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.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

As this a board for discussing fantasy games there is no need to bring it up then.

Just to remind anyone that how it was done for the last 45 years was not an act of discrimination, but an attempt to simulate a world (with our world or the taless of our world as the basis). Dwarves were not given +CON for optimization reasons, elves were not given +dex for the same reason or halflings got no str penalty to discriminate them. It was an honest attempt of a very easy mathically justified way to model the world and the tales of it.
3d6 is approximately a bell curve with an average of 10.5 and most values in the middle. If you add +1, the bell curve has its middle at 11.5
Most people are still in the middle. It is very easy to find someone of the first population who is a lot better than most of the second one.
Careful: real world example... a professional female body builder (str 18) is stronger than most men and even as strong as other male professional body builders. But there are a few male ones with Str 19 that are impossible to reach.

Or a different example: There are different tables for the average size and weigth of boys and girls. Imagine, you would unify them into one baby table because of false zeal. You would treat babys that happen to be girls as underweight and undersized and boys as overweight for no reason...

Or in sports class, you take the same table for throwing, running and so on and tell them that everyone is treated equally for fairness sake...

And still, in my first post, I said: that I don´t want it in my fantasy game. As I don´t want to roleplay how my character goes to the toilet several times a day...

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

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.

I think that this is the main reason that WotC have stopped using the word "races" and moved to lineages or folk. Using races implies similarities with human races, where the D&D lineages would be completely different orders, or even classes of life if those were relevant.

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.

The Str difference between men and women would be around 4-5 points going by lifting capability I think. Since we're not going to implement that, I reckon we can ignore the 2 pt difference between halflings and half-orcs.

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.

I have to point out: cutting the quote off right before they point out that that is something they definitely don't want kinda looks a little like you're trying to insinuate some really unpleasant things about that poster while not outright lying about them.

So, here's the deal - while population averages may be a thing, D&D is about fantastic individuals. Those individuals are not bound by "population averages". Part of this is as a wish fulfillment exercise, why not allow someone to say "They're a woman stronger than any man!" - it's not like there's a lack of this in fact (female body builders could probably crush anyone on this board with their bare hands) or in fiction (usually Russian-coded "bear of a woman" tropes).

Is anyone suggesting that we not allow someone to say "They're a woman stronger than any man!"?

D&D is already about fantastic individuals. Just using the Standard array puts them in the top few %. They're not bound by population averages to start with.

 

[Cadence]

The Str difference between men and women would be around 4-5 points going by lifting capability I think. Since we're not going to implement that, I reckon we can ignore the 2 pt difference between halflings and half-orcs.

Is that the difference at the middle, or at the top of the two distributions?

I think I'd argue it the other way - if the clearly much bigger difference between gnomes/halflings and half-orcs/goliaths/dragonborns is reduced to just +2 to make the game flow better, and we're not going to do stats based on individual size, there's no reason at all to look at differences within each humanoid species.

 

[TwoSix]

So, here's the deal - while population averages may be a thing, D&D is about fantastic individuals. Those individuals are not bound by "population averages". Part of this is as a wish fulfillment exercise, why not allow someone to say "They're a woman stronger than any man!" - it's not like there's a lack of this in fact (female body builders could probably crush anyone on this board with their bare hands) or in fiction (usually Russian-coded "bear of a woman" tropes).

Regardless, let's keep this thread focused on the lineage system

So much this. Things can be true about groups in aggregate while not telling us anything about the potential of an individual.

Which is why I have no problem saying the average dwarf has a higher Con than the average human, but that has nothing to do with the potential of any PC of those races.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Is that the difference at the middle, or at the top of the two distributions?

At the top. Assuming that the current olympic record was set by someone with 20 Str (I think: Might have been 18). D&D assumes a linear progression of lifting or encumbrance with the Str score.

I think I'd argue it the other way - if the clearly much bigger difference between gnomes/halflings and half-orcs/goliaths/dragonborns is reduced to just +2 to make the game flow better, and we're not going to do stats based on individual size, there's no reason at all to look at differences within each humanoid species.

?

If I read this right, you're suggesting the same thing that I am: removal of racial ASIs.

 

[Sacrosanct]

IMO, the reason I immediately throw out things like str limitations on smaller species is because they are just that, a different species. Chimpanzees and humans are near identical DNA wise, but chimps have 1.5 the strength per pound than a human does.

So we have real world examples here. And if we didn't, then we always have "it's a fantasy game, just have fun"

 

[Cadence]

IMO, the reason I immediately throw out things like str limitations on smaller species is because they are just that, a different species. Chimpanzees and humans are near identical DNA wise, but chimps have 1.5 the strength per pound than a human does.

So we have real world examples here. And if we didn't, then we always have "it's a fantasy game, just have fun"

We do have literary examples of Halflings though. And we have written game descriptions describing other races as strong. (Is there anything "it's a fantasy game, just have fun" can't justify?).

Why is the conception of the Goliath/Dragonborn/Half-Orc PC who chose a race and character concept to be ultra strong (and does so in the ways the game fiction describes things) not worth keeping?

For fun, does it matter If the Gnome or Halfling decides to also max out strength after hearing that the Goliath/Dragonborn/Half-orc character is aiming to be super strong, or if the Gnome/Halfling player was the first to chime up and say they always wanted to try something genre busing?

 

[Istbor]

What I got out of 22 pages of posts.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

We do have literary examples of Halflings though. And we have written game descriptions describing other races as strong. (Is there anything "it's a fantasy game, just have fun" can't justify?).

Why is the conception of the Goliath/Dragonborn/Half-Orc PC who chose a race and character concept to be ultra strong (and does so in the ways the game fiction describes things) not worth keeping?

For fun, does it matter If the Gnome or Halfling decides to also max out strength after hearing that the Goliath/Dragonborn/Half-orc character is aiming to be super strong, or if the Gnome/Halfling player was the first to chime up and say they always wanted to try something genre busint?

I think it would feel sucky for the person who chose the 'strong species' to play the strong character if some pint-sized superman equalled them. This is exactly the sort of situation I'd like to avoid and that's why I like there being certain aspects for the species that the other species cannot easily match. Niche protection.

 

[MGibster]

Nope. That is called science. Sorry. Ever seen sports? It is not discrimination, that women are slower sprinters on average. It is also no discrimination, that women have different hormones and no testicles.
It is also dangerous to medically treat women and man as if they were interchangeable.

Within in the context of fantasy role playing these thoughts do not generally take is in a good direction. The idea of a female fighter with an 18/00 strength in AD&D never particularly bothered me when I was younger and I see no purpose in imposing limits based on the sex of a character in D&D. If we want to talk about real life hockey or track teams that's probably best left to another thread.