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.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

I'm not going to dispute that medium armor is valuable, but that's really all you're getting from Mountain Dwarf. If you expect to get attacked a lot it's very good, but it's perfectly reasonable to have games where you aren't going to get attacked a lot.

medium armour (saving you a spell pick and 1-2 slots/day), +2 to both your primary and secondary ability scores, 5 tool proficiencies, and darkvision.

 

[Kurotowa]

I want to address the general attitude some people have that this will dilute the important racial identity of the D&D races. For some of us, reducing the amount of hard coded racial essentialism is a feature, not a bug. Quite aside from locking out a lot of character concepts behind a wall of mechanical inefficiency, it doesn't feel cool to be saying in 2020 that "All of those people are naturally that way."

Probably the races keep most of their flavor and identity despite this change, just like they did when racial level caps were removed. Maybe some specific associations are lost, like when gender specific ability modifiers were discarded, but some things deserve being thrown out. Is it going to ruin the game by having un-elfy elves that are strong and un-dwarfy dwarves who are smart? Hardly. Elves will still be elfy and dwarves will still be dwarfy.

Maybe your strong elf is the exception that proves the rule, or maybe their background is that they trained with the elven Gryphon Knights who unlike most of their people specialize in heavy arms and armor. Either way, the DM is still determining what your average elf is like. Besides, as the AL PDF takes a moment to remind us, the PC racial package was always only intended for PCs. It "doesn’t apply to every dwarf, just to dwarf adventurers, and it exists to reinforce an archetype." Changing the PC racials does literally nothing to change what the average civilian or NPC is like.

So no one needs to panic that elves will be less elfy because not all of them are lithe and graceful. Even if the DM decides that remains the most common mode of elven people in their game world, PCs are exceptional and are often exceptions. Now we've just got more mechanical support for the elf who took up bodybuilding so he could show off his pecs, or the dwarven runemage who spent most of her days in the library, or the orphan drow that was raised by dwarves and grew up in a smithy, or the charming half-orc that channels the passion in his blood into song and dance.

 

[EarthSeraphEdna]

I honestly think people are overblowing the impact of dwarf casters. Relative to literally any other race, what you're getting is another point in your secondary stat - which I assume is so you can have a base 14 instead of base 15 to start with a score of 16. That's worth 2/27 points, so in reality you're actually just bumping you're tertiary stat from a possible 13 to a reasonable 14. Furthermore, you could get those stats with any other race, so it's really just +2 points spread across your 4th/5th/6th best stats. Is it nice that you can make a dwarf wizard with 16 con and 14 dex with medium armor? Yes! Is that broken? Probably not - You're still stuck with 25' speed, and while you get to trade off those weapon proficiencies for tools, your only other positive feature is the anti-poison Dwarven Resilience. By contrast, other races offer other strong features like skill proficiencies, broader resistances, or even spells.

What I'm saying is Mountain Dwarf kinda sucked and this is actually just making them playable, moving them from D tier to a solid B+. Yes, it's a big move, but you're not raising the ceiling.

No, this is incorrect. Mountain dwarves normally have +2 Strength and +2 Constitution.

This variant rule allows a mountain dwarf, say, wizard to have +2 Constitution and +2 Intelligence. This is important, because normally, point-buy would forbid such a wizard from starting off with Intelligence modifier +3.

On top of this, the mountain dwarf wizard cashes in their four useless weapon proficiencies for four tool proficiencies, alongside any other tool proficiencies they would have received as a dwarf wizard.

 

[Charlaquin]

Yet IIRC earlier when I suggested something similar to solve the minuscule imbalance caused by racial ASIs you were offended...

Maybe because, as someone who cares about the imbalance caused by racial ASIs, your suggestion implied that I was a Cheeto eating munchkin.

 

[Horwath]

all of this could be avoided if they went with 13age and their beta test that gave classes ability boosts.

every class should get +2 to abilities that could raise one or two of class favored abilities. +2 to one ability or +1 to two abilities. Class and race ability boosts cannot go over +2

I.E. fighters favored abilities would be str, dex and con. You could raise any of those 3 by +2 or two of those 3 by +1

so Mt. dwarf fighter would have +2 to str, +2 dex, +2 con

half orc fighter would have +2 str and either +2 dex and +1 con or +1 dex and +2 con


etc...

 

[RSIxidor]

I'm mostly fine with this but they should just remove the race-based ability scores altogether to get rid of the Mountain Dwarf problem and just let each character get +2 to 1 ability and +1 to another ability. I think this is the most straightforward way of solving the issue and completely divorces ability score bumps from race, from class, from all of it. Just let people pick.

I haven't thought about how to handle this for humans and human variants, but I'm sure there's a way. Maybe those are the only ones that stay as is while everything else adopts what I described above.

 

[TwoSix]

No, this is incorrect. Mountain dwarves normally have +2 Strength and +2 Constitution.

This variant rule allows a mountain dwarf, say, wizard to have +2 Constitution and +2 Intelligence. This is important, because normally, point-buy would forbid such a wizard from starting off with Intelligence modifier +3.

On top of this, the mountain dwarf wizard cashes in their four useless weapon proficiencies for four tool proficiencies, alongside any other tool proficiencies they would have received as a dwarf wizard.

I think we're all aware of that. That's literally what @ChaosOS was talking about.

The issue is that the virtually all races get +2/+1 under the new rules, and mountain dwarves get +2/+2. What Chaos is saying is that the second +2 compared to +1 isn't that big of a deal, as getting a 16 in your secondary stat was already feasible, so those extra points (assuming point buy) will simply cascade into tertiary/quaternary stats.

The tool proficiencies are certainly nice, but no different than what an elf would get under the new rules. What really sets apart Mountain Dwarves from other options is the medium armor proficiency.

 

[TwoSix]

Maybe because, as someone who cares about the imbalance caused by racial ASIs, your suggestion implied that I was a Cheeto eating munchkin.

Which is an extremely hurtful thing to say. I only eat Doritos.

 

[MGibster]

It makes me wonder why not just get rid of all of them and say, "Hey, look, every PC gets an additional 3-4 proficiencies for weapons, armors, tools, kits, or whatever." Don't worry about anything that might (shocker) define your PC or its race. Just make everything a la carte and stuff yourselves.

You know, that's kind of what I was thinking as well. Instead of making players jump through hoops to switch abilities out why not just start with a blank slate and let them pick whatever they want? That seems far easier to me.

 

[DND_Reborn]

all of this could be avoided if they went with 13age and their beta test that gave classes ability boosts.

Or... just remove the ASI bumps entirely. You want a high score, just put the number there.