Unearthed Arcana 1/26/21 - Gothic Lineages

[PhoenixPhyre]

We need to find a game where we can as players, eh? That could be some fun.

Yeah. Although a lot of my racial overhaul stuff is very world-driven, so doing that in someone else's world would be a bit strange. Doable, just odd. A lot of the class/spell stuff is more cross-world.

I see races as being the most tied in to the world itself. Much more so than classes (which aren't actually always things in world--a wizard doesn't necessarily walk around with a hat with WIZZARD on it, nor does a barbarian identify as a barbarian), spells, feats, or any of the other player-option things.

That's a large part of why I take so poorly to the Tasha's changes being more than just advice for DMs who want to make more customized races. Races belong to the world, and the world and the races have to agree well. For example, you'll never find a stock drow in my world. I highly dislike the race. There are the goroesi, the dark elves. But other than the fact that they're dark-skinned and several of their populations are underground, they're basically nothing alike. And gnomes were rightfully genocided about 250 years ago [1]

[1] not really, but it's traditional to exclaim Gno Gnomes!

That's how you know you're a true DM! =D
(And really, things are usable once they're complete enough for play[testing] for something like races; since only a handful of races will be used at a time, you functionally don't need it to be completely finished for each race.)



That thematic list option or a ritual-inspired system (probably with chance of failure) is what I'd love to see for Sorcerers especially (merging threads).

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Anyhow, to touch on the Unearthed Arcana, it's pretty tough to be hopeful. The things that can work even as a newly introduced system/ruleset/variant (like second types, which I've played with in actual games) just aren't done in a way that makes it seem coherent and desirable. And these lineages at best seem like they maybe should be framed as templates not races given how much of it is described (and how often introducing their base concepts during a campaign due to a curse or a botched revivification seem more interesting).

Yeah. As for the full overhaul, I'm only at the basic framework stage.

Thematic stuff...well...that's another ball of mud. A draft can be seen at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing, but it's an untested (except for NPC inspiration) draft.

Rituals--my idea was to take a page out of 4e and move almost all spells that didn't need to be cast quickly (ie most non-combat ones) and pull them out of spells entirely. Instead they're incantations, which anyone can learn and use (costing time and expensive components, plus having to find and learn them). Casting classes get boons that let them do certain ones faster/cheaper/better--basically the reverse of Ritual Caster. Being able to trade spell slots for faster casting, instead of trading slower casting for not spending spell slots. Etc. The idea is to break the full-caster monopoly on utility magic, while still giving them a reason to be. Even rougher draft: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

And as far as doing the races with templates, I could see that. Building racial templates for adding on later (or even at character creation). Or an easy way to represent "raise dead gone wrong" or "touched by an angel/devil/fey and transformed". But that would require more than just "here's a new race!"