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

[Witty Username]

Many have a mix, and most base races have cultural elements.

And many races don't have room for subraces at all.

Mechanics wise, yeah would probably need a redesign for some like half-orc and dragonborn and a reorganizing of tiefing(they got the sub races, they are just poorly organized). Flavor wise, I think we could come up with something. Assuming we are jumping into the home brew train anyway.

Cultural stuff in base races could be moved to the subraces as needed. It may make races like dwarf take up more lines for the sake of the framework. But we are also likely going to need more sub races and generic sub races anyway, so the shuffling could be more advantageous from that angle.

Dwarf probably move combat training, tools and stone cutting to the sub races. Maybe give mountain dwarf stone cutting and 1 tool and hill dwarf 2 tools.
Elf is probably fine as is.
Halfling is also fine, brave could be moved to sub races but I don't think that is necessary.
Human is well served with how variable variant human is.
Gnome is fine, Gnome Cunning should probably be renamed.

Dragonborn need subraces, and culture.
Half-elf should probably be rebranded as a sub race of elf for raised in another culture, and half-elf or full elf be a character description thing.
Orc and Half-orc probably need a full redesign.

I am not sure how to handle Tiefling, since they should have culture - as human and sub races for human would get awkard. maybe make a tiefling feat which would give you the resistance and the spells?

[t209]

Part of me thought up ideas of Fallout-perks (with or without penalty), Dragon Age's origins (like a Dwarf underclass or a warrior aristocrat), or equivalent.
Each Race/Lineage/Culture having exclusive perks (like instead of subrace, maybe like perks based on backgrounds or culture like an Orc who served in the military of a powerful kingdom for generations ala Roman Foedarati would have Charisma, Intelligence/educated bonus due to being integrated into officer corps--or Half-Orc Stilicho--while Orc in the wilderness has survival proficiency, or equivalent).

[Luccan]

P.S. Secondary thought: should racial spells be swapable? It seems like an oversight in the Tasha's rules, and there is already a precedent for races like tieflings having different spell lists as part of a sub race like option.

That's an interesting question. The explanation of bloodlines gives the impression that the Tiefling's racial spells are based on their fiendish ancestor. But do forest gnomes get minor illusion because they can cast it naturally or because their culture likes to be left alone? Duergar have always been implied to naturally be able to cast Enlarge and Invisibility. They were Spell-like Abilities in 3e, which on races generally meant it was inherent.

There's also balance issues of swapping racial spells around for whatever you want.

[quinron]

There's also balance issues of swapping racial spells around for whatever you want.

Agreed. Comparing the fire genasi and tiefling, which only differ in ASIs and racial spells, it seems pretty evident that the specific spells you get are part of how the features are balanced.

[Pandamonium]

I am not sure how to handle Tiefling, since they should have culture - as human and sub races for human would get awkard. maybe make a tiefling feat which would give you the resistance and the spells?

I kinda like it as a Human (or any race) with a feat: Infernal heritage similar to but distinct from Fey touched or Shadow Touched?

[t209]

I kinda like it as a Human (or any race) with a feat: Infernal heritage similar to but distinct from Fey touched or Shadow Touched?

I had one request for using human feats when someone is playing Simic Hybrid, which he justifies his character as a human with self-modification.

[Sorinth]

Something I thought of, why isn't subrace a place for culture to reside?

Take the Gith, As I understand it the Githyanki and Githzerai are the same race (or at least mostly) and so the differentiation between the subraces is (almost) entirely cultural, The privateer warrior culture from the astral plane & the enlightenment monastic culture from the ever chaging chaos of limbo. If you wanted a new culture just make a new sub race and add it to Gith. Now though this lens, a Githzerai raised by humans, wouldn't be a Githzerai but they would be a Gith. That seems a fairer model of reality then anything goes character traits or straight jacket archetypes.

P.S. Secondary thought: should racial spells be swapable? It seems like an oversight in the Tasha's rules, and there is already a precedent for races like tieflings having different spell lists as part of a sub race like option.

Whether the cultural aspects are in the base race or subrace it doesn't really change anything, you still end up picking a race and getting a mix of physical and cultural abilities.

I think I'd rather the Background feature be expanded possibly by selecting a Cultural Background and a Professional background. So for example things like Dwarven Combat Training/Elf Weapon Training is removed from race/subrace abilities, but now there's a Military Service feature that can be selected as part of your background that grants proficiency in 4 martial weapons.

[quinron]

Whether the cultural aspects are in the base race or subrace it doesn't really change anything, you still end up picking a race and getting a mix of physical and cultural abilities.

I think I'd rather the Background feature be expanded possibly by selecting a Cultural Background and a Professional background. So for example things like Dwarven Combat Training/Elf Weapon Training is removed from race/subrace abilities, but now there's a Military Service feature that can be selected as part of your background that grants proficiency in 4 martial weapons.

I once did a full overhaul of the race mechanics to split things between biological and cultural. I was also trying to accomplish some other stuff, so the way I did it wouldn't work for this, but if put only cultural traits in the subraces, made sure every race had at least one subrace, and kept the subraces balanced, I could totally see just slicing them off the races and having them as a secondary choice - pick your biological traits from list A, then pick your cultural traits from list B.

[Sorinth]

I once did a full overhaul of the race mechanics to split things between biological and cultural. I was also trying to accomplish some other stuff, so the way I did it wouldn't work for this, but if put only cultural traits in the subraces, made sure every race had at least one subrace, and kept the subraces balanced, I could totally see just slicing them off the races and having them as a secondary choice - pick your biological traits from list A, then pick your cultural traits from list B.

If list B is based on the race you picked from list A then you haven't actually changed anything. Cultural traits will still be based on Race. To actually change things list B has to be completely independent, like how Backgrounds are completely independent of race/class selections.

[quinron]

If list B is based on the race you picked from list A then you haven't actually changed anything. Cultural traits will still be based on Race. To actually change things list B has to be completely independent, like how Backgrounds are completely independent of race/class selections.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. You make the two lists, probably still basing a few of list B's entries on list A's entires so you could have typical dwarven or elven cultures, but you choose the subrace from list B totally independently of what your list A choice was. You could pick human for A and hill dwarf for B and play Captain Carrot.

[Dienekes]

I love this splitting of racial and cultural traits, I might have a play with these variants.

That's awfully kind of you to say. Though I would suggest letting me have a day or two to clean it up and fix some things before you do. And I would ask if you do use it, to perhaps make a quick PM how it went if that's not too much to ask.

Well a gift from Moradin is still something that is probably cultural but it doesn't really matter since there isn't really a right or wrong.

Anyways there's certainly some interesting ideas in there but I'm not sold on tying the cultural stuff to the races. For example, I can easily imagine the High Magic Realms features being applicable to anyone who grew up in a high magic city. In lots of D&D lore those high magic cities are Elven, but I don't see the value in imposing that sort of restriction since it can and will be different in one setting compared to another. Similarly there's Nomadic Herdsmen and Wild Hordes which are basically representing the same/similar culture, so there's a level of duplication, and I can easily imagine a Wood-Elf tribe that would also have a focus on being mounted. So it makes more sense for the cultural stuff to be independent from race selection as they are generally more associated to the Background selected.

That's not to say the DM shouldn't impose any restrictions, it's just those should be based on the campaign world. So if in the world the only Nomadic societies are Orc/Human then yeah it can makes sense to restrict the nomad culture to only those races and so Halflings can't choose it. It's like how Bladesinger was restricted to Elves, that's Forgotten Realms specific, but it's not something that should be baked into the base/generic D&D rules.

They way I have it set up is less that cultures are tied to races and more that cultures are organized by races. if you read the section on Cultures at the beginning I say that any race can be of any culture in theory. But different races have developed different cultures and tend to dominate the cultures listed with each race.

For me this did three things:

1) Made it much, much easier for people to quickly understand. Especially newer folk who are just looking into my weird houserules. If you just want to play a Halfling, pick Halfling and then determine if you want to be a Hobbit or a Kender. But once someone gets a firmer grasp on everything you can choose to have your Halfling live in the High Magic Realms.

2) Allowed me to make more race specific cultures and cultural abilities. The Drow and the Dragonborn are the obvious ones that comes to mind. The Drow's Underdark culture is pretty specific. Now all Drow get the cantrip like I have set up for the High Magic realms, but their culture is definitely more brutal and conniving oriented than the more academically minded. While even something like the Dwarves Stonecunning if we take it as cultural and not racial only makes sense for the Dwarven cultures to have.

3) It let me make variations on the same theme that emphasize different things. As you pointed out The Wild Horde and Nomadic Herdsmen are both nomadic societies, but so are Road Clans and Lightfoot Caravans in their own way. But I do think I probably went too far on this. And where I to do it again, I'd probably just made Nomadic Herdsman listed under both Orc and Human, and probably High Magic Realms would have a human version as well.

[Snails]

If list B is based on the race you picked from list A then you haven't actually changed anything. Cultural traits will still be based on Race. To actually change things list B has to be completely independent, like how Backgrounds are completely independent of race/class selections.

Logically speaking, any purely cultural attribute would be exactly like a background, like you said here.

But it is practical and perhaps desirable to have something in between, where, say the Hill Dwarf is just an example of how you could build a dwarf from the menu of items listed under Dwarf. Templates are useful. Thus most of the dwarves from the hill country are resistant to poison, but not all, for example. PCs being special people marked by destiny tend to be a bit more efficiently built from this menu, but the DM can still use the bog standard Hill Dwarf template for NPCs where the fine details rarely matter.

I am not claiming this is the best of all worlds, because perhaps it would be interesting to have truly orthogonal dimensions of: race, culture, background. The alternative is thus we might have a Hill Human who lives among those famously tough dwarves of the Hill country, and is resistant to poison.

[Sorinth]

Logically speaking, any purely cultural attribute would be exactly like a background, like you said here.

But it is practical and perhaps desirable to have something in between, where, say the Hill Dwarf is just an example of how you could build a dwarf from the menu of items listed under Dwarf. Templates are useful. Thus most of the dwarves from the hill country are resistant to poison, but not all, for example. PCs being special people marked by destiny tend to be a bit more efficiently built from this menu, but the DM can still use the bog standard Hill Dwarf template for NPCs where the fine details rarely matter.

I am not claiming this is the best of all worlds, because perhaps it would be interesting to have truly orthogonal dimensions of: race, culture, background. The alternative is thus we might have a Hill Human who lives among those famously tough dwarves of the Hill country, and is resistant to poison.

The easiest way would be too have a line or two about the most common selections for NPCs. So something along the lines of Hill Dwarfs are generally Lawful Good, choose +2 Con +1 Wis, come from Culture: x, y, or z, and are most commonly Classes: a, b, c. That sort of thing, though even then it's probably better placed in the DMG.

I'd probably mostly prefer the base D&D to have generic cultures that aren't related in any way to race. So I'd rather not have a "High Elf" culture that gives a Wizard cantrip even if any race could choose that culture. I'd rather a "Magocracy" culture that gives a Wizard cantrip. In Campaign Settings books it might make sense for backgrounds to be tied to specific locals which could of course be tied to race.

[Theodoxus]

Agreed. Though again, using your idea, why not have "Magocracy: Generally found in Elven and Gnomish kingdoms." - since this feels more like worldbuilding, it would be in the DMG anyway.

I would suspect a PHB would have something like:

The ABC's (and Ds and Es) of creating a character:
A) Generate your base Attributes (roll, PB, SA)
B) Choose your Background - this is what you did before the lure of adventure gripped your heart.
C) Choose your Culture - Are you from a magocracy, and magic is in your blood? Are you from a harsh tundra wilderness, living off the land? Maybe you grew up outside of a feudal castle, supporting the Lord and Lady on the hill. Perhaps you're from a small sea-faring community trading wares up and down the coast.
D) Choose your Dedication - how do you apply yourself in your adventurous trade? Perhaps you're a wily rogue using your streetsmarts and cunning to get your daily bread. Perhaps you're a priest, seeking alms and giving blessings. Or you might be a sellsword, honing your weaponcraft to protect your brothers in arms. Or maybe magic runs in your blood, allowing you to bend the very laws of nature and man to your whims.
E) Choose your Ethnicity. Are you descended from ancient beings of good or evil, or elemental powers? Perhaps flighty fey or grim orcs. Maybe you're an anthropomorphic critter; a bear, cat, dog or even buffalo! Your ethnicity provides a few genetic traits common to your species.

One would hope that the section on Cultures, while setting neutral, would be at least nearly as exhaustive as the original backgrounds in 5E's PHB. A sentence or two of flavor text detailing the feel of it, and then however many bullet points Cultures actually provide (I'd hazard only a few, Skill, Tool and "cool thing" that it provides. Could even tie into the magic that permeates everything (such that it allows your to heal from 1 hp to full overnight!)

(I'm guessing Ethnicity is a charged word.)

[t209]

Agreed. Though again, using your idea, why not have "Magocracy: Generally found in Elven and Gnomish kingdoms." - since this feels more like worldbuilding, it would be in the DMG anyway.

I would suspect a PHB would have something like:

The ABC's (and Ds and Es) of creating a character:
A) Generate your base Attributes (roll, PB, SA)
B) Choose your Background - this is what you did before the lure of adventure gripped your heart.
C) Choose your Culture - Are you from a magocracy, and magic is in your blood? Are you from a harsh tundra wilderness, living off the land? Maybe you grew up outside of a feudal castle, supporting the Lord and Lady on the hill. Perhaps you're from a small sea-faring community trading wares up and down the coast.
D) Choose your Dedication - how do you apply yourself in your adventurous trade? Perhaps you're a wily rogue using your streetsmarts and cunning to get your daily bread. Perhaps you're a priest, seeking alms and giving blessings. Or you might be a sellsword, honing your weaponcraft to protect your brothers in arms. Or maybe magic runs in your blood, allowing you to bend the very laws of nature and man to your whims.
E) Choose your Ethnicity. Are you descended from ancient beings of good or evil, or elemental powers? Perhaps flighty fey or grim orcs. Maybe you're an anthropomorphic critter; a bear, cat, dog or even buffalo! Your ethnicity provides a few genetic traits common to your species.

One would hope that the section on Cultures, while setting neutral, would be at least nearly as exhaustive as the original backgrounds in 5E's PHB. A sentence or two of flavor text detailing the feel of it, and then however many bullet points Cultures actually provide (I'd hazard only a few, Skill, Tool and "cool thing" that it provides. Could even tie into the magic that permeates everything (such that it allows your to heal from 1 hp to full overnight!)

(I'm guessing Ethnicity is a charged word.)

Kinda like that for my ideal idea.
Though I do get bothered by Bureaucracy, Monarchy, Feudalism since...government and systems are more complex (like a nation with a powerful king can have bureaucracy ala China or post-3rd Century AD/CE Roman Empire, or frontier-march can count as stratocracy and bureaucracy since it can be a military district with an appointed official). Magocracy is more like Oligarchy or Technocracy but with magic.

[Wildstag]

E) Choose your Ethnicity. Are you descended from ancient beings of good or evil, or elemental powers? Perhaps flighty fey or grim orcs. Maybe you're an anthropomorphic critter; a bear, cat, dog or even buffalo! Your ethnicity provides a few genetic traits common to your species.

One would hope that the section on Cultures, while setting neutral, would be at least nearly as exhaustive as the original backgrounds in 5E's PHB. A sentence or two of flavor text detailing the feel of it, and then however many bullet points Cultures actually provide (I'd hazard only a few, Skill, Tool and "cool thing" that it provides. Could even tie into the magic that permeates everything (such that it allows your to heal from 1 hp to full overnight!)

(I'm guessing Ethnicity is a charged word.)

It's really not, but I would say that it's synonymous with Culture and Nationality. Granted, there's not really a word that fits well for a purely biological descriptor of other sapient creatures. Kindred might work, but it doesn't fit in the ABCs that you put together. Either way, I love the way you managed to do that, and dedication seems like a fun and 'native' word (for lack of a better word) for what Class ends up meaning in D&D.

[Herbert_W]

Separating culture from the biological aspects of a character's race is a step in this right direction, but it doesn't go far enough IMO. You're adding another fiddly bit to character creation (or two, if you have backgrounds and culture as separate elements), but it's not doing as much work as it could. In the current system, players make two major character-defining choices at creation: race and class. These, respectively, answer the questions of "what is you character, physically?" and "what does your character do while adventuring?"

If you're going to ask players to make another decision at character creation, then it should answer an equally important question, such as "what does my character do while not adventuring?" Backgrounds already lean in that direction, but I think we should take them further. Every background should give players default answers to the question of how their character usually lives, where they go where an adventure is over (at least at low levels, before the players establish a home base together), where the other characters can usually find them when it's time for another adventure to begin, and what sort of relationship they might have with other characters at the start of the game.

There was a supplement for 3.5e that suggested giving characters "lifestyles" which would determine upkeep cost and which would IIRC grant small social boons. Lifestyles existed on a sliding scale from self-sufficiency to living like a king; this was essentially a way for players to spend their mountains of useless gold in a way that gives them a mechanical advantage that's small enough to not unbalance the game, objective and mechanical enough to appeal to powergamers, and flavorful enough to appeal to everyone else. Of course, since this was a tiny little rule tucked away in a supplement, I don't think it ended up doing the edition much good - but there is a seed of a good idea here.

I'm suggesting making backgrounds similar to that, but with differentiation in kind rather than a sliding scale. Different backgrounds would allow different characters to bring different resources to the game. Say, for example, a merchant or thief could help the group by selling off art objects that they loot and buying armour and weapons at a better price than they'd otherwise get. A blacksmith could outright make that equipment themselves given enough downtime. A self-sufficient hermit can provide food and extend the range of a group's travel when moving through the woods.

One thing that I'd recommend avoiding is having backgrounds provide mechanical benefits that could mesh with racial or class features in a way that makes some combinations more powerful that others, for obvious reasons. The more complexity there is in a game, the more opportunity there is for optimized builds to rise above unoptimized ones. Balancing a wide range of race/class combos is already difficult - doing the same for race/class/background combos would be even harder. It's not impossible, though, and it'd be worth the effort.

I think the best way to achieve this would be to focus on background benefits that are noncombat-related and to focus on benefits that ultimately help a whole party. Classes, subclasses, and feats already do enough for a character's role in combat. We don't want backgrounds to be another tool that powergamers use to give themselves yet another +1. Instead, backgrounds should encourage cooperation. (This is the same reason why I like buff and BFC spells: when a fighter focuses down on an enemy with a sword that a wizard enchanted, both players feel like they're contributing on each and every hit. Everyone can be a little bit in the limelight all the time, not just when it focuses on them on their turn. That's a topic for another thread though.)

Background is currently tied to race, because that's where the concept peeled off from. This is a historical accident, though: background would have made every bit as much sense if it were ties instead to class. I can easily imagine an alternative version of the game where "nomadic tribe," "reclusive hermit," "literally raised by wolves," and "raised by druids" are all backgrounds associated with the ranger class, for example. Backgrounds make just as much sense tied to class as they do to race . . .

. . . So why not peel it off completely and let it be it's own thing? Backgrounds have several important roles that they could play in a game system, and once fleshed out to fill those roles they'll deserve their own section in between the races and the classes. Of course, it'll make sense for races and backgrounds to be correlated (although how they are correlated could be campaign-dependent), just as it makes sense for backgrounds and classes to be dependent. I can easily imagine a PHB where every race has a list of suggested backgrounds and classes, every background has a list of suggested races and classes, and every class has a list of suggested backgrounds and races. That way, players can start with any one (or any two, if they prefer) of the three as the "seed" for a character idea and have suggestions at every step of the way for how to flesh their character out.

[KyleG]

Separating culture from the biological aspects of a character's race is a step in this right direction, but it doesn't go far enough IMO. You're adding another fiddly bit to character creation (or two, if you have backgrounds and culture as separate elements), but it's not doing as much work as it could. In the current system, players make two major character-defining choices at creation: race and class. These, respectively, answer the questions of "what is you character, physically?" and "what does your character do while adventuring?"

If you're going to ask players to make another decision at character creation, then it should answer an equally important question, such as "what does my character do while not adventuring?" Backgrounds already lean in that direction, but I think we should take them further. Every background should give players default answers to the question of how their character usually lives, where they go where an adventure is over (at least at low levels, before the players establish a home base together), where the other characters can usually find them when it's time for another adventure to begin, and what sort of relationship they might have with other characters at the start of the game.

There was a supplement for 3.5e that suggested giving characters "lifestyles" which would determine upkeep cost and which would IIRC grant small social boons. Lifestyles existed on a sliding scale from self-sufficiency to living like a king; this was essentially a way for players to spend their mountains of useless gold in a way that gives them a mechanical advantage that's small enough to not unbalance the game, objective and mechanical enough to appeal to powergamers, and flavorful enough to appeal to everyone else. Of course, since this was a tiny little rule tucked away in a supplement, I don't think it ended up doing the edition much good - but there is a seed of a good idea here.

I'm suggesting making backgrounds similar to that, but with differentiation in kind rather than a sliding scale. Different backgrounds would allow different characters to bring different resources to the game. Say, for example, a merchant or thief could help the group by selling off art objects that they loot and buying armour and weapons at a better price than they'd otherwise get. A blacksmith could outright make that equipment themselves given enough downtime. A self-sufficient hermit can provide food and extend the range of a group's travel when moving through the woods.

One thing that I'd recommend avoiding is having backgrounds provide mechanical benefits that could mesh with racial or class features in a way that makes some combinations more powerful that others, for obvious reasons. The more complexity there is in a game, the more opportunity there is for optimized builds to rise above unoptimized ones. Balancing a wide range of race/class combos is already difficult - doing the same for race/class/background combos would be even harder. It's not impossible, though, and it'd be worth the effort.

I think the best way to achieve this would be to focus on background benefits that are noncombat-related and to focus on benefits that ultimately help a whole party. Classes, subclasses, and feats already do enough for a character's role in combat. We don't want backgrounds to be another tool that powergamers use to give themselves yet another +1. Instead, backgrounds should encourage cooperation. (This is the same reason why I like buff and BFC spells: when a fighter focuses down on an enemy with a sword that a wizard enchanted, both players feel like they're contributing on each and every hit. Everyone can be a little bit in the limelight all the time, not just when it focuses on them on their turn. That's a topic for another thread though.)

Background is currently tied to race, because that's where the concept peeled off from. This is a historical accident, though: background would have made every bit as much sense if it were ties instead to class. I can easily imagine an alternative version of the game where "nomadic tribe," "reclusive hermit," "literally raised by wolves," and "raised by druids" are all backgrounds associated with the ranger class, for example. Backgrounds make just as much sense tied to class as they do to race . . .

. . . So why not peel it off completely and let it be it's own thing? Backgrounds have several important roles that they could play in a game system, and once fleshed out to fill those roles they'll deserve their own section in between the races and the classes. Of course, it'll make sense for races and backgrounds to be correlated (although how they are correlated could be campaign-dependent), just as it makes sense for backgrounds and classes to be dependent. I can easily imagine a PHB where every race has a list of suggested backgrounds and classes, every background has a list of suggested races and classes, and every class has a list of suggested backgrounds and races. That way, players can start with any one (or any two, if they prefer) of the three as the "seed" for a character idea and have suggestions at every step of the way for how to flesh their character out.

Whilst I don't disagree with the sentiment I want to challenge your premise.. "what does my character do when NOT adventuring?"

My experience both as a player and consuming dnd media is that adventuring IS your life. There isn't any years off where you get a regular job (nor need to). Obviously my experience could be vastly different from others but it doesn't seem to me that the intent of dnd is to do anything bar adventure.

[Luccan]

Whilst I don't disagree with the sentiment I want to challenge your premise.. "what does my character do when NOT adventuring?"

My experience both as a player and consuming dnd media is that adventuring IS your life. There isn't any years off where you get a regular job (nor need to). Obviously my experience could be vastly different from others but it doesn't seem to me that the intent of dnd is to do anything bar adventure.

D&D has gradually moved away from incentivizing "taking a break" for PCs to do things besides adventure. It's not wrong to play that way, but there's a reason you don't see non-adventuring activities anymore and that's because in 5e you recover all your HP and abilities overnight (with a couple exceptions) and activities like crafting magic items or running businesses have purposefully annoying rules to dissuade you from actually doing them. Even buying magic items is made more difficult than really necessary, partly to reinforce 5e's claim of not needing them, but also to make adventuring even more appealing since you can just get magic items on adventures (theoretically).

... Honestly, when I lay it out like that it feels like the designers were worried no one playing 5e would want to adventure if they could do other stuff in the game.

[PhoenixPhyre]

D&D has gradually moved away from incentivizing "taking a break" for PCs to do things besides adventure. It's not wrong to play that way, but there's a reason you don't see non-adventuring activities anymore and that's because in 5e you recover all your HP and abilities overnight (with a couple exceptions) and activities like crafting magic items or running businesses have purposefully annoying rules to dissuade you from actually doing them. Even buying magic items is made more difficult than really necessary, partly to reinforce 5e's claim of not needing them, but also to make adventuring even more appealing since you can just get magic items on adventures (theoretically).

... Honestly, when I lay it out like that it feels like the designers were worried no one playing 5e would want to adventure if they could do other stuff in the game.

It's Dungeons and Dragons, not Merchants and Ledgers.

Basically, they were reacting to 3e, which tried to be more simulation-style in that way, and was horrifically broken. Not just for those reasons, but that certainly contributed (when crafting was a way to shatter the game's expectations and not adventuring was a better way of gaining power than actually adventuring...).

And I'm thankful for it. The time between adventures is downtime. And I struggle to get my parties to take more than a few days at a time unless they're traveling between two points in "safe" territory. Pouring resources into making that "more engaging" is frankly, IMO, a waste of effort.

-------------
Back on the main thread, I'm getting close to finishing my first draft of my racial overhaul. That will have (names not set in stone)

Physical heritage: Just the biological parts. 2 biological/genetic-based features, +1 to one ability score (sometimes choice between 2), size, and speed (for mechanical factors). Replaces race/subrace entirely.

Cultural heritage: The social part. Any culture can be taken by any physical heritage. Grants 1 cultural feature, +1 to two ability scores (for either +1/+1/+1 or +2/+1 overall, often with choices), at least one language other than common[1], and a set of proficiencies. Some cultures are very specific, others are much more generic. These are associated with three adjectives/descriptors.

Example physical heritages (without the wording):
Orc (no half orcs in this setting): Medium, 30 ft, +1 CON, Relentless Endurance (PHB), Inexhaustible (recover 1 level of exhaustion on SR as well as LR).
Human: Medium, 30 ft. Any half feat (which grants their ASI).
Goroesi (replaces drow): Medium, 30 ft, +1 CON, darkvision, Fey Nature (1)
Ihmisi (replaces wood elves): Medium, 35 ft, +1 DEX, Fey Nature (1), Trance (PHB)
Gwerin (replaces high elves): Medium, 30 ft, +1 INT, Superior Trance (conscious while trancing), Quick Learner (+2 languages or tools, half cost/time to learn new ones).

Fey Nature (N): Choose N of
Psychic Resistance. You have resistance to psychic damage.
Fey Trick: As an action, one creature you can see within 60 feet must make a Wisdom saving throw against a DC of 8 + your Charisma modifier + your proficiency bonus. On a failure, they must use their reaction to move up to their speed in a straight line in a direction of your choice. Once a creature fails this saving throw, you cannot use this trait again until you finish a long rest.
One with Nature : As an action, you can merge into a natural feature (such as a rock, tree, dirt, or unworked stone) and reappear at a different natural feature you can see within 30 feet. Once you use this trait, you cannot do so again until you finish a long rest.
Nature’s Concealment : You can attempt to hide when lightly obscured by natural elements such as trees, mist, bushes, etc.
Fey Companion. You can cast the find familiar spell once with this trait, regaining the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. The familiar you summon has the fey type

Example Cultural Heritage (without the wording):
Wallbuilder (normally dwarves, gwerin, half-elves, halflings, human, and ihmisi): devout, resourceful, crafty. +1 WIS, +1 Any other. Religion + 1 tool. Consensus-Builder. Knows choice of gwerin, old imperial[2], or dwarven.

Consensus Builder: The wallbuilders have a long history of working closely together and valuing consensus. When you take the Help action to assist with an Intelligence or Charisma check, you can add your relevant modifier (if positive) to the result as well.

[1] languages are a big thing in my setting, and many of them aren't racial in origin.
[2] Old imperial is roughly Latin to common's French. Ancestor language, shares roots. Language of lots of old records and ruins in the area where Wallbuilders are mostly from.

[Herbert_W]

Whilst I don't disagree with the sentiment I want to challenge your premise.. "what does my character do when NOT adventuring?"

My experience both as a player and consuming dnd media is that adventuring IS your life. There isn't any years off where you get a regular job (nor need to). Obviously my experience could be vastly different from others but it doesn't seem to me that the intent of dnd is to do anything bar adventure.

Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting that players be pushed to roleplay a blacksmith beating out a steel pot for two hours. That'd be boring as all heck. I'm suggesting that, when there's suddenly a goblin loose on main street, the character who is a blacksmith might start the encounter in his workshop with a hammer already in-hand.

The life that a character leads between adventures will affect how adventures begin and end. Even if per hypothesis your table only cares about adventuring, there's a useful role for fleshed-out backgrounds.

Backgrounds have both plot hooks and complications built-in. Suppose a character is a merchant - this means that they either are or deal with traveling merchants, which means that they either are or know people who'd very much like to have an escort straight through a forest instead of taking the several days to go around. Suppose that another character is a hermit who lives in the woods, while the rest live in a walled settlement that comes under sage. The hermit is going to start the adventure outside of the walls and would have a hard time getting in - while for the rest of the characters it'll be the other way around. Even something as simple as a basic roll table to determine where a character is at a given moment if an adventure hook wanders into town would help.

We don't use these in the game because we don't have them. There's a chicken-and-egg situation here.

To put this in a broader context, a full adventure could have five stages, at least in theory:

• The hook: The characters see an opportunity, or a problem, and decide to act.
• The journey: The characters go where they need to be, trying to minimize expenditure of limited resources on random encounters, or perhaps just trying to get to main street before that goblin slips away.
• The main event: A series of challenge is faced and overcome. There may be traps, puzzles, and secret doors. There'll certainly be monsters. Often there'll be one big fight at the end.
• The return: The party makes their way back to safety while dealing with the complications of the loot (or prisoners, or rescued captives, etc.) that needs transporting and lasting curses/injuries/whatever from the main event.
• The denouement: Loot is divided and sold, gear is bought, and all of the repercussions of the adventure are worked out. This would be a good place for characters to level up IMO, as gaining abilities gets players keen for the next adventure.

DnD has very detailed rules for the main event. They aren't balanced in all of the ways that we might want; this thread's conversation on the impact of racial ASIs on build diversity is an example of that.

5e seems to actively discourage modeling journeys by making attrition no longer a realistic threat, but that's a topic for another thread.

The hook and denouement are supposed to be there, as indicated by the fact that DnD is ostensibly a roleplaying game that merely includes rather than being limited to a tactical fantasy skirmish simulator. That's also mainly a topic for another thread, but it's worth mentioning here that if we're going to include this third fiddly bit in character generation then it's something that can easily (and IMO should) extend into a foundation for improved mechanical support of hooks and denouements.

[Mikal]

No. DND as it stands is too basic already. Something as simple as this being removed just makes it even weaker

[greenstone]

I really like the idea of biological differences between the races, though I'd like to see them inform the dominant culture of those races.

For example, dwarves being comfortable in stone means that they never live in wooden buildings. For example, elves don't have safety rails anywhere, because they are, in general, very agile.

How does "not being able to see in the dark" make human culture different from elf or dwarf culture?

How does "hatching from eggs" make the family structure of gith or dragonborn different from that of humans?

After all, if there is no difference between an elf and a dwarf then why have elves and dwarves in the game?

Logically speaking, any purely cultural attribute would be exactly like a background, like you said here.

It sounds like we need two backgrounds, one for childhood, one for pre-adventuring adult life. Each might give proficiencies (weapon, armour, tool, language) or spells.

Or, to extend it further, a lifepath system.

[Luccan]

I really like the idea of biological differences between the races, though I'd like to see them inform the dominant culture of those races.

For example, dwarves being comfortable in stone means that they never live in wooden buildings. For example, elves don't have safety rails anywhere, because they are, in general, very agile.

How does "not being able to see in the dark" make human culture different from elf or dwarf culture?

How does "hatching from eggs" make the family structure of gith or dragonborn different from that of humans?

After all, if there is no difference between an elf and a dwarf then why have elves and dwarves in the game?



It sounds like we need two backgrounds, one for childhood, one for pre-adventuring adult life. Each might give proficiencies (weapon, armour, tool, language) or spells.

Or, to extend it further, a lifepath system.

Gith lay eggs?

[Luccan]

page 87 from MToF:

Huh, guess I skimmed over that. That does make them more alien