D&D 5E Race Class Combos, Design, Roleplaying and the fear of the new

[Lylandra]

I'd be totally in favor of races losing the attribute crunch to gain more other flavorful skills or abilities. Like cantrips. or proficiencies. Or small, situational quirks. Ideally, your race/class combo of choice shouldn't feel like it is a burden or not viable.

Now minimum attributes is what I could find neat, especially if you get the lower end of the stick with more than one attribute.

And I have to add that with bound accuracy (at least for me) you don't feel so "forced" to play an ideal race/class combo. With 3e's or 4e's open ended scales, you'd always feel like you'd never catch up to that eladrin wizard if you're playing a dwarf. Sure, +2 is not that big of a deal, but you'll always be 2 behind the best option. (Plus you got some nasty side-effects in 3e/PF like absolutely horrific attribute requirements to casts spells of the highest level...) With bound accuracy, the better option reaches the max some levels before you, but you'll catch up in time AND you'll have another good attribute for the remaining time.

 

[Lanefan]

[MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION] - I have to confess I'm also not sure what you're after with the OP.

Are you looking for more race-class diversity? Less race-class diversity? All races mechanically the same? The game to promote and support established (both in D&D and in general culture) race-class archetypes? To dispense with race-class archetypes?

What's your end goal here?

Lan-"confused"-efan

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Sunseeker]

..." which is to say, "Aliens aren't like us, man, they don't even think like we do."

I'm going to borrow your comment and spitball a little here, so this isn't really directed at you, but more at Sci-Fi/Sy-Fy that promotes this line of thought.

I've always found this line of thought odd because it seems to ignore the fundamental similarities between humans and aliens. It's a similarity we even ignore between humans and animals, so it's not entirely unexpected that when we see creatures that look totally different than us, we must assume that they ARE totally different from us. But the underlying reality is that aliens probably require the same fundamental elements that humans do. At a bare minimum, food and a life-sustaining environment. Now what qualifies as "food" and "life sustaining environment" may be a million different things, but the reactions to the need, to the possession, to the loss of those things is arguably (and I've never met an alien mind you) fundamentally the same.

When a human is hungry, the hungrier they get the less picky they become about what they will eat. Why would aliens be any different?

Aliens may experience lesser or greater degrees of "greed" when they have food, depending on biological and cultural needs and norms but they'll still have them. Any intelligent species is likely to currently or historically have worshipped gods and have created cultures and civilizations. They may have different philosophical approaches to the construction of these civilizations, but really, short of these creatures being Xenomorphs or Horta there are going to be very real underpinnings to their existance that will make them far closer to humans than not.

Now, if we want to talk about truly alien creatures in D&D, we can start with Illithids and Warforged. We could probably even extend the concept to dragons. But anything that fits into the medium size category and has a roughly human build is going to be roughly human in lifestyle out of simple biological necessity.

 

[Sunseeker]

That's possibly true, but it's a hekuva lot less likely and obvious than stat differences. It's fairly easy to justify most stat differences from physical differences in the species in question. Is it heavily built, or slender? Is it tall or short?

I think, in this day and age that assuming a creature must be stronger because it is more muscular in outward appearance promotes a dangerous ideology, and undermines the that players are exceptions not common stock.

It would be really odd if there were no stat differences at all between 3' tall 30lb humanoids and 7' tall 300lb humanoids.

Would it? There's nothing stopping a Gnome from having a 20 STR in 5E than there is stopping a human from having an 8 STR. Your average hobbit may be prone to desiring to be quick and clever while your average orc may value strength and heartiness, but players are not "average" members of their species. They're that one hobbit who decided he really liked hitting things. There's that one orc who skipped combat training to gaze at the stars. They're that one human who happens to have the exact same score in every stat. NPCs can have whatever stats you want to give them. Want all your elves to be a little more dexterous? Give them all a +2 to Dex when making them. Want your orcs to be burly meatheads? Give them a +2 Str AND Con!

But the players are exceptions. That's why they're the ones we're telling a story about. Not Joe Average from Commonplace who is more or less like Everybody Else(TM).

Indeed, even your suggestion while it does suggest flavor (the race is 'magical') is highly unlikely from the flavor you gave it. Which is more likely, "Due to the High Elf thirst for knowledge, they all start play with +1 intelligence." or "Due to the High Elf thirst for knowledge, they all start play knowing 1 cantrip." One suggests a very broad based inquisitiveness that manifests in knowing more stuff, regardless of the stuff we are talking about, and the other suggests that every elf in their background has been exposed to the same stuff (that is, every elf, regardless of background at some point encounters magical knowledge). And which is more likely to make one want to play an elf?

Like I said, the fluff is up to the DM. And I gave two examples of how "being exposed to magical stuff" could be fluffed in:
A: the race has a natural desire to seek out the magical.
or;
B: the race is institutionally exposed to the magical.
or, and I just thought of this;
C: a mix of both: elves are required to demonstrate at least a minimal (one cantrip) magical proficiency to be considered "adults".
or;
D: The elven patron gods have blessed the elves with natural magical affinity, causing all of them to "discover" the ability to cast a cantrip at some point in life.

There, now don't tell me I'm imposing on your campaign. The ability is already there. No imposition has been made by the removal of stat bonuses. I've just placed the imposition on culture instead of biology. Frankly, I find it easier to justify that mass numbers of Elves share cultural traits than mass numbers of Elves share biological traits. Stat bonuses pigeon-hole elves into always being the "quick and dexterous race", and leave no room for the chunky short elf, or the beefy brawler elf.

I didn't add anything. I removed something that forced elves into even more of a hole than they already were. The free cantrip? It's right there. In the RAW. I did nothing to it other than suggest that the DM rely on interesting aspects of a races culture instead of that race's physical makeup. The idea that all elves are somehow extra skinny and extra dexterous flies in the face of player exceptionalism.

Or in short, elves might already be too established of a thing to meddle with much.

Tough. That means they need more meddling. Argument to Tradition is a logical fallacy. If your argument can be summed up with "It's always been this way, don't rock the boat." you're missing my entire point and not even making an argument. I want to rock the boat.

But, ok, sell me on the idea. Establish some ideas for races that have racial features that are mechanically interesting and evocative and don't involve attribute differences, and then show me that this avoids the concern over "racial essentialism". For example, is getting a bonus cantrip more of a big deal if you are a spell-caster, or more of a big deal if you are not, and in that case does it push the race toward one sort of class choice or the other?

Isn't the whole concern with racial essentialism that certain races ought to have certain stats in order to better support their lore? So, removing the stats would naturally move one away from racial essentialism. I mean, there's a reason that when I want to play dex-heavy classes I play elves.

I'm not arguing that certain races shouldn't be entirely disinclined towards certain things over others. That's a perfectly normal part of culture and society to press people into a direction that makes them conform to society. If that society has chosen militarism, then it's people are going to be better at fighting and tactics. If that society has chosen art and culture, then it's people, even the untrained ones will have a natural inclination towards art and culture because they're surrounded by it 24/7 until they start adventuring. If people around you are always talking about what makes a good painting, you're going to pick up on that, even if you have no interest in painting. It doesn't mean you're smarter, or a better painter, you've just got a more trained eye for painting.

All races are going to gravitate towards certain classes, even with the removal of stats. The only way you could not do so is to make the race nothing but flavor, and have a "background" selection that provides generic non-racial features. Now I don't think we need to go that far. But I think taking away mechanical bonuses from races entirely, or at least attaching them to class and background would move the race away from being the expected choice for any given class.

Like, lets say Elves get 1 Cantrip.
The background: Criminal gives +1 Dex, to represent all the time you've spend running and evading the law.
and the class Monk gives +2 Wisdom, to represent all the time you've spent in meditation, reflecting on the decisions you've made in life.

And really I think that's how it should be handled.

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

If you take away the stat bonuses, then what makes an Elf different to a human or an orc?

For example: Elves are generally more agile than Humans. There are some Humans more Agile than some Elves but generally, Elves are better. One consequence might be that Elvish architecture uses height more than Humans do because Elves can, in general, deal with this. Humans are nervous in Elvish cities because of the lack of railings, the thin walkways, the height of the buildings. A Human might not consciously notice this; they just feel that Elven cities are alien, strange, and different.

For example: Orcs are generally stronger than Humans. To an Orc, Human culture seems weak because those puny humans wince every time the Orc gives them a friendly thump on the back or a respectfully firm handshake. Orcs think Human furniture is weak and spindly because when the Orc kicks it across the room to another table, it breaks.

If there are more Orc fighters than Orc rogues, and more Elf rogues than Elf fighters, that is not a bad thing, any more than it is bad that more german shepherd police dogs than poodle police dogs.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Celebrim]

I think, in this day and age that assuming a creature must be stronger because it is more muscular in outward appearance promotes a dangerous ideology...

Oy vey.

Rather than arguing a bunch of... stuff, let me just jump to your conclusions to show that ultimately you aren't that far from what I just said.

I'm not arguing that certain races shouldn't be entirely disinclined towards certain things over others. That's a perfectly normal part of culture and society to press people into a direction that makes them conform to society. If that society has chosen militarism, then it's people are going to be better at fighting and tactics. If that society has chosen art and culture, then it's people, even the untrained ones will have a natural inclination towards art and culture because they're surrounded by it 24/7 until they start adventuring. If people around you are always talking about what makes a good painting, you're going to pick up on that, even if you have no interest in painting. It doesn't mean you're smarter, or a better painter, you've just got a more trained eye for painting.

All races are going to gravitate towards certain classes, even with the removal of stats. The only way you could not do so is to make the race nothing but flavor, and have a "background" selection that provides generic non-racial features.

Those statements largely agree with the thrust of my argument. Indeed, the very last sentence I quoted in that block basically concedes my main point.

Beyond that, let me just say that my version of the D&D races are vastly more different physically and physiologically than you imagine yours. Your argument is essentially that the races differ from each other no more than human ethnicities might differ from each other at different times as they adopt different cultural values. If that was the case, then you wouldn't need any mechanical differences; you could just say that on that aggregate - at the mean or at the mode - the NPCs of different regions (or in your case races) put their CharGen points into different things resulting in different emergent strengths. You wouldn't even need to separate your races by flavor, much less mechanics. I'm suggesting that at least as I've always imagined them, they really are very different - much more so than human ethnicities or cultures are different from one another. The different non-human races have features and attributes that simply do not exist in the human population, however rare and heroic those humans might be. Each is really unique.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I think the fact that the stat differences between races amount to what are in the end pretty minor variations.

Fundamentally stat alignment with ones class is a matter of offensive combat efficiency... but a fairly dubious matter. Having +2 to a stat is only a swing of +1 on a d20.

Even the mechanical edges that races get aren't purely limited to a single class in benefit.

I actually think that the only thing that keeps people making elf archers, dwarf fighters and dragonborn paladins is the mistaken idea that +2 to your primary stat is essential to being an effective character, or that getting that bonus to a different stat is somehow pointless. It's simply not.

 

[hawkeyefan]

If the goal is to decouple common race-class combos that are chosen simply for mechanical optimization, then the best thing to do would be to remove racial stat modifiers and replace them with some kind of racial ability that plays to the race’s inherent speciality.

So instead of a +2 to STR for a Half-orc, you would double their carrying capacity. Or maybe gove them advantage on STR based checks, or something along thise lines. It still plays to the idea that “Half-orcs are strong” but it doesn’t play into combat.

It would essentially level the playing field for combat purposes, and probably increase the amount of thought given to non-combat efficacy than is typically given. Depending on the style such racial abilities were designed with, and how powerful their effects.