Level Up (A5E) Changes to race (species?)

[EscherEnigma]

And now that I'm caught up with the thread...

Nations aren't cultural monoliths. Nations are made-up of many different cultures.

So folks shouldn't confuse a "middle-class from the dominant ethnicity" giving a bonus to helicopter-moming with "everyone in the nation is like that".

For that matter, there's also "culture you were raised in" and "culture you adopted". How many of us moved away from our parents, meet new people and new things, and have adopted values that just weren't that important to our parents?

You can have someone raised in "military brat" culture (which values conformity and regulation) but adopts "disenfranchised cultural minority" (whether it's due to religion or something else) that values individuality and freedom.

For this reason, "culture" might work better a a sort of "cultural point buy", where you pick up whatever mechanical bonuses are being assigned to culture in a ala carte fashion.

And then you would create pre-set grab bags to represent common choices.

But the important thing is that societies and nations don't have a single "culture", they're made up of many cultures, often at odds and conflict with escorted, including within families.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

And now that I'm caught up with the thread...

Nations aren't cultural monoliths. Nations are made-up of many different cultures.

So folks shouldn't confuse a "middle-class from the dominant ethnicity" giving a bonus to helicopter-moming with "everyone in the nation is like that".

For that matter, there's also "culture you were raised in" and "culture you adopted". How many of us moved away from our parents, meet new people and new things, and have adopted values that just weren't that important to our parents?

You can have someone raised in "military brat" culture (which values conformity and regulation) but adopts "disenfranchised cultural minority" (whether it's due to religion or something else) that values individuality and freedom.

For this reason, "culture" might work better a a sort of "cultural point buy", where you pick up whatever mechanical bonuses are being assigned to culture in a ala carte fashion.

And then you would create pre-set grab bags to represent common choices.

But the important thing is that societies and nations don't have a single "culture", they're made up of many cultures, often at odds and conflict with escorted, including within families.

Backgrounds already exist. They basically represent the sort of thing you're talking about. Now one could of give more crunch to the backgrounds to make them more significant.

 

[Kinematics]

For example, a mercantile nation may prize good negotiating skills, and thus a person from there is a good negotiator, whether he's a barbarian or a wizard or a halfling or an orc. A country with rigid formal structure may settle differences with duels, and thus everyone learns at least the basics of using a standard set of dueling weapons. Etc. This is the stuff you grew up learning and playing, and is also stuff that is likely to cause a culture clash when you go somewhere else. The good is that you gain bonuses. The bad is that those bonuses may cause problems for you if you use them somewhere else (ie: storytelling hooks or plot hooks).

Generally, background/culture might be the design space to focus on social encounters? It would also be the place to go when founding a stronghold or college, or other institution, that attracts members.

Just saw this remark in another thread. And yeah, that could work. Culture and background should most definitely affect how you approach social situations, so building off of them for how to handle social encounters (instead of the Cha list of skills) would make a lot of sense.

It would probably require rethinking how social conflict is resolved. I'd probably look into some sort of point bid system. Will play more with that idea later.

 

[Stalker0]

That is the main problem of culture. A warrior culture is not the same as an artistic culture. Yet, you will see art in a warrior culture and you will see warriors in an art culture... Upbringing would be better. Come to think of it, isn't background exactly that? Instead of just having a few skills, why not give a +1 ASI related to background instead? Acolyte? +1 to wisdom or charisma. Guild member? +1 to charisma or intel. Soldier? +1 to strength or dexterity. Folk hero? +1 Dex or Con... many possibilities in there.

Edit: @Haldrik beat me to my idea...

this to me is the way to do it. Maybe give everyone 2 backgrounds now, and some could be the racial cultures.

“elven weapon training” or “dwarf racial enemy upbringing” could be backgrounds. And I wouldn’t put them behind racial barriers either.

while the default of course would be only elves would take elven weapon training...if your playing thst human thst was taken in by elves at birth and trained in their style by all means go for it

 

[Haldrik]

It would probably require rethinking how social conflict is resolved. I'd probably look into some sort of point bid system. Will play more with that idea later.

Cortex deals well with social conflicts, by having a dice pool. Then a relationship with a person, or a certain kind of relationship, can be added to the pool. This allows a game that can have both Superman and Lois Lane as viable characters.

Because D&D is a single d20, this solution is more difficult.

Yet, assigning a different bonuses to certain kinds of relationships with persons, organizations, and places, might be part of the solution.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

An Orc Chieftain − or even the child of a chieftain family who is being groomed to become the next chieftain − might have Charisma 20.

They might. If they're generated like a PC is and assigned maxed-out Charisma they only have to be level 4 to get Cha of 20.

More to the point, you don't need a stat of 20 to be a believable character.

To be a charismatic chieftain, all you need is better than average Charisma. Assign a stat higher than 11 there and hey, the character is charismatic.
Given that the standard NPC stat bell curve is rather flatter than even the PC one, just sticking a 16 in Charisma won't just make you the most charismatic orc in several tribes, you'll probably be the most charismatic person in the region, including a couple of human cities.

A 3d6 ability score generation, by itself, cannot achieve a 20.

No, but after after learning a little more and more real-life experience, they can.

To say an entire Humanoid race is unable to have a 20 falls into the trap of the reallife racist assumptions that WotC and others are trying remove from the game.

With the exception of those games where the DM allows the optional variant human rules, even humans can't get a stat of 20 at level 1.
Is it a real-life racist assumption that a human can't start out with a stat of 20? Really?

The reallife racist assumptions are the connection formed by the descriptive language used for specific D&D species mirroring racist language used to describe realife ethnicities. That language will be removed, at which point there should be no links between D&D species and realife ethnicities.

I dispute the generalization. For example, not all cultures have sailors.

Unless a culture doesn't have boats or the equivalent method of transportation across distances like caravans, that the Ship's Passage feature could be applied to, it does. The exceptions are why I said almost all. At which point, maybe just don't pick the sailor background if the Ship's Passage feature is not appropriate for your character?

The DM can decide which Backgrounds seem more salient when describing a culture in broad brushstrokes. There will always be individuals who come from a Background that is different from the salient ones.

Those are likely to be few and far between. At which point homebrewing a feature may be appropriate.
I'm coming up with a blank though: Could you give some examples?

Even if so, there will be many times when the DM will want to customize the Background to better articulate a specific cultural concept. Likewise there will be many times when a player will want to customize the Background to better articulate a specific character concept. The player customization to will have meaningful implications within the wider cultural context.

Backgrounds are already eminently customisable. A character concept that you just cannot apply one of the existing class features to would be pretty rare I believe.

 

[Micah Sweet]

My note is pretty minor, but I miss the elves in 4e that had long but not ridiculously long life spans.

I’ve always hated having to hand wave why the top people in a city aren’t always elves and why If I need to know anything that happened 500 years ago I can’t just go and ask an elf that actually lived through it.

See, I've always used the Tolkien idea that elves are basically immortal, but after a while most of them chuffed off to the Feywild or something and aren't really around in the material world anymore. 2nd ed also used this idea.

 

[Wishbone]

As people are discussing applying a range of potential ASI options to different backgrounds rather than races or culture seem like an idea worth thinking through.

Firstly, we aren’t talking a game set in the real world.


As to your earlier point, Dungeon Masters Guild

I’ve yet to see a single person claim this product is racist, yet it places ASIs in Culture.

Not that this comment is claiming the product is racist per se, but that it shuffles the cards in a way to address the fundamental issues people raise with race and ability scores in D&D without changing much about the deck. I should add that I haven't read the product and am basing my understandings of it on what they said in DMs Guild and what commenters and the creators are saying.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Racial ability adjustments represent biological differences between species and subspecies. Culture rarely has much to do with RSIs.
Nonhuman races should not have parallels to real-life human ethnicities. However cultures most definitely do.

Because unlike species, you can draw direct parallels between fantasy and real-life cultures. Putting attribute bonuses on a culture will indicate value judgements on equivalent real-life races and cultures.



Do you really, really think it would be a good idea to put your name on, and try to market a product, in this day and age, that portrays USA Americans as mentally and physically superior to, say Africans, Europeans and Asians?

I think it might be ok if you're describing nonhuman cultures in a positive way. This all came to a head because orcs and drow were being described negatively with specific racially charged language. Very few people complain about dwarves and halfling. And by splitting ancestry and culture, you can basically give your character whatever ASI's you want.

 

[Undrave]

I'm gonna quote myself on the subject of species and culture:

You could always go for more generic cultures and civilisation, like how the game 'Tapestry' doesn't have real life civilization but only generically themed ones: Militant, Isolationist, Nomad, Historian, Entertainer, Builders, Futurists, Inventor, Merrymaker, Traders, Mystics, The Chosen, Leaders, Alchemist, etc.

I think it would be possible to provide civilization building blocks... like to make a civilization or culture you first start with an environment (mountain stronghold, forest town, port city, desert oasis, farming village, etc) and then something we can call a 'virtue', like what the culture uses as the most important measure of success. You could have militant culture who value strength of arm, culture who value self-suficiency and grit, cultures who value religious devotion, other the accumulation of knowledge, mercantile acumen, crafting ability, magical talent, and so forth.

Smush them together, pick 1 main language and 3 secondary language from which characters can choose from and VOILA! You have your civilization with the benefits they give!

For exemple, you can say you come from a theocratic kingdom built around a desert oasis. You get +2 CON, because you are used to the desert heat, +1 INT because it's important to recall the tenet of the Faith, you gain proficiency in Religion (obviously) and Animal Handling (to ride Camels), you learn Common and you can pick between an equivalent to ancient latin, a language related to djinn and the draconic spoken by that one clan of nomadic Dragonborn that always come by the city.

Throw in the speed, vision and maybe a single physical ability from race (say that you're a Dwarf so you get the iron stomach of the race) and you got a solid replacement for race.

Throw in a background to represent your previous career (let's say, Soldier) and you can start picking your class.

I don't think a 'background' should account for all of that stuff. To me, your 'Background' is just your occupation before you became an adventurer. You can be a noble from a nomadic society, an artisan or entertainer from a militaristic culture, or you were born into a melting pot trade port but moved to become a hunter on the fringes of society later on in life (AKA an Outlander). Your culture will still affect you, even if you're no longer there. And focusing on a more precise location than a nation will give your culture more realistic flavour and quirks.

I might just build that system myself one of these days...

Backgrounds already exist. They basically represent the sort of thing you're talking about. Now one could of give more crunch to the backgrounds to make them more significant.

If you combine everything into Background you need WAAAY too many Backgrounds to cover all possibilities. Better make it more modular.

See, I've always used the Tolkien idea that elves are basically immortal, but after a while most of them chuffed off to the Feywild or something and aren't really around in the material world anymore. 2nd ed also used this idea.

You could always include Information Creep, where Elves forget things they don't bring up often without realizing it and those memories sorta get unconsciously replaced...