Harvesting power and the difference between 3.5 and 5.0 when it comes to races.

[Entessa]

If you asked many of my old companions about the features they liked the most about dnd 3.5, apart from the high variety of builds, classes, and skills, they would tell you one thing: you could become powerful. Powerful not in a sense of actually levelling up and start smashing stuff left and right, but in a sense that if you wanted to become a "greater" being you had lot of options available.

I'm defining "greater" compared to the "generic" (not that "generic", I hope you got the sense) human.

An example of this would be switching from human to necropolitan or undead as a culmination of long quests that could/or could not award you with the prize of the desired immortality of power. You didn't even read to reach level 20 to have that kind of power.

But reading dnd 5, all that is left for a human is simply to change to "changeling" if they want to be a better "actor" or yuan-ti, if they want to go further and become a snake. Not that enticing.

Are there any other possibilities I'm blind to?

[Burley]

If you asked many of my old companions about the features they liked the most about dnd 3.5, apart from the high variety of builds, classes, and skills, they would tell you one thing: you could become powerful. Powerful not in a sense of actually levelling up and start smashing stuff left and right, but in a sense that if you wanted to become a "greater" being you had lot of options available.

I'm defining "greater" compared to the "generic" (not that "generic", I hope you got the sense) human.

An example of this would be switching from human to necropolitan or undead as a culmination of long quests that could/or could not award you with the prize of the desired immortality of power. You didn't even read to reach level 20 to have that kind of power.

But reading dnd 5, all that is left for a human is simply to change to "changeling" if they want to be a better "actor" or yuan-ti, if they want to go further and become a snake. Not that enticing.

Are there any other possibilities I'm blind to?

So, what I noticed between 3.5e and 5e is, while 3.5 had a ton of options for a ton of things, 5e is modular enough that you can make things up and slot them in.
So, sure, there's not a lot of published 5e content giving PCs a ton of extra options. But, it's easy for a DM to say, "Yeah, necropolitan is a thing in my world, you can be one by doing [these things]. This is how it will affect your [human, elf, dwarf, whatever]."

So, sure, you're right: There's less options. That's by design, to simplify a DM's agency. Less players requesting/demanding power-creepy things from supplements, more player/DM conversation about making something that fits at that specific table.

[KorvinStarmast]

So, sure, you're right: There's less options. That's by design, to simplify a DM's agency. Less players requesting/demanding power-creepy things from supplements, more player/DM conversation about making something that fits at that specific table. And that's a good thing. :smallsmile:

[MoiMagnus]

In the MM, there are a small rule for how to adjust the stats of a PC becoming a Vampire. And you can always seek a caster of the True Polymorph spell to be turned into whatever you want.

But yeah, 5e doesn't have a lot of content comparatively to 3.5. Well, there is now significantly more content than at release, but we're at the end life of 5e as the 5.5e (or whatever will be the name of the backward-compatible new edition) is in the work.

It's supposed to be the GM's work to design those things now.
In my current campaign, one of our character had his entire body replace by magical flexible bronze (after encountering ancient humans that naturally/magically evolved to have those those due to the environment).
In my previous campaign, multiple of us went through some magical biologic engineering of some long extinct civilisation with some nice bonuses associated to it. And we pretty much all transformed ourself into Liches during the epilogue.

[Unoriginal]

If you asked many of my old companions about the features they liked the most about dnd 3.5, apart from the high variety of builds, classes, and skills, they would tell you one thing: you could become powerful. Powerful not in a sense of actually levelling up and start smashing stuff left and right, but in a sense that if you wanted to become a "greater" being you had lot of options available.

I'm defining "greater" compared to the "generic" (not that "generic", I hope you got the sense) human.

An example of this would be switching from human to necropolitan or undead as a culmination of long quests that could/or could not award you with the prize of the desired immortality of power. You didn't even read to reach level 20 to have that kind of power.

But reading dnd 5, all that is left for a human is simply to change to "changeling" if they want to be a better "actor" or yuan-ti, if they want to go further and become a snake. Not that enticing.

Are there any other possibilities I'm blind to?

Things DnD 5e Humans can become willingly:

- Half-Dragon
- Lich
- All kind of lycanthropy

[Burley]

And, that's all not mentioning the Reincarnation spell, if you want a "lateral" shift.

[Khrysaes]

Things DnD 5e Humans can become willingly:

- Half-Dragon
- Lich
- All kind of lycanthropy

Wait? Where are the half -dragon things?

Also, vampires.

More if you use Grim Hollow.

[Unoriginal]

Wait? Where are the half -dragon things?

In the MM's entry about Half-Dragon.

[J-H]

That's up to the DM and campaign, not to a set of hard rules that players can push DMs to adopt as standard.

My 16th level players:
-1 has perfect vision in all forms of darkness from drinking an experimental potion
-3 of them have strange spots over 20% of their skin, an elemental resistance, +2 constitution, and -2s to respectively INT, INT, and CHA. The Paladin got the Cha penalty. The monk's INT is 6, but he wears one of the circlets that boosts his INT to 19. They drank some unidentified magic liquids given to them by fomorians without even trying to figure out what it does first.
-3 of them (the same 3) have adamantine bone plating (crit immunity) and, after some bargaining with trolls and expensive surgery, have implanted troll hearts that give them effectively Fast Healing 1 all the time. Somewhere out on the western edge of the map, a group of trolls is now equipped with powerful magic weapons as a result of that trade, and is probably destroying their opposition.

One of them is going to get a chance to acquire yuan-ti traits over time thanks to a magic sword.

Lichdom and undeath aren't on-theme for this game.

[Willie the Duck]

But reading dnd 5, all that is left for a human is simply to change to "changeling" if they want to be a better "actor" or yuan-ti, if they want to go further and become a snake. Not that enticing.

Are there any other possibilities I'm blind to?

Fundamentally, the game decided that this should be mostly open-ended and at the constraint of the DM/shared-table-agreement. Undoubtedly because of 3e's case of people planning builds out of 15 different splatbooks (and the nightmare that is trying to balance that along with an ordinary human fighter, or the like), but also because of group differences in the concept of heroic development. Some people really like the idea of their character becoming a necropolitan. Others would prefer a game where the goal is to become, well, rich (or a baron, or a successful general, etc.). Others would find merely a necropolitan boring and would prefer a one eye, blue-furred flying werebandicoot betrothed to the primordial concept of the taste of raspberries. Trying to marry these divergent expectations is (IMO) why they stepped back and said 'let's just try to make something really good* at representing becoming a successful fighter, wizard, warlock, etc.'
*YMMV on their success.

[Psyren]

Just because there is no RAW cookbook, "follow these steps in the recipe to play as a monster," doesn't mean you can't be a monster. It just means your DM has to come up with what that looks like themselves. In the end, all races, monsters and classes in this game boil down to is a stack of features and stats. Your DM can have you undergo some kind of quest or rite, take your sheet away, and hand you a new one with all the stuff you want on it no problem.

[KorvinStarmast]

It just means your DM has to come up with what that looks like themselves. 7 Or, in a more perfect world, the DM and the Player work together to come up with what that looks like, with the DM having final touch on 'how this fits into the game world' ... :smallsmile:

Put a different way, for the OP: you don't need a rule for that. It's that whole "I need a rule for that" approach (3.x centric for this conversation, but honestly, "I need a rule for that" was something Gygax struggled with too, so it's across many editions) that is a matter of framing the question incorrectly.

[Psyren]

Right, I didn't mean to imply it wouldn't be a collaborative process; just that there isn't a Savage Species-style ritual the player can flip to and stick in front of the DM going "well, it says here..."

[Burley]

Right, I didn't mean to imply it wouldn't be a collaborative process; just that there isn't a Savage Species-style ritual the player can flip to and stick in front of the DM going "well, it says here..."

Exactly. That is essentially what these "edition comparisons" boil down to, in my opinion: 3.5 had tons prefab options to do your imagining for you, 5e expects you to make up your own stuff.

3.5 was fun for players and theory crafters, because you have many things to look at and forward to (prestige classes, mainly). 5e gives you a prestige class at 3rd level and you're on rails. But, specifically because there's not a ton of options (that may interact with each other in such a way as to encourage carrying around a sack of sacrificial squirrels), players and DMs make up their own stuff, because the mechanics are simplified enough that any mechanical change is a +/-1 or advantage on something.