D&D (2024) No Dwarf, Halfling, and Orc suborgins, lineages, and legacies

[Hussar]

Oh, I don't think they never should be, but I' don't feel making every remotely supernatural ability a spell is good either. I would hate, for example, to replace a changeling's ability to morph into other species just become "cast disguise self x/per day" even if the two have roughly the same parameters.

But I get you don't like the idea that characters have abilities you can't hard block.

But, that's the point. Why not? Granted, Disguise Self is an illusion, so, that's out. But why not a modified Alter Self (no adaptations, no natural weapons)? Make it concentration with no duration. Poof, now, it's nice an flavorful - but, changelings are vulnerable when they sleep - they revert to their natural forms. Because it's straight up a spell, it's detectable, dispellable and no longer bypasses the limitation of casters.

Those limitations on there on casters for very good reasons. By making obvious spells "non-spells" it's just power creep.

 

[Scribe]

Every Elf that casts spells can waterbreathe.

But not every elf can natively, biologically, breath water.

That would be what Sea Elves can do.

 

[Azzy]

A setting can't be designed to incorporate something that didn't exist when it was created. That statement in the 2014 PH is a clear retcon. Draconians are notably different, mechanically, from dragonborn.

And yet, Greyhawk did just that with each bit of material for 1e. It's what it's reason—a tabula rasa to fit all the new classes, races, spells, magic items, creatures, etc. that got added to the game by Gary-era TSR and by DM home-brewers. Heck, you can see it between the 81 GH Folio and the '83 boxed set—creatures from the Fiend Folio were put into the random monster tables in the boxed set even though the FF was released after the Greyhawk Folio was published.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Here I liked the idea of Pathfinder 2, some racial traits being replaced with racial feats, allowing different types of build: warrior, spellcaster, stealth.

If a mountain dwarf and a hilla dwarf marry, how would be the children? Or let's imagine a gnome couple is killed by the gnolls, and the survivor baby is adopted by her dwarf godparents. Could that adopted gnome grown up among dwarves to learn "speak with animals"? Cattie-Brie, Drizzt's wife and mother of his children, was adopted by dwarf king Bruenor Battlehammer.

Dragonlance is a good examples, or let's say one of the best and clearest examples about how a setting created in a previous edition becomes "behind the times" or outdated when new crunch elements are added later. Any solution to can fix this? I suggest to add "variant timelines", for example a Krynnspace where psionic manifesters, incarnum soulmelders and ki martial adepts always there were there, or where the cataclysm happened in a different way, or there are gem dragons in the unknown continent of Adlatum, or where the summer of Chaos didn't happen, or the Krynspace was invaded by the Vodoni empire (a Spelljammer faction).

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Then where's the value of calling them dragonborn?

To tell a player which stats to use if they want to play one. What a species is called mechanically does not need to be the same as they are called in-world.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And yet, Greyhawk did just that with each bit of material for 1e. It's what it's reason—a tabula rasa to fit all the new classes, races, spells, magic items, creatures, etc. that got added to the game by Gary-era TSR and by DM home-brewers. Heck, you can see it between the 81 GH Folio and the '83 boxed set—creatures from the Fiend Folio were put into the random monster tables in the boxed set even though the FF was released after the Greyhawk Folio was published.

It stretched to accommodate those things, yes, but it was not designed to incorporate them. Because that's not how causality works.

 

[Micah Sweet]

To tell a player which stats to use if they want to play one. What a species is called mechanically does not need to be the same as they are called in-world.

Draconians have species abilities that differ from dragonborn. The PH sidebar admits this, but does not provide mechanics for said abilities. Thus, a player could not play one.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Draconians have species abilities that differ from dragonborn. The PH sidebar admits this, but does not provide mechanics for said abilities. Thus, a player could not play one.

The player can play one if the DM lets them play one. Their character is a free-willed mutant with non-standard abilities. Player characters are exceptional is a core assumption of D&D.

 

[Mind of tempest]

this would all be so much easer to deal with if wotc just made properly designed new settings

 

[Paul Farquhar]

this would all be so much easer to deal with if wotc just made properly designed new settings

If you real the current DMG, the focus is on encouraging DMs to create their own settings.