D&D 5E Races in my Own Campaign World

[TheCosmicKid]

I sort of see that as trying to be a Supreme Court Justice without a Constitution from which to make legal decisions.

A written constitution can't cover every contingency. That's why America's explicitly has Article Five and the Ninth Amendment. (And keep in mind as well that a number of countries, notably Great Britain, don't even have written constitutions at all.) When cases enter legal territory not explicitly covered by the Constitution or statutory law -- and cases which make it all the way up to the Supreme Court are in this territory almost by definition -- then judges must make a decision based on precedent and their own educated opinion. The Founding Fathers had nothing to say about, for example, net neutrality, so when a net neutrality case comes before the Court, the justices are not going to be able to look at the Constitution and say, "Oh, here in the Xth Amendment it says ISPs can't be discriminatory in the data they transmit. Done!" They're gonna have to judge. That's what they're there for.

And this is, in a much more trivial manner, exactly what a DM is expected to do. Your imagination is limitless and the rules are not. No rules or guidelines are going to be able to spell out exactly how you exercise your creativity. You have experience, and you have precedents in the existing races. But in the end, you're gonna have to judge. You're gonna have to make stuff up. That's the job.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Since they have nothing indicating how to adjust that CR that isn't possible.

DMG pp. 274-279.

 

[pukunui]

[MENTION=6883963]Whithers[/MENTION]: Here's how I'd write up your Reptilians in the 5e player race format:

Reptilian Traits
Ability Score Increase. Your Constitution score increases by 2. [And some other ability score increases by +1?]
Age. Reptilians reach maturity at age 7 and normally live until ??
Alignment. Most reptilians are chaotic neutral.
Size. Reptilians stand between 4 and 5 feet tall and average about 150 pounds (Same as dwarves?). Your size is Medium.
Speed. Your base walking speed while upright is 25 feet. If you are holding nothing in your hands and crouch down on all fours, your walking speed increases to 35 feet.
Darkvision. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can't discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.
Hold Breath. You can hold your breath for up to 10 minutes at a time.
Scent. You have advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks relying on smell.
Natural Armor. You have tough, scaly skin. When you aren't wearing armor, your AC is 13 + your Dexterity modifier. You can use your natural armor to determine your AC if the armor you wear would leave you with a lower AC. A shield's benefits apply as normal while you use your natural armor.
Natural Weapons. Your fanged maw and sharp claws are natural weapons, which you can use to make unarmed strikes. If you hit with your maw, you can deal piercing damage equal to 1d6 + your Strength modifier. If you hit with your claws, you can deal slashing damage equal to 1d4 + your Strength modifier. This damage is instead of the bludgeoning damage normal for an unarmed strike.
Wrestler. You have advantage on ability checks made to initiate or escape a grapple.
Languages. You can speak, read, and write Reptilian and one other language of your choice.


As you can see, I simplified a few things (and borrowed heavily from the lizardfolk). Still seems a little OP maybe, but there you go.

 

[Whithers]

Furthermore -- and this is important -- these formulas are not rules. Even in games like Pathfinder where they do officially exist in print, they are entities of a completely different nature than the game rules that tell you how to resolve actions and events with consistency. They are guidelines for helping DMs who may not know what to do, like the encounter difficulty math, or the treasure tables. As a DM, you are no more obligated to follow them than you are obligated to roll on the "Individual Treasure: Challenge 0-4" table every time your players kill an orc.

Those who made Pathfinder created 3.5, and used those formulas as the rules by which they determined when an idea had achieved game balance. The rules may not have been public when D&D 3.5 came out, but they did exist. Those at WotC have these rules, and have them well calculated and tested, because they have managed to make a game where the players and their opposing forces are able to wield much more power, express many more options during an encounter, and not break game balance.

Following Tolkien's descriptions of the races, Elves and those of Numenor would always be overpowered. Elrond, Arwen, and perhaps even Aragorn as direct descendants of one of the Maiar even more so. Gandalf, Melian, Radegast, Saruman, Sauron, and the Valarauka, etc. as a members of the race of the Maiar even more overpowered than that. What is the bonus for someone who is part demigod? Even the elves are described as immortals which are more akin to the Valar and Maiar being manifest spirits/avatars expressing the aspects from which the world is woven into existence. The dwarves are a tolerated mistake which the All Father chose to allow, but never intended to be part of the design. How does one make game balance out of this without everyone wanting to be a scion of gods and angelic avatars when there are no rules defining what makes balance?

But yes, going to DL the write up and hope it helps.

Also, thank you guys for answering. Personality wise I test as a rather heavy intuitive analytical thinker concerned with process to achieve outcome. I would suspect some who answered me vary in approach to life. Which would be the source of the bewilderment at my demand for consistent orderly progression. I am looking for what I need to not find the game frustrating, while not everyone will have that need or desire.

 

[Whithers]

A written constitution can't cover every contingency. That's why America's explicitly has Article Five and the Ninth Amendment. (And keep in mind as well that a number of countries, notably Great Britain, don't even have written constitutions at all.) When cases enter legal territory not explicitly covered by the Constitution or statutory law -- and cases which make it all the way up to the Supreme Court are in this territory almost by definition -- then judges must make a decision based on precedent and their own educated opinion. The Founding Fathers had nothing to say about, for example, net neutrality, so when a net neutrality case comes before the Court, the justices are not going to be able to look at the Constitution and say, "Oh, here in the Xth Amendment it says ISPs can't be discriminatory in the data they transmit. Done!" They're gonna have to judge. That's what they're there for.

And this is, in a much more trivial manner, exactly what a DM is expected to do. Your imagination is limitless and the rules are not. No rules or guidelines are going to be able to spell out exactly how you exercise your creativity. You have experience, and you have precedents in the existing races. But in the end, you're gonna have to judge. You're gonna have to make stuff up. That's the job.

Except that we don't have that experience. I have just purchased the books, largely thanks to discovering Vox Machina. The rules I am talking about would make that transition functional for those like myself who are starting out as the DM transitioning already existing materials into the system.

Our Constitution does contain contingencies for adapting new guidelines - that is what the legislative body is supposed to do. Governments whose foundations were laid in Hammurabi's Code, Justinian's Code, etc. rely upon principles. Two millennia ago a people debated the rights of inheritance under the law based on whether or not a person were conceived in the belly of a cow and born by a woman in their society, or vice versa. So, when artificial insemination became possible they already had a legal precedent that had waited 2,000 years for a reason to be in effect. Good judgment can be created from the mistakes of hindsight, but it need not be so if one has the rules from which to work.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Those who made Pathfinder created 3.5, and used those formulas as the rules by which they determined when an idea had achieved game balance. The rules may not have been public when D&D 3.5 came out, but they did exist. Those at WotC have these rules, and have them well calculated and tested, because they have managed to make a game where the players and their opposing forces are able to wield much more power, express many more options during an encounter, and not break game balance.

I'm sorry, but no factual statement you're making here is true. Pathfinder and 3.5 were written by different people (except insofar as Pathfinder used what was written in 3.5, of course). And the D&D writers did not use an explicit balance formula. We can tell because (especially in 5E) when they do use a formula for something, they give it to us. See again the formula for calculating CR in the DMG for an example. We can also tell because there are flaws and discrepancies in the formulas that have been invented retroactively: the core races in Pathfinder range from 8 to 11 RP, you may note.

WotC did not use a balance formula for the player races because, frankly, player races are simple enough that you don't need anything like that to create player races that are reasonably balanced. Just by looking at the examples in the book you can see pretty clearly the outline of how to do it: +2 to one ability score, +1 to another, three or four flavorful but not overwhelming perks and abilities. And there's nothing overwhelming in what your reptilian race does. If you just describe its capabilities in D&D terms, you will get a playable race that is not going to break anything. [MENTION=54629]pukunui[/MENTION] showed you exactly how. No point buy necessary.

Following Tolkien's descriptions of the races, Elves and those of Numenor would always be overpowered. Elrond, Arwen, and perhaps even Aragorn as direct descendants of one of the Maiar even more so. Gandalf, Melian, Radegast, Saruman, Sauron, and the Valarauka, etc. as a members of the race of the Maiar even more overpowered than that. What is the bonus for someone who is part demigod? Even the elves are described as immortals which are more akin to the Valar and Maiar being manifest spirits/avatars expressing the aspects from which the world is woven into existence. The dwarves are a tolerated mistake which the All Father chose to allow, but never intended to be part of the design. How does one make game balance out of this without everyone wanting to be a scion of gods and angelic avatars when there are no rules defining what makes balance?

Well, I'd dispute that Tolkien's elves would always be overpowered -- the big names among the elves are very old and experienced and therefore, in D&D terms, have a lot of levels. Asking to play Galadriel isn't asking to play an overpowered race; it's asking to play a 31st-level wizard. A more typical, youthful elvish adventurer doesn't stand out in combat power from his mannish and dwarvish compatriots. We have empirical evidence for this in Legolas and Gimli's contest at Helm's Deep.

But that's beside the point. The point is that, in D&D, as a matter of fact, the elf race is balanced against humans and dwarves and everybody else. And it was written that way without needing to assign point values to every possible feature and sum them to find an appropriate combination. They just eyeballed it. And even with a formula, you are inevitably going to have to do the same.

 

[pukunui]

I feel it's worth pointing out that building a character in 5e isn't meant to be a mini-game in its own right, as is the case with the various 3.x/PF editions. The focus is meant to be on actually playing the game. That's why things like races are much simpler in 5e. No fiddly calculations or funky synergies.

 

[Jester David]

Well, pretty much everything here at the Pathfinder SRD is an example of rules that are not there. Everything which calculates the CR effect from Race Points (RP) so that the DM can attempt to maintain game balance. http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemasterin...ting-new-races

Those rules were released in the Advanced Race Guide released in 2012, three years after the Pathfinder rules dropped. They weren't used to create the races. Really, they just assigned a point value to each ability in existing races and used that to "build" the races.
In fact, in the playtest for that book, they assumed races were all 10-points and balanced and used that to determine the value of the various racial abilities. But, as was quickly pointed out, not all the the abilities were really worth the assigned points. So not all of the PC races remained 10 points.

While more balanced, it's certainly not perfect. It's pretty easy to make broken races: either overpowered or underpowered.

 

[Shiroiken]

Since they have nothing indicating how to adjust that CR that isn't possible.

As has been pointed out, the information on determining CR for a homebrew creature is in the DMG. CR really only matters if this is for a monster. I couldn't tell from your posts if this is for a playable race or a monster.

As to being DM, Authority is granted power because it can be trusted to give power away. In gaming, give away to much power and there is nothing to challenge the player. Give away too little and the agenda of the player for the character becomes balked. That is why rules that provide actual direction and define balance for the referee make the DM's job functional.

Consider the general damage description divided between setback, standard, and deadly and qualified by level. That is a good system so that the DM can do research on how they want to describe the party moving through a blizzard or around a venting volcano without killing them - and still require the DM to learn the subject area enough to do something with the numbers. But the numbers are provided to show what is appropriate. In race creation there are no numbers, there are no charts defining what makes what CR. That is the problem I am having converting my world.

I think the biggest problem here is level of expectations. As I stated previously, 5E is very loose with rules, relying on DMs to make rulings, rather than trying to codify everything, as 3E and Pathfinder did. If you can't work within that frame, I have to wonder WHY are you trying to convert something from a game system that works for you to a system that obviously doesn't? There's nothing wrong with sticking to Pathfinder, or even 3E, and it's obvious 5E's rules light philosophy is going to cause you problems.

 

[Whithers]

I think the biggest problem here is level of expectations. As I stated previously, 5E is very loose with rules, relying on DMs to make rulings, rather than trying to codify everything, as 3E and Pathfinder did. If you can't work within that frame, I have to wonder WHY are you trying to convert something from a game system that works for you to a system that obviously doesn't? There's nothing wrong with sticking to Pathfinder, or even 3E, and it's obvious 5E's rules light philosophy is going to cause you problems.

I started playing 1E 40 years ago next month. Within a year I had memorized all the saving throws by type, class, and level. I knew all AC combinations, loved using the Runka to disarm opponents, openly used the Melnibonean mythos in almost everything, and was trying to program more than my computer could handle in ASCII to speed up play. By the time 2E came out, I was starting to get irritated at all the rules changes. When I adapted 3.5 because someone asked me to run a pen and paper game for them, it was because all of my original materials for 1E was lost in a fire in a friend's apartment building. I purchased a used copy of Greyhawk and used 3.5 to imitate 1E play. However, I did not purchase the 10,000 tomes containing information such as: If you are standing 10 ft from a lava stream you take X damage, etc. And when D&D Next started up I was one of the first to argue for simpler play that would resolve faster.

There are two types of Character Development in D&D. There is RP development, which involves story telling, e.g. in the movie Braveheart the main character is Robert the Bruce (narrator) whose character actually develops through his experience of the unyielding unchanging paragon styled William Wallace. In 1E we did not spend all of our time flipping through environmental charts and tables to move across 10 leagues of map nor did we have to consult a dozen conditionals in 6 different books to obtain an outcome. So far, the truncation of the game in 5E has gone back toward a story telling style of resolution with simpler more concise dynamics during the most time consuming part of the play event. That is good because working people, who are likely a good portion of today's customers, want to be able to play during the few hours they can schedule play.

The other part of character development is the statistical skeleton which allows all the muscles to function in a dexterous manner. A part of that is setting up a system wherein a group of specific and exhaustive stats and structures can be put together for fast reference by people who have little time to test play materials for balance before they use them. The rules necessary to do that do not so far apparently exist in an official capacity. The DMG is insufficient - and intends to be, to that job. For one thing it references using other books. So, I have had to purchase additional books to do what should be in the DMG. (I just spent $70 last evening and should have the additional material within a couple days - living in the country those guaranteed delivery times aren't so guaranteed. )

There are places where the nebulous aids in making the story telling easier, and frankly inspires people to do research and at least read about the facets of nature they will include in their stories in order to enhance the suspension of disbelief. I didn't graduate high school because there was anything inherent in school which inspired me to learn, I graduated and went prepared to college because D&D drove me to learn the world around me so I could tell a better story. However, there are also places where creativity needs that framework from which to work. One can do epic paintings on the floor or ceiling when one has a patron and the time. However, for most realism requires strong definition of light and dark, of the negative space and the positive space, the blending of color, glazing, etc. There are rules for this which are prepared ahead of actually painting. I have seen some interesting art created by throwing paint upon a canvas, but nothing that I would create. The first fantasy story I ever read was Kim by Rudyard Kipling, the next was the Once and Future King, and then the Chanson de Roland. What makes the spontaneity of Shakespeare is what the actor brings to it in the moment of the execution - but the full form and structure is prepared before the curtain parts.

So, I am not looking for a 42" pile of books each of which must be referenced through each round of combat, watch through the night, and league of travel through the day. But I am looking for that framework which makes preparing the full and balanced preparation of game play take the least amount of time possible without having to break out a slide rule and spreadsheet in order to prepare the subatomic structure so I can prepare the atomic structure so I can alchemy together the ingredients so I can finalize the stats for the score of potential encounters into which the party might improv itself. I would rather start at least at the level of chemistry, rather than starting off by having to find the G-d Particle. But I am attempting to read "Unusual Races Point Build 200" by John D. Batten. And I have ordered more materials from which I might get some answers.

As to the CR of monsters and players, they are the same. Just like all Wiccans are witches, but not all witches are Wiccans::Every playable race is also a monster, but not all monsters are a playable race.