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.

 

[Krachek]

Advice to DM, Make sure that general store keep medium armor and thieve´s tools in stock.

 

[MGibster]

You could always make every class feature into feats, and just let players pick new feats each level. (I actually have a homebrew that does that.)

I think this is just a clumsy effort to bridge the gap between those who want more freedom in character generation and those who prefer the more traditional racial expressions. Maybe in 6th edition races will just be a blank slate and we won't have to worry about swapping anything.

 

[TwoSix]

Yeah, half-elves are (over all) the most powerful race IMO. Their +2 and double +1's are good, but the dwarf is the only one with two +2's, which is more powerful I think.

Yea, I'm starting to think that maybe +2/+2 is better than I thought. In point-buy, it lets you get 2 17s right off that bat, which means you hit double 18 at level 4. You sacrifice a half-feat to do so, but that's a pretty solid gain for a good number of classes.

 

[TwoSix]

I think this is just a clumsy effort to bridge the gap between those who want more freedom in character generation and those who prefer the more traditional racial expressions. Maybe in 6th edition races will just be a blank slate and we won't have to worry about swapping anything.

Quite possible, even probable in my estimation. I do agree that if the Tasha guidelines are pretty much the same as the AL rules, it is a clumsy implementation. I would prefer slightly more rigor in the swaps allowed, and a little more depth.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

Yeah, half-elves are (over all) the most powerful race IMO. Their +2 and double +1's are good, but the dwarf is the only one with two +2's, which is more powerful I think.

I believe we should all agree that races that were designed with more than +2/+1 for their ability scores were designed that way for a reason, and that this is supposed to achieve proper balance when you take the rest of their racial traits into account.

Besides, as Monte Cook once wrote about 20 years ago, not all ability scores are equal, Constitution and Dexterity being the biggest offenders, in my opinion. It seems to me that the races as described in the PHB are not perfectly balanced, but they do have a fair degree of balance that these weird rules throw out of the window, and JC and his team should know better.

 

[Zsig]

It's a mixed bag for me.

I had some really bad experiences with min-maxers on tables I DM/played, even lost a friend because this dude wouldn't stop pestering other players for not building/playing their characters optimally. So, today, every time I see the potential for that sort of stuff to creep up, I get a bit wary. All the tables I play have casual players or just players that don't care about making non-optimal decisions in favor of concept (we had, for instance, an Aerenal elf, that was a warlock with the undying pact, and he had a charisma score of 14, and he was totally fine with that... but the other dude couldn't accept it).

Today, I'd be perfectly fine to get that character my player wanted to play (the aerenal warlock) and make it so that instead of getting a +1 to Int he'd get a +1 to Cha. Or maybe, on the next campaign we're about to start, if anyone decides to play a talenta halfling barbarian, to change the +1 Con from the stout halfling into +1 Str.

Guess what I'm trying to say is that when it makes sense culturally on a case by case basis, I'm ok with that. Now, just offering "blanks" so that the players fills the way they want, just gives the opportunity for the min-maxers to resurface, and I'm not ok with that. Not to mention that some races were designed with being versatile part of what they are (half-elves) conceptually, and when you change that, they lose a lot of their appeal (at least to me). I know what people will say "but half-elves are super popular", I know that, and it's by design, they are made to be versatile.

So in order for that rule to be made right, they'd need to employ it right from the start, on the design stage for each race.

That being said, these rules are very interesting to use as a tool when designing a setting, and I'll certainly keep them in mind whenever I decide to make one.

 

[Horwath]

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

That works also. Make point buy from 8 to 16 and all is good.

 

[Retreater]

@Retreater Okay you can be the ONE MIN-MAXER at my table. But you have to defend your position if another shows up. (Wife says to dig up the side garden, loser gets buried. Both players have to dig up side garden before combat, and buy the rose bushes to be placed on top. I say we split the loser’s stuff 60 40. )

Sweet. I took a feat that gives me a +2 to debating my min-maxer status, +4 vs other min-maxers.

 

[Inchoroi]

I was hoping for something a little more robust, but I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. I'm not sure if I'll allow it or not, depending on what the actual book contains. I probably would have gone with "instead of your normal ASIs, you get a +1 bonus to any two different ability scores" and called it a day.

 

[Cadence]

Come on, folks. Is min-maxing the worst thing there is? I'm a good player, contribute to role-playing, want to help the GM move the story forward, look for out of the box solutions to problems. But I also want my character to be good at what he is supposed to do in the group. I don't want to bring in a wizard with a 12 Intelligence or some other sub-optimal build just because "it's a cool character concept." I can have good stats AND a cool character concept.
D&D is like a team sport. You don't put your slugger in to pitch, and you don't put your pitcher in to bat cleanup. Everyone has roles to play if the team is going to succeed.

It feels like there's a difference between coming up with a cool semi-in-depth character concept you can get into and then figuring out how to make it shine vs. finding something mechanically really shiney that will dominate one of the pillars over all of the the other thoughtfully built characters of that type, and then trying to give it an in world concept. I don't know if I think of the former as min-maxing.

As far as the 12 Int wizard, I think a lot of the conversation in past threads has been where folks won't play a race that doesn't have a +1 or +2 in the prime requisite of the class. One can be quite a bit higher than a 12 Int without even having the bonus there, can't they? But for some, knowing that every time they missed a roll by one it was "their fault" for putting that bonus to rounding out their character sucks the fun out of it. That kind of just makes me sad to hear. But it's why I don't mind floating stats for the NPCs. Having Goliaths not in general stronger than Halfilings anymore (in the background world) just seems strange now though.