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

Micah Sweet said:

So "something" equals "has spells". Got it.

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Breath weapons, evil or laser eyes, claws or fangs, size increases, size decrease, heat or cold aura, natural luck, wings, water Breathing,...

You knew what I meant.

For 35+ years, PC races were humans with rubber ears.

Remathilis said:

They're lucky. If they were in the PHB like drow, they would be reduced to three SLA and a ribbon feature.

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They are already 3 SLA and a ribbon feature.

Micah Sweet said:

Just once I would like to see some aspect of D&D where the top priority isn't, "but what will new players think?". If WotC could pretend anyone who already owns their products matters to them, at all, that would be great.

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This is ridiculous. Duergar weren’t in the 2014 PHB either, and I never saw you or anyone else complaining about that, but suddenly because I just made the remark that it makes sense to include the more iconic player options in the PHB, you’ve decided it’s something to complain about and fits into a bigger scheme of screwing over older players.

Micah Sweet said:

Doing things in the world that enforce the reality of that world (and happen to also enforce the sort of behavior you prefer) is a far better method than forcing the rules to do it, IMO. The way you're describing is, to my mind, a form of tyranny of fun. You want your game to be exploited less? Maybe have a discussion with your players.

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So we should make races that let people cast 9th-level spells? Have classes that can do 100d6 damage with a single hit?

Yes, these are extreme examples. Your explicit position is nothing is too extreme--that extrema should only be addressed through DMs moralizing at their players.

Micah Sweet said:

So "something" equals "has spells". Got it.

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I mean, in 5e, it might as well!

Micah Sweet said:

I agree that limitations are good. You seem to want more hard-coded limitations than I do, and you seem to want them for everyone who plays the game, not just you and yours, for...reasons?

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I don't really care what the specific limitations in the books are, because I'm going to change them for my games anyway.

I just don't want the structure and the precedent of those limitations to be further eroded. I mean, given my preferences, ancestry would be a much more substantial portion of character abilities-- from first to cap-- the majority of ancestry options wouldn't be subrace-locked, and ancestries would have restrictions on their available classes (less strict but more varied than AD&D) and multiclass combos. Lost that fight before I slapped leather, but I would really like to keep even more of the narrative and mechanical weight of ancestry from being removed into another practically meaningless choice at 1st level.

Minigiant said:

Doing "something".

In the old editions elves only had better senses, resistance to charms, immunity to sleep because it had to be balance to a human who had... nothing for a while.

When they gave some elf subraces "something" like spells, they were forced to give them harsh penalties as balance to square up with humans.

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Let's say that Elves get a Fighting Style and their own half-caster progression. I don't like darkvision on surface elves, but let's stick with it for the sake of argument. Fast land movement. Fey resistances. That's your first level. Every X levels, you can improve your elf vision (+ Perception/Investigation, darkvision radius, come up with something), your elf hearing (blindsense), your elf mobility (land speed, eladrin teleport), or maybe your elf martial stuff (extra attack) or your elf spellcasting.

Dwarves get Medium Armor, bump their Hit Die up a step, darkvision, and their poison and magic resistance. Maybe they get Heavy Armor. Remove the "dim light" penalty for darkvision. Tremorsense. Resilient saves, other damage resistances, extra Hit Dice. Crafting? More... armor... stuff.

Humans don't get unique human stuff; they get more picks for generic stuff. Human ancestry widgets can be used on class/multiclass widgets, humans can multiclass more better than nonhumans, humans get more proficiencies and fighting styles and whatever than everyone else.

If we keep "subraces" as a thing, you pick it at 1st and maybe each subrace has a few unique ancestry widgets, but most of your ancestry widgets are chosen freely from your general ancestry list. Because "subraces" aren't as different as actual ancestries.

Micah Sweet said:

Just once I would like to see some aspect of D&D where the top priority isn't, "but what will new players think?". If WotC could pretend anyone who already owns their products matters to them, at all, that would be great.

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Business still has to make money.

Like in all the threads about it, if your customer base contains new players some of the game should be tailored to them.
Many of the games in the D&Dverse have better origin systems but could never work as gateways as their systems are too high of an information introduction to work as a gateway. They most run on having WOTC teach fans the game for them.

Can't have it both ways. Cant have a complex core and a simple core.

DammitVictor said:

Let's say that Elves get a Fighting Style and their own half-caster progression. I don't like darkvision on surface elves, but let's stick with it for the sake of argument. Fast land movement. Fey resistances. That's your first level. Every X levels, you can improve your elf vision (+ Perception/Investigation, darkvision radius, come up with something), your elf hearing (blindsense), your elf mobility (land speed, eladrin teleport), or maybe your elf martial stuff (extra attack) or your elf spellcasting.

Dwarves get Medium Armor, bump their Hit Die up a step, darkvision, and their poison and magic resistance. Maybe they get Heavy Armor. Remove the "dim light" penalty for darkvision. Tremorsense. Resilient saves, other damage resistances, extra Hit Dice. Crafting? More... armor... stuff.

Humans don't get unique human stuff; they get more picks for generic stuff. Human ancestry widgets can be used on class/multiclass widgets, humans can multiclass more better than nonhumans, humans get more proficiencies and fighting styles and whatever than everyone else.

If we keep "subraces" as a thing, you pick it at 1st and maybe each subrace has a few unique ancestry widgets, but most of your ancestry widgets are chosen freely from your general ancestry list. Because "subraces" aren't as different as actual ancestries.

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Yeah, you could do that.

The point was before feats and character choice was a thing (pre2000), you couldn't do that.
So Elves were just humans with funny hats. And subraces were just different hats.

Now that we have design space and tools, there is no need to design "hat subraces". We could design actual biological subspecies.

But WOTC and many of the fandom are still designing core and iconic races like it's 1994. They only get creative with they are forced to create new content for new book sales.

Minigiant said:

Breath weapons, evil or laser eyes, claws or fangs, size increases, size decrease, heat or cold aura, natural luck, wings, water Breathing,...

You knew what I meant.

For 35+ years, PC races were humans with rubber ears.

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Do any of those make sense as traits for elves?

Fiction first please.

Levistus's_Leviathan said:

This is ridiculous. Duergar weren’t in the 2014 PHB either, and I never saw you or anyone else complaining about that, but suddenly because I just made the remark that it makes sense to include the more iconic player options in the PHB, you’ve decided it’s something to complain about and fits into a bigger scheme of screwing over older players.

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I don't really care about the duergar; I already have stats for them. But I do have an issue the general idea of only caring about new players, and your comment reminded me.

Levistus's_Leviathan said:

This is ridiculous. Duergar weren’t in the 2014 PHB either, and I never saw you or anyone else complaining about that,

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Anyone but Minigiant. I did make this thread about wanting dwarven subpecies.

Micah Sweet said:

Do any of those make sense as traits for elves?

Fiction first please.

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Ok

glamour based mirror images
fey charms
light beams
feywild teleports
natural barkskin
supernatural aim from heighten vision
tree powers
animal transformations