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.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

CG's House rule: (PH Edition)

Human	None
Dwarf	Con
Elf	Dex
Halfling	Dex
Dragonborn	Cha
Gnome	Int
Half-elf	Cha
Half-Orc	Con (could be strength but I'd like to reserve that for giantish races)
Tiefling	Cha

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Meh. Mountain Dwarves get crap racial features, its why they get the +2/+2 in good abilities. I think I might try a house rule on this, giving each race an ability they need to keep at least a +1 in. Elves can swap, but need a +1 Dex, for example.

I think that being able to shift one bonus point to another stat (to maximum of +2) would have been perfectly sufficient. It would let you start with +3 modifier in any ability. Not being able to do that was the main complaint about the default set up.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

I get the impression that people here are discussing two things as if they were the same, which they are not, in my opinion.

It's one thing to defend a greater customization of the character races, as PF2 already does and "Advanced 5e" also intends to do, allowing players to create their preferred combinations of race and class, but maintaining the balance between the various options.

Another completely different thing is to look at this lazy solution that WotC presented, which messes up the balance that supposedly existed in the races as conceived in the PHB, and saying that it is OK, no problem.

"OK, no problem" would be an appropriate answer if we were talking about a homemade solution that one of us thought for their own campaign. As I said before, though, a designer was paid to come up with this. It seems that this bad houserule will soon be appearing in a $50 hardcover. It's the solution presented to Adventurer's League, where DMs will have to deal with characters built using these rules, regardless of whether they agree with them.

Besides that, the "it's optional, use it if you want" argument is great in theory, but anyone who (like me) has spent the last 25 years in the DM chair knows that when a player arrives with a new book and says they would like to use one of the options presented there, saying "no" feels more like an act of diplomacy than authority. And you feel bad about having to do that. Many DMs who I know avoid nonofficial stuff exactly because they believe you can trust the owners of D&D to do a better than average job with their rules.

No, I don't think this is an acceptable situation.

 

[TwoSix]

I think that being able to shift one bonus point to another stat (to maximum of +2) would have been perfectly sufficient. It would let you start with +3 modifier in any ability. Not being able to do that was the main complaint about the default set up.

That's generally what I allowed pre-Tasha's. I had +2 Int/+1 Dex high elves and +2 Wis/+1 Dex wood elves as PCs.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

Now that I think about it, it wouldn't be that hard to come up with a system for people who want to be able to completely customize the "Race" options, like playing a one-of-a-kind Human with Darkvision, or a Half-Elf with Infernal Legacy. If you're so inclined, you could also choose to play a Dwarf which looks like a Tabaxi, but has the racial traits of a Tortle.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

The line differs between people, though. In some of these recent threads, just picking your race because it gets a +2 to a stat seems to be min-maxing to certain people.

As I remember it was rather that some people think that not taking a race that has +2 to your main stat makes the character a liability for the rest of the group.

 

[Kurotowa]

Honestly it just doesn't make sense to me. Mountain Dwarves get a bonus to Strength and Constitution, and not Intelligence, because of their genetics (or whatever passes for it in D&D).

Let me gently suggest you sit down and reconsider your assumptions. There is a very key line being crossed when you go from "This singular person has a predisposition to X because of genetics" and "This race of people are all like X because of genetics". The first can sometimes be true, the latter is pure prejudice with a very ugly history.

Look around at the world today. There are people fighting back against the assumption that "their race" are innately violent and dangerous. There are ancient accusations on the rise again that "some people" are innately greedy and manipulative. These are not dry concerns for the history books, they're happening right outside your window. And for those people on the receiving end, myself among them, running into the exact same blanket assumptions about how entire races of people "naturally are" in D&D is an ugly and off-putting thing.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Let me gently suggest you sit down and reconsider your assumptions. There is a very key line being crossed when you go from "This singular person has a predisposition to X because of genetics" and "This race of people are all like X because of genetics". The first can sometimes be true, the latter is pure prejudice with a very ugly history.

This is why you assign stat points. The +2 bonus reflects the predisposition. So on average dwarves have higher constitution.
A minus 2 strength modifier for really small races (we speak of "as big as a 3 year old child" ) was also in order, because there just is not enough muscle mass. Actually a woman having a strength penalty would also be ok, because women on average have lower muscle mass and the steongest woman is definitely not as strong as the strongest man.
Do we want to have that in our fantasy setting? The last part definitely not... At least I hope we agree here. The question is, if there is a better solution to consider better health, size or nimbleness.
I think yes:
look at 4e racial utility traits and 3e size modifier for carrying weight.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Let me gently suggest you sit down and reconsider your assumptions. There is a very key line being crossed when you go from "This singular person has a predisposition to X because of genetics" and "This race of people are all like X because of genetics". The first can sometimes be true, the latter is pure prejudice with a very ugly history.

Look around at the world today. There are people fighting back against the assumption that "their race" are innately violent and dangerous. There are ancient accusations on the rise again that "some people" are innately greedy and manipulative. These are not dry concerns for the history books, they're happening right outside your window. And for those people on the receiving end, myself among them, running into the exact same blanket assumptions about how entire races of people "naturally are" in D&D is an ugly and off-putting thing.

Thing is these are not human ethnicities, they're different species. So to some of us this is like recognising that bears and foxes have pretty damn significant biological differences. I get your point though, because the fantasy races have the awkward position of being physically different species but often narratively treated as just human ethnicities. But even if we we get rid of ASIs there still is a lot of baked-in biological differences and removing them would remove the last remaining identity of the species. Or what should done with wood elf speed, aarakocra flight, dragonborn breath weapon etc? They're all biology based capabilities just like the ASIs. I really don't think this issue can be perfecty solved whilst actually keeping the fantasy species.

 

[Kurotowa]

Actually a woman having a strength penalty would also be ok, because women on average have lower muscle mass and the steongest woman is definitely not as strong as the strongest man.

Well, at least you're honest about how deep and wide your prejudice goes. And here I thought we'd killed that particular issue decades ago.