D&D 5E Discriminating Against Sameness: A Case for Readjusting Racial Bonuses and Ability Score Increases


log in or register to remove this ad

snickersnax

Explorer
......

If you're going to do a stat difference between men and women drow, why are the female drow not Wisdom? They're primarily clerics!

And why the Charisma boop to Elves? High Elves are heavily focused on wizard stuff - arcane tricksters, eldritch knights wizards, and they're known for their psionics as well.

Why are you ditching Charisma for lightfoot halflings? They can't be chaos sorcerers anymore? Or bards?

I feel like there's prejudice against dragonborn, tieflings and half-orcs here. The "goodly races" get to shine brighter, but the "monster" races can't?

I picked Charisma for female drow, because the female high priestess listed in the Monster Manual has charisma as the highest ability - 18 (higher than wisdom - 17). Also I felt that drow female social dominance should have some numbers to back it up.

I know that elves usually get intelligence bonuses in 5e, and if you wanted to incorporate a version of these rules in your world you could easily substitute intelligence. For me the classic high elven caster classes are bard, wild magic sorcerer, archfey warlock, and bladesinger(reworked to fit in the bard class). I also have a multiclass fighter-eldritch knight/sorcerer 11F/9 sorc or 6EK/14 sorcerer: does almost everything an EK can do only better. There's a reason dwarves say, "No telling what an elf will do next; when the hammer meets the orc’s head, they’re as apt to start singing as to pull out a sword." -PH

I just have a hard time seeing elves as the bookworm studying type. Maybe in human lands there are more elven wizards because they just don't fit in with the rest of the elves frolicking in the forest. Plus I get to reserve intelligence bonus for grey elves, so if you really wanted to play an elven wizard in my world we'd find a way.

I ended up ditching charisma for lightfoots only because of the beautiful symmetry that exposed itself when I was contemplating halflings. I wanted them to be quick, hardy and mentally tough, a race that might be able to withstand bearing the burden of the one ring (LoTR). At the time I was thinking that I wanted them to have a hitpoint size penalty as described in the monster manual- page 7 (basically one die size smaller) and I wanted to find another way to balance the penalty, so they all needed a point of constitution to do that. That fit in with my idea that they were surprisingly sturdy, despite their small size. I decided to squeeze the extra +2 for them by balancing with a minus -2 strength (I just have such a hard time with a 40 lb person being as strong as a 150lb person (without magic), -2 strength is probably way too generous).

Long story longer, something had to go and I sacrificed charisma. When I did, it made halflings with 3 strong abilities with a subrace that personified one of each (dex, con, wis). I fell in the love with the symmetry and simplicity of it. If I gave all halflings +4 dex and -2 str and then lightfoots +2 cha, stouts +2 con and ghostwise +2 wis then I'd still need to give them another +2 somewhere to balance the strength penalty. The choice for an extra +2 probably shouldn't be str, dext, cha, con, or wis . That left intelligence and didn't seem to make sense, so my choices where either come up with a +2 stat for each subrace of halfling or sacrifice charisma. Charisma lost to beauty.

OK maybe I'll get to the last part of your question, but not for a while. I have to take a break
 
Last edited:

Remove ads

Top