The 10 Player Races in Volo's Guide Revealed

Mouseferatu · Nov 5, 2016

MiraMels said:
Basically, it'd be weird if a race or class had a feature that could only be used "once per social interaction". It's just as weird to have something limited to "once per combat".

Is it? I mean, I can see real-world circumstances that would best be described as "once per combat." Effectively, a trick or sneaky move that the opponent, once he's seen it, won't fall for a second time.

Sure, IRL, there's a question of whether everyone involved saw it or not, or whether they've seen something similar in the past. But it basically abstracts down to "you can do this effectively once per fight."

MiraMels · Nov 5, 2016

Mouseferatu said:
Is it? I mean, I can see real-world circumstances that would best be described as "once per combat." Effectively, a trick or sneaky move that the opponent, once he's seen it, won't fall for a second time.

Sure, IRL, there's a question of whether everyone involved saw it or not, or whether they've seen something similar in the past. But it basically abstracts down to "you can do this effectively once per fight."

Right, but 'a fight' isn't defined as a unit of gameplay within the ruleset.

This is rule design critique. You and I both know what they are getting at with 'once per combat', and can both actively interpret the rule into a table ruling that matches the intent, but that doesn't mean that the rule is designed well.

Mouseferatu · Nov 5, 2016

I'm not sure there's any way of phrasing it better that wouldn't require a lot more word count, and a level of nit-picky precision that 5E's trying to get away from. I think "once per combat" is pretty clear, and not hard to interpret. Sure, there are corner cases where it may not be 100% clear, but I prefer that to--for instance--3E's efforts at trying to eliminate corner cases by casting everything in concrete.

Not trying to convince you to like it; just saying, I don't think it's objectively poor design.

FormerlyHemlock · Nov 5, 2016

Chaosmancer said:
Perhaps this is me being slightly dense... but the ability is to deal extra damage correct? When are you dealing damage, from surprise, where you wouldn't call it combat?

And, if you are in an incredibly long combat, or war/siege situation, how does it make more sense that every 10 rounds they are suddenly sneaky damage dealers again? Plus, in my experience, with those scenarios you either don't have a lot of hiding, or you break it into smaller combats, which would refresh the ability....

So... is this just an "I don't like the word choice here" type of situation, because it seems that in practice it will work perfectly fine as written?

Now that I've actually read the ability text in question, it seems that the "once per combat" limitation is actually not needed at all, nor once per minute, since it only works against surprised creatures. If it's limited to 1/turn, like Sneak Attack, then everything works just fine.

If you are in a long combat, say one where people keep teleporting into a meeting and you keep ambushing them as they arrive, that does mean that you might get to surprise and do extra damage to each participant in turn--but as you say, there's no reason why that shouldn't be the case. You're super-sneaky; no need to make you super-sneaky only once per minute.

It's basically just a limited form of Sneak Attack.

MiraMels · Nov 5, 2016

Mouseferatu said:
I'm not sure there's any way of phrasing it better that wouldn't require a lot more word count, and a level of nit-picky precision that 5E's trying to get away from. I think "once per combat" is pretty clear, and not hard to interpret. Sure, there are corner cases where it may not be 100% clear, but I prefer that to--for instance--3E's efforts at trying to eliminate corner cases by casting everything in concrete.

Not trying to convince you to like it; just saying, I don't think it's objectively poor design.

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. I am not arguing that this rule is hard to interpret. I am arguing that accidentally adding a brand new rules construct to the game (which this does, by way of referencing a concept that doesn't exist) when you are not thinking about the rules set as a whole, just this new little racial benefit is objectively bad game design.

This was, in fact, that is exactly what 3rd edition did. Splat books added new rules to the game all the time (remember swift actions?) and I admire 5th edition for avoiding it up until now.

FormerlyHemlock · Nov 5, 2016

MiraMels said:
I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. I am not arguing that this rule is hard to interpret. I am arguing that accidentally adding a brand new rules construct to the game (which this does, by way of referencing a concept that doesn't exist) when you are not thinking about the rules set as a whole, just this new little racial benefit is objectively bad game design.

This was, in fact, that is exactly what 3rd edition did. Splat books added new rules to the game all the time (remember swift actions?) and I admire 5th edition for avoiding it up until now.

To be fair, 5E already had this concept in a couple of places, including the Thief's 17th-level ability. It's just that the Thief's 17th-level ability can be largely ignored because very few DMs will ever encounter a 17th-level Thief in actual play.

gyor · Nov 5, 2016

So there are nine races in the PHB and 13 races in Volo's Guide to Monsters and 3 in EEPG (but the Goliath is in 2 books unfortunately).

So that is 24 races you can choice with just buying 2 books abd a free book, with many subraces.

Human, Human Variant
Elf, High, Wild, Drow
Dwarf, Hill, Mountain, Grey
Halfling, Lightfoot, Stout, Ghostwise
Gnome, Rock, Forest, Deep
Tiefling, Variants
Half Elf, Variants
Half Orc
Dragonborn, different breath weapons
Aakrocaa
Genasi, Fire, Water, Earth, Air (need to be redone in my opinion)
Goliaths
Aasimar, Protector, Scrouge, Fallen
Firbolgs
Lizardfolk
Tritons
Tabaxi
Hobgoblins
Goblins
Bugbears
Yuan Ti Purebloods
Kobolds
Orcs.

So, lots of races/subrace/variant choices.

KahlessNestor · Nov 5, 2016

MiraMels said:
It's okay, the concerns that I (and others) have raised about the wording can easily be read as trifling over semantics. I'll try to explain better.

The issue isn't that I'm envisioning use of the Surprise Attack ability in a situation that you wouldn't consider to be 'combat', or even that I want to have it happen multiple times in a particularly drawn out scene.

The issue is that this game isn't Dragon Age. This isn't a video game. I don't want to canonize a 'combat'/'non-combat' dichotomy within the rules through the creation of features and abilities that reference 'combat' as a game-state. Combat is not a game-state in 5th edition, it is a thing that frequently occurs during the course of gameplay (it's one of the three pillars of gameplay!). But this isn't a video game, so DMs don't need rigidly defined game-states in order to interpret the rules and apply them to gameplay.

Basically, it'd be weird if a race or class had a feature that could only be used "once per social interaction". It's just as weird to have something limited to "once per combat".

Isn't combat a "game state" though? It's called "roll initiative".

Seems worded fine to me. Natural language and all. If everyone understands what it to means, I think it's doing it's job. Why nitpick?

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SkidAce · Nov 5, 2016

Conceptually, I understand what [MENTION=6855497]MiraMels[/MENTION] is saying.

I guess we will have to see whether its a one off or something that continues to spread with more rules additions.

MiraMels · Nov 5, 2016

KahlessNestor said:
Isn't combat a "game state" though? It's called "roll initiative".

Seems worded fine to me. Natural language and all. If everyone understands what it to means, I think it's doing it's job. Why nitpick?

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The initiative round is a game state: the narrative slows down, and everyone's actions are tracked with much greater degree of precision.

The initiative round is usually concurrent with the beginning and end of combat, but you can use initiative time to resolve anything that requires such attention to order of action and positioning (ie, plenty of things that we wouldn't consider combat). Likewise, initiative isn't a necessary component to combat; you can resolve combat without initiative, using the same action resolution mechanics of the rest of the game.

Initiative time is a game state, and combat is just something you do in the course of gameplay.

As to why I'm being nitpicky about this: The terms you use to describe your game necessarily effect the goals and behaviors of people playing the game. Communication about expectations and the game will become a lot more difficult if the designers continue this trend of canonizing combat as the primary thing that D&D is about. This shift from 'combat'/'exploration'/'interaction' to 'combat'/'non-combat' (even just in natural language references to what the designers assume your table play is like) will necessarily change the way the game is played by many, and not in a way that I would like.