Better alternative than stat-less races

[strangebloke]

In general, I would say that the goal should be to make every race as mechanically interesting as possible. Whether something is 'interesting' or not is subjective, but in general I would say that a race that is good for several classes while also being very different from other races that are good for those classes should be the goal.

One of my favorite races is the tortle. Objectively, not remotely overpowered, but it allows you to play certain classes (druid, monk, cleric) in new ways, and people still bring it up now and again./

The problem with fixed-stat modifiers is that they're both

• very mechanically important.
• very standardized and not particularly distinctive.

So looking at the PHB races, dragonborn, half-orcs, mountain dwarves, humans, and half elves all could get bonuses to strength, which made all of them good as barbarians or strength fighters. They are all way better for such builds/classes than the alternatives. Dragonborn make WAY better barbarians than wood elves under the PHB rules, in spite of being much weaker overall.

But all these "good barbarian races" are good for the same reason. They good because of the bonus to strength. for different reasons. A barbarian doesn't actually want the (non-strength) features that a half-orc or dragonborn has. Mechanically speaking, playing a half-orc doesn't feel very different from playing a half-elf that put its modifier into strength. Things like brutal critical and standing up at 1 hp and sleep immunity don't come up much overall.

And that's bad. These races are very boring, and concepts that could be fun are much mechanically worse for no real reason. Something like a wood elf being so much worse than a half elf, while the half elf is just as good as a half orc, is pretty hard to justify on the basis of fluff, and the mechanical reasons for this are boring as heck.

I'll also note that speaking for myself, I've seen a LOT of vhumans and half-elves at my table over the years. Those races having floating modifiers made them easy to slot into any build.

The Tasha's solution here is simple: make every race have floating modifiers, so that race choice is guided by their non-ASI features, and then make those non-ASI features really strong and distinctive. And though I was skeptical at first...

Look, compare the Fizban's dragonborn to the PHB dragonborn. Can you seriously tell me that you'd ever prefer the PHB dragonborn? And the Fizban's dragonborn isn't even OP, its just good and has interesting abilities.

AND its more in keeping with the lore, since Dragonborn aren't supposed to all be big muscly half-orc lookalikes.