D&D 5E A First Look at Tasha’s Lineage System In AL Player’s Guide - Customizing Your Origin In D&D

The new player’s guide for the D&D Adventurers League has been released. Appendix 1 includes the new info from Tasha’s Cauldron on customizing your origin. It‘s a one-page appendix.

The D&D Adventurers League now uses this variant system from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything since it allows for a greater degree of customization. For ease of reference, the relevant information is included as an appendix to this document and doesn’t count against the PH + 1 rule.

You can do any of the following (obviously the full document has more detail):

1. Move your race ability score increases wherever your want to. “...take any ability score increase you gain in your race or subrace and apply it to an ability score of your choice.”​

2. Replace each language from your race with any language from a set list.​

3. Swap each proficiency for another of the same type.​

4. Alter behaviour/personality race-based descriptions.​

Its not clear if that’s the whole Lineage system or just part of it. You can download the player’s guide here.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Nerd Immersion does a preview here. Start at the 3 minute mark. Seems like a preview of what we'll expect in Tasha's

 

[DND_Reborn]

I understand peoples' desire for flexibility, but IMO this just detracts from the concepts of races (or "lineage" or whatever) and makes min/maxers even more dangerous... Like it said, a mountain dwarf wizard with INT +2 and CON +2, plus trading out the combat training for other weapons and/or tools? Yikes!

It will be interesting if this is what they end up doing in Tasha's (not that I'm buying it, but it will be interesting to see nonetheless).

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I hope there's more to the ''lineage system'' than that. I hoped for something like XGtE's Its your life tables, but generating starting proficiencies and ASI instead. If its just ''you can replace whatever with something you like'', calling it a ''system'' might be pushing it little

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I understand peoples' desire for flexibility, but IMO this just detracts from the concepts of races (or "lineage" or whatever) and makes min/maxers even more dangerous... Like it said, a mountain dwarf wizard with INT +2 and CON +2, plus trading out the combat training for other weapons and/or tools? Yikes!

It will be interesting if this is what they end up doing in Tasha's (not that I'm buying it, but it will be interesting to see nonetheless).

Yeeaah... I was expecting being able to shift one bonus point or something like that... And my first though after seeing this was indeed too that we better get ready for our new dwarven overlords!

 

[oreofox]

I can see minmaxers abusing this. Overall, I like what I saw. This can open up a lot of various race class combos that you don't typically see, which is always a bonus. As I have said in many threads before, it gets tiresome seeing halflings only being rogues, countless tiefling warlocks, half-orc barbarians, elf wizards or rogues, etc. Now maybe there will be more dwarf wizards (as mentioned in the video, though hill dwarf will see a drastic reduction of use), gnome barbarians, half-orc clerics, halfling druids, etc.

I did something similar with my setting, except the +2 came from the class, while the +1 came from the race. I may have to change it back again.

 

[ccooke]

Hmm.
I'm sure there will be people who want this to go further, but... this is honesty not bad. It's enough leeway to break open chargen to a larger design space (I quite like the example of the musical elf).

Main downside, I think, is that it seems simple and obvious. Maybe that's a good thing, though. Well, it's going to make me happy, but I'm probably easier to please than many of you lot :-D

 

[TwoSix]

It’s fine, just kinda blah. Opens up some options, but humans/half-elfs are still top dog (and now mountain dwarf for casters).

 

[jmartkdr2]

That's a bit lazy, but otherwise fine. I usually went with +2 and +1 regardless of race. The idea is to make race not part of ability score decisions, so people will pick races for more distinctive racial features. I think I'll keep doing that rather than this version. The rest (proficiency swapping) is fine.

I don't worry too much about how munchkins will abuse this rule, because munchkins will always find a rule to abuse. The only way to keep them from ruining your game is to not play with them.

 

[Ath-kethin]

To my mind, this setup really just doubles down on the "the only thing interesting about playing a nonhuman is the ability score bonuses" problem. As others have mentioned, now the arms race just becomes "which race has the biggest bonuses I can put wherever I want?"

I find that a far better option is to just remove the racial ability score boosts entirely. YMMV.