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

[Maxperson]

I would love pizza right now, but I had a side salad for breakfast.

Sounds like a slow motion lunch special!

 

[Remathilis]

And I will say this one last time. Having a 15 versus a 16 means nothing unless you run a super-tight, incredibly well balanced, min-max game. If I made your character and had never told you a bonus, an AC, HP, etc. and had you do the rolls, it is doubtful you would be able to notice. But for some reason (myself included at times), we need a 16 in order to fully enjoy the character. I get it. I just don't think it should come at the expense of dismissing archetypes, an original rulebook that has held up for five years, and another player's fun.

The reverse is also true: why is starting with a 16 "niche protection" for a strong race when it's only minimally impactful over the 15? Why is the half-orc with the 16 "strong" but the halfling with the 15 not?

My point is that this is all psychological. 3e opened all classes to all races and the game didn't lose dwarf fighters and halfling rogues as staples. The difference between that 15 and 16 is 5% mechanically but miles apart psychologically. The only thing hurt is a perceived notion that pigeonholing certain races as a small selection of classes is good for the game. D&D survived dwarves being allowed to be more than fighters, be any class, and have 20+ charisma scores, it will survive this.

That said, I'm not a fan of how WotC is doing this: it's so hamfisted that any DM worth his d20 could have done it. Some have. But I can respect the goal of it. It opens up more builds than most people would give a 2nd look at. Short of rewriting every race, it was probably their best option.

 

[Scott Christian]

The reverse is also true: why is starting with a 16 "niche protection" for a strong race when it's only minimally impactful over the 15? Why is the half-orc with the 16 "strong" but the halfling with the 15 not?

My point is that this is all psychological. 3e opened all classes to all races and the game didn't lose dwarf fighters and halfling rogues as staples. The difference between that 15 and 16 is 5% mechanically but miles apart psychologically. The only thing hurt is a perceived notion that pigeonholing certain races as a small selection of classes is good for the game. D&D survived dwarves being allowed to be more than fighters, be any class, and have 20+ charisma scores, it will survive this.

That said, I'm not a fan of how WotC is doing this: it's so hamfisted that any DM worth his d20 could have done it. Some have. But I can respect the goal of it. It opens up more builds than most people would give a 2nd look at. Short of rewriting every race, it was probably their best option.

I agree with you. It is minimally impactful, except in that it deters certain race/class combos. That deterrence helps create archetypes. No deterrence makes for fewer archetypes.

I agree again, it is all psychological.

Last point, I agree with to a point. I think if they were going to do this, rewrite every race. Create a new setting where the old races that people had an issue with are now the opposite. This way, the DM can more easily say, well that isn't Forgotten Realms, but Gizzmodium Realms, and the two do not exist together. Better yet, have the writers place it in the book that the two do not exist together. Now a person can go explore a halfling with 16 strength at level one, but that halfling will never start with a 16 dex. They are just too musclebound to be all nimble and acrobatic. And make the orcs intelligent and beautiful. But they are weaker than everyone else. And make the elves hardy, and make the dwarves thin and agile. It would be a fun path to explore for some. That would be the way to continue to stay true to the rules, explain the rules through lore, and build new archetypes.

But they didn't. And that causes consternation in some.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Like you I don't think it is a bad thing either (racial sensitivity) but it is the rushed aspect that I truly find irksome. The way they're doing it does not ring right. There must've been a way to be better and yet, respect the history of how D&D has worked since the "almost" the beginning. Rushing things is never a good idea.

What disrespect has occurred, though?

It's interesting that subraces (from a rules perspective) are pretty much made redundant by this added flexibility. (Really if they don't give ability bonuses it would probably make a lot of sense to fold them into backgrounds in some way).

No, they aren't. At all. I could maybe see a conceptual argument, but not one from a rules perspective. From a rules perspective, for most subraces, the +1 to a secondary stat is absolutely the least part of the subrace.

+2 to two abilities. (Frequently not very consistent with anything that had gone before). Later on they opened it us because people wanted more flexibility (deja vu) so that only one of those +2 was fixed and you had a choice between two different ability scores for the other.

Having the right ability score in the right place was actually much more important than it is in 5e - one reason why 13th Age lets you gain ability scores from your class as well.

I'd have to disagree with that last part. In 4e I never found any disadvantage at all from playing a Gnoll Artificer or a Dwarf Rogue or a Shadar-Kai Barbarian. I never made a character with maxed out main stats, in all the couple dozen characters I played in 4e, and it never mattered. Very much including games that went into Paragon and Epic tiers.

 

[GreenTengu]

Nope. Racial abilities are just that. Racial abilities. You little devil of min/maxer...

You accuse me of being a min/maxer, but what I am honestly sick of, and have been for decades is the naughty word elf powergamers.
There is some interpretation of elves that make them the absolute best at everything. So when it comes to design, they get all the goodies and then some.
Then when it comes to designing a race that isn't the designer's favorite that they design the entire edition around empowering, if it is something they transparently begrudge players even choosing-- Orcs for example, the entrire race gets transparently shafted.
Without any formula or format, that is easy to get away with.
But if everything a race grants is something that can be gained through class combination, that sort of naughty word naturally goes away. There is a transparent formula for when a race grants either too much or too little bonus.
That forces the designers into cutting back on giving everything to their favorite and putting actual thought and effort into the others so one doesn't feel utterly naughty word over if they try to play one.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The reverse is also true: why is starting with a 16 "niche protection" for a strong race when it's only minimally impactful over the 15? Why is the half-orc with the 16 "strong" but the halfling with the 15 not?

My point is that this is all psychological. 3e opened all classes to all races and the game didn't lose dwarf fighters and halfling rogues as staples. The difference between that 15 and 16 is 5% mechanically but miles apart psychologically. The only thing hurt is a perceived notion that pigeonholing certain races as a small selection of classes is good for the game. D&D survived dwarves being allowed to be more than fighters, be any class, and have 20+ charisma scores, it will survive this.

That said, I'm not a fan of how WotC is doing this: it's so hamfisted that any DM worth his d20 could have done it. Some have. But I can respect the goal of it. It opens up more builds than most people would give a 2nd look at. Short of rewriting every race, it was probably their best option.

The difference is impactful because it creates, no matter what nonsense anyone tries to argue, an expectation of what the average member of the race is like. Luckily, this isn't errata, so it will not impact that at all, and I don't think there is a snowball's chance in hell that any "6e" will have a PHB that doesn't have archetypal dwarves and elves with options to modify the race to be less archetypal.

The game will always, always, tell you that dwarves tend to be tough and elves tend to be dexterous. I think that from now on, however, you will always be allowed to make characters who defy their archetypes. Just like you can make anti-social humans. That social nature is no less biological in humans than a bonus to con or strength would be, but I doubt any of us really has a problem with being able to represent people with Anti-Social Personality Disorder.

As far as the execution, I really don't understand the "hamfisted" thing. What other way would you want them to do it? What about this seems rushed to folks? These criticisms don't make any sense, to me. This is exactly what they should have done, with the possible exception of the "build your own race" part, which makes races that are weaker than half the PHB races, by my estimation.

 

[Helldritch]

@GreenTengu
1) I like elves.
2) My sentences were meant as a joke. Not an attack. So I am sorry if you felt that way.
3) I am almost exclusively a DM. Last time I have been a player must have been in 1993 or something. So I am fairly neuter to what a player wants.
4) I strongly feel that race should have a big impact on what you are. So yep, the +2/+1 should stay static. The best compromise I'd be ready to accept would be to be able to move the +1 around but in doing so, I would remove subraces altogether. A dwarf would simply be a dwarf. Would be hard to accept, but at least it would be consistent. You could define your subrace with where your +1 went into.
5) All classes should give nothing really special until level 3 and truly good stuff only at level 6. This would prevent cheesy combo with 1st level pick. Multiclassing should have been restricted to 1 change or a prefered class system such as the one we had 3.xed. No turning back to your previous class would ensure that multiclassing would be done for RP purpose and not cheesy pick as I have seen so many times.
6) It was really not meant as an attack on you. I am really sorry.

 

[Remathilis]

As far as the execution, I really don't understand the "hamfisted" thing. What other way would you want them to do it? What about this seems rushed to folks? These criticisms don't make any sense, to me. This is exactly what they should have done, with the possible exception of the "build your own race" part, which makes races that are weaker than half the PHB races, by my estimation.

I really don't need WotC to say "put your ability score mods anywhere you want, damn the consequences". I could say that! I would have loved a little attention played to those corner cases like half elves or mountain dwarves, or some rebalancing of races to make up for the changes to asi and racial proficiencies, but that doesn't seem to be a concern to WotC. They went for the most direct approach when I think we all agree a little bit more nuance could have been applied.

Put another way; if you put the Tasha lineage rules as we know them in a PDF on the DMsGuild, I'd consider them an amateur attempt at best.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

5) All classes should give nothing really special until level 3 and truly good stuff only at level 6. This would prevent cheesy combo with 1st level pick. Multiclassing should have been restricted to 1 change or a prefered class system such as the one we had 3.xed. No turning back to your previous class would ensure that multiclassing would be done for RP purpose and not cheesy pick as I have seen so many times.

That sounds very very bad for any group other than your own.

Classes would be boring in the bulk of play, under that system, for one thing. For another, it would lead to many crappy filler features from levels 1-5, and make multiclassing just a total waste of time. Just ban multiclassing, it's easier, and does less to hurt the rest of the game.

As for the "cheesy combo" concern, I kinda get where you're coming from, but as DM you have the power to literally just say, "you can MC for concept but cheesy combos are not allowed. I reserve the right to retcon any MC back to a pure class version of the character, if it comes to light that you're just trying to game the system" or whatever. However, 5e doesn't actually have satisfying iterations of every character concept without some multiclassing, so i vehemently oppose reducing MC options to "roleplaying decision" made in play. My Rogue/Wizard isn't a rogue who decided to become a wizard instead, he is both;

a) Training further in both arcana and skulldugery, as well as his swordplay being a mix of the two
2) His conceptual class is "Bladesinging Mage Hunter" which I've built from Swashbuckler Rogue and Bladesinger Wizard levels. At level 20 he will have 14 levels of rogue and 6 levels of wizard, with a custom feat that allows him to count his rogue levels as 1/3 caster class levels for determining his spellcasting, and to learn spells of any level he has spell slots. It's a hack to build a custom class, essentially, but it works.

Depending on his story as it plays out, it's possible that he might gain 2-4 levels of Fighter in there, but that's unlikely.

I greatly prefer this to building an entire new class for him. My DM is much more comfortable with the custom feat than with trying to DM for an entirely homebrewed Swordmage class with a Mage Hunter subclass. I'll build that eventaully anyway, because I enjoy it, but I am not gonna ask someone to run a full campaign where we have to tinker my class regularly, sometimes retconning major abilities as we find them to not work as intended. I can't wait to playtest my swordmage in short story games and one shots, but I wouldn't throw it into a real campaign.

And most players don't have the mindset to build a custom class, to begin with. Why not just let them build thier "class" as a multiclass "build"?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I really don't need WotC to say "put your ability score mods anywhere you want, damn the consequences". I could say that! I would have loved a little attention played to those corner cases like half elves or mountain dwarves, or some rebalancing of races to make up for the changes to asi and racial proficiencies, but that doesn't seem to be a concern to WotC. They went for the most direct approach when I think we all agree a little bit more nuance could have been applied.

Put another way; if you put the Tasha lineage rules as we know them in a PDF on the DMsGuild, I'd consider them an amateur attempt at best.

And if someone put a more complex and "nuanced" version on DMSguild that rewrote multiple races in order to address the illusion of imbalance, I'd call that over-engineered and just use the Tasha's rules instead.

As for your or my ability to do this without an official rule...okay? So what? What possible relevance could that ever have to whether the Tasha rules are what wotc should have done? I can build new classes, rebuild existing ones, and completely rework most monsters in the MM. That fact is wholly irrelevant to whether wotc should make well designed options and put out errata when something is just wrong.

Not to mention that the Tasha's lineage rules aren't just "put your racial ability score adjustments anywhere, but you cannot stack them". You can also swap any proficiency with a like proficiency, or build an entirely new lineage (though they should have also included advice about adding in a ribbon or two for flavor and IMO they overvalued feats). It's a good system, and all the game needs.