (I think this combo could be quite effective with the Arcane domain, using GFB, medium armor and a rapier/shield combination.) Post Tasha's, heck, I'd still probably keep the +2 Dex, but the +1 Con or Cha (they didn't note if it was Stout, Light or Ghost) would go to Wisdom or possible Con, depending...

It's not something I'd ever play, but I can see a way of making it roleplay heavy AND useful.

Yeah. Could have been ok, but rarely cast spells and insisted on an inappropriate weapon. He was most (dare I say only) effective when he had to rely on his sling for ranged combat. Thankfully he was only there a few sessions in a short adventure.

But I've had plenty of "suboptimal" builds do just fine. Tiefling Druids who basically only go bear and rarely cast spells, even well into T2, for example. I think though that that's because I try to set expectations early that I'm not going to ride the ragged edge. The needs of the ongoing story and established world control over any type of "making things a challenge." And I try to give every one a chance to shine and to contribute.

[KorvinStarmast]

5e is good design because of how simple it is to play what you want. The mechanics of the game should make a dwarf feel like a dwarf but not at the cost of pigeon holing them into a boring stereotype. The tunnel vision on optimization schemes is part of what makes GiTP an interesting site to visit, but it is also a way to get a narrow view of the game. :smallsmile:
Aye. The standard ability array is a sacred cow ready for slaughter. Keep it as an alternative rule but really it's holding back the game in more ways than one.
The current standard array is off by about two anyway ...
it was garbage to start with and was aimed at people who just wanted a number.
My hope is that 6E actually has all the knobs we were promised for 5E to make it as simple or complex as a table would like - with whatever incarnation of AL it has using something in the middle. What knobs are missing? I am not seeing any missing knobs beyond the "Strongholds" and "Armies" stuff that was in TSR products. Matt's book is OK, but the 'how do I do battles with larger formations' is a bit of a tough nut to crack given this system's basic structure.

I suppose at that point, the question boils down to "why did you pick the race you did for your character?"

Not all non-ASI racial traits are equal, this is known. Yes, and that's a problem. A half orc gets up at 0 HP and has 1. That's a heck of a boost. Half orc gets an additional die on his critical hits. Big boost, eh? I enjoyed my half orc champion, yeah, but the racial bonuses are all over the map, in terms of a one for one comparison. Flavor not bad, but balance ... well ... not great.

Even if you are specifically in a campaign that puts an unusually high emphasis on Water Breathing (a higher emphasis than any published campaign has), it's an easy feature to come by, for less investment than what Triton costs (e.g. putting yourself behind on ASIs etc). Salt Marsh. :smallcool:

I'm pretty sure we can as a society make a distinction between fantastical races and real world people. They are not, and never have been, meant to resemble each other by name, by appearance, or otherwise. It's not racist to use a term race when they are clearly something different from each other. An elf or a dwarf, for example, are nothing alike, except that they are bipedal humanoids. I see it similarly. I wish the situation were as you suggest it ought to be, but apparently there's a critical mass who don't go along with that. I'll stop there.

If all you need to be "competitive" is to not anti-optimize (ie biggest stat in your main stat, don't intentionally hobble yourself by using non-proficient weapons and armor, etc), then the number of builds is much larger than if the expectation is "can kill an enemy of CR = level + 5 in one turn" or "can survive against <super ultra deadly threat>" (to exaggerate a bit). When the minimum benchmark is already heavily optimized, the margin of acceptability is much narrower than when it's set much lower.

[1] metas are for competitive games. D&D is not a competitive game. Meta chasing is out of place IMO. +5 for the footnote at the end. :smallsmile:

But it is in general more fun for your character to be good at the thing you imagine them to be good at. I've seen a lot of new players get pretty frustrated with their unoptimized characters when they are out of room for prepared spells or they keep missing. I have that problem with modestly optimized characters (prime requisite the highest stat, etc) and have since 2014. The dice are fickle. The d20 will drive you mad.

But the underlying point (that if, given a spectrum of choices, one option is substantially and uniformly inferior to another, the weaker is basically a waste of space) is something we agree on. I have a personal hatred for intentional trap options. Reward system mastery if you want, but intentionally making things weak to trap newbies is both a waste and bad design. I'd rather have 10 reasonably-well balanced, thematic choices over 100 options, of which 80 are trash and 20 are good. +2 :smallsmile:

I will comment further on 13th age class/race +2 options; it is to my tastes an excellent way to offer more customization, and, the Physical Defense, mental defense, and one other defense all refer to different stat combos. It isn't as simple as 5e, but I like what they did there.

[Dienekes]

Burning Wheel is an interesting comparison, actually.

If you play an Elf in Burning Wheel, you have an entirely different set of choices than you would have if you were playing a Dwarf (for example) — you have different lifepaths, different skills, and different stats. You can make a much stronger case that there are more than just cultural differences between them than you can with D&D, where your choice of race boils down to slightly more than an ASI and a few minor features.

If Orcs were a group of fungus-people who are habitually violent because that helps them reproduce, and they got extra strength because they were all football hooligans, well... let's just say that I don't think I've ever seen any complaints about Warhammer Orcs.

(Also, honestly, maybe just rename Intelligence? Call it Memory or something. I dunno.)

It is an interesting system. And part of me is curious if we could streamline and implement some of what makes the other races seem inhuman to D&D. But that’s I think another discussion.

As to intelligence, maybe. I’ve see. sagacity used as well. But I kinda think as long as it gets tied to knowledge skills in some way it will be seen as the ability for smart people.

[Morty]

I'm not even sure that dwarf and halfling rogues are meaningfully different even with PHB rules, but Tasha's rules indisputably makes them even more similar than PHB rules.

Tasha's rules don't make them any more or less similar than they were. If dwarf and halfling rogues play the same with PHB, the only thing Tasha's changes is that the dwarf rogue isn't just kind of worse at rogue-ing than the halfling one. If my GM hadn't houseruled what was essentially an early version of those (let me swap out +2 Con for +2 Dex), my dwarf rogue would have been exactly the same, just weaker. I'm not seeing any of the vaunted "diversity" here.

[MaxWilson]

Tasha's rules don't make them any more or less similar than they were.

It makes hill dwarves and halflings have the same racial ASIs (floating +2/+1) and mountain dwarves have a floating +2/+2. That's indisputably more similarity than by PHB rules.

[Morty]

It makes hill dwarves and halflings have the same racial ASIs (floating +2/+1) and mountain dwarves have a floating +2/+2. That's indisputably more similarity than by PHB rules.

And the end result is still that a dwarf rogue, halfling rogue and human rogue play more or less the same. The dwarf is just behind on the most important rogue attributes in PHB, which is no longer the case in Tasha's.

[Dienekes]

And the end result is still that a dwarf rogue, halfling rogue and human rogue play more or less the same. The dwarf is just behind on the most important rogue attributes in PHB, which is no longer the case in Tasha's.

I will say "just being worse" is a difference. More an annoyance of a difference than one that changes play pattern, but it is a difference.

For some people that is enough of a difference to matter.

[MaxWilson]

And the end result is still that a dwarf rogue, halfling rogue and human rogue play more or less the same.

What makes this a good thing?

[Morty]

What makes this a good thing?

Whether or not it's a good thing is irrelevant. But it's the case with or without Tasha's - as I already said in the part of my post you decided not to quote. For it not to be the case, you'd need more meaningful racial abilities, not ASIs.

[MaxWilson]

(C) And the end result is still that a dwarf rogue, halfling rogue and human rogue play more or less the same. (D) The dwarf is just behind on the most important rogue attributes in PHB, which is no longer the case in Tasha's.


(A) Whether or not it's a good thing is irrelevant. (B) But it's the case with or without Tasha's - as I already said in the part of my post you decided not to quote. For it not to be the case, you'd need more meaningful racial abilities, not ASIs.

(A) If you can't defend this similarity as a good thing then why would adding even more similarity with Tasha's be a good thing?

(B) Why are you upset that I didn't quote (D)? (C) is the relevant part where you talk about what's "the case with or without Tasha's". (D) is where you tacitly acknowledge that Tasha's does make halflings/dwarves/humans more similar, but then try to minimize that.

(D) is most definitely not where you argue that "But it's the case with or without Tasha's - as I already said in [(D)]."

[Morty]

(A) If you can't defend this similarity as a good thing then why would adding even more similarity with Tasha's be a good thing?

(B) Why are you upset that I didn't quote (D)? (C) is the relevant part where you talk about what's "the case with or without Tasha's". (D) is where you tacitly acknowledge that Tasha's does make halflings/dwarves/humans more similar, but then try to minimize that.

(D) is most definitely not where you argue that "But it's the case with or without Tasha's - as I already said in [(D)]."

That races don't offer a lot of variety is a fact. I'm not sure what there is to "defend". Whether or not someone likes it is another thing. ASIs don't change that - they make some races better or worse at some classes, but that doesn't make them meaningfully different. If you do want races to be different, they either need more in-depth racial abilities, or attributes need to be less of an illusion of choice in general.

[Sorinth]

I find the idea that a Dwarf Rogue should play different compared to a Halfling Rogue to be a dubious goal in the first place. Especially if that difference is simply being better/worse at the standard Rogue stuff.

That's not to say that all the races should be the same but that the racial abilities shouldn't be bound tightly to classes, and for better or worse ability scores are bound tightly to certain classes.

Racial features should be stand on their own. Things like Dwarven Resilience vs Brave or Nimble creates a difference between a Dwarf and a Halfling without making one race better/worse for a specific class.

[LudicSavant]

Salt Marsh. :smallcool:

Yes, a higher emphasis than any published campaign has, including Saltmarsh.

[greenstone]

I find the idea that a Dwarf Rogue should play different compared to a Halfling Rogue to be a dubious goal in the first place.
I feel the exact opposite.

If a Dwarf Rogue plays the same as a Halfling Rogue then why have Dwarves and Halflings in the game?

[Tanarii]

I feel the exact opposite.

If a Dwarf Rogue plays the same as a Halfling Rogue then why have Dwarves and Halflings in the game?
Some people just want a human in a funny hat.

[Morty]

I feel the exact opposite.

If a Dwarf Rogue plays the same as a Halfling Rogue then why have Dwarves and Halflings in the game?

That's an excellent question, one that D&D has yet to reckon with. Because, as noted, ASIs don't actually make those races play differently. The edition to come closest was probably 4E - but even there, the quality of racial abilities varies wildly. You get good ones, like dwarves using Second Wind with a minor action, but also fiddly and pointless ribbons like half-elves giving everyone within 10 squares +2 to perception. The main purpose of D&D races is to be, because you need elves, dwarves, orcs and gnomes.

[Composer99]

If a Dwarf Rogue plays the same as a Halfling Rogue then why have Dwarves and Halflings in the game?

The answer is "the designers and players, writ large, want them in the game, and they aren't unsuitable for the intended design aesthetic or desired gameplay experience". And that's all the answer you need, really.

Of course, two rogues don't necessarily have to play the same, even if they're the same folk - a halfling Thief rogue who wields a hand crossbow and who's got expertise in Sleight of Hand and thieves' tools, and a halfling Arcane Trickster who wields a shortsword and who's got expertise in Deception and Persuasion, are going to play differently despite both being halfling rogues.

In the meantime two rogues, a dwarf and a halfling, who both use hand crossbows, have the Thief subclass, and who have expertise in Sleight of Hand and Stealth are probably going to play just about "the same" despite being different folk. Their identical build choices lead them to play "the same", with the only substantial difference being that Lucky and, pre-Tasha's, synergistic ability score adjustments make the halfling better at it.

[MaxWilson]

That's an excellent question, one that D&D has yet to reckon with.

I think you mean "WotC D&D has yet to reckon with." The distinctions between the races are significantly greater in TSR-era D&D. Generally they have different classes and multiclass combinations available to them, different level limits, and different racial prerequisites--e.g. dwarves live much longer, halflings don't roll exception strength even if they are Fighter/Thieves with Str 18, dwarves can be Fighter/Clerics but halfling clerics must be single-classed, dwarven clerics can be much more powerful than halfling clerics (dwarves can go up to cleric 15 whereas halflings top out around level 9ish IIRC). Playing a halfling winds up being quite different from playing a dwarf.

WotC has yet to reckon with the implications of erasing most distinctions between the demihumans. I sometimes wish they'd just deleted dwarves, gnomes, and halflings entirely from 5E.

[quinron]

I think you mean "WotC D&D has yet to reckon with." The distinctions between the races are significantly greater in TSR-era D&D. Generally they have different classes and multiclass combinations available to them, different level limits, and different racial prerequisites--e.g. dwarves live much longer, halflings don't roll exception strength even if they are Fighter/Thieves with Str 18, dwarves can be Fighter/Clerics but halfling clerics must be single-classed, dwarven clerics can be much more powerful than halfling clerics (dwarves can go up to cleric 15 whereas halflings top out around level 9ish IIRC). Playing a halfling winds up being quite different from playing a dwarf.

WotC has yet to reckon with the implications of erasing most distinctions between the demihumans. I sometimes wish they'd just deleted dwarves, gnomes, and halflings entirely from 5E.

Which implies that part of WotC's design was to allow a player to make any class/race combination, including multiclassing (which was, as near as I can tell, a key selling point for the move to 3e). I don't think this is a failure to reckon with how different races should play, I think it's a deliberate choice to make races more similar.

Given the move away from racial ASIs and the industry's big players generally moving away from the concept of "race" as a defining character element, I think the Tasha's and UA changes are an intentional but noncommittal decision to phase these elements out of the game. The designers seem to want to get rid of racial traits altogether, but they know that a) a lot of players find fantasy races to be a key aspect of play and b) players prefer their decisions to have mechanics rather than just fluff, so they'll just make it so race doesn't meaningfully differentiate characters.

[Theodoxus]

I suspect you're right. Going back to the 'dials of complexity' - this is one I wish were hard coded.

There are plenty of games that are human only, or humans facing off against supernatural critters (or aliens or mutants or...) There's certainly nothing wrong with playing D&D as "humans in funny hats". Given that none of us are actually dwarves or halflings or elves, its hard to not do so at some ephemeral level. It's one reason I went with changelings as my progenitor race, it allowed for the most reasonable explanation for differentiation within a species. Elves and Dwarves are breeds within the same species - much like Bulldogs and Greyhounds. Now, I'm not offended by the term 'breed', but I suspect there are those who would find it offensive. (And it does hew quite closely to eugenics, so I can see it being cringeworthy in that aspect.)

Tasha's actually helps me, in this case. While a greyhound might be very fast, and a golden retriever might be very friendly, there are also individuals in each breed that exemplify the opposite. Granting flexible ASI allows for players to pick the breed trait(s) they like without having to worry about the pre-disposed stat upgrades that someone at WotC decided matched a race. (Which I think, if we were being honest, none of us would agree 100% with their allocation - look at the drow discussion as just one example.)

Now, if I had the time and inclination, I would probably set up my homebrew along the lines of what Telesphoros is suggesting. Mixing and matching 'racial' features matches my world perfectly. The only thing I would balk at is a point buy method. I get that things like flight should cost more "character creation points", but I'd rather there were a few lists of abilities, and you get a menu of options "pick 1 ability from Table A, B and C, and 2 from Table D" kind of thing, where flight would be teamed up with other, strong traits (Lucky, etc.).

Then, either keep a basic +3, or ditch it for a beefed up point buy system (and I'd probably go with a 6d4L1 for rolled stats. Gotta get that 20 somehow :smallwink:

[Sorinth]

I feel the exact opposite.

If a Dwarf Rogue plays the same as a Halfling Rogue then why have Dwarves and Halflings in the game?


Some people just want a human in a funny hat.

There will still be differences it's just that those differences aren't about which one is being a better Rogue.

If I want to be a Tiefling street urchin shunned by everyone because of my heritage, always on the move and forced to steal to survive. I don't want to be 5% worse at sneaking/stealing compared to a Dex boosting race.

You're Dwarven Rogue doesn't have to play the same as your Halfling Rogue but why should the Dwarven Rogue be punished because it doesn't follow the Dwarf/Halfling stereotypes?

[rlc]

My guess for 6e is that each lineage gives you a buffet of options to pick from, where you pick one major benefit from a list of x, and then one or two minor benefits from a list of y. Then you can also pick to be small to get some disadvantages in exchange for an extra minor benefit.
There would then be examples of what some of the well known races would be (so an iconic dwarf and an iconic goliath might both be from the mountain lineage, but their major and minor benefits could be different, but related, and the dwarf would get an extra minor benefit for being small).

[Witty Username]

This smacks of Stormwind Fallacy-ism... Being mechanically optimized =/= deficient in roleplaying capability and vice versa. I don't need to be a halfling cleric/barbarian with a greatsword and low Wis and Str to prove how great I am at RP... Or to quote the author of Burning Wheel referenced before:

"My favorite nights around the table are the nights when we don’t roll any dice, the nights where all the hurdles are overcome with a little discussion, a little teamwork and a lot of roleplaying. Trust me, these nights are not just “sit around the campfire and talk about our adventure” nights. I have run whole rebellions without touching the dice. The inspiring words of a commander are far more important to the game and to the players than a roll of the dice." - Luke Crane, Burning Wheel Corebook, pg 230.

Mechanics be damned on a roll-less night.

If I come off as engaging in the storm wind fallacy, I apologize, that was not my intention. I just get frustrated when people make claims that optimization is bad or wrong, or worse understanding of the mechanics are in some way detrimental despite arguably using the same methodology with (claimed) different priorities.

[Luccan]

There will still be differences it's just that those differences aren't about which one is being a better Rogue.

If I want to be a Tiefling street urchin shunned by everyone because of my heritage, always on the move and forced to steal to survive. I don't want to be 5% worse at sneaking/stealing compared to a Dex boosting race.

You're Dwarven Rogue doesn't have to play the same as your Halfling Rogue but why should the Dwarven Rogue be punished because it doesn't follow the Dwarf/Halfling stereotypes?

Ya know what's funny is your Halfling Thief and Dwarven Thief did used to be good at different things. They were just better at different Thief things

[Sorinth]

Ya know what's funny is your Halfling Thief and Dwarven Thief did used to be good at different things. They were just better at different Thief things

What Rogue things is my Dwarf better at? He's worse at attacking, stealthing, picking pockets, opening locks, etc... You know pretty much all the classic Rogue stuff.

[awa]

What Rogue things is my Dwarf better at? He's worse at attacking, stealthing, picking pockets, opening locks, etc... You know pretty much all the classic Rogue stuff.

Its possible he was referring to second edition when the thief had bonus and penalties based on race. dwarf +10% open lock +15% find remove traps -10% climb walls -5% read language

[Witty Username]

What Rogue things is my Dwarf better at? He's worse at attacking, stealthing, picking pockets, opening locks, etc... You know pretty much all the classic Rogue stuff.

Well, mountain dwarf would be better at climbing walls and jumping from rooftop to rooftop because of the strength bonus.

I have been wanting to make an half-orc smash and grab kind of rogue. Thief, expertise in athletics for breaking things open, climbing, shoving guards. Fast hands for being able to more easily grab and use items on the go. Needs a specific campaign though.
That being said, I can still do that post tasha's, it would just work better with wood elf.

[Theodoxus]

What Rogue things is my Dwarf better at? He's worse at attacking, stealthing, picking pockets, opening locks, etc... You know pretty much all the classic Rogue stuff.


Its possible he was referring to second edition when the thief had bonus and penalties based on race. dwarf +10% open lock +15% find remove traps -10% climb walls -5% read language

Sounds right.

OTOH, dwarves, with their darkvision, make better burglars than halflings, or tomb raiders... advantage against poison is great for traps, so only 1/3 of halfling subraces can compete... Hammer's are great for smashing chests or vases... war > light (as in hammer, not as in domains, in case that wasn't clear...)

[KorvinStarmast]

For it not to be the case, you'd need more meaningful racial abilities, not ASIs. Which is harder to balance, so they went with ASIs which ... well here we are. It's newbie friendly to do as they did, but newbies are not the prime audience of GiTP.

The main purpose of D&D races is to be, because you need elves, dwarves, orcs and gnomes. Yes; but you can also play the game with all of the PCs as humans and everyone else is either a monster or an NPC. It's actually simpler to do that, but they didn't want to go that simple. Momentum and tradition, yada yada.

I sometimes wish they'd just deleted dwarves, gnomes, and halflings entirely from 5E.
Keep the dwarves, drop the other two. My two cents.

Ya know what's funny is your Halfling Thief and Dwarven Thief did used to be good at different things. They were just better at different Thief things My dwarf thief in older editions was a good standard thief. My dwarf thief in this edition I made into a grappling specialist thanks to Expertise. Worked out fine. I've sworn off halfling thieves (save maybe for a one shot) since I played so many back in the day. Need to try other stuff. Done halfling thief to death.

[Luccan]

What Rogue things is my Dwarf better at? He's worse at attacking, stealthing, picking pockets, opening locks, etc... You know pretty much all the classic Rogue stuff.


Its possible he was referring to second edition when the thief had bonus and penalties based on race. dwarf +10% open lock +15% find remove traps -10% climb walls -5% read language

1e, technically, but yeah. The modern Dwarf isn't necessarily better at anything (unless it has something to do with stonework, I guess), but it wasn't always that way. I just think it's funny that, while there are concerns with the way older editions did things impacting 5e in a negative manner, this one thing some people have brought up actually did allow a Dwarven thief to be better at certain things than a Halfling one and vice versa.

Edit: I mean, 5e dwarf has some advantages (above posts), but they're not all classic Rogue things and it's hard to argue 5e supports the non-standard choice of dwarf rogue particularly well when you'll still want Dex for most Rogue things.

[Sorinth]

Well, mountain dwarf would be better at climbing walls and jumping from rooftop to rooftop because of the strength bonus.

I have been wanting to make an half-orc smash and grab kind of rogue. Thief, expertise in athletics for breaking things open, climbing, shoving guards. Fast hands for being able to more easily grab and use items on the go. Needs a specific campaign though.
That being said, I can still do that post tasha's, it would just work better with wood elf.

Jumping from rooftop to rooftop is just as likely to be an acrobatics check, and it's worth noting that we could just as easily be a Hill Dwarf which has no strength bonus.

For sure you can build a Strength focused Rogue in which case getting a strength bonus is best, but that highlights the whole issue with racial ASIs. It pigeon holes races to specific builds.


Sounds right.

OTOH, dwarves, with their darkvision, make better burglars than halflings, or tomb raiders... advantage against poison is great for traps, so only 1/3 of halfling subraces can compete... Hammer's are great for smashing chests or vases... war > light (as in hammer, not as in domains, in case that wasn't clear...)

I'm not so sure they make better burglars since a very big part of being a burglar is stealth and picking locks both of which the halfling is better at. If you have to smash open doors/chests that's not a good sign for a master burglar (But can work for other types of rogues). Darkvision is overrated in terms of tomb raiding, but granted it might be very important for scouting. And if it matters then we can just as easily be talking about a Dwarf vs Elf Rogue.

But even if we can find a couple things, that doesn't really change the overall point. When the choice is between being worse at 90% of the things then it isn't a real choice. Even if there are niche builds/design spaces such as the Half-Orc smash and grab expert above that can be built from that other 10%, Tasha's hasn't actually impacted that. You can still work in those niche areas, the only difference is you are no longer limited to only that space.

[Sorinth]

1e, technically, but yeah. The modern Dwarf isn't necessarily better at anything (unless it has something to do with stonework, I guess), but it wasn't always that way. I just think it's funny that, while there are concerns with the way older editions did things impacting 5e in a negative manner, this one thing some people have brought up actually did allow a Dwarven thief to be better at certain things than a Halfling one and vice versa.

Edit: I mean, 5e dwarf has some advantages (above posts), but they're not all classic Rogue things and it's hard to argue 5e supports the non-standard choice of dwarf rogue particularly well when you'll still want Dex for most Rogue things.

Sure 1e and 2e had much bigger differentiation between races. But as I said in an earlier post, I'm not sure it's all that desirable to have those differences impact class abilities. If all Dwarf Rogues are supposed to be expert lock/trapsmiths compared to Halflings then those differences have reduced/limited the design space by punishing anything that goes against some pre-defined sterotypes.

By all means let's make race choices meaningful by having varied abilities just don't make those abilities guide/influence class choices.

[MaxWilson]

Sure 1e and 2e had much bigger differentiation between races. But as I said in an earlier post, I'm not sure it's all that desirable to have those differences impact class abilities. If all Dwarf Rogues are supposed to be expert lock/trapsmiths compared to Halflings then those differences have reduced/limited the design space by punishing anything that goes against some pre-defined sterotypes.

By all means let's make race choices meaningful by having varied abilities just don't make those abilities guide/influence class choices.

So... is it bad in your eyes that 5E Aarakocras make good monks? Does Aarakocra flight need to start working in heavy armor just so it won't influence class choices any more?

[Witty Username]

Jumping from rooftop to rooftop is just as likely to be an acrobatics check, and it's worth noting that we could just as easily be a Hill Dwarf which has no strength bonus.

For sure you can build a Strength focused Rogue in which case getting a strength bonus is best, but that highlights the whole issue with racial ASIs. It pigeon holes races to specific builds.


I partially disagree, mostly because I think this is more a point buy issue than a racial ASI issue. But I think the effect of racial ASI's are small, and wouldn't be missed if they disappeared from the game entirely.

Which I think sums up my opinion on fungible racial ASI's, I don't really care. The effect is small either way, It won't break a game, it makes some people really happy. I do question the need for fungible racial ASI's + with point buy as opposed to point buy with more points, but that is more explaining to a new player stuff then any worry about a sacred cow falling down an elevator shaft.

[Sorinth]

So... is it bad in your eyes that 5E Aarakocras make good monks? Does Aarakocra flight need to start working in heavy armor just so it won't influence class choices any more?

No it's not bad that a Aarakocras make good Monks. And no I don't think flight needs to work in heavy armor, why would that limit impact class choice, which class is bad as an Aarakocra post Tasha's?

[Sorinth]

I partially disagree, mostly because I think this is more a point buy issue than a racial ASI issue. But I think the effect of racial ASI's are small, and wouldn't be missed if they disappeared from the game entirely.

Which I think sums up my opinion on fungible racial ASI's, I don't really care. The effect is small either way, It won't break a game, it makes some people really happy. I do question the need for fungible racial ASI's + with point buy as opposed to point buy with more points, but that is more explaining to a new player stuff then any worry about a sacred cow falling down an elevator shaft.

I agree that being 5% better/worse at everything doesn't break the game. But it is noticeable and it feels like crap when you fail at the things you are supposed to be good especially when you know the reason you failed was because of an RP choice. But I'll admit it's possible that confirmation bias is at work.

I have no problems with removing racial ASIs. I would also be fine if they changed how important ability scores were and then kept fixed racial ASIs. For example if they removed the to hit bonus from ability scores and balanced it with a bigger proficiency bonus so that a Hill Dwarf Fighter is just as good with his axe as the Mountain Dwarf Fighter even though the Mountain Dwarf is slightly stronger.

[MaxWilson]

No it's not bad that a Aarakocras make good Monks. And no I don't think flight needs to work in heavy armor, why would that limit impact class choice, which class is bad as an Aarakocra post Tasha's?

Well, you said "By all means let's make race choices meaningful by having varied abilities just don't make those abilities guide/influence class choices." Flight while unarmoured is an ability that influences class choice. Why is flight influencing class choice good, but naturally high Dex influencing class choice bad?

I am not picking on you, Sorinth, in particular. It's an open question to anyone who wants all race choices to be (ideally) perfectly symmetrical and equally good for all classes, such that knowing the PC's race gives no information about what their class is likely to be. Why is symmetry better than PHB asymmetry?

[Sorinth]

Well, you said "By all means let's make race choices meaningful by having varied abilities just don't make those abilities guide/influence class choices." Flight while unarmoured is an ability that influences class choice. Why is flight influencing class choice good, but naturally high Dex influencing class choice bad?

I am not picking on you, Sorinth, in particular. It's an open question to anyone who wants all race choices to be (ideally) perfectly symmetrical and equally good for all classes, such that knowing the PC's race gives no information about what their class is likely to be. Why is symmetry better than PHB asymmetry?

I don't see how flight is influencing class choice, it's good for magic users, ranged attackers, and it's good for melee classes too. So which classes are being influenced?

[Xervous]

Well, you said "By all means let's make race choices meaningful by having varied abilities just don't make those abilities guide/influence class choices." Flight while unarmoured is an ability that influences class choice. Why is flight influencing class choice good, but naturally high Dex influencing class choice bad?

I am not picking on you, Sorinth, in particular. It's an open question to anyone who wants all race choices to be (ideally) perfectly symmetrical and equally good for all classes, such that knowing the PC's race gives no information about what their class is likely to be. Why is symmetry better than PHB asymmetry?

Is it to be colored flour or separate seasoned flour packets that lend themselves to different meals? For general use, general market appeal and sales raw flour has the better promise of revenue. Some people who are used to the company selling the seasoned packets will gripe that they have to go to other brands to get their spices and do the mixing themselves, but nobody can complain that they have to sift out the thyme from mix Q since the only presented option is flour.

[Morty]

I think you mean "WotC D&D has yet to reckon with." The distinctions between the races are significantly greater in TSR-era D&D. Generally they have different classes and multiclass combinations available to them, different level limits, and different racial prerequisites--e.g. dwarves live much longer, halflings don't roll exception strength even if they are Fighter/Thieves with Str 18, dwarves can be Fighter/Clerics but halfling clerics must be single-classed, dwarven clerics can be much more powerful than halfling clerics (dwarves can go up to cleric 15 whereas halflings top out around level 9ish IIRC). Playing a halfling winds up being quite different from playing a dwarf.

WotC has yet to reckon with the implications of erasing most distinctions between the demihumans. I sometimes wish they'd just deleted dwarves, gnomes, and halflings entirely from 5E.

I see those as worse than ASIs. They don't actually make playing any given race/class combination particularly different, they just cordon off what players can use at all.

[MaxWilson]

I don't see how flight is influencing class choice, it's good for magic users, ranged attackers, and it's good for melee classes too. So which classes are being influenced?

Flight that is allowed only while unarmoured or lightly armored encourages play of lightly armored classes. A tank like a paladorc is unlikely to be an Aarakocra--too MAD. You'd pick something that synergizes better with your features, like Yuan-ti. To make Aarakocra attractive to tanky paladorcs you'd have to let Aarakocra fly while moderately armored at the very least--that would make half plate a viable option, without demanding max Dex.

[x3n0n]

Well, you said "By all means let's make race choices meaningful by having varied abilities just don't make those abilities guide/influence class choices." Flight while unarmoured is an ability that influences class choice. Why is flight influencing class choice good, but naturally high Dex influencing class choice bad?

I am not picking on you, Sorinth, in particular. It's an open question to anyone who wants all race choices to be (ideally) perfectly symmetrical and equally good for all classes, such that knowing the PC's race gives no information about what their class is likely to be. Why is symmetry better than PHB asymmetry?

Personally, I enjoy the mechanics of pairing *unusual* racial abilities with class features that have particular synergies.
"Bundling" the fixed ASIs with the unusual abilities is a significant penalty if the ASIs don't align.

Again, this is more of an issue for
* people like me who want to have interesting synergies without overly compromising "performance",
* MAD classes and/or non-Fighter attacking classes, and
* "ungenerous" PHB point-buy (in particular, no 16s).

If I weren't already "conditioned" to think that attaining an early 18 was important, I would personally have less issue with this.

A world where the standard array was 16/14/13/12/10/9 with two floating non-stackable +1s actually sounds kind of nice: no expectation of a starting 18, but a starting 16 is guaranteed.
Then every race/origin gets "interesting" abilities that separate them from the others.

That's not *too* far off from what we have with PHB point buy and Tasha's, but the starting feat origins are WAY out of whack then.

Aaracokra and Yuan-Ti are also "problems"...but they're already problems. Shrug.

[MaxWilson]

Personally, I enjoy the mechanics of pairing *unusual* racial abilities with class features that have particular synergies.
"Bundling" the fixed ASIs with the unusual abilities is a significant penalty if the ASIs don't align.

Again, this is more of an issue for
* people like me who want to have interesting synergies without overly compromising "performance",
* MAD classes and/or non-Fighter attacking classes, and
* "ungenerous" PHB point-buy (in particular, no 16s).

If I weren't already "conditioned" to think that attaining an early 18 was important, I would personally have less issue with this.

A world where the standard array was 16/14/13/12/10/9 with two floating non-stackable +1s actually sounds kind of nice: no expectation of a starting 18, but a starting 16 is guaranteed.
Then every race/origin gets "interesting" abilities that separate them from the others.

That's not *too* far off from what we have with PHB point buy and Tasha's, but the starting feat origins are WAY out of whack then.

Aaracokra and Yuan-Ti are also "problems"...but they're already problems. Shrug.

Come to the Dark Side (4d6k3 or 3d6 in order). We have build diversity. :)

[Xervous]

Come to the Dark Side (4d6k3 or 3d6 in order). We have build diversity. :)

I’d agree it’s diversity in character outcomes but it doesn’t have much to do with builds as that implies choice. You either roll outlier stats (for your group) or you don’t... unless you’re a filthy cheater ‘rolling’ four 18s.

Seems little different from saying there’s differences in a build point system if everyone rolls their initial budget and there’s no/minimal catch up mechanism.

[Sorinth]

Flight that is allowed only while unarmoured or lightly armored encourages play of lightly armored classes. A tank like a paladorc is unlikely to be an Aarakocra--too MAD. You'd pick something that synergizes better with your features, like Yuan-ti. To make Aarakocra attractive to tanky paladorcs you'd have to let Aarakocra fly while moderately armored at the very least--that would make half plate a viable option, without demanding max Dex.

First off this seems to be an edge case based around the multiclassing rules. The 13str min for multiclassing from Paladin actually highlights the same issue of racial ASIs. It's enforcing a specific stereotype and punishing the less conforming. So Dexadin is getting punished because it doesn't conform to one type of Paladin stereotype.


If you want a Tanky Aarakocra Paladin you can actually do that quite easily as a Dexadin, all you've done is trade 1 AC for added mobility. And frankly that's a great trade for a tank since the bonus initiative + extra movement allows the Aarakocra to better position themselves on the battlefield which is an extremely important part of being a tank.

I'd also point out that even if you go Strength the Aarakocra is still good choice. Flight is not only amazing in combat, it's amazing outside of combat too. So while travelling you wear leather and fly giving your party a huge boost in the exploration pillar of the game, easily spotting enemies, finding the hidden dungeon, avoiding natural hazards, etc... then as you get close to the adventuring site you spend the 10min to get into your heavy armor and be the heavy armour tank you want. And when you are forced into combat while wearing your leather armor, you still make a solid tank using grappling+flight to remove enemies from combat.

[x3n0n]

Come to the Dark Side (4d6k3 or 3d6 in order). We have build diversity. :)

:)

I think standard array and point buy serve some real purposes, most of them social.

I know I haven't thought through all of them yet, but they include:
* having a "verifiable provenance" for characters that could cross tables (like Adventurer's League)
* providing a risk-free way for a noob to get a passable character build (primary high, con 14+ after bonus, secondary next, whatever; align your bonuses)
* providing a repeatable way for people like me to experiment with "mechanics-heavy" "builds" and share them.

I look at "3d6 in order" and I shudder at the thought of having several of my 6-18 sessions a *year* attached to tactical gaming with something that I had so little input into.
For example, "I sure think it would be fun to play a 5e Monk in this campaign" is "never" (rarely) going to happen with 3d6 in order.
Or "I guess I'll be v.human Tough or Hill Dwarf *again*" because I rolled 7 Con and don't want to die to a stiff breeze, failing my team in the process.

[MaxWilson]

I’d agree it’s diversity in character outcomes but it doesn’t have much to do with builds as that implies choice.

Even little things like rolling an odd vs. even high stat have far more impact on builds than you seem to realize.


:)

I think standard array and point buy serve some real purposes, most of them social.

I know I haven't thought through all of them yet, but they include:
* having a "verifiable provenance" for characters that could cross tables (like Adventurer's League)
* providing a risk-free way for a noob to get a passable character build (primary high, con 14+ after bonus, secondary next, whatever; align your bonuses)
* providing a repeatable way for people like me to experiment with "mechanics-heavy" "builds" and share them.

I look at "3d6 in order" and I shudder at the thought of having several of my 6-18 sessions a *year* attached to tactical gaming with something that I had so little input into.
For example, "I sure think it would be fun to play a 5e Monk in this campaign" is "never" (rarely) going to happen with 3d6 in order.
Or "I guess I'll be v.human Tough or Hill Dwarf *again*" because I rolled 7 Con and don't want to die to a stiff breeze, failing my team in the process.

Yeah, the Dark Side isn't for everyone. I do think there are solutions for some of the issues you name (pregens as a fallback for newbies is actually better IMO than standard array because they can focus on learning to play the game instead of learning to play the chargen minigame) but if you want guaranteed repeatability to share online with 100% probability, rolling obviously can't work. (It would be interesting to me to share builds and also list the probability that you will roll well enough to "afford" them, but clearly that's not what you're into.)

I don't think monks have to be rare though. [roll, roll] Of my first three 3d6-in-order rolls just now, one of them would make a good monk:

[8+5+11+10+9+8] => 51
[9+7+12+16+11+12] => 67
[14+12+12+11+18+6] => 73

Dex 12, Wis 18, Con 12 before racial modifiers would make a fine Aarakocra or vhuman monk. Before rolling I'd planned on Kensei for Dex, but with Wis high maybe Elemonk is more appropriate. By level 4 you'll have Dex 14 and Wis 20 if human, plus a feat. The other two look like a Diviner (Con 12 Int 10) who will get retired after one or two adventures at most, and a old but still hearty Kalashtar Enchanter X/Forge Cleric 1 (Con 12, Int 16, Wis 13 (11), Cha 13 (12)) in heavy armor. I probably would never play a Kalashtar under point buy or even 4d6k3, but for that array it feels appropriate.