Blood without Bowlers: What would Good Race or Ancestry Implementation Look Like?

[TaiLiu]

There's an argument that I don't understand. It takes this form: if you remove racial stat bonuses, race basically becomes a skin or a hat. Since many DMs implement Tasha's optional non-racial stat bonuses, race is basically a skin or a hat.

If 5e didn't have stat caps, or if stat caps moved with racial bonuses, I might be kinda sympathetic to this argument. In principle, an elf with a racial +dexterity bonus has a higher dexterity ceiling than a human. The most graceful elves are truly more graceful than the most graceful humans. But that's not the case in 5e—both races have a +5 dexterity modifier ceiling.

I say kinda sympathetic, cuz it's just a +1 difference in modifiers. That's the second thing that I don't get. Races are already hats. It's not like elves have, like, fundamentally different senses or pattern-recognition abilities or something. Take a look at what the Player's Handbook offers elves in contrast to a game like Fellowship.


Keen Senses. You have proficiency in the Perception skill.

Elfsight. Your eyes are unnaturally good, and you can see fine detail even through the darkest night or densest fog. When you Look Closely, you may study any location you can see, no matter how distant, as if you were standing right there.

Anyone can pick up proficiency in Perception. Elves just get it for free. Unlike Fellowship, in 5e you can't pull a genuine "Legolas, what do your elf eyes see?" (Well, you can. I have. But the sharpest elf eyes are matched by the sharpest human eyes. So elf eyes are nothing special.)

Which is all to say: I think the "race as hat" problem really is a problem, but it's one that's always been there. It might be a consequence of race being a relatively minor mechanic compared to class. Or maybe there's a problem with 5e's mechanical rigidity, or maybe imagination, or something else. Does my argument seem sound? What would good race or ancestry implementation look like?

[Liquor Box]

If the stat modifiers don't do enough to differentiate the races, then that's an argument to increase their extent (or to make the caps for each different), not to do away with them.

But I think that stat modifiers are more than the maximum. What they mean in practice is that people are more likely to choose a half orc for a warrior or an int based race for a wizard etc. That means you are going to see more orcish warriors and more halflings thieves in a game (both from their fellow PCs and NPCs), so it does achieve the goal of making those races more thematic.

[Sorinth]

Stat boosts have always been a terrible way of representing those types of things. Mask of the Wild does more to represent that elven grace then a dex or proficiency bonus ever will.

But to the point about races are just hats that's not something you can do with mechanics because it's all about how you RP. No matter the mechanical abilities lots of players will just play them as "human" with abilities and it doesn't matter whether those abilities came from race or class or background or spells or magic items, etc... And frankly I'm not sure anyone can really do more then just be a human with abilities and some specific cultural things.

[Damon_Tor]

This is the slippery slope fallacy, but the ACTUAL slippery slope fallacy. If A is the good place you want to get to, and Z is the bad place you don't want it to get to, and you are currently at like M or something, and it just moved to N. Someone says "why are you so upset it just went to N? It was nowhere near A anyway. That's really a very small difference".

Races in D&D used to be more important than they were even at the very start of 5th edition. To those of us that still want races to matter, we would like to hold our ground here thank you.

[Catullus64]

Stat allocation methods are by far the least interesting part of how races get designed and presented. With moveable ability scores and ample ASI, it's really just slightly different roads to the same destination.

Size and speed are the crunch aspects where I feel the new design trends are more pushing towards the kind of bland homogeneity that people complain about. 30 foot speeds, and most traditionally Small creatures can choose Medium. That bothers me a bit.

What I mainly want is racial features that characterize the race as a people, and give flavorful gameplay verbs to characters of that race.

By the first part, I mean stuff like Trance & Stonecunning. If you've never heard of an Elf or a Dwarf before (somehow), these features clue you in on something about them. But WotC has understandably developed an allergy to saying "X group is like Y", so they are now at pains to emphasize diversity over characterization.

By the second part, I mainly mean that I'm a big fan of racial features that are not redundant with other game features. I want there to be stuff that only Your Race can do; lots of races sadly tend to be grab-bags of stuff you can get from other game features: skills, spells, tools, weapons & armor, unarmed attacks, AC, situational advantage.

All that to say, I'm fine with just "people in hats", but they should be, like, really distinctive and fancy hats.

[Greywander]

What would a good implementation look like? Well, one thing I think should be taken into account for starters is the Reincarnate spell. Now, you could just axe that spell from the game, but I find it kind of interesting, and removing the spell doesn't really fix the problem, as there are any number of other ways to change a creature from one race to another. Instead, I'd first recommend splitting off a creature's genetic/innate traits from their cultural traits. For simplicity, let's just refer to the former as "race" and the latter as "background". Only traits that can be easily swapped out in the event of a race change should be used as racial traits. For example, skill proficiencies are a poor choice, and would do better under a cultural background.

On the subject of ASIs, those are problematic, too. What if I get changed from a race without a STR bonus to a race with a STR bonus? What if my STR was already maxed out before the change? Should I just keep my previous scores and not apply the new racial ASIs? What if those races don't have the same number of ASIs? Not only that, but racial ASIs are rather lazy. Personally, I would rather replace racial ASIs with interesting traits that retain the feel of a particular race being strong or intelligent or graceful or hardy, but expressed in a way that doesn't mechanically pidgeonhole them into specific classes. An orc wizard with x2 carrying capacity (instead of a STR bonus) can still dump STR, but they can carry a lot more than a wizard normally would be able to, which could still be pretty useful without needing to invest in STR.

Doing it that way will, I think, make races more interesting and unique. I think this could actually get pretty close to making everyone happy.

[Sparky McDibben]

All that to say, I'm find with just "people in hats", but they should be, like, really distinctive and fancy hats.

That quote made my day, Catullus, well said.

The issue with stat bonuses to race is that it promotes bio-essentialism, which has a nasty history in the real world. See here (https://nkjemisin.com/2013/02/from-the-mailbag-the-unbearable-baggage-of-orcing/) for one example of that can make some folks uncomfortable.

Personally, I would like to see them split the cultural components of race out of the mix, so you'd have

Ancestry + Culture + Background + Class

Ancestry (in my idea, anyway) is only those things biologically tied to your species. Choosing an elf, therefore, gets you Fey Ancestry, Trance, Speed, Keen Senses and Darkvision. Choosing a human gets you Speed.

Culture, then, is the kind of culture in which you grew were raised. An Arcane culture, for example, might give you your choice between a free cantrip and proficiency in the Arcana skill. A Martial culture gives you your choice between the Weapon Master and Durable feats. (This is me spitballing; obviously you'd need to do some work to refine balance between the options).

Background is mostly unchanged from base 5E design, but the stat boosts you would normally get from race get moved into your class. So starting as a level 1 fighter gets you +2 / +1 to two abilities, or +1 to three. This does not happen with multiclassing.

[Sorinth]

This is the slippery slope fallacy, but the ACTUAL slippery slope fallacy. If A is the good place you want to get to, and Z is the bad place you don't want it to get to, and you are currently at like M or something, and it just moved to N. Someone says "why are you so upset it just went to N? It was nowhere near A anyway. That's really a very small difference".

Races in D&D used to be more important than they were even at the very start of 5th edition. To those of us that still want races to matter, we would like to hold our ground here thank you.

First I'd point out that power level of the race vs class is independent of fixed attributes bonuses. They could make races weak/strong with or without fixed attributes. Now I'm all for wanting races to matter, but I'm against doing so via fixed racial attribute bonuses. Make the races matter through actual features, don't highlight Dwarven Toughness via a +2 Con, do it via something like the Dwarven Fortitude feat, not strong enough for you make it a BA instead of linking it to Dodge, now that would be very powerful and really highlight how Dwarves are much tougher then other races. So by all means lets make the base power level of races higher, just do it through cool features and not ability score mods.

[OldTrees1]

Which is all to say: I think the "race as hat" problem really is a problem, but it's one that's always been there. It might be a consequence of race being a relatively minor mechanic compared to class. Or maybe there's a problem with 5e's mechanical rigidity, or maybe imagination, or something else. Does my argument seem sound? What would good race or ancestry implementation look like?

Your argument seems sound but we should emphasize wanting to solve the problem rather than worrying about if it always existed. It has been better and worse over time. We can learn lessons from those changes.

Step 1: Species should be stronger. Assign more build points to species design. This allows for impactful features that currently get cut for lack of room or downsized to minimal impact.

Step 2: Remove all cultural features from species and strengthen backgrounds (this might require splitting background into multiple parts). High Elf's +1 cantrip is from your background growing up in a society that stressed a foundational education in magic. That would apply to an Orc growing up in Thay. Removing these features gives you space to replace them with more actual "this is not a human" biological features.

Edit Step 2b: Some species, like humans, don't have enough "this is not a human" biological features. You have a choice to make. Either you make them less human or you grant them a stronger background. Rather that use cultural features in the species, just say this species gets more backgrounds or stronger backgrounds. That keeps all the cultural features out of the species.

Step 3: (optional but a good idea): Have species gain or improve features later. Some features are not appropriate for 1st level but help avoid the "species as hats" problem at 11th level. This also helps handle species that can't fit in their entirety at 1st level (Dragons for example).

Step 4: Be more willing to include (in a splatbook rather than core) species that are already more divergent from humans. Warforged and Plasmoids are a good start. These species are more resilient to the "species as hats problem", but don't get complacent.

Step 5: Any difference you decide can't exist, won't exist (Giants can't exist as 5E PCs). Figure out where you will draw that line. Otherwise you will step over it in both directions. Both directions are bad.

Step 6: Fix the systemic lore problems and don't introduce new ones. Speak clearer where there was miscommunication. Give more examples rather than a single monolithic example. Hire a myconoid onto your writing staff. Respectfully handling the difference between divergent fictional species can be different from respectfully handling the diversity within a single real species. Do both.

[Greywander]

The issue with stat bonuses to race is that it promotes bio-essentialism, which has a nasty history in the real world. See here (https://nkjemisin.com/2013/02/from-the-mailbag-the-unbearable-baggage-of-orcing/) for one example of that can make some folks uncomfortable.
Perhaps those folks should go and play a different game that doesn't make them uncomfortable. Perhaps the changes that they're asking for will end up making someone else uncomfortable. Imagine, for example, going to a party and seeing everyone jamming out to a song, but you don't like that song. Is it appropriate to change the music to something you like, despite the protests of the other party goers? Would it not make more sense to leave them be and simply find a different party that is more your style? Or, if you can't find one, then maybe you can start your own party. And if you really can't find anyone willing to come to your party, then maybe you just have bad taste in music.

I mean, having racial traits at all is bio-essentialism. Having monsters or animals with different stat blocks is bio-essentialism. At the end of the day, there's only one human race, so all humans have the same bio-essential traits. Isn't that enough?

Nevertheless, the solution I proposed in my last post should be amenable even to you, as it follows your suggestion to split off genetics and culture and remove racial ASIs (albeit for different reasons). So again, maybe we actually can make almost everyone happy here.

[Angelalex242]

I'd go back to 2E style races, where every nonhuman had a bonus and a penalty. Remember, elves and dwarves aren't humans, even funny looking humans. Elves may have enough common DNA to crossbreed, but lions and tigers can do that too.

You want to get back to the LOTR style basics of what makes each race unique.

[Damon_Tor]

First I'd point out that power level of the race vs class is independent of fixed attributes bonuses. They could make races weak/strong with or without fixed attributes. Now I'm all for wanting races to matter, but I'm against doing so via fixed racial attribute bonuses. Make the races matter through actual features, don't highlight Dwarven Toughness via a +2 Con, do it via something like the Dwarven Fortitude feat, not strong enough for you make it a BA instead of linking it to Dodge, now that would be very powerful and really highlight how Dwarves are much tougher then other races. So by all means lets make the base power level of races higher, just do it through cool features and not ability score mods.

My concern is more that we're shifting toward a system where stats don't matter at all. Right now if you removed stats entirely and gave each class +5 proficiency bonus at first level and had it gain a +1 every 3 levels, you would have to change shockingly little for the game to remain basically the same.

[Black Jester]

Anyone can pick up proficiency in Perception. Elves just get it for free. Unlike Fellowship, in 5e you can't pull a genuine "Legolas, what do your elf eyes see?" (Well, you can. I have. But the sharpest elf eyes are matched by the sharpest human eyes. So elf eyes are nothing special.)

Which is all to say: I think the "race as hat" problem really is a problem, but it's one that's always been there. It might be a consequence of race being a relatively minor mechanic compared to class. Or maybe there's a problem with 5e's mechanical rigidity, or maybe imagination, or something else. Does my argument seem sound? What would good race or ancestry implementation look like?

The main problem is the kitchen sink approach of including every. single. species in every. single. setting, without any distinguishing elements or unique traits. That alone will make any differentiation hard. If there are elves everywhere, and they are all the same three standard tastes of elves (snobby-mage-elf, noble-savage-elf and probably-evil-colour-switched-elf) they have very little personality beyond that, no matter if they gain a +2 bonus to Dexterity (as is the default) or +2 to Wisdom, because you want to play a Druid. To create differentiation, versatility and a distinct taste for each species and culture, you need a fixed, campaign-specific background for each one of these critters.
The difference between the Fellowhip Elves and the D&D Elves is not the way “I see good” is worded; it is that the Fellowship is based on the very distinct and fleshed out Tolkienian literature, with all its genealogy and its Feanors and so on. I don’t know much about Middle Earth beyond the most superficial stuff, Tolkien does very little for me. But even I understand that there is tons of (subjectively: very boring) lore to explore.

However you need to say no to some species, because there is only so much campaign space for fully fleshed out species, especially if you want to avoid to portray non-humans as cultural monoliths who are all the same (which is another way of saying: boring clichés).
A very good example is the original selection of PC races for Dark Sun: The elves are different. The dwarves are less different, culturally, but very much visually (no beard! Such a simple way to indicate a contrast to the typical forgotten realms stout little grumpy guy). Gnomes, one of the PHB’s standard races, were gone completely – but we also gained three additional creatures unique to the setting, with the Kreen, Muls and Half-Giants. And, famously, the fat little balls of butter who used to be more human than human and a stand-in for idyllic rural bliss, became the cannibalistic halflings of Athas. The setting had an instant, distinctive quality, because it was obviously different from any other setting, the character selection was unique and had, sorry for the pun, actual character.
So, I’d rather have strong elves than trying to push goliaths down the figurative throat of my campaign setting or try to find a niche for something as extra as a tortle. I’d rather have a somewhat consistent and accessible campaign world, thank you very much (Now, the correct way to handle this would be to just get rid of racial stat adjustments all together and offer more other features, hopefully ones more distinguishing than Darkvision). A good campaign setting should have no more five major player species, and maybe again as many half-breeds mutants and unique things that require only very little introduction. Anything more than that makes the setting too inaccessible. After all, you want your PC Elf Paladin be able to understand the rivalries between the Elven city states well enough that he is able to make informed decisions.

That said, in my opinion, it is a tad silly that a 3 foot halfling, no matter how muscular he is, should be stronger than a halfway trained, 7 foot half-ogre. This mismatch of mechanics and inner logic hurts my sense of aesthetics, but it is also strongly antagonistic to the campaign setting’s verisimilitude, and that is almost as close to an inexcusable offense at game design as adding different racial stats to different human ethnicities.

However, this matters little. I am an old hand at this whole roleplaying thing, I am not inflicted with the fetishization of RAW and are fully capable to introduce minimal and maximum ability scores, if I were so inclined. Generally speaking, when I don’t like a rule element, I don’t use it, or change to something that I find more intriguing. Campaign rules should be, just as the selection of races, classes and subclasses (“no, no matter how often you ask, there are psionics in this campaign, and all psionic subclasses are auto-banned.”) adjusted to the specific qualities of the campaign. This is a very natural part of Dungeon Mastering, or playing RPGs in general, at least to me.

For some people however, this is hard. There is a group of players who feel that upholding the Rules as Written as some sort of dogma is a good thing. For these players, deviating from RAW (even when using the official alternative rules in the DMG) is a source of frustration.
You might think this approach is a bit tedious (and don’t worry, I do), but that doesn’t mean one shouldn’t be empathetic: the frustration is real. And players can be frustrated about this discrepancy, expecting a dwarf to be tough (high CON) and maybe headstrong (high WIS), but not necessarily light-footed dancers (high DEX) and poets (high CHA), for the same reason I find it frustrating: it hurts their sense of aesthetics and verisimilitude. But, unused to see things they don’t like as a natural occurrence and just another opportunity to adjust the game to your individual need, they are miffed. And, they have a reason why. They might even be correct.



A very good step-by-step guideline for handling species, backgrounds and their further development.

This sounds quite good in theory, but I can see so many ways that tryin to implementing this in actual game mechanics could fail. But yes, on principle something like this seems the best way to go.

[Dienekes]

I think your argument is pretty air tight. 5e races have pretty much been the equivalent of hats for awhile now. But Tasha's just made it more egregious to the point you couldn't really ignore it. Elves no longer are the lithe naturally graceful creatures of lore. Because they don't really have any bonuses to dexterity or vision anymore. They have a bonus ability to anything and a bonus skill to anything.

Now, there are several ways to look at this. Two of which are the bonus to Dexterity and the proficiency in Perception aren't really that great. As you said, they're nothing particularly special. Which makes elves not particularly special. Therefore, elves are a hat.

The other view is that these bonuses represent these features of being an elf and therefore that is what an elf is. They are satisfied with these token considerations of what it means to be an elf. Elves are lithe and move elegantly, therefore they have a +2 to Dex. Elves have naturally great eyesight therefore they have proficiency in Perception. The mechanics reflect their view of the game's reality. Some might not think it's the best representation possible, but they may justify it that doing otherwise would potentially break the delicate balance of the game system and therefore they are willing to accept this little bit of verisimilitude as worth preserving.


Personally, I'm of the opinion, 5e races have always been pretty dull. I care more about the direction they're taking races I like than these figgly little benefits. I despise what MotM did to the lore of my precious Hobgoblins, even as I admit the mechanics work better for the game. But, if I wanted an interesting take on races I'd be looking at games like Burning Wheel. There if you play an elf you are playing an elf. Not just a Fighter or Rogue with some token elven traits. You are an elf, and the very mechanics of the game effect your mentality and abilities at a very fundamental level. A D&D player can play an elf as essentially a human with pointy ears, a Burning Wheel player would have to fight against the very system to try to do that.

There are pros and cons to both ways of doing it. Race as hat allows more flexibility for the players. Race as an involved roleplaying experience can create a more refined notion of playing something other than yourself, and help create a truly inhuman experience.

Neither is really better than the other. It's just what your preference is.

[Sparky McDibben]

Perhaps those folks should go and play a different game that doesn't make them uncomfortable.

I mean, doesn't that argument cut both ways? Wouldn't they be equally justified in suggesting you go play an older edition and leave 5E to them? I don't think gatekeeping the hobby is a productive exercise, and it also opens us up to being left behind by the game we're trying to keep from changing. You're not necessarily wrong to want to keep things a certain way (we all do!) but this is clearly a stumbling block for folks.


I mean, having racial traits at all is bio-essentialism. Having monsters or animals with different stat blocks is bio-essentialism. At the end of the day, there's only one human race, so all humans have the same bio-essential traits. Isn't that enough?

I think you are misunderstanding bio-essentialism. (https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095507973) The problem is not that some creatures have biologically innate abilities. The problem is saying that your biology determines how you will behave (e.g., because I am a man, I will be aggressive; in a fantasy world, this can be framed as, "Because I am an elf, I will be graceful and delicate").


Nevertheless, the solution I proposed in my last post should be amenable even to you, as it follows your suggestion to split off genetics and culture and remove racial ASIs (albeit for different reasons). So again, maybe we actually can make almost everyone happy here.

Without seeing your full design, I can't give an unconditional thumbs-up, but I certainly think it's a big honkin' step in the right direction! :)

[Dienekes]

I mean, doesn't that argument cut both ways? Wouldn't they be equally justified in suggesting you go play an older edition and leave 5E to them? I don't think gatekeeping the hobby is a productive exercise, and it also opens us up to being left behind by the game we're trying to keep from changing. You're not necessarily wrong to want to keep things a certain way (we all do!) but this is clearly a stumbling block for folks.



I think you are misunderstanding bio-essentialism. (https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095507973) The problem is not that some creatures have biologically innate abilities. The problem is saying that your biology determines how you will behave (e.g., because I am a man, I will be aggressive; in a fantasy world, this can be framed as, "Because I am an elf, I will be graceful and delicate").



This is an odd argument, because biology does effect how we behave. All the time. The development of our brains and the instincts written on our DNA very much directly effect how we act as humans. It’s why a chimpanzee is pretty much always dangerous regardless of how well trained it can be. It’s why Koko, the worlds most well educated and intelligent gorilla could still bend steel. And it can even be used to create some rather interesting structures. Beavers seem to have this innate need to build dams, even when not taught the intricacies from a parent. Spiders spin rather complex webs or build burrows.

Bio-essentialism is of course bogus when trying to explain some racist ideology of why “all X people act like that.” But we’re not using mechanics to reflect other humans differently. We are literally showing how different species are different. If elves are graceful and elegant, then they are graceful and elegant, because elves are not human.

[OldTrees1]

I think you are misunderstanding bio-essentialism. (https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095507973) The problem is not that some creatures have biologically innate abilities. The problem is saying that your biology determines how you will behave (e.g., because I am a man, I will be aggressive; in a fantasy world, this can be framed as, "Because I am an elf, I will be graceful and delicate").

In which case, isn't D&D a counterargument to bio-essentialism? Bio-essentialism is claiming a negligible difference in IRL human biology would result in an overblown difference in behavior & ability.

D&D says even a significant biological difference between alien species (warforged and plasmoid) does not have any significant limitations on how you behave (there are no rules restricting personality) and even bigger biological differences (say between a human and an ogre) are smaller than the 16 point variation within a species. Thereby outright dismissing the behavior bio-essentialism and tearing the ability bio-essentialism to shreds by using an exaggerated fictional case to demonstrate how overblown bio-essentialism ability claims are for IRL humans. (Or at least that is what the 6 strength ogre archmage told me)


Still, I understand the desire to remove fixed ASIs. It would make it harder to have hill giant PCs, and thus contributes to the hats problem.

[Sorinth]

My concern is more that we're shifting toward a system where stats don't matter at all. Right now if you removed stats entirely and gave each class +5 proficiency bonus at first level and had it gain a +1 every 3 levels, you would have to change shockingly little for the game to remain basically the same.

Well that has nothing to do with race selection being meaningful but ok. The question is why is that a problem, because I can see the argument for why rolling good/bad stats should not be all that important in terms of overall power. Let's not forget the old way of dealing with poor stats was to commit suicide and then roll up a new character which hardly seems like what they should be aiming for. And in point buy stats don't really matter to begin with since everybody is the same.

[Damon_Tor]

Well that has nothing to do with race selection being meaningful but ok.

Because "race" is a lever I can pull which has trickle-down effects to other aspects of my build, and the less meaningful that choice is, the fewer meaningful choices there are in the process. So "race matters" is a issue for me because "many things should matter" is my preferred game experience.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'm conflicted on this.

First, I dislike the Tasha's changes (and the further direction they're taking races). For a bunch of reasons. But yes, it feels like they're moving toward a world where "race" is just "pick a feature you like", disconnected from anything connected to the actual world they inhabit.

Second, I like the idea of splitting culture from biology. It seems to be what sub-races should have been.

Except...biology does influence culture. And, in a fantasy world, culture influences biology (over generations). A race that lives 700 years should not think or act like one that lives 30. A race that is 7-8' tall should not think or act like one that is 3' tall and can fly. One native to the jungles should not act or think like one that is native to deep underwater or the depths of space. Having celestial influence should change how you are; a culture of celestial-influenced people should be different than one with fiendish or elemental influence.


Let's take three "races" (I've taken to calling them lineages, but whatever). Gwerin (high elves), orcs, and goblins.

Gwerin have been breeding themselves intentionally for arcane affinity for the last 20 millennia or so. Intentionally so--they exiled those that couldn't or wouldn't use arcane magic back in the 2nd age, resulting in the ihimisi (wood elf)/gwerin split. And ending that age, once the ihmisi developed primal magic and sweet-talked one of the moons into crashing into the gwerin empire's capital. Up until 250 years ago, they lived nearly unbounded amounts of time (in principle, infighting/violence or ennui usually killed them after a millennium or so). Since the Cataclysm, they live only 200 years or so. So yes, a gwerin will be better at learning to be a wizard than any random person as a matter of biology. And anywhere you have substantial numbers of gwerin, one of the adulthood requirements is being able to cast an arcane spell. Any arcane spell. Those who can't aren't allowed to have children. And marriages are arranged for the purpose of breeding arcane power (among other things).

Orcs, on the other hand, were originally a manufactured race--created by the ihmisi as soldiers in the war against the gwerin, just as humans were created on the other side. As such, they were constructed with a link to primal power, activated via emotion, granting enhanced speed, strength, and pain tolerance. One bad "accident" with a demon prince later (a few thousand years later) and that Rage became a trigger for bloodlust. Due to <shenanigans>, the women were mostly spared the worst of the Rage, as were rare males. Those became shamans and other leaders. The Cataclysm broke the demonic link; the Rage is now just a link to primal power again. Although many still long for the "high" of the bloodlust, wallowing in the freedom from thought and the adrenaline and sense of power. For literal millennia, orcs were considered bestial, turning their bloodlust against slaves and other tribes. They're as civilized as anyone now, but some legacies die hard. And the built-in primal strength still abides. So an orc is just a better barbarian (being the OG barbarians) than just about anyone else. And their cultures still value physical strength and primal power and are less favorable toward the arcane.

Goblins are the weirdest ones. An individual goblin has very little sense of object permanence and almost no longer-term memory (beyond a few minutes). Their language is, for the most part, intrinsic to them. Combine the curiosity of a kitten with human-scale intelligence (other than the memory issues) and you have a tribeless goblin. But if you put a goblin in a tribe, the members of the tribe share (unconsciously) their memories, including parts of their working memory. A tribe of goblins isn't quite a hive mind, but it's best to think of the tribe as the fundamental unit, rather than the individual. Most of their intra-tribal communication is glosses on bits of memory/thoughts passed around at the sub-conscious level. Goblins also are intrinsically chaotic in the "prone to rapid changes" sense. They develop obsessions...which then they drop when someone else in the tribe has a "better" one. Since that's not viable societally, they've developed a way of pouring their "tribe's energy" into a few individuals, who physically change into hobgoblins (and bugbears). These individuals are insulated from the tides of obsession and have their own memories (with some access to the tribal memory as well), and so act as rudders and leaders, especially in times of stress. But the transformation isn't permanent--a tribe under stress (such as having to migrate due to climatic changes) may have a few dozen hobgoblins. But once the stress ends, the hobs revert back to regular goblins, with only small changes. So goblin societies are strange. For purely biological reasons. And a goblin (as opposed to a hobgoblin) isn't a playable race at all--since they're so bound up by their tribe, they can't function independently.

In all these cases, the biological history has influenced the cultures substantially. And vice versa (especially for the gwerin, who have actively practiced biological modification for culturally-desirable traits). How should that translate to the playable implementation? Dunno. Haven't figured that out yet. Haven't figured out the right cleavage points.


My current model (for an in-progress homebrew overhaul) is that every character chooses a lineage, a culture, and a background.
* Lineage is mostly the biological parts. Plus those cultural ones strongly influenced by biology. With "duplicates" where there are two or more major paths.
Lineages grant a +1 to an ability, as well as two features (with some choices depending on biology).

* Culture is either a generic thing (Arcane Cultures grant XYZ, Militant cultures grant ABC, Maritime ones PDQ, etc) or a specific, world-bound thing (being from Byss means you grew up around the sea and kami + ancestor worship, while being from Shinevog means that you grew up around crazy, anti-tradition, tech-and-progress-obsessed people, with lots of explosions, and growing up in the HKR means that you grew up in a strongly conformist, uber-religious (in the god-worshipping sense) community).
Cultures grant +1/+1 (sometimes flexibly, sometimes not, but with no option to get +3), some proficiencies (languages at bare minimum, plus tools and skills), and a cultural feature (or two).

* Background is your individual place within society before you started adventuring, and is basically stock. The details depend on your culture--the HKR doesn't have nobles (being a fantasy theocratic communistic society), but it does have some animals that are more equal than other animals. Shinevog is utterly landlocked, so being a sailor from there just doesn't work. But you could be a caravaneer, which swaps water vehicles for land vehicles. Etc.

[Greywander]

I mean, doesn't that argument cut both ways? Wouldn't they be equally justified in suggesting you go play an older edition and leave 5E to them?
No? There's a huge difference between redirecting someone to a thing that is already better suited to them vs. hijacking a pre-existing thing and forcing the former fans to go elsewhere. See my party music metaphor. Forcefully changing the music at a party and telling everyone who doesn't like it to go to somewhere else when they're already there is rude at best.


I don't think gatekeeping the hobby is a productive exercise, and it also opens us up to being left behind by the game we're trying to keep from changing. You're not necessarily wrong to want to keep things a certain way (we all do!) but this is clearly a stumbling block for folks.
Gatekeeping is neither good nor bad, it is a tool that can be used or misused. Used properly, it keeps out bad actors who have no interest in the hobby and are only looking to cause trouble.

I've seen it happen repeatedly where bad actors invade a hobby, speak the evils of gatekeeping when the fandom reacts negatively, then force out the old fans once they've taken over. They're not really against gatekeeping, they're only against being gatekept.

Also, not all change is good. I'm perfectly fine being left behind if everyone else is rushing off a cliff. Not every idea is worth entertaining, and certainly not worth implementing.


I think you are misunderstanding bio-essentialism. (https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095507973) The problem is not that some creatures have biologically innate abilities. The problem is saying that your biology determines how you will behave (e.g., because I am a man, I will be aggressive; in a fantasy world, this can be framed as, "Because I am an elf, I will be graceful and delicate").
Weirdly, when I try to look up information on biological essentialism, I keep getting directed to things on "gender essentialism". I'm not sure either of us really knows what this term is meant to mean, so maybe we should just say what we mean plainly instead of using a vague and ill-defined buzzword. Also, I have a suspicion that this is a political term.

In any case, in the debate of Nature vs. Nurture, I think we can agree that it's a mix of both. An elf is more graceful than a human in the same way that a swan is more graceful than a hippopotamus. Through training, a human can become more graceful, but they can't change their underlying nature. Depending on the degree to which the elf is more graceful, a human may or may not be able to catch up to them, but can't compete against an elf who also trains to be more graceful. In terms of ASIs, this would be like having racial ASIs that also increase your max for those ability scores. Which sounds like a bad idea in terms of game design.


Without seeing your full design, I can't give an unconditional thumbs-up, but I certainly think it's a big honkin' step in the right direction! :)
Well, I'm not going to write up a full list of lineage options, but I could summarize how I might do it if I did.

Racial traits are all innate/genetic, and can easily be swapped out if e.g. that character gets Reincarnated as a different race. This means traits like ASIs or proficiencies aren't viable racial traits, since they can't be easily swapped out without creating confusion. Each race would have traits that would evoke the idea of that race being naturally strong or graceful or tough or whatever, but without touching ability scores. For example, orcs could have double carrying capacity, dwarves might reduce all damage taken by 1, elves might have a higher move speed and see twice as far, and so on. It would be more refined than that, but it at least gives you an idea.

In addition to a race, you would also choose a nation or culture. This gives you bonuses according to the culture you grew up in. For example, if you grew up in a trade capital, you might get extra languages and a tool proficiency. If in a kingdom of mages, you might get a few spells or cantrips. Basically, just think of this like racial traits that aren't genetic. You'd keep this if you got reincarnated, since it has to do with upbringing and not genetics.

I'd kind of also like to include something to do with climate, e.g. if you grew up on a tropical island you might have advantage on saves vs. extreme heat and get a swim speed, while if you grew up in the mountains you'd have advantage on saves vs. extreme cold and get a climb speed. Maybe also a small bonus depending on which deity you serve, but YMMV on that one.

All of this would give players a lot more room to customize their character, which is always fun. And it doesn't shoehorn races into particular classes, though certain racial traits will likely still benefit certain builds more than others. I actually posted a thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?644883-What-lineage-should-be-Race-culture-home-environment-faith-and-background) on this subject a while back, if you care to read it.

[Sorinth]

Because "race" is a lever I can pull which has trickle-down effects to other aspects of my build, and the less meaningful that choice is, the fewer meaningful choices there are in the process. So "race matters" is a issue for me because "many things should matter" is my preferred game experience.

I get that but fixed racial asis are not necessary for there to be levers. Replace +2 Con with a racial feature like Relentless Endurance and you have more of a lever and just if not more thematic to show the race being tough. So like I said I agree that race choice should matter, but it shouldn't be a question of asis because those are both bland and powerful so they take up a lot of the power budget and don't actually offer interesting levers to play with.

[GooeyChewie]

I would start with the goals:

•We want to make players feel like they are not limited to certain class/race combinations.
•In cases where a race thematically pairs well with a certain class, we want that race to be able to bring a bit of that class flavor into the build even when playing other classes.
•In cases where a race thematically pairs well with a certain class, we want to avoid disincentivizing that race/class pair on account of redundant features.

With those goals in mind, I would set up the racial features as follows:

•Ability score increases do not come from race. They instead come from a combination of starting class and background, set up in such a way that you can effectively get +2/+1 or +1/+1/+1 but chosen for reasons which relate to the specific character instead of just because the character is a D&D adventurer.
•Each race has a list of 'major' and 'minor' features. The terms 'major' and 'minor' refer to their expected impact on the game, with major features likely affecting gameplay and minor features being mostly ribbons. When creating your character, you choose two major features and two minor features available to your race. (I say two, but the exact number could change based on playtesting.)
•Each race has a separate "vision" category, which may have multiple options. The three generic options are standard vision, darkvision, and superior darkvision with sunlight sensitivity. No race would be forced into that last category. Some races may have non-standard options (like Fire Genasi, with their red-tinted darkvision).
•Major and minor features would be designed in such a way that players can always choose major and minor features which will not be redundant with their class. For example, if a race has weapon/armor proficiencies as options, they would also have options which would be attractive to martial classes which would already have those proficiencies.
•Instead of subraces, many of the features we currently think of as subrace features would be selectable features. Players could re-create Wood Elves or High Elves if they want, or they could mix it up and have an Elf with (for example) Mask of the Wild and Cantrip.
•Setting-specific source books would have additional features available to races which appear in those setting. For example, Eberron Dragonmarks would be additional features which players could select in the place of their normal racial features.

[Psyren]

Unlike Fellowship, in 5e you can't pull a genuine "Legolas, what do your elf eyes see?" ((Well, you can. I have. But the sharpest elf eyes are matched by the sharpest human eyes. So elf eyes are nothing special.)

Why not? Just because some members of other races can eventually match elf eyes doesn't mean elf eyes aren't special. And LotR is generally a low-level campaign setting, with some exceptions largely dating from before the Third Age, so stat caps aren't relevant when most characters won't reach them. Legolas has better eyesight than the others because his race gave him advantages that the other Fellowship members are either unable or highly unlikely to reach; nothing about Tasha's made that state of affairs impossible.

[Liquor Box]

The issue with stat bonuses to race is that it promotes bio-essentialism, which has a nasty history in the real world.

If you are suggesting bio-essentialism is a bad thing I think you have to explain it a little better. The real world has a nasty history with violence, but noone is suggesting that it should be excluded from the discussion.

We can probably agree that it is bad to suggest that different human ethnicities are preprogrammed to be more or less intelligent than one another. But DnD doesn't do that. The different playable creature types in DnD are clearly much more different from one another than ethnicities are from one another.

Indeed, many settings have several ethnicities of humans, with no stat differences. It seems to me that a system where different human ethnicities have no stat differences, and different creatures (orcs and the like) by contrast do, it reinforces the idea that there is no inherent intelligence (or other ability score) difference between human ethnicities.

[Notafish]

I think the Tasha's options move the racial implementation pretty close to where I'd want it for this system - player characters are roughly aligned with each other in terms of starting ability, although they might differ significantly from the average for other members of their race. The races are skins, darkvision, and the occaisional spell, and I think that's fine - it still gives plenty of options for telling stories about ancestry and culture.

For conveying the feel of distinct species, some homebrew or creative DM-ing might be required, and ymmv depending on taste. For instance, if I wanted to increase the Dwarfyness of the Dwarves, I might reinterpret Stonecutting as an innate connection to the "memory" of worked stone - if they succeed on a History check on stonework, they get a short vision of its creation rather than "you are confident that the Drow made this temple". Swapping Darkvision for Blindsight or Tremorsense might also help to vary the flavors a bit - maybe there are a few cases where it leads to imbalance, but mostly it seems like a low impact way to vary the feel of play without much extra work. Orcs/Elves/Half-Elves=darkvision Dwarves/Gnomes=tremorsense Tieflings:blindsight )

I do wish that there was more advice for DMs doing things like limiting the list of possible races to support worldbuilding. I know that there are notes saying "check with your DM" on top of things like Aaracocra, but newer DMs should feel empowered to limit the races in the campaign setting, and have advice for how to present those options. "No Warforged in this campaign" feels restrictive; "Our starting characters come from a city with Dwarves, Humans, Halflings, Elves, and Tieflings; please pick one of these, but let me know if it doesn't work for your concept/build" might be a better approach.

Despite the obvious connections between D&D and LotR, the standard 5e rules are not good for conveying the feel of a Tolkien-style adventure - a good 5e Middle Earth setting wouldn't just need to re-write the rules for character creation, it would also need to re-write the rules for spellcasting, and likely class progression and other parts of the rules as well. I'm not even sure 5e would be a good template for a LotR TTRPG.

[Witty Username]

If the stat modifiers don't do enough to differentiate the races, then that's an argument to increase their extent (or to make the caps for each different), not to do away with them.


Or to use other means to differentiate races, which I personally prefer at least in 5e's model. Humans didn't need stat bonuses in any other edition to be the most effective race, and that trend arguably continues in 5e with the variant human. Extra feats, extra skills, in the old ways no level caps or stat restrictions. No bonuses to anything and they were bloody everywhere.

5e has a few examples of this kinda thing, mimicy for kenku, pack tactics for kobolds, wings for aarakocra. But for the most part, racial features are boring relying on the stat adjustments to carry basically the entire race's identity in some cases (dragonborn).

--
The first thing I would likely do is shift power away from ability scores in how they apply to class power. 5e's bounded accuracy creates this issue of necessity, the player is not expected to have increasing numbers to hit target points at particular levels, but greatly incentivized to take bonuses that increase there prime features. And has this weird class bleed effect, where ability scores are more meaningful to party role than class. shifting prime features towards proficiency more and ability scores less would solve a number of problems in race design.

But specifically race design, more features and more powerful features.
Take say Goliath:
I would add the ability to use oversized weapons without penalty, maybe large sized as well but powerful build should be sufficient.

For elves, if you want grace, give them double dex bonus on ability checks, now dancing, acrobatics and such will all be supernaturally powerful, not high human with the numbers skewed high.

[TaiLiu]

Thanks for the responses, everyone! :smallsmile:


Stat allocation methods are by far the least interesting part of how races get designed and presented. With moveable ability scores and ample ASI, it's really just slightly different roads to the same destination.

Size and speed are the crunch aspects where I feel the new design trends are more pushing towards the kind of bland homogeneity that people complain about. 30 foot speeds, and most traditionally Small creatures can choose Medium. That bothers me a bit.
I agree with your point about stats, but not about your point re: size and speed. I think those are uninteresting mechanics, too.


What I mainly want is racial features that characterize the race as a people, and give flavorful gameplay verbs to characters of that race.

By the first part, I mean stuff like Trance & Stonecunning. If you've never heard of an Elf or a Dwarf before (somehow), these features clue you in on something about them. But WotC has understandably developed an allergy to saying "X group is like Y", so they are now at pains to emphasize diversity over characterization.

By the second part, I mainly mean that I'm a big fan of racial features that are not redundant with other game features. I want there to be stuff that only Your Race can do; lots of races sadly tend to be grab-bags of stuff you can get from other game features: skills, spells, tools, weapons & armor, unarmed attacks, AC, situational advantage.

All that to say, I'm fine with just "people in hats", but they should be, like, really distinctive and fancy hats.
Right! Unique racial features. And defining racial features. And really fancy hats.



What would a good implementation look like? Well, one thing I think should be taken into account for starters is the Reincarnate spell. Now, you could just axe that spell from the game, but I find it kind of interesting, and removing the spell doesn't really fix the problem, as there are any number of other ways to change a creature from one race to another. Instead, I'd first recommend splitting off a creature's genetic/innate traits from their cultural traits. For simplicity, let's just refer to the former as "race" and the latter as "background". Only traits that can be easily swapped out in the event of a race change should be used as racial traits. For example, skill proficiencies are a poor choice, and would do better under a cultural background.

On the subject of ASIs, those are problematic, too. What if I get changed from a race without a STR bonus to a race with a STR bonus? What if my STR was already maxed out before the change? Should I just keep my previous scores and not apply the new racial ASIs? What if those races don't have the same number of ASIs? Not only that, but racial ASIs are rather lazy. Personally, I would rather replace racial ASIs with interesting traits that retain the feel of a particular race being strong or intelligent or graceful or hardy, but expressed in a way that doesn't mechanically pidgeonhole them into specific classes. An orc wizard with x2 carrying capacity (instead of a STR bonus) can still dump STR, but they can carry a lot more than a wizard normally would be able to, which could still be pretty useful without needing to invest in STR.

Doing it that way will, I think, make races more interesting and unique. I think this could actually get pretty close to making everyone happy.
Right, absolutely. I do think part of the work will have to be balancing different traits against one another, though. Bonuses to carrying capacity matter very little; bonuses to perception matter a lot.



Your argument seems sound but we should emphasize wanting to solve the problem rather than worrying about if it always existed. It has been better and worse over time. We can learn lessons from those changes.

Step 1: Species should be stronger. Assign more build points to species design. This allows for impactful features that currently get cut for lack of room or downsized to minimal impact.

Step 2: Remove all cultural features from species and strengthen backgrounds (this might require splitting background into multiple parts). High Elf's +1 cantrip is from your background growing up in a society that stressed a foundational education in magic. That would apply to an Orc growing up in Thay. Removing these features gives you space to replace them with more actual "this is not a human" biological features.

Edit Step 2b: Some species, like humans, don't have enough "this is not a human" biological features. You have a choice to make. Either you make them less human or you grant them a stronger background. Rather that use cultural features in the species, just say this species gets more backgrounds or stronger backgrounds. That keeps all the cultural features out of the species.

Step 3: (optional but a good idea): Have species gain or improve features later. Some features are not appropriate for 1st level but help avoid the "species as hats" problem at 11th level. This also helps handle species that can't fit in their entirety at 1st level (Dragons for example).

Step 4: Be more willing to include (in a splatbook rather than core) species that are already more divergent from humans. Warforged and Plasmoids are a good start. These species are more resilient to the "species as hats problem", but don't get complacent.

Step 5: Any difference you decide can't exist, won't exist (Giants can't exist as 5E PCs). Figure out where you will draw that line. Otherwise you will step over it in both directions. Both directions are bad.

Step 6: Fix the systemic lore problems and don't introduce new ones. Speak clearer where there was miscommunication. Give more examples rather than a single monolithic example. Hire a myconoid onto your writing staff. Respectfully handling the difference between divergent fictional species can be different from respectfully handling the diversity within a single real species. Do both.
These seem like helpful guidelines. I agree that backgrounds are boring, too, so maybe changing race and background in conjunction will be helpful. It's not immediately clear to me that D&D races and culture are so cleanly separated, but that might just be my own imaginative limitation.



I'd go back to 2E style races, where every nonhuman had a bonus and a penalty. Remember, elves and dwarves aren't humans, even funny looking humans. Elves may have enough common DNA to crossbreed, but lions and tigers can do that too.

You want to get back to the LOTR style basics of what makes each race unique.
If you're referring to stats, I'm not sure I agree. Bonuses and penalties are somewhat dull and don't make race unique.



The main problem is the kitchen sink approach of including every. single. species in every. single. setting, without any distinguishing elements or unique traits. That alone will make any differentiation hard. If there are elves everywhere, and they are all the same three standard tastes of elves (snobby-mage-elf, noble-savage-elf and probably-evil-colour-switched-elf) they have very little personality beyond that, no matter if they gain a +2 bonus to Dexterity (as is the default) or +2 to Wisdom, because you want to play a Druid. To create differentiation, versatility and a distinct taste for each species and culture, you need a fixed, campaign-specific background for each one of these critters.
The difference between the Fellowhip Elves and the D&D Elves is not the way “I see good” is worded; it is that the Fellowship is based on the very distinct and fleshed out Tolkienian literature, with all its genealogy and its Feanors and so on. I don’t know much about Middle Earth beyond the most superficial stuff, Tolkien does very little for me. But even I understand that there is tons of (subjectively: very boring) lore to explore.

However you need to say no to some species, because there is only so much campaign space for fully fleshed out species, especially if you want to avoid to portray non-humans as cultural monoliths who are all the same (which is another way of saying: boring cliches).
A very good example is the original selection of PC races for Dark Sun: The elves are different. The dwarves are less different, culturally, but very much visually (no beard! Such a simple way to indicate a contrast to the typical forgotten realms stout little grumpy guy). Gnomes, one of the PHB’s standard races, were gone completely – but we also gained three additional creatures unique to the setting, with the Kreen, Muls and Half-Giants. And, famously, the fat little balls of butter who used to be more human than human and a stand-in for idyllic rural bliss, became the cannibalistic halflings of Athas. The setting had an instant, distinctive quality, because it was obviously different from any other setting, the character selection was unique and had, sorry for the pun, actual character.
So, I’d rather have strong elves than trying to push goliaths down the figurative throat of my campaign setting or try to find a niche for something as extra as a tortle. I’d rather have a somewhat consistent and accessible campaign world, thank you very much (Now, the correct way to handle this would be to just get rid of racial stat adjustments all together and offer more other features, hopefully ones more distinguishing than Darkvision). A good campaign setting should have no more five major player species, and maybe again as many half-breeds mutants and unique things that require only very little introduction. Anything more than that makes the setting too inaccessible. After all, you want your PC Elf Paladin be able to understand the rivalries between the Elven city states well enough that he is able to make informed decisions.

That said, in my opinion, it is a tad silly that a 3 foot halfling, no matter how muscular he is, should be stronger than a halfway trained, 7 foot half-ogre. This mismatch of mechanics and inner logic hurts my sense of aesthetics, but it is also strongly antagonistic to the campaign setting’s verisimilitude, and that is almost as close to an inexcusable offense at game design as adding different racial stats to different human ethnicities.

However, this matters little. I am an old hand at this whole roleplaying thing, I am not inflicted with the fetishization of RAW and are fully capable to introduce minimal and maximum ability scores, if I were so inclined. Generally speaking, when I don’t like a rule element, I don’t use it, or change to something that I find more intriguing. Campaign rules should be, just as the selection of races, classes and subclasses (“no, no matter how often you ask, there are psionics in this campaign, and all psionic subclasses are auto-banned.”) adjusted to the specific qualities of the campaign. This is a very natural part of Dungeon Mastering, or playing RPGs in general, at least to me.

For some people however, this is hard. There is a group of players who feel that upholding the Rules as Written as some sort of dogma is a good thing. For these players, deviating from RAW (even when using the official alternative rules in the DMG) is a source of frustration.
You might think this approach is a bit tedious (and don’t worry, I do), but that doesn’t mean one shouldn’t be empathetic: the frustration is real. And players can be frustrated about this discrepancy, expecting a dwarf to be tough (high CON) and maybe headstrong (high WIS), but not necessarily light-footed dancers (high DEX) and poets (high CHA), for the same reason I find it frustrating: it hurts their sense of aesthetics and verisimilitude. But, unused to see things they don’t like as a natural occurrence and just another opportunity to adjust the game to your individual need, they are miffed. And, they have a reason why. They might even be correct.


This sounds quite good in theory, but I can see so many ways that tryin to implementing this in actual game mechanics could fail. But yes, on principle something like this seems the best way to go.
As you note with Dark Sun, I think the kitchen sink problem isn't a problem in some campaign settings. You're right that too many species can make things real messy and incoherent. I guess I disagree with your stance on stats and verisimilitude, though. Once, before Tasha's, I rolled real well and decided to play a Halfling Barbarian. Her +3 strength meant that she really was stronger than most orcs. I absolutely loved that character. Being ridiculously strong and playing against type was so much fun. So it's possible that we want different things from race.



I think your argument is pretty air tight. 5e races have pretty much been the equivalent of hats for awhile now. But Tasha's just made it more egregious to the point you couldn't really ignore it. Elves no longer are the lithe naturally graceful creatures of lore. Because they don't really have any bonuses to dexterity or vision anymore. They have a bonus ability to anything and a bonus skill to anything.

Now, there are several ways to look at this. Two of which are the bonus to Dexterity and the proficiency in Perception aren't really that great. As you said, they're nothing particularly special. Which makes elves not particularly special. Therefore, elves are a hat.

The other view is that these bonuses represent these features of being an elf and therefore that is what an elf is. They are satisfied with these token considerations of what it means to be an elf. Elves are lithe and move elegantly, therefore they have a +2 to Dex. Elves have naturally great eyesight therefore they have proficiency in Perception. The mechanics reflect their view of the game's reality. Some might not think it's the best representation possible, but they may justify it that doing otherwise would potentially break the delicate balance of the game system and therefore they are willing to accept this little bit of verisimilitude as worth preserving.


Personally, I'm of the opinion, 5e races have always been pretty dull. I care more about the direction they're taking races I like than these figgly little benefits. I despise what MotM did to the lore of my precious Hobgoblins, even as I admit the mechanics work better for the game. But, if I wanted an interesting take on races I'd be looking at games like Burning Wheel. There if you play an elf you are playing an elf. Not just a Fighter or Rogue with some token elven traits. You are an elf, and the very mechanics of the game effect your mentality and abilities at a very fundamental level. A D&D player can play an elf as essentially a human with pointy ears, a Burning Wheel player would have to fight against the very system to try to do that.

There are pros and cons to both ways of doing it. Race as hat allows more flexibility for the players. Race as an involved roleplaying experience can create a more refined notion of playing something other than yourself, and help create a truly inhuman experience.

Neither is really better than the other. It's just what your preference is.
Yeah, that's not wrong. It's possible that what will make me happy re: race won't make others happy. And I do prefer other systems to D&D.



I'm conflicted on this.

First, I dislike the Tasha's changes (and the further direction they're taking races). For a bunch of reasons. But yes, it feels like they're moving toward a world where "race" is just "pick a feature you like", disconnected from anything connected to the actual world they inhabit.

Second, I like the idea of splitting culture from biology. It seems to be what sub-races should have been.

Except...biology does influence culture. And, in a fantasy world, culture influences biology (over generations). A race that lives 700 years should not think or act like one that lives 30. A race that is 7-8' tall should not think or act like one that is 3' tall and can fly. One native to the jungles should not act or think like one that is native to deep underwater or the depths of space. Having celestial influence should change how you are; a culture of celestial-influenced people should be different than one with fiendish or elemental influence.

My current model (for an in-progress homebrew overhaul) is that every character chooses a lineage, a culture, and a background.
* Lineage is mostly the biological parts. Plus those cultural ones strongly influenced by biology. With "duplicates" where there are two or more major paths.
Lineages grant a +1 to an ability, as well as two features (with some choices depending on biology).

* Culture is either a generic thing (Arcane Cultures grant XYZ, Militant cultures grant ABC, Maritime ones PDQ, etc) or a specific, world-bound thing (being from Byss means you grew up around the sea and kami + ancestor worship, while being from Shinevog means that you grew up around crazy, anti-tradition, tech-and-progress-obsessed people, with lots of explosions, and growing up in the HKR means that you grew up in a strongly conformist, uber-religious (in the god-worshipping sense) community).
Cultures grant +1/+1 (sometimes flexibly, sometimes not, but with no option to get +3), some proficiencies (languages at bare minimum, plus tools and skills), and a cultural feature (or two).

* Background is your individual place within society before you started adventuring, and is basically stock. The details depend on your culture--the HKR doesn't have nobles (being a fantasy theocratic communistic society), but it does have some animals that are more equal than other animals. Shinevog is utterly landlocked, so being a sailor from there just doesn't work. But you could be a caravaneer, which swaps water vehicles for land vehicles. Etc.
Huh. I actually like (or at least don't dislike) the changes Tasha's has made. Race has always been a bit of a bland buffet. The food has just gotten a bit better since.

I agree with you about the mutual influence. Eberron has both of its major elf cultures obsessed with loss, cuz elves live so long that they're not used to losing people. Your lineage, culture, background combo feels a little complex for me. It sounds like it's working great for you and yours, though. I also dislike having the stat bonuses attached to them. I think Tasha's was right to remove stat bonuses from race. Stats are so dull that I don't want them to take up space in race.



I would start with the goals:

•We want to make players feel like they are not limited to certain class/race combinations.
•In cases where a race thematically pairs well with a certain class, we want that race to be able to bring a bit of that class flavor into the build even when playing other classes.
•In cases where a race thematically pairs well with a certain class, we want to avoid disincentivizing that race/class pair on account of redundant features.

With those goals in mind, I would set up the racial features as follows:

•Ability score increases do not come from race. They instead come from a combination of starting class and background, set up in such a way that you can effectively get +2/+1 or +1/+1/+1 but chosen for reasons which relate to the specific character instead of just because the character is a D&D adventurer.
•Each race has a list of 'major' and 'minor' features. The terms 'major' and 'minor' refer to their expected impact on the game, with major features likely affecting gameplay and minor features being mostly ribbons. When creating your character, you choose two major features and two minor features available to your race. (I say two, but the exact number could change based on playtesting.)
•Each race has a separate "vision" category, which may have multiple options. The three generic options are standard vision, darkvision, and superior darkvision with sunlight sensitivity. No race would be forced into that last category. Some races may have non-standard options (like Fire Genasi, with their red-tinted darkvision).
•Major and minor features would be designed in such a way that players can always choose major and minor features which will not be redundant with their class. For example, if a race has weapon/armor proficiencies as options, they would also have options which would be attractive to martial classes which would already have those proficiencies.
•Instead of subraces, many of the features we currently think of as subrace features would be selectable features. Players could re-create Wood Elves or High Elves if they want, or they could mix it up and have an Elf with (for example) Mask of the Wild and Cantrip.
•Setting-specific source books would have additional features available to races which appear in those setting. For example, Eberron Dragonmarks would be additional features which players could select in the place of their normal racial features.
I like your thoughts re: new ways to implement race. I might be inclined to limit it to just one major and possibly one minor feature. That way there's a signature qualitative ability that you can use to display your dwarfness or elfness or whatnot.



Why not? Just because some members of other races can eventually match elf eyes doesn't mean elf eyes aren't special. And LotR is generally a low-level campaign setting, with some exceptions largely dating from before the Third Age, so stat caps aren't relevant when most characters won't reach them. Legolas has better eyesight than the others because his race gave him advantages that the other Fellowship members are either unable or highly unlikely to reach; nothing about Tasha's made that state of affairs impossible.
The elf eyes example was just an example. I'm not interested in emulating LOTR, but I think I wanna have my human ranger and my elven ranger feel distinct. (I'm not sure how else to put it. "Niche protection" comes relatively close, but that's not what I wanna say.)

I dislike Keen Senses cuz other races can pick up proficiency in Perception, including as a racial feature. It's also the case that proficiency is just a +2 to +6 bonus (+2 to +4 in the first two tiers). You're right: that doesn't mean that elf eyes aren't special. What I should've written was that elf eyes aren't unique. I think I want, like, qualitative differences. Not just numbers. That's what Elfsight offers that Keen Senses doesn't.

I also agree with your point about Tasha's. I have no beef with that book. I just wish they changed race more.



I think the Tasha's options move the racial implementation pretty close to where I'd want it for this system - player characters are roughly aligned with each other in terms of starting ability, although they might differ significantly from the average for other members of their race. The races are skins, darkvision, and the occaisional spell, and I think that's fine - it still gives plenty of options for telling stories about ancestry and culture.
Right. Race works fine as it is, and as players and DMs we can absolutely tell those stories. I just think it can be implemented much more richly.


For conveying the feel of distinct species, some homebrew or creative DM-ing might be required, and ymmv depending on taste. For instance, if I wanted to increase the Dwarfyness of the Dwarves, I might reinterpret Stonecutting as an innate connection to the "memory" of worked stone - if they succeed on a History check on stonework, they get a short vision of its creation rather than "you are confident that the Drow made this temple". Swapping Darkvision for Blindsight or Tremorsense might also help to vary the flavors a bit - maybe there are a few cases where it leads to imbalance, but mostly it seems like a low impact way to vary the feel of play without much extra work. Orcs/Elves/Half-Elves=darkvision Dwarves/Gnomes=tremorsense Tieflings:blindsight )
I like this idea. It does seem like it would be a lot of work, but if you limit it to just the races that your players are playing, that might work out. Offer something unique to each ancestry.


I do wish that there was more advice for DMs doing things like limiting the list of possible races to support worldbuilding. I know that there are notes saying "check with your DM" on top of things like Aaracocra, but newer DMs should feel empowered to limit the races in the campaign setting, and have advice for how to present those options. "No Warforged in this campaign" feels restrictive; "Our starting characters come from a city with Dwarves, Humans, Halflings, Elves, and Tieflings; please pick one of these, but let me know if it doesn't work for your concept/build" might be a better approach.
Maybe. I feel like the separate campaign settings kinda offer that already. Warforged in Eberron but not in Dark Sun and all that.


Despite the obvious connections between D&D and LotR, the standard 5e rules are not good for conveying the feel of a Tolkien-style adventure - a good 5e Middle Earth setting wouldn't just need to re-write the rules for character creation, it would also need to re-write the rules for spellcasting, and likely class progression and other parts of the rules as well. I'm not even sure 5e would be a good template for a LotR TTRPG.
I think someone did build a LOTR-inspired system on top of the 5e engine. You're right, though—it's definitely not ideal. My goal isn't to play LOTR with 5e.

[TyGuy]

There's an argument that I don't understand. It takes this form: if you remove racial stat bonuses, race basically becomes a skin or a hat. Since many DMs implement Tasha's optional non-racial stat bonuses, race is basically a skin or a hat.

If 5e didn't have stat caps, or if stat caps moved with racial bonuses, I might be kinda sympathetic to this argument. In principle, an elf with a racial +dexterity bonus has a higher dexterity ceiling than a human. The most graceful elves are truly more graceful than the most graceful humans. But that's not the case in 5e—both races have a +5 dexterity modifier ceiling.

I say kinda sympathetic, cuz it's just a +1 difference in modifiers. That's the second thing that I don't get. Races are already hats. It's not like elves have, like, fundamentally different senses or pattern-recognition abilities or something. Take a look at what the Player's Handbook offers elves in contrast to a game like Fellowship.




Anyone can pick up proficiency in Perception. Elves just get it for free. Unlike Fellowship, in 5e you can't pull a genuine "Legolas, what do your elf eyes see?" (Well, you can. I have. But the sharpest elf eyes are matched by the sharpest human eyes. So elf eyes are nothing special.)

Which is all to say: I think the "race as hat" problem really is a problem, but it's one that's always been there. It might be a consequence of race being a relatively minor mechanic compared to class. Or maybe there's a problem with 5e's mechanical rigidity, or maybe imagination, or something else. Does my argument seem sound? What would good race or ancestry implementation look like?

I forget what game I was looking over, but I saw racial stat caps and thought it was really cool and better at differentiation.
But that kind of mechanic wasn't a part of the two guiding principals of 5e design. Low crunch and bounded accuracy.
Another thing that killed racial ASI in 5e was the +2 / +1 as a baseline. Honestly, I don't think every race has a clear cut thematic ASI bump, but some truly do. Goliath and elf, for example, thematically benefit from generally higher strength or dexterity. Probably at the level of a +2 as well. But maybe the Drow didn't need the +1 charisma.
If I had it my way, 5e would have been released with the following changes.
An ASI is considered a feature just like darkvision. And in its stead, some races get more non-ASI features to reinforce their themeA lot more use and normalization of ASD (ability score decrease)The DMG contains racial feature weights/budgets, including ASI & ASD. The idea being that like CR, as imperfect as it is, DMs could have better guidelines for homebrewing race options buffet styleThe PHB contains a variant rule in which a racial +2 ASI also increases the max from 20 to 22 and a -2 ASD decreases the max to 18

[Sorinth]

Personally, I would like to see them split the cultural components of race out of the mix, so you'd have

Ancestry + Culture + Background + Class

I'm not opposed to this idea but I wonder why there needs to be a split between Background and Culture. Why not just have Background be a powerful part of the build on par with race?

[zzzzzzzz414]

Personally, I quite liked the way the ICON system did it.

There are 4 default player races (or "Kin"), each very visually and physically distinct, each with some lore ties to the history of the setting (though presented as apocrypha and legend rather than anything overly concrete), and each even having their own biological quirks and differences that affect how they view the world/interact with society (like the Trogg, who are functionally immortal but also quite rare due to rarely, if ever, having children, or the Xixo, shrimp people who only live about 4 decades but have perfect eidetic memory). They're all quite flavorful and pretty much completely avoid the problem of being "humans in rubber masks" (with the exception of the actual human expies), or, worse, thinly-veiled caricatures of real life groups. And it's meaningful, something you very much do have to consider at least a bit when coming up with/fleshing out/roleplaying as your character.

It also has no mechanical impact whatsoever. The bits that interact with dice rolls and combat and whatnot in a concrete way are determined by your classes, chosen traits/abilities, and Culture (all of the default options for which contain members from all Kintypes - there is no "Beastfolk Culture", etc). You can pick abilities, classes and stats that emphasize certain unique traits of your character's Kintype/lineage in order to lean into that aspect if you like, and that's it; there is no actual mechanical advantage any has over the others, or any archetype a PC is shoehorned into.

I think this is also helped in part by the fact that the game uses both a strict tactical combat system and a much more freeform non-combat system that's pretty open-ended and freeform in terms of what powers you actually have, with actions being judged/categorized on overall "approach". I.e. there's a "Smash" action/stat for solving a situation with brute force in non-combat, but the force can be flavored as a fist, or a club, or a fireball, or whatever works best for verisimilitude/character.

Not sure how much of that is reasonably directly applicable to DnD, but, personally, its the best example of interesting and well done "race" implementation i can think of currently.

[Psyren]

The elf eyes example was just an example. I'm not interested in emulating LOTR, but I think I wanna have my human ranger and my elven ranger feel distinct. (I'm not sure how else to put it. "Niche protection" comes relatively close, but that's not what I wanna say.)

I'm interested in that goal too, but comparing to humans isn't a useful benchmark at present. 5e Humans are a bit undercooked design-wise. Variant Human fares better but even they need work.

If you instead compare elf rangers to, say, shifter rangers, or firbolg rangers, or dhampir rangers, you get much more pronounced differences. The newer design does a much better job at creating the "qualitative differences, not just numbers" you claim to want.


I also agree with your point about Tasha's. I have no beef with that book. I just wish they changed race more.

That wasn't Tasha's job; MPMM did that. Tasha was just there to provide a portable alternative to the fixed ASIs and proficiencies of the previous books.

[da newt]

I've always been surprised that this topic and ones like it are even a thing.

If you want your hunanoid PC to be very unhuman, then play them that way - RP to your heart's content, find your happy place, explore your kink, whatever. If you want your humanoid PC to just be a human but with green skin and pointy ears, go for it. Create as much or as little 'distinctness' as you like.

As for mechanics, things need to retain some semblance of balance, so all the playable races need to have similar mechanics.

[DigitalCharlie]

I find stat increases to be the most boring feature in the game. They’re strong, and getting stronger is part of the fun, but I’m rarely excited to bump a stat - I just recognize it as a necessity, so I do.

Along the same lines… racial stat bonuses aren’t fun or interesting to me. I’d rather see unique features that make races distinct and let modifiers float. Having everyone pick a couple races for a class because they match stats isn’t exciting to me - but it’s incredibly common with fixed modifiers because stat increases are strong.

And with the new, stronger half feats that would only get more intense because you already see almost every character now set themselves to 17 so they can take a half feat at level 4. So while before you might pick a class that gives a +1 to your main stat, now that’s a harder sell.

[Telwar]

I'm not opposed to this idea but I wonder why there needs to be a split between Background and Culture. Why not just have Background be a powerful part of the build on par with race?

Background, in my head, would basically be what you did as part of your culture, and is likely not unique to that culture, and could be easily represented by current background choices.

Culture would likely provide languages and proficiencies as well, but like things that all people from that culture would have. Like, the Giffs of Giffsylvania have a gun in their hand from birth, so they get Firearms proficiency, while the Giffston Giffs are all about commerce, so they all get Persuasion proficiency.

In an ideal world (IMNAAHO), race would *only* give physiological things, like Powerful Build, Long Arms, etc. Elf eyes would be a +1d4 to Perception checks, like the Dragon marked races from Eberron, to represent that they'll be good at it even if they don't focus on it.

[Damon_Tor]

Background, in my head, would basically be what you did as part of your culture, and is likely not unique to that culture, and could be easily represented by current background choices.

Culture would likely provide languages and proficiencies as well, but like things that all people from that culture would have. Like, the Giffs of Giffsylvania have a gun in their hand from birth, so they get Firearms proficiency, while the Giffston Giffs are all about commerce, so they all get Persuasion proficiency.

That makes perfect sense to me, and it helps return some of the "levers" I feel have gone missing with the advent of Tasha's.


In an ideal world (IMNAAHO), race would *only* give physiological things, like Powerful Build, Long Arms, etc. Elf eyes would be a +1d4 to Perception checks, like the Dragon marked races from Eberron, to represent that they'll be good at it even if they don't focus on it.

I'm on board with all of that.

[Sorinth]

Background, in my head, would basically be what you did as part of your culture, and is likely not unique to that culture, and could be easily represented by current background choices.

Culture would likely provide languages and proficiencies as well, but like things that all people from that culture would have. Like, the Giffs of Giffsylvania have a gun in their hand from birth, so they get Firearms proficiency, while the Giffston Giffs are all about commerce, so they all get Persuasion proficiency.

In an ideal world (IMNAAHO), race would *only* give physiological things, like Powerful Build, Long Arms, etc. Elf eyes would be a +1d4 to Perception checks, like the Dragon marked races from Eberron, to represent that they'll be good at it even if they don't focus on it.

One of the classic examples used is the High Elf's Cantrip. But should that be part of Culture because the person grew up in a high magic society or should it be part of Background like Wizard's Apprentice. Not to mention there will be the outcasts type like Urchins who probably won't have gotten the magical education that is normal for that society, and there will also be people who just aren't adept at whatever it is, so even though they got training/were immersed in it they are just naturally bad at it and so shouldn't have proficiency.

Also the more we add player facing stuff like this the more likely there will be friction with the DM and the world they created. It's a lot easier to say my PC was a wizards apprentice and therefore gains background features like a Cantrip and proficiency in Arcana. But if we put that stuff in culture and I want that Cantrip + Arcana Proficiency for my build there now needs to be a whole society created and placed somewhere on the map to accommodate my choices.

I think the better solution might be to simply have a list of features to select from but leave it up to the player/dm to decide for themselves whether it's cultural/job/etc... So my PC takes the feature Arcane Training and gets that Cantrip + Proficiency and I weave it into my backstory.

[Psyren]

Elves (including High Elves) haven't been redesigned yet so we don't actually know what will happen to their Cantrip. But races starting with cantrips is still a thing, Genasi for example, and we know the answer at least where they're concerned is that it's based on their innate magical nature rather than culture. A fire genasi street urchin can still produce flame and that makes sense.

[PhoenixPhyre]

One of the classic examples used is the High Elf's Cantrip. But should that be part of Culture because the person grew up in a high magic society or should it be part of Background like Wizard's Apprentice. Not to mention there will be the outcasts type like Urchins who probably won't have gotten the magical education that is normal for that society, and there will also be people who just aren't adept at whatever it is, so even though they got training/were immersed in it they are just naturally bad at it and so shouldn't have proficiency.

Also the more we add player facing stuff like this the more likely there will be friction with the DM and the world they created. It's a lot easier to say my PC was a wizards apprentice and therefore gains background features like a Cantrip and proficiency in Arcana. But if we put that stuff in culture and I want that Cantrip + Arcana Proficiency for my build there now needs to be a whole society created and placed somewhere on the map to accommodate my choices.

I think the better solution might be to simply have a list of features to select from but leave it up to the player/dm to decide for themselves whether it's cultural/job/etc... So my PC takes the feature Arcane Training and gets that Cantrip + Proficiency and I weave it into my backstory.

The bold is feature, not bug. Races and racial choices should require and expect heavy working with the DM to clear. The whole model of "just pick from this list" makes coherent worlds impossible and makes all PCs of the same race: race PC.

Personally, creating a character without reference to an existing (or added with DM approval) culture, location, and place in the world is not something I want to support. Making a character isn't something that should happen in isolation. It's a collaboration between the player (who gets to pick most of the things) and the DM (who, as the world's representative, wants to make sure they have a clear place in the world). PCs don't arise spontaneously, they grew up somewhere. Somewhere meaningful. And if there aren't any high magic societies, you don't get a free cantrip even if you want it for mechanical purposes. Just like if there aren't any oceans or big lakes nearby, you don't get the Sailor background. Or if there aren't any orcs in the setting, you don't get to be an orc. Even if those goodies are that tempting. World coherence comes first.

[Elves]

There's definitely a discussion to be had about race design, but to be productive it has to come from a game design perspective and not from the sensitivity concerns that seem to be the fundamental reason for the changes in 5e. Because those concerns aren't well-founded.

The accusation that stat mods are racist is ignorant. "Race" in D&D is used in an old-fashioned sense to mean species. If you're really concerned that this is a problem, change the word, not the mechanics. Saying gnomes are less strong than orcs is no more racist than saying mice are less strong than cats.

Meanwhile, the cultural vs biological part is massively overblown, in part because it insists on interpreting mythical creatures through the lens of human sociology. For example, stonecunning isn't a cultural trait of dwarves -- dwarves are mythological earth spirits who have an inherent connection to stone and earth.

In some cases, the distinction is right. For example, dark elves only worship Lolth in some settings. But they didn't have any racial traits about Lolth to begin with. If you look at the published races, the number of racial traits that actually represent a cultural rather than inherent factor is very small. So this whole complaint seems to me like a solution in search of a problem, with nonsensical results -- like labeling darkvision as a cultural trait.

---

So I think to actually get good answers we have to set those issues aside and discuss it from a game perspective.

Is there a reason that racial abilities should come in predefined packages instead of being chosen a la carte?
This is the same question as why you choose from predefined classes instead of choosing your class abilities a la carte.
Both ways of doing things can work, but I think it's inconsistent design to have one be a la carte but the other be predefined. Either go freeform for both race and class, or keep both in the packaged model. And this isn't just an aesthetic thing, because the packaged model does have advantages to offset its lower optionality. It allows coherent kit design, allows more variety in abilities because the power budget can be spent dynamically within each kit, and often makes up for lower absolute optionality with a larger meta than in a freeform system, where lack of obstacles to choice often simply mean the meta will cluster around a few optimal combinations.


I think there's a valid game design criticism of racial ability modifiers -- they make certain race/class combinations that people might want to play less viable. But there are also advantages to them, like directness* and realism.

(*If the game has ability scores, and you want to characterize a certain race as being big and brawny or superhumanly smart, the direct way to do that is a bonus to Strength or Intelligence. If you instead feel the need to create a special Big and Brawny or Supergenius quality, you have to ask why the game has Strength or Intelligence scores if you aren't going to express those traits with those scores.)

It's fine for some races to be good at certain things and not others. Gnomes who want to be warriors should be pushed toward Dexterity-based combat rather than Strength-based combat because that's what makes sense.

And plenty of choice can be provided through subraces, alternate racial features (like 4e's alternate racial stat mods), feats, variant classes, race-specific subclasses, and all the other smorgasbord of content types in this game. Embrace this and the problem of some races being worse at certain classes will disappear -- maybe there's a Strength-based wizard warcaster subclass that's perfect for orcs, etc. This is a route that makes things MORE flavorful, rather than erasing major parts of the fantasy that draws someone to a certain race to begin with (like elves being graceful or orcs being strong but dumb) or being unrealistic (gnomes being as strong as humans).

My view: not every race should have ability modifiers. They're just one tool in the toolkit and should come from the same power budget as the rest of a race's abilities. Humans don't need any since they're the baseline assumption. But if a race has a defining trait that's best expressed as an ability modifier, give them one.

[Psyren]

So I think to actually get good answers we have to set those issues aside and discuss it from a game perspective.

I'm fine setting those issues aside - but to be clear it's not because I agree with a single syllable in your intro, rather it's because the thread probably won't last otherwise.


Is there a reason that racial abilities should come in predefined packages instead of being chosen a la carte?
This is the same question as why you choose from predefined classes instead of choosing your class abilities a la carte.

Yes, and it's the same reason class abilities do - it's vastly more accessible. You certainly could make it so every race and/or class in the game are built exclusively a la carte, but you'd end up with a system that isn't nearly as popular since you'd hand that list of options to a new player and most of them wouldd immediately nope out.


Both ways of doing things can work, but I think it's inconsistent design to have one be a la carte but the other be predefined. Either go freeform for both race and class, or keep both in the packaged model.

What? Both are very clearly packaged in 5e :smallconfused:

[Catullus64]

If I'm indulging a more fantastical scenario (Fantastical? In this game?), I think that having your race be a parallel progression track, of roughly equal mechanical heft to your class, would be pretty awesome, but that's obviously miles away from what's usual for D&D (BECMI-style Race-as-class notwithstanding). I'd love to play an Elf who gets more and more Elfy as his adventuring career advances, and it would make racial archetypes come through very strongly in gameplay. Plus, if there are a decent number of choice points built into the race as well as the class, it could give people who don't like one flavor of the race some options to branch out.

[Dienekes]

Yes, and it's the same reason class abilities do - it's vastly more accessible. You certainly could make it so every race and/or class in the game are built exclusively a la carte, but you'd end up with a system that isn't nearly as popular since you'd hand that list of options to a new player and most of them wouldd immediately nope out.



I would say that's a reason, but it's hardly the only reason or the most important one.

Classes were designed as a means of portraying archetypes, not accessibility. I mean, go read Gygax' early stuff, he did not give a crap about accessibility. But he did design his system in terms of classes, so he could make the game fit his world. Fighting Men had these mechanics because those mechanics were what he thought best fit a Fighting Man. Those mechanics were separate from what was available to Magic User because he wanted his magic users to work like they did in Jack Vance's work.

So we go down a divide here. Are races designed to just offer some predetermined chunks to make it easy for new players to choose, or are they designed to create an authentic take on a different species as allowed through the mechanics of the game.

I'd say neither is wrong, provided the designers are up front with what they're design goals are. I just personally, find the latter so much more compelling.

[Psyren]

If I'm indulging a more fantastical scenario (Fantastical? In this game?), I think that having your race be a parallel progression track, of roughly equal mechanical heft to your class, would be pretty awesome, but that's obviously miles away from what's usual for D&D (BECMI-style Race-as-class notwithstanding). I'd love to play an Elf who gets more and more Elfy as his adventuring career advances, and it would make racial archetypes come through very strongly in gameplay. Plus, if there are a decent number of choice points built into the race as well as the class, it could give people who don't like one flavor of the race some options to branch out.

This sounds kind of like PF2, have you played it?


I would say that's a reason, but it's hardly the only reason or the most important one.

Classes were designed as a means of portraying archetypes, not accessibility. I mean, go read Gygax' early stuff, he did not give a crap about accessibility. But he did design his system in terms of classes, so he could make the game fit his world. Fighting Men had these mechanics because those mechanics were what he thought best fit a Fighting Man. Those mechanics were separate from what was available to Magic User because he wanted his magic users to work like they did in Jack Vance's work.

So we go down a divide here. Are races designed to just offer some predetermined chunks to make it easy for new players to choose, or are they designed to create an authentic take on a different species as allowed through the mechanics of the game.

I'd say neither is wrong, provided the designers are up front with what they're design goals are. I just personally, find the latter so much more compelling.

You say "it's archetypes, not accessibility" as though the two are somehow mutually exclusive when they're not. Archetypes are the best way to attain accessibility. "I want to be a ninja!" "Take this class and these other choices, done."

As for "Gygax's early stuff", it's not the 1970s anymore so I'm good actually.

[Dienekes]

You say "it's archetypes, not accessibility" as though the two are somehow mutually exclusive when they're not. Archetypes are the best way to attain accessibility. "I want to be a ninja!" "Take this class and these other choices, done."

As for "Gygax's early stuff", it's not the 1970s anymore so I'm good actually.

They're not mutually exclusive, but they are different values and goals. My argument was not that accessibility is somehow in complete conflict with the creating a curated experience (though it can be). It's that your initial statement was classes are for accessibility. Which is not always the case.

[TaiLiu]

Wow, a lot more people are responding than I thought would, and responding with great detail. Having some trouble keeping up.


I'm interested in that goal too, but comparing to humans isn't a useful benchmark at present. 5e Humans are a bit undercooked design-wise. Variant Human fares better but even they need work.

If you instead compare elf rangers to, say, shifter rangers, or firbolg rangers, or dhampir rangers, you get much more pronounced differences.
I agree that humans are undercooked, but I think that blandness makes them a nice marker to hold other races against. You bring up Shifters. I like them a lot, conceptually, but their implementation in both War and Mordenkainen's feel frustrating. Being able to shift a limited number of times a day sucks, and I want my shifting to give me something other than numbers. Don't just give me advantage on Wisdom checks--let me do something that non-shifters can't do!


The newer design does a much better job at creating the "qualitative differences, not just numbers" you claim to want.
Do you mind clarifying this sentence? Nothing's confusing about it semantically, but use of the redundant "you claim to" makes me feel like I'm missing a pragmatic element you're trying to convey.


That wasn't Tasha's job; MPMM did that. Tasha was just there to provide a portable alternative to the fixed ASIs and proficiencies of the previous books.
Oh, okay. Thank you for correcting me. I agree that Mordenkainen's has made strides. It still feels unsatisfactory to me.



I've always been surprised that this topic and ones like it are even a thing.

If you want your hunanoid PC to be very unhuman, then play them that way - RP to your heart's content, find your happy place, explore your kink, whatever. If you want your humanoid PC to just be a human but with green skin and pointy ears, go for it. Create as much or as little 'distinctness' as you like.

As for mechanics, things need to retain some semblance of balance, so all the playable races need to have similar mechanics.
Sure, a lot of things can just be roleplayed. In fact, it's what I do with race right now. But roleplay can't justify qualitative differences in ability. My elf can't look at a mountain in the distance and perform a Perception check as if I were there.

[Goobahfish]

Race is a rather complex issue unfortunately.

From a story-telling perspective, having a race's biology influence their culture is a compelling story. Being a black sheep or a fish out of water is also a compelling story. So, having races being bland is definitely a loss of story telling capacity for the game.

I think a few terms have been bandied about without really exploring them sensibly. There are schools of thought on Genetic Determinism (i.e. how much of behaviour can be determined by genes). Obviously, all behaviour is determined by genes (it is ridiculous to claim otherwise) but the mechanism of that expression (i.e. how deep the learning goes, epigenetics, neuronal etc) is less well understood, especially in humans. Consider how little we know about people 'on the spectrum' or even with rather common psychological issues like 'depression' or 'anxiety'. It is at best messy.

What we do know, is that if you take a random kid from country X and raise them in country Y, other than whatever racist attitudes those countries hold, there will be almost no meaningful difference between race X and race Y in terms of development (i.e. humans are pretty homogenous).

The Tolkein races (the inspiration for D&D) are actually super bland. Elves and Dwarves have always been 'mostly human' with a few cultural traits thrown on top of them. Yes Elves live longer and don't sleep the same way, but they still eat and dance. Dwarves drink but are short and stout. This is because the origin of these races are pretty much 'annoying humans' (read any mythology about Dwarves, Gnome etc).

So that would push towards a view that really having bonuses/penalties to anything remotely cultural is pretty arbitrary. A dwarf raised among halflings is basically going to be a halfling in outlook and hobbies etc.

In terms of physique however, now there are real differences. An elf should be more agile than a human. An ogre should be able to carry more than a halfling. The question is (at least as the OP seems to be inquiring) how should that manifest in game?

IMO, the best way is to have traits that are not replications of training. In my system I basically said, you can re-roll X once per day (for poison resistance in dwarves). There aren't other abilities which are similar to that in the game so it is a small unique 'hat'. For large and small creatures, I wouldn't touch damage (that is an accident waiting to happen) but instead just talk about carrying capacity etc. Otherwise you push players to optimize which creates 'elf rangers', 'dwarf fighters' and 'half-elf bards'.
I also split it into three basic groupings:
Genetic: I.e. if you are a dwarf, you are resistant to poison because of blood. If you are an elf, you are resistant to sleeping because elves don't sleep normally.
Cultural: Where did you grow up? Did you get mandatory weapon training? Did you spend all your time in a forest climbing trees?
Personal: I was a farmer, or an apprentice etc.
Elves can't take Dwarf genetic traits. You must pick a cultural background and select uniquely from those traits. Personal can be whatever.

But, if I were to work in the 5E framework? I'd just do it like this:
Elves get +2 Dex, +1 Subrace and another two random +1's (as if you got an ASI) with the caveat, you may not add more than +2 to any stat (including your default bonuses). Done. This way, if you want to play a <insert race> <insert class> it is basically viable. You put your extra +1's in the key stat and just get the racial ones as 'gravy'. Want to play a Halfling Warlock? You get +2 to Charisma (of course) but also +2 Dex and something else (Int/Wis etc)? No longer is there a Ranger => Wood Elf, Fighter => Mountain Dwarf. These pressures still exist but they aren't as blatant as they are now. What it does mean, that there aren't any really clumsy elves or really fragile dwarves but you aren't being 'told' to play an Elf or a Dwarf by the incentive structure of the game.

This also means that an Elf Fighter and an Half-Orc Fighter will probably feel different enough (stats-wise) to make race slightly more than a hat.

[greenstone]

I like the idea of four sources of features: birth, childhood, pre-adventuring life (what 5E calls "background"), and class.

Birth features are the physical things you get from race. I'd make these quite significant. I want a game where elves are quite different from dwarves, not just Star Trek "humans with funny forehead makeup".

Childhood features are from the society you grow up in. Warlike societies would train every child in martial skills, nomadic societies would train every child in animal handling, for example.

These two are mostly independant. There would be elvish warlike societies and dwarven warlike societies and elvish nomadic societies and dwarven nomadic societies, and so on. Some of those societies would be multiracial, some wouldn't (and that's a world building decision, not a rules decision).

Pre-adventuring life is what the character did as an adult before they became an adventurer. A character might have multiple jobs before adventuring, but the player has to pick one of them that had the biggest impact on the character.

Some characters might have trained in a class during or before their background, some might start adventuring literally at the end of their training as a cleric or bard or whatever. Either way, for table balance all the PCs start at the same power level (usually level 1). A player can't say, 'My character spent 10 years as a city guard after they trained as a fighter so they already have some experience and levels."

[Greywander]

I remember having the idea for a video game RPG where as part of character creation you choose the professions of your parents. The idea being that simply growing up in a household that practices a given trade, even if you decide not to pursue that trade later in life, will still influence your development and teach you a few things about that trade. That roughly tracks with a "childhood" aspect of your background.

Plus, filling out details of your background as part of your character creation also helps flesh your character out from a roleplay angle. It's kind of the same thing that backgrounds do. So that's always helpful.

Choosing a hometown could also be another neat detail. It could be interesting if you could essentially "create" a custom hometown, choosing different traits for the town which in turn give you different bonuses. Not sure 5e has the granularity to make that work, though.

Heck, you could continue to expand on this idea by including, say, notable life events; important events in your past that shaped who you are today. Drafted to fight in a war? Defaulted on a loan to the mob? Lost a loved one to a murderer? Escaped your village being burned down by orcs? Saved a noble's life? Found lost treasure? Etc. You could choose, say, three events, each with a different bonus. That doesn't mean you can't include other events in your backstory, but those three were ones that really struck a chord with you and left a lasting impression.

Honestly, I think at this point I'm just brainstorming for my own homebrew system more than anything to do with D&D.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I remember having the idea for a video game RPG where as part of character creation you choose the professions of your parents. The idea being that simply growing up in a household that practices a given trade, even if you decide not to pursue that trade later in life, will still influence your development and teach you a few things about that trade. That roughly tracks with a "childhood" aspect of your background.

Plus, filling out details of your background as part of your character creation also helps flesh your character out from a roleplay angle. It's kind of the same thing that backgrounds do. So that's always helpful.

Choosing a hometown could also be another neat detail. It could be interesting if you could essentially "create" a custom hometown, choosing different traits for the town which in turn give you different bonuses. Not sure 5e has the granularity to make that work, though.

Heck, you could continue to expand on this idea by including, say, notable life events; important events in your past that shaped who you are today. Drafted to fight in a war? Defaulted on a loan to the mob? Lost a loved one to a murderer? Escaped your village being burned down by orcs? Saved a noble's life? Found lost treasure? Etc. You could choose, say, three events, each with a different bonus. That doesn't mean you can't include other events in your backstory, but those three were ones that really struck a chord with you and left a lasting impression.

Honestly, I think at this point I'm just brainstorming for my own homebrew system more than anything to do with D&D.

This all seems like great stuff...for a backstory. Preferably worked on with the DM. I wouldn't want to mechanize it, however. But I got a lot of mileage out of post hoc asking where the characters came from and running some side sessions with just one or two of them, fleshing out their backstories. Two even chose to be from the same small town, but opposite sides of a racial split (high elf/wood elf, which for me is weird, as those two don't normally get along in that culture). We ended up weaving both of them and the destruction of their town (due to time-travel shenanigans by the BBEG, who was trying to wipe them out before they got started), which ended up playing thematic roles in the campaign.

[Psyren]

They're not mutually exclusive, but they are different values and goals. My argument was not that accessibility is somehow in complete conflict with the creating a curated experience (though it can be). It's that your initial statement was classes are for accessibility. Which is not always the case.

5e as a whole is about accessibility. It was meant to be the most accessible edition of them all, and while it definitely isn't perfect, it certainly succeeded at that.


I agree that humans are undercooked, but I think that blandness makes them a nice marker to hold other races against. You bring up Shifters. I like them a lot, conceptually, but their implementation in both War and Mordenkainen's feel frustrating. Being able to shift a limited number of times a day sucks, and I want my shifting to give me something other than numbers. Don't just give me advantage on Wisdom checks--let me do something that non-shifters can't do!
...
Do you mind clarifying this sentence? Nothing's confusing about it semantically, but use of the redundant "you claim to" makes me feel like I'm missing a pragmatic element you're trying to convey.

I'm saying that you want racials to be qualitatively different rather than just quantitatively and the new ones do that. Even the Shifter - a bonus action attack from your race isn't just a number, it's a trait you can make entire builds around. And Wildhunt doesn't just grant advantage on wisdom checks, it cancels all advantage against you, which every barbarian loves. Sure it's limited use, but you have more than enough for all the dangerous encounters you're likely to run into in a day.

[Greywander]

This all seems like great stuff...for a backstory. Preferably worked on with the DM. I wouldn't want to mechanize it, however.
Minmaxing could be an issue if certain options were clearly better than others, or synergized too well with certain builds. So I understand not wanting to mechanize it. But the advantage of doing so is that you can get players (such as myself) who are less invested in the roleplaying aspect and more invested in the mechanical aspect to actually flesh out those parts of their characters. Last few times I've played, I don't remember writing down a hometown or anything about my parents, for example. Mechanizing backgrounds was actually a pretty big step for 5e in helping otherwise reticent players (as most people new to the hobby tend to be) to put some thought into their character's history.

I think some important points to consider are to not make any of these bonuses too strong, and to make then broadly useful so that they don't inordinately benefit one build far more than another build. As long as I'm getting a bonus, I'm going to be eager to invest some thought into the subject, even if the bonus is relatively minor. Background features are actually a pretty good baseline for this, as they seem to (mostly) hit both these points. Sure, it makes more sense for the wizard to be a sage and the ranger to be an outlander, but it's still mechanically sound to have a ranger sage and a wizard outlander (at least, as far as the background feature is concerned; you might want to customize the skills and such you get).


Back on the subject of races, not that long ago I started working on a big overhaul where each class is cut down to just four levels, and you stack multiple classes as you progress. I had the brilliant idea to turn races into classes, too, which would have enabled things like making a mixed race character by taking a second racial class like a normal class, or having more powerful races (e.g. dragons) have their features split up between multiple racial classes. Sadly, I don't think I'll be continuing this project, as the effort I was hoping to save by working within the 5e framework seemed to be decreasing as I found the overhaul touching more and more aspects of the base system, while also restricting some of the things I was able to do. So I think my efforts will be better spent making a wholly original system. But, I still think this is an interesting idea, and if someone else wanted to work on a project like this I'd be happy to share what I had planned and discuss possible implementations. Even cutting back all the other features of the overhaul, this might still be a pretty big undertaking though.

[Goobahfish]

I like the idea of four sources of features: birth, childhood, pre-adventuring life (what 5E calls "background"), and class.

Birth

Childhood

Pre-adventuring life


Yep, that is basically what I have by other names. I tend to find this granularity is about as far as you want to go.


Heck, you could continue to expand on this idea by including, say, notable life events; important events in your past that shaped who you are today. Drafted to fight in a war? Defaulted on a loan to the mob? Lost a loved one to a murderer? Escaped your village being burned down by orcs? Saved a noble's life? Found lost treasure? Etc. You could choose, say, three events, each with a different bonus. That doesn't mean you can't include other events in your backstory, but those three were ones that really struck a chord with you and left a lasting impression.

This sounds interesting in a list of 'background' options. The only issue from a design perspective is needing to wade through a bajillion of said options.

I think codifying backgrounds (even if loosely) was one of the best innovations in 5e there were. Now instead of trying to either negotiate with the DM because you don't like the 'cleric skill list' or trying to homebrew something, you basically get a few free skill picks/tool picks which can be used to fit with your character.

[TaiLiu]

The Tolkein races (the inspiration for D&D) are actually super bland. Elves and Dwarves have always been 'mostly human' with a few cultural traits thrown on top of them. Yes Elves live longer and don't sleep the same way, but they still eat and dance. Dwarves drink but are short and stout. This is because the origin of these races are pretty much 'annoying humans' (read any mythology about Dwarves, Gnome etc).
I guess I don't mind the blandness all that much, at least for the elves. Having a couple of special abilities and the worldbuilding to support it is enough for me.


I'm saying that you want racials to be qualitatively different rather than just quantitatively and the new ones do that. Even the Shifter - a bonus action attack from your race isn't just a number, it's a trait you can make entire builds around. And Wildhunt doesn't just grant advantage on wisdom checks, it cancels all advantage against you, which every barbarian loves. Sure it's limited use, but you have more than enough for all the dangerous encounters you're likely to run into in a day.
I guess you're right. Wildhunt especially has a unique ability, though it's troublesome to use on a Barbarian since both shifting and raging eat up bonus actions.

It still doesn't feel like it's the same kind of thing as Elfsight, though. Maybe "qualitatively different" is the wrong way to describe it. I'm not sure how else to. I'm guessing Elfsight and shifting are the same kind of thing to you?

[Psyren]

I guess you're right. Wildhunt especially has a unique ability, though it's troublesome to use on a Barbarian since both shifting and raging eat up bonus actions.

If you're in a minor fight you likely don't need to shift and rage. And if you're in a major fight, it's probably going to last long enough that you can afford to have a setup round.


It still doesn't feel like it's the same kind of thing as Elfsight, though. Maybe "qualitatively different" is the wrong way to describe it. I'm not sure how else to. I'm guessing Elfsight and shifting are the same kind of thing to you?

What trait is "Elfsight?" My DDB isn't turning up anything.

[TaiLiu]

If you're in a minor fight you likely don't need to shift and rage. And if you're in a major fight, it's probably going to last long enough that you can afford to have a setup round.
That's true. It does feel a little unsatisfying to me. Like a misaligned puzzle.


What trait is "Elfsight?" My DDB isn't turning up anything.
Oh, it's from Fellowship. I quoted it in the first post, but happy to quote it again:

Elfsight. Your eyes are unnaturally good, and you can see fine detail even through the darkest night or densest fog. When you Look Closely, you may study any location you can see, no matter how distant, as if you were standing right there.

Even if it's not exceptionally powerful, it feels different than, say, proficiency or advantage on checks. Or the ability to cast a spell once a day. Maybe it's the fact that it's both useful mostly outside of combat and that it gives you the ability to do something no other race can that feels "qualitatively different" or race-defining to me.

The Wildhunt Shifter kinda has that, but the fact that their shifting wears off after a minute feels bad to me. As does the fact that it's just advantage, not some special cool skill that you get to add on top of Insight or Perception or Animal Handling.

[Leon]

It was fine before the Tasha's set of rules or the subsequent design ethos shift that followed

[Psyren]

Oh, it's from Fellowship. I quoted it in the first post, but happy to quote it again:


Even if it's not exceptionally powerful, it feels different than, say, proficiency or advantage on checks. Or the ability to cast a spell once a day. Maybe it's the fact that it's both useful mostly outside of combat and that it gives you the ability to do something no other race can that feels "qualitatively different" or race-defining to me.

"Not exceptionally powerful?"

Yeah, I don't think unlimited-range sight (with darkvision and through fog no less!) as a racial, would really work in 5e. You're right that that's certainly different than any racial we currently have - but I don't think that's a good thing.



The Wildhunt Shifter kinda has that, but the fact that their shifting wears off after a minute feels bad to me. As does the fact that it's just advantage, not some special cool skill that you get to add on top of Insight or Perception or Animal Handling.

By itself it's not a particualrly exciting trait, no. But not every racial trait needs to be - you should be evaluating the whole package. No one picks Dhampir just to get a proficiency or two, but those things certainly help.

[Azuresun]

I've been thinking lately that the best take on races in D&D has come from Eberron.

One thing that I always ask myself with non-human races is, "why not humans?" And a lot of them just plain fail that test, with no guidance on any traits that might make them distinct from "humans with blue skin" or "humans with pointy ears". (MotM aggressively blanding away distinctiveness did not help).

In Eberron, there's a clear hook for how each of the races see the world, and hooks you can hang your roleplaying on, which are tied into ongoing issues and conflicts in the world. Warforged feel alienated from humankind, are resented as a living reminder of the war, and tend to see things through the lens of a military hierarchy. Kalashtar have a symbiotic bond with an astral spirit and are aware of a shadow war and threat to the world that nobody else can see; one that has marked them as a threat simply by existing. Goblins were once the rulers of the world, but their empire fell and they've been living as second-class citizens; a new nation offers them a chance for greatness again, but it remains very fragile. Elves are split into four major groups, including ancestor worshippers from a very calcified and timeless nation, and zealots who constantly pick fights to win glory and the approval of their ancestors.

But cleverly, it's completely optional how weird any given character needs to be, beyond the facts of their nature and place in society. An outgoing and chatty warforged, a kalashtar who doesn't have a clue about the shadow war, or a cosmopolitan elf or goblin who is quite happy with or at least accepting of their place in human society.

They feel like part of the setting, they feel distinctly not-human on the whole, there are clear and obvious hooks about how to portray their non-human traits without them being disruptive, obnoxious or too alien, and there are backdoors to play them as being closer to human if you choose to.

[KorvinStarmast]

There's an argument that I don't understand. It takes this form: if you remove racial stat bonuses, race basically becomes a skin or a hat. Since many DMs implement Tasha's optional non-racial stat bonuses, race is basically a skin or a hat. I have played fellowship, I played the Orc, I had a good time with it. Sadly, the group was on line and the pacing was excruciatingly slow and after a few sessions that group broke up.

As far as I am concerned, the best system for Race and Class boosts is in 13th Age. For a given race, you pick one of two attributes (that are based on the lore of the world/game on what those races are good at) to plus up, and that gets you a +2. This offers a bit more customization. For your class, you pick one of two attributes to plus up, and you get a +2. You can vary this, of course, by making either of those a +1 probably fits into the D&D 5e model very well. It also avoids negative mods that seem to make some people get all wound up these days. And I'd rather that the Race gave the +1 and the Class gave the +2, but it could be the other way around.
Example: so I want to make an elf wizard.
Elf you get to pick Wis or Dex, add 2 to your die roll (or PB number). Wizard: Add +2 to Int or Wis.
So I want to make a dwarf wizard.
Dwarf: Add 2 to Str or Con. Wizard: Add 2 to Int or Wis. (Change either to a +1 if need be).

Then toss in racial features like Mask of the Wild, Stone Cunning, half orc's ability to handle damage, halfling's lucky, and so on, such that each race's unique attributes (or two attributes) are unique to them. No overlap with anyone else.
And I'll now evoke the pitch forks and torches moment: and Stop It with the sub races already. Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, Aasimar ... I don't need three of each kind. One is fine. The only race I'd suggest even needs a multiple is Genasi, one for each element. The rest: there can be only one! There is so much empty, meaningless variety already.
I will now get off of my soap box.

Stat boosts have always been a terrible way of representing those types of things. Mask of the Wild does more to represent that elven grace then a dex or proficiency bonus ever will. Disagree with 'always been terrible' but your point on Mask of the Wild I concur with.

No matter the mechanical abilities lots of players will just play them as "human" with abilities and it doesn't matter whether those abilities came from race or class or background or spells or magic items That is my experience also, which is why I find the race bloat to become more and more pointless as time goes on.

Races in D&D used to be more important than they were even at the very start of 5th edition. To those of us that still want races to matter, we would like to hold our ground here thank you. Mostly agree, but we just have too many.

[Amechra]

explore your kink

This goes without saying, but for the love of god do not explore your kink unless everyone else at the table is a consenting adult. I say this as someone who had to end a game because two out of my three players decided they wanted to use game time to hold an impromptu BDSM roleplay.

[PhoenixPhyre]

This goes without saying, but for the love of god do not explore your kink unless everyone else at the table is a consenting adult. I say this as someone who had to end a game because two out of my three players decided they wanted to use game time to hold an impromptu BDSM roleplay.

Yeah. The one group I flat bailed on wasn't that bad, but when 2 players want to have public sex, another is trying to get kids drunk for unspecified reasons, and the last is already drunk and carrying a barrel of ale off towards the woods and it's only an hour into session 1...

[Amechra]

Yeah. The one group I flat bailed on wasn't that bad, but when 2 players want to have public sex, another is trying to get kids drunk for unspecified reasons, and the last is already drunk and carrying a barrel of ale off towards the woods and it's only an hour into session 1...

The sad thing is that I actually have worse gaming stories... like, there's one that I'm pretty sure would actually be against forum rules to go into detail about.

[LibraryOgre]

Ironically, this is a place 4e did pretty well... races gave you stat bonuses, yes, but the difference between a Dwarf Ranger and an Elf Ranger went WAY beyond Dex bonuses and Con bonuses, with elfs shifting all over the place and being hella accurate, and dwarves being immovable and able to self-heal easily.

My inclination would be something akin to the Race + Culture + Background + Class list above, though I might be inclined to combine Culture and Background (on the fence about this).

To slide into a Dragon Age example, think about Dwarves. You have Dwarves, whose big feature in-game is a degree of magic resistance. But then you'd have at least 3-4 separate cultures... Noble, Commoner, Duster, and Surface... followed by backgrounds, which would talk about their skills, followed by class.

If I still felt stat bonuses were necessary, and wanted to keep 5e's standard of +2/+1, I'd lean towards +1 from your background, and +2 from your class... so you might have a Soldier Fighter starting with an 18 strength, even in a standard array.

[PhoenixPhyre]

The sad thing is that I actually have worse gaming stories... like, there's one that I'm pretty sure would actually be against forum rules to go into detail about.

Oh, no question. I consider myself extremely blessed and lucky that that's my worst experience. I've had one where I left due to "philosophical disagreements" (it was a shared DM/episodic system in a shared universe where I didn't particularly like some of the worldbuilding choices and wasn't having tons of fun). All my other groups have ended due to "natural causes" (aka failing the DC 30 scheduling check or other real life issues causing population loss) or naturally ended (such as a school club at the end of the school year).

[Psyren]

Ironically, this is a place 4e did pretty well... races gave you stat bonuses, yes, but the difference between a Dwarf Ranger and an Elf Ranger went WAY beyond Dex bonuses and Con bonuses, with elfs shifting all over the place and being hella accurate, and dwarves being immovable and able to self-heal easily.

My inclination would be something akin to the Race + Culture + Background + Class list above, though I might be inclined to combine Culture and Background (on the fence about this).

To slide into a Dragon Age example, think about Dwarves. You have Dwarves, whose big feature in-game is a degree of magic resistance. But then you'd have at least 3-4 separate cultures... Noble, Commoner, Duster, and Surface... followed by backgrounds, which would talk about their skills, followed by class.

If I still felt stat bonuses were necessary, and wanted to keep 5e's standard of +2/+1, I'd lean towards +1 from your background, and +2 from your class... so you might have a Soldier Fighter starting with an 18 strength, even in a standard array.

How were 4e racials out of combat? Any fun things like a Kenku's ability to perfectly mimic voices or a Githzerai's invisible mage hand?

[da newt]

"explore your kink"


This goes without saying, but for the love of god do not explore your kink unless everyone else at the table is a consenting adult. I say this as someone who had to end a game because two out of my three players decided they wanted to use game time to hold an impromptu BDSM roleplay.

Absolutely. My comment was aimed at the PG version --> 'do the thing that makes you happy,' not feel free to completely overstep everyone's bounds by subjecting them to inappropriate / uncomfortable subject matter.

[LibraryOgre]

How were 4e racials out of combat? Any fun things like a Kenku's ability to perfectly mimic voices or a Githzerai's invisible mage hand?

You want a game that's a combat simulator with some things tacked on? 4e is your game. All races give skill bonuses, and a few have non-combat abilities (elves give bonuses to perception, half-elves to diplomacy), and some have some extra skill training or feats but, for the most part, they were combat-oriented abilties.

[Psyren]

You want a game that's a combat simulator with some things tacked on? 4e is your game. All races give skill bonuses, and a few have non-combat abilities (elves give bonuses to perception, half-elves to diplomacy), and some have some extra skill training or feats but, for the most part, they were combat-oriented abilties.

You mean the non-combat racials were limited to skill bonuses? That's... disappointing, but not surprising.

[LibraryOgre]

You mean the non-combat racials were limited to skill bonuses? That's... disappointing, but not surprising.

Mostly. As I said, elves gave everyone in the party a bonus to Perception, and half-elves gave a bonus to Diplomacy... a skill bonus, but more than "I am better at this than average". Humans had a bonus feat which could expand them in other ways (like learning to cast Ritual magic), but, like I said, combat simulator with other things tacked on.

[sandmote]

Even if it's not exceptionally powerful, it feels different than, say, proficiency or advantage on checks. Or the ability to cast a spell once a day. Maybe it's the fact that it's both useful mostly outside of combat and that it gives you the ability to do something no other race can that feels "qualitatively different" or race-defining to me.

The Wildhunt Shifter kinda has that, but the fact that their shifting wears off after a minute feels bad to me. As does the fact that it's just advantage, not some special cool skill that you get to add on top of Insight or Perception or Animal Handling. I'm wondering how "expertise in a very narrow area" comes out here. I assume it isn't perfect, but am wondering if ribbons similar to dwarves' Stonecunning are okay-ish (at least, much better than a lot of features), where in contrast I find Dwarven Resilience incredibly boring.

[TaiLiu]

"Not exceptionally powerful?"

Yeah, I don't think unlimited-range sight (with darkvision and through fog no less!) as a racial, would really work in 5e. You're right that that's certainly different than any racial we currently have - but I don't think that's a good thing.
I guess I was thinking that line of sight would quickly truncate that sight: blocked by buildings and trees and hills and mountains and at last the curvature of the earth. You might be right that it's too powerful. I wouldn't mind, say, removing the ability to see through darkness and fog.

Having chatted with you for a bit, I think I've gained some clarity on what I want—at-will mechanical complexity re: a skill or a set of skills useful outside of combat. I think the 5e races and skill system generally lacks this. Complexity is often filed away into spells. I know that's the guideline for 5e, so I guess I'm now pretty confident that 5e will never do race in the way that I want.


By itself it's not a particualrly exciting trait, no. But not every racial trait needs to be - you should be evaluating the whole package. No one picks Dhampir just to get a proficiency or two, but those things certainly help.
I guess I want the package to be consist of fewer parts. Like, a race consisting of one particular exciting trait and then maybe an unexciting ribbon or proficiency or something. Shifters as a package are cool for sure, but they just seem to fall on the edge of unsatisfying.



I've been thinking lately that the best take on races in D&D has come from Eberron...
I think this is right. Certainly I find Eberron races to be preferable to, say, those in the Forgotten Realms. I still don't think there are especially interesting from a mechanical point of view, but I really like the roleplay guidelines (which are not rules) that its races offer.



I have played fellowship, I played the Orc, I had a good time with it. Sadly, the group was on line and the pacing was excruciatingly slow and after a few sessions that group broke up.

As far as I am concerned, the best system for Race and Class boosts is in 13th Age...
Sorry to hear about the group breakup. Were there any breaking of the fellowship jokes?

Huh. I guess 13th Age wouldn't satisfy me, either, with its focus on attribute assignment.



I'm wondering how "expertise in a very narrow area" comes out here. I assume it isn't perfect, but am wondering if ribbons similar to dwarves' Stonecunning are okay-ish (at least, much better than a lot of features), where in contrast I find Dwarven Resilience incredibly boring.
Yeah, I wonder if that's what I'm after. Being real good at highly specific things that a player may nonetheless invoke relatively often. (And may invoke specifically cuz they have this special skill!) I don't like Stonecunning cuz it just gives you expertise, but oh man, if you could ask the stone one specific question or favor or something...

[Psyren]

I'm wondering how "expertise in a very narrow area" comes out here. I assume it isn't perfect, but am wondering if ribbons similar to dwarves' Stonecunning are okay-ish (at least, much better than a lot of features), where in contrast I find Dwarven Resilience incredibly boring.

You weren't asking me, but I vastly prefer useful resource-limited features, to at-will but narrowly situational ones.

Svirfneblin are a great example - the original version got constant advantage to hide in "rocky terrain." No limit, but I can only imagine how many table arguments that caused, when it was useful at all. The MotM version meanwhile can turn on advantage anywhere; it's limited in how many times they can do it, but you can guarantee that you'll get to use that racial in every single campaign. I know which one I'd take.

[OldTrees1]

You weren't asking me, but I vastly prefer useful resource-limited features, to at-will but narrowly situational ones.

Why not the best of both, aka at-will useful features?

We don't need to settle for being an Elf only 3 times per day or only in narrow situations.

Consider the aarakocra's wings.

[LibraryOgre]

I guess I was thinking that line of sight would quickly truncate that sight: blocked by buildings and trees and hills and mountains and at last the curvature of the earth. You might be right that it's too powerful. I wouldn't mind, say, removing the ability to see through darkness and fog.


Fun fact: Tolkien Elves don't have a problem with the curvature of the earth. The Gods (I cannot remember which one, or what name they call those Gods by to avoid calling them Gods) curved the world for men, but not for elves.

[Psyren]

Why not the best of both, aka at-will useful features?

We don't need to settle for being an Elf only 3 times per day or only in narrow situations.

Consider the aarakocra's wings.

I never said you can't have good at-will or constant abilities too. But we'd never get something like Draconic Cry or Stone's Endurance as at-will racials either. Adding limits to them = more design space in the long run.

[Thrudd]

Fun fact: Tolkien Elves don't have a problem with the curvature of the earth. The Gods (I cannot remember which one, or what name they call those Gods by to avoid calling them Gods) curved the world for men, but not for elves.

Capital G- God curved the world, because the lower g-gods weren't allowed to kill humans, but some bad guys were trying to exploit that loophole to take over the immortal lands.

[sandmote]

Yeah, I wonder if that's what I'm after. Being real good at highly specific things that a player may nonetheless invoke relatively often. (And may invoke specifically cuz they have this special skill!) I don't like Stonecunning cuz it just gives you expertise, but oh man, if you could ask the stone one specific question or favor or something... I recall someone using the phrase "actively dwarfing through obstacles," as their idea of what a good racial feature allows, although I might be misremembering.

I also prefer practical suggestions to theorycrafting in a blank space, so some ideas for hypothetically better racial features:

Keen Smell. Your sensitive nose allows you to visualize the creatures and objects that have passed through your space. You can accurately identify objects and creatures that passed through your space within the last hour, as if they were still in front of your eyes. Flowing water, the mixing of many scents, active attempts to hide a scent, and other factors can lightly or heavily obscure a scent in the same manner that vision can be lightly or heavily obscured.

Strong Jumper. You add your proficiency bonus to the maximum height of your high jumps and double your proficiency bonus to the maximum length of your jumps.

Forest Whispers. As an action you can grant a plant limited sentience, which lasts for 1 minute. The plant gain no additional ability to distinguish creature or events by touch, shadow, or vibration, but gains the ability to telepathically communicate with you. You can question the plant about events in the spell's area within the past day, gaining information about creatures that have passed, weather, and other circumstances. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and regain all uses at the end of a long rest.

Wood Chewer. Your arms and jaws allow them to easily work with wooden materials, and their innate knowledge using this translates to the equipment of other races. You have proficiency with woodcarver's tools, and you do not require a set of woodcarver's tools to make checks or engage with materials if you are able to use your arms and jaws on the material.

Quick Balance. If an effect would cause you to be knocked prone, you can prevent yourself from being knocked prone as a reaction.

[Goobahfish]

Yeah, I wonder if that's what I'm after. Being real good at highly specific things that a player may nonetheless invoke relatively often. (And may invoke specifically cuz they have this special skill!) I don't like Stonecunning cuz it just gives you expertise, but oh man, if you could ask the stone one specific question or favor or something...

So we were big fans of different races having distinct senses because this fall heavily on 'at-will' "actively dwarfing through obstacles," (coolest phrase btw).

So, not 'advantage on stone checks' but instead. 'Can sense how thick stone is and what kind of stone... at will'.

Not darkvision... 'Infravision'. They can see where there is no light but there is heat (can't see a stone golem or earth elemental in a cold room for example). Also, that wall is hot for no reason? Suspicious much? Let's investigate.

Giving some races a crude form of tremorsense, or good hearing. Again... not just advantage on Perception checks but more "can hear things four times further away" like whispers in an adjacent room.

We also had random disadvantages, like Gnomes are sleepy so have disadvantage on checks vs Sleep spells/draughts etc.

This gives each race a kind of 'I can do X and feel special vibe' rather than... I can breathe crappy fire once per day which was fun at level 1 and then quickly became useless vibe OR I took Elf because an extra cantrip lets me play my character (which is a spellsword) but honestly if dwarf had the extra cantrip I would be a dwarf instead vibe.

[TaiLiu]

Fun fact: Tolkien Elves don't have a problem with the curvature of the earth. The Gods (I cannot remember which one, or what name they call those Gods by to avoid calling them Gods) curved the world for men, but not for elves.
Oh, really? I thought they curved the world for everyone. Just that the isles or whatever can't be sailed to by men, cuz the world curves away from the isles. (Which I guess are in space or something?)


I recall someone using the phrase "actively dwarfing through obstacles," as their idea of what a good racial feature allows, although I might be misremembering.

I also prefer practical suggestions to theorycrafting in a blank space, so some ideas for hypothetically better racial features:

Keen Smell. Your sensitive nose allows you to visualize the creatures and objects that have passed through your space. You can accurately identify objects and creatures that passed through your space within the last hour, as if they were still in front of your eyes. Flowing water, the mixing of many scents, active attempts to hide a scent, and other factors can lightly or heavily obscure a scent in the same manner that vision can be lightly or heavily obscured.

Strong Jumper. You add your proficiency bonus to the maximum height of your high jumps and double your proficiency bonus to the maximum length of your jumps.

Forest Whispers. As an action you can grant a plant limited sentience, which lasts for 1 minute. The plant gain no additional ability to distinguish creature or events by touch, shadow, or vibration, but gains the ability to telepathically communicate with you. You can question the plant about events in the spell's area within the past day, gaining information about creatures that have passed, weather, and other circumstances. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and regain all uses at the end of a long rest.

Wood Chewer. Your arms and jaws allow them to easily work with wooden materials, and their innate knowledge using this translates to the equipment of other races. You have proficiency with woodcarver's tools, and you do not require a set of woodcarver's tools to make checks or engage with materials if you are able to use your arms and jaws on the material.

Quick Balance. If an effect would cause you to be knocked prone, you can prevent yourself from being knocked prone as a reaction.
I like a lot of these! I think my favorite is Keen Scent, which is both at-will and a really neat ability.



So we were big fans of different races having distinct senses because this fall heavily on 'at-will' "actively dwarfing through obstacles," (coolest phrase btw).

So, not 'advantage on stone checks' but instead. 'Can sense how thick stone is and what kind of stone... at will'.

Not darkvision... 'Infravision'. They can see where there is no light but there is heat (can't see a stone golem or earth elemental in a cold room for example). Also, that wall is hot for no reason? Suspicious much? Let's investigate.

Giving some races a crude form of tremorsense, or good hearing. Again... not just advantage on Perception checks but more "can hear things four times further away" like whispers in an adjacent room.

We also had random disadvantages, like Gnomes are sleepy so have disadvantage on checks vs Sleep spells/draughts etc.

This gives each race a kind of 'I can do X and feel special vibe' rather than... I can breathe crappy fire once per day which was fun at level 1 and then quickly became useless vibe OR I took Elf because an extra cantrip lets me play my character (which is a spellsword) but honestly if dwarf had the extra cantrip I would be a dwarf instead vibe.
Oh, that's cool! I dunno how I feel about the random disadvantage stuff, but it's cool to hear about groups making up their own racial houserules.

[Amechra]

Oh, really? I thought they curved the world for everyone. Just that the isles or whatever can't be sailed to by men, cuz the world curves away from the isles. (Which I guess are in space or something?)

Less like they're in space, and more that they're in a straight line in a direction where non-elves can't go. It's like how you wouldn't necessarily say that something 1 mile kata from your direction was in space — like, it could be, but you can't actually look in that direction to check.

[TaiLiu]

Less like they're in space, and more that they're in a straight line in a direction where non-elves can't go. It's like how you wouldn't necessarily say that something 1 mile kata from your direction was in space — like, it could be, but you can't actually look in that direction to check.
Oh, I see. So it's not that ships can't reach it cuz ships can't fly. It's like a demiplane that only elves can sail to.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Someone's probably already mentioned this, but 4th Edition did race identity really well. That's because in addition to the stat increases and passive benefits, (almost) every 4E race got a unique power, typically usable once per encounter. Dragonborns could breath [element] as a once-per-encounter AOE, dwarves could heal themselves and get some defensive boosts as a bonus action, wood elves could reroll an attack roll, half-elves actually got to pick an at-will power from any class and use it as an encounter power, etc. In addition to being cool and fun, this made all the races feel pretty distinct in actual play, since each one could and usually did do something unique in every encounter.

There were also a lot of Paragon Paths (the closest 5E equivalent is subclasses, but from level 11-20) that were race-specific. So if you really wanted to lean into your character's racial identity, you could choose the appropriate Paragon Path and get some thematic class features and powers, like for instance the Fighter paragon path Inner Dragon let you use your breath more often, use it as a free action roughly 1/day, charge your weapon with elemental damage, gain resistance to damage as you manifested draconic power, etc.