D&D 5E Jeremy Crawford Discusses Details on Custom Origins

[Alzrius]

Go back and read my now complete post..I hit post before I was done, and you quoted my work in progress.

Fair enough, I'll respond to those point-for-point.

LoTR is why D&D exists. Gary might have preferred other authors, personally, but the impact of Tolkien on the culture and the hobby is paramount and obvious. To call the impact "modest" is a warped view.

And I think this is wrong in the extreme. D&D would still exist if Tolkien hadn't written anything, and I suspect it would still look very much like it does now. A close examination of the game's history, I feel confident, bares this out.

D&D has wargaming roots, because those wargamers wanted to play in battles described in the LotR books. People want to create the Battle of Five Armies and so forth....then they wanted to narrow their scope and play the heroes.

Wargaming had very little to do with Tolkien. Most wargaming was medieval in nature, and Chainmail (typically asserted as the prototype for D&D) largely limited itself in that regard; there's a reason why it only had a "fantasy supplement" at the back, which had a little Tolkien here and there, but quite a bit that wasn't (e.g. "super-heroes," wizards being treated as artillery, etc.)

The Conan stories were published in the 1920's.....some stories feature large scale battles....none of the stories impact was sufficient for someone to produce D&D.

No, but they were sufficient for the one-on-one battle rules that helped transition between medieval wargames and tabletop role-playing.

The popularity and wide spread influence of the Lord of the Rings books, in Europe and North America, is what set the stage for the genesis of D&D, and D&D's obvious similarity to Tolkien is what made it a commercial success.

This is true, but leaves out a lot of critical context. Playing at the World, by Jon Peterson, takes a look at how various factors led to the rise of D&D, which includes a lot of socio-cultural forces that helped give birth to the rise of what we would now call "fandom," which included a decades-long uptick in fantasy fiction (particularly of the "displaced" type, where someone from contemporary Earth goes to another world), the rise of war- and strategy-games, not just in local groups but also by mail, and larger post-war shifts in pastimes, among other things.

I've left out most of your other references because they're not really worth responding to. Led Zeppelin references aside, stating your opinion ("there is no D&D without Tolkien") as if it were a fact doesn't advance the discussion, and neither does "flat-Earth" trolling. I'm not going down that road again in this thread.

 

[Cadence]

I disagree. While that quote talks about your starting characteristics, the power-gain from leveling up back in older editions was notably smaller. Fighters and related sub-classes got the equivalent of an increased to-hit bonus at higher levels, but most classes didn't, which meant that being locked out of those greater levels represented a comparatively modest loss (and that's without reaching for the old "most games never got that high anyway" idea). Saving throws, for instance, only tended to go up every few levels, hit points quickly tapered off, and proficiencies came later. Magical gear could still be collected, hirelings and henchmen could still be retained, etc. You were hardly a drag on the party if you were a few levels behind them...especially considering that they might lose levels from level-draining undead, being resurrected, etc.

It kind of feels like Magic-Users being limited to 5th level spells instead of 9th (for elves), or Clerics being limited to 2nd level spells instead of 7th (for Half-Orcs) does make them useless in higher level adventures just for the spells.

Even so, no, they don't need to retire right away.

But give it four levels and the magic-user might miss the extra 1/1/1/2/2/2/1 spells, especially when they didn't have any of the 6th or 7th level ones (the 5 hp and no to hit probably don't factor in).

For the cleric those four levels are 0/1/3/2 spells - where they didn't have the 3rd or 4th before, and average of 18 hit points, +2 to hit, and turning on a completely different scale.

"Modest Loss"!?!?!?

And for fighters, the Elvish fighter stuck at 6th level for only having a 16 strength is already 2 lower on the to-hit rolls and an average of at least 5 hp down with just one change in level.

Sure. Getting bonuses that humans didn't made them better mechanical choices, particularly at the outset. But would D&D look significantly different if those races weren't there at all?

You're literally the first person I've ever heard imply it wouldn't. I think it definitely would, and would bet that the vast majority of players would say it does. And that if D&D hadn't had them, and a competitor came out with them, that D&D would have needed to adapt or die.

 

[Cadence]

That was my take on it, too.


That's a difficult question to answer, because "the flavor of the game" is so hard to pin down. What constitutes definitional characteristics of D&D are going to vary from person to person (and certainly, for some people that will include Tolkien-style elves and dwarves). Those six entries cover a lot of ground, but there's quite a bit that they don't cover, such as Zelazny's Jack in Shadows (hence why the thief ability is "hide in shadows" and not just "hide"), Dunsany's "King of Elfland's Daughter" (I might be misremembering, but that's the Appendix N stories where the characters openly talk about "random encounters"), Gardner Fox's "Kothar" stories (which gave us the lich), etc.

The best answer I can give is a tentative "I suppose," but limiting it to those six leaves out a lot.

It feels like if leaving out Tolkien doesn't cause a big change, that everything after those six is pretty small potatoes. Is a single monster or needing shadows to hide much at all? (Especially when your chance of doing anything thievish in AD&D was pretty garbagey, wasn't it?).

Thanks for the note on the random encounters - I'll have to dig up that one!

 

[Alzrius]

It kind of feels like Magic-Users being limited to 5th level spells instead of 9th (for elves), or Clerics being limited to 2nd level spells instead of 7th (for Half-Orcs) does make them useless in higher level adventures just for the spells.

Well, this is why this conversation might be better if we pinned down which edition of the game we're talking about. In OD&D (1974), spells originally stopped at 6th level (even if they went up to 9th very quickly thereafter).

Even so, no, they don't need to retire right away.

But give it four levels and the magic-user might miss the extra 1/1/1/2/2/2/1 spells, especially when they didn't have any of the 6th or 7th level ones (the 5 hp and no to hit probably don't factor in).

For the cleric those four levels are 0/1/3/2 spells - where they didn't have the 3rd or 4th before, and average of 18 hit points, +2 to hit, and turning on a completely different scale.

Leaving aside that I'm only somewhat certain that you're talking about AD&D 1E (where level limits were already starting to become porous, if I recall correctly, due to allowances for an extra level or two if they had high-enough ability scores), the number of spells cast per day isn't the best way to look at this. The long periods of time needed to regain spells, combined with how easy they were to disrupt when casting (and how hard it could be to locate and learn new ones, the hard caps on how many spells of each level wizards could know, etc.), meant that total spell ability typically wasn't ever an issue in a given adventure. I believe Gary outlines in the DMG (apologies for not being able to pull a quote) that most wizards would use a few spells and then rely on a magic item, such as a wand of frost, which didn't take their level into account anyway.

"Modest Loss"!?!?!?

Taking the above into account, I think so. 3E and beyond have colored a lot of our perceptions regarding how notable spellcasting ability is.

And for fighters, the Elvish fighter stuck at 6th level for only having a 16 strength is already 2 lower on the to-hit rolls and an average of at least 5 hp down with just one change in level.

Being slightly behind another character isn't what I'd call "sucking." Yes, they weren't going to be as good as a high-level fighter, but they weren't useless. They just weren't optimal.

You're literally the first person I've ever heard imply it wouldn't. I think it definitely would, and would bet that the vast majority of players would say it does. And that if D&D hadn't had them, and a competitor came out with them, that D&D would have needed to adapt or die.

I disagree. I've seen plenty of campaigns that were all-human, and they were none the poorer for it. While Tolkien has captured popular imagination for what "classic high fantasy" feels like, it's not the ne plus ultra of it, and I feel confident that a game of D&D would still feel like a game of D&D without it.

 

[Alzrius]

It feels like if leaving out Tolkien doesn't cause a big change, that everything after those six is pretty small potatoes. Is a single monster or needing shadows to hide much at all? (Especially when your chance of doing anything thievish in AD&D was pretty garbagey, wasn't it?).

There's certainly room for arguing that D&D is one big mish-mash of influences, with none being something that can be pointed to as the one that defines the game better than any other. I'm just saying I think that holds true for Tolkien about as much as some of the other notable names.

As for thieves hiding in shadows...certainly, my characters failed those rolls often enough that it felt "garbagey."

Thanks for the note on the random encounters - I'll have to dig up that one!

Take that one with a grain of salt. I started reading the Appendix N books a while back, and while I distinctly remember raising my eyebrows at seeing a character talk about "random encounters," I'm not 100% certain that was the story.

 

[Sacrosanct]

If you look at the 5E DMG's "NPC Features" (pg. 282), that section assumes that non-adventuring NPC elves, dwarves, etc. have certain ability score adjustments by default. If you encounter an elf commoner, they're going to have a higher Dex than a human commoner. So while Wizards and the rest of us can certainly change perceptions of what those adjustments mean, the idea that these adjustments are inherent to that character race/culture isn't just something players thought; it's been a key assumption of the game up to this point. (4E may have been the only exception.)

Right, and I'm not disputing how it was done previously. I'm saying if we shift our perspective going forward, it makes a lot more sense and is more easily acceptable. That's hardly a unique thing to do with the game. I mean, with the exception of a few, hardly anyone is still upset D&D uses ascending AC, right? Or that we got rid of STR maximums for gender? The game is ever evolving and perspectives shift. So making this shift in perspective to view racial modifiers as something unique to an adventuring member of the race, rather than every single person of that race, why not?

 

[DEFCON 1]

It's not just that change is hard (and the game has evolved with every edition) it's that change can also have unexpected consequences and this feels like a fairly fundamental change. I haven't decided if it's going to affect my home game or not, but when we can play in person again I had planned on getting involved in AL again where this rule will be in place.

It just means that if I want to play against type (I've played dwarven wizards, half-orc monk and so on) I can't do that any more. Every race "fits" every class and archetype now. Every race becomes ever more generic, ever more just a funny accent with a different mask. I'd actually prefer penalties for every race, so that I could have the ugliest dwarf in the land* who was convinced he had a future in showbiz because he rolled a 20 on a performance check while the bard rolled a 1 in a contest.

I get that certain sacred cows should be taken out back and put out of their misery. I'm just not sure this is one of them.

*in Living Greyhawk I had a dwarf with a 5 charisma because of a curse

When you "play against type"... what exactly are you looking for? Credit from all the other players at the table that you are intentionally using bad stats? It's not enough to play a dwarven wizard... you need to make sure the dwarven wizard is statistically poor so that "playing against type" is somehow more meaningful?

If you wish to play a dwarven wizard or a halfork monk... because those character concepts are interesting to you and formulate compelling roleplaying challenges... that's awesome! Go for it! But those concepts do not go hand-in-hand with having bad stats along with it. Or really more to the point... bad stats that the book forces you to have, rather than bad stats you chose for yourself voluntarily.

Because remember... in any game world you could have thousands of dwarven wizards even if the dwarf stats remained as they were. So you wouldn't be "playing against type" in that world there at all. Having the dwarf stats-as-is does nothing for the "type" you want to play against. Likewise... a game world where the fiction said there had never been a single previous dwarven wizard ever would allow you to do so and "play against type" even if the game rules from Tasha's allowed people at all other tables across the globe to not use the same stat arrays. You don't need the book to force you into certain stats to "play against type", and you certainly can't demand the rest of us follow along with your desires if you actually think you do.

 

[Cadence]

I disagree. I've seen plenty of campaigns that were all-human, and they were none the poorer for it. While Tolkien has captured popular imagination for what "classic high fantasy" feels like, it's not the ne plus ultra of it, and I feel confident that a game of D&D would still feel like a game of D&D without it.

Some folks on these boards have also run games without any humans and thought they worked just fine as D&D too. Same for clerics or wizards or gods or alignment. It feels like there's a big core bundle of D&Disms and taking out some to give unique flavor works fine for a campaign that feels like a flavor of D&D. Taking them out of the core axes off all of those campaigns though and leaves the whole much smaller.

 

[Helldritch]

When your own individual table can have an Elf start with a 10 Dexterity and a Dwarf with a 10 Strength, and a Halfork start with a 15 Dexterity and a Halfling start with a 15 Strength in the same exact party... the starting bonuses a race gets in their Player's Handbook write-up to "describe" what that race is meant to be is pretty much meaningless.

Everybody here seems wants to use the totality of every single D&D table across the globe to justify why Elves should average out to be more dexterous than dwarves and humans and dragonborn and such... but you know what? Nothing that happens at anyone else's table has any impact on what goes on at yours. If you honestly felt that all elves should be more dexterous than the other races, you probably have already instituted minimums and maximums on player stats to get there. Or adjusted point-buy or point-buy maximums or max ability scores to do so. Then your own table can represent how you want to see these races portrayed.

But if you are now complaining that other people have a book which "allows" them to deviate from your own personal feelings on how these races should be represented? Guess what? Tough crap. I don't give a rat's ass what you think elves should be or get mechanically, and neither do 99% of the other tables tables OR the D&D designers. And on top of that... we've ALREADY had our games look the way we wanted... we've never needed a book like Tasha's to "allow" us to do that. If you knew how many tables out there didn't have elves dexterous than the other races, your brains might've melted.

You go institute whatever house rule you want... that's the way the game was designed to allow for and the expectation you are supposed to have to make it your own. But if you think your opinion is going to have any weight on the rest of us, you are sorely mistaken.

What you forget is that in making this drastic hange in an official rule book, it will change how my table will have to play in AL context. The PHB+1 will soon become PHB+2 and quite a few players will balk at a notion that I might not allow "x" because it is in Tasha... Even personal games will be affected one way or an other as arguments will spring up when a new, or an old player will want to play an odd class/race combination with no drawback because Tasha allows it. I can see young DMs having to argue with said player just like I did when a player wanted to play a ninja in my campaign ecause it was an "official" class with OA. Same in 2nd edition with the complete book of "x" with kits, or 3.xed with the class books. Or 4ed with PHB2+. A DM do have the right not to play with some books when they are not core. But when they are core books as Tasha will be considered, it is hard to justify. The younger the DM (experience wise) the harder it will be.

 

[Maxperson]

EDIT: Looking back through the AD&D 1E DMG, I'm not seeing where it says that rangers can use crystal balls. Can anyone find a citation on that?

I'll get to most of this thread later, since I'm at work. This one is easy, though. You are looking in the wrong place. It's in the Ranger class in the PHB.