UngeheuerLich
Legend
You need some flavour or you get very boring rules.
The alternative is to have a culture metric in your character creation system, where stuff like that can go.That's where we run into the limits of biology being the only justification for racial traits. Firearm use has been a major part of the Giff story since their inception. Ask any D&D player who has heard of Giff prior to 5e and they will say they are "hippo people with guns". Remove the latter and they just are "hippo people" and they can be tossed on the furry pile with cat people, bird people, elephant people, etc.
The alternative, of course, is that races NEVER grant proficiency in anything and only ever influence size, movement, senses, and natural attacks/defenses. But I think that design space isn't going to support a lot of options.
The alternative is to have a culture metric in your character creation system, where stuff like that can go.
I just use Level Up.I was wondering earlier about something called just "Early Life" or "Formative Years", that combined the culture and background things.
Isn’t that… what background is?I was wondering earlier about something called just "Early Life" or "Formative Years", that combined the culture and background things.
It separates culture and background.I just use Level Up.
Maybe I'm spoiled by culture and background in A5e or thinking of race and background in 5e.Isn’t that… what background is?
I love the giff (one of my favorite parts of Spelljammer) so I built a Level Up heritage for them, and giff culture. Works great for me.It separates culture and background.
Maybe I'm spoiled by culture and background in A5e or thinking of race and background in 5e.
I wonder if changing the name would make people think about all of those things. So the Giff that went off somewhere fairly young with a caravan might still have firearms skill because of being trained really young in it. The Halfling who was hired as a cook for the Giff might have it for a very different reason.
So make a “gun-loving people” background/culture and associate the Giff with it in the lore.
There’s also room for unique race features like the new version of Stonecunning, inherent spellcasting, the halflings’ lucky, the Tabaxi’s cool dash move, orcs’ adrenaline rush, humans’ new inspiration feature, etc, etc, etc.
What I'm not understanding is why Gods granting magical kewl abilities is ok, but granting mundane proficiency isn't. Why are ALL halflings lucky? The lore says they're blessed by the Gods of luck. Apparently, the Gods of luck can bless an entire race with good fortune, but hit Gods of crafting can't bless them with natural talent with crafts. Maybe the God of crafting should just give dwarves free rerolls when using artisan tools.
It's not that they're inspired to study, it's that they have instinctual racial memories that are part of their heritage. A dwarf, regardless of where they were born and raised, finds that if they pick up an artisan tool, they know how to use it. They have muscle memory and knowledge of the tool despite never having used one before granted by their creator. Likewise, a dragonborn might never have learned or spoken with someone in draconic, but when he finds another creature speaking it, he automatically understands what is being said and can respond*. If that's not as magical as supernatural luck or spell knowledge, I don't know what is.Luck is impersonal (even if the players can use it so that other people fails when around their halflings). They are blessed and it affects the world around them. The ability to cast a spell is an ability that the character decides on using. On the other hand, inspiring the mind of their creatures toward studying stonecutting and masonry is not different to inspire hatred toward the god's enemy: WotC has clearly departed from that, and if gods can't inspire a basic emotion, they can't inspire a craving for studying masonry, that even a dwarf raised on the plane of Earth, without any access to a mason or a boulder or a rock, because he lives on a floating cloud, would feel. It would certainly mesh better if the dwarf's creator god had commanded the stones to comply to the orders of his children, so they are proficient with mason's tools without any need to learn them (or even without the need to have them).