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

[Remathilis]

Those PHB edits are rather deceitful.
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Now, some of that stuff is racial and clearly a result of their lineage. Age, size, darkvision, land speed. Some of that is not like Language and Alignment.

And this is true of every single race you listed. You took the first sentence, then posted only the ASIs and ignored everything else underneath that sentence. So, unless you want to say that Half-elves Biologically know a random language from any race, or that Halflings are biologically pre-disposed to Law, then you need to recognize that not everything under that sentence is meant to be true of the race as a biological fact.

Bingo.

It's important to note that racial traits are a mix of biology, society and personal ability. An ridge elf's +2 Dex can be justified as biological, but what about his proficiency in bows or cantrip? An elves proficiency in Perception could be viewed as biological, but what of a half elves two skill proficiencies?

It's interesting that there is a lot of flap about the ability score mods, but no one is concerned about the loss of elfishness that is trading your weapon proficiency and Perception skill as part of the Tasha rules.

 

[Helldritch]

I kind of thought it would be a split - mountain dwarves for any class that could benefit from medium armor, half-elves for everything else. Of course the prejudice against being short runs deep so you may be right.

I doubt I will use this in my home game in any case. The other thing that bothers me is the complete lack of surveys, UA, any attempt to get feedback from the community at large for a change this fundamental.

Agreed. I would have expected more playtest.
So far my friends have put pros and cons for the both the half-elf and the mountain dwarf.
Mountain dwarf allows you a 16 and a 17. Which is good, really good. But...
The rest of the mountain dwarf abilities are not that big of a deal. Armor prof is excellent, but it can be obtained through multiclassing in the right order.

The Half-elf is the real star. Especially if multi multi classing is allowed. All those MAD classes will now benefits from the half-elf's ASI. This means that builds with 3 or 4 classes will be more up to the task as your lowest ability for MAD will be 14. Plus, you get darkvision (just like the dwarf) and resitance to charm and sleep. It will be really powerful.

 

[Helldritch]

Bingo.

It's important to note that racial traits are a mix of biology, society and personal ability. An ridge elf's +2 Dex can be justified as biological, but what about his proficiency in bows or cantrip? An elves proficiency in Perception could be viewed as biological, but what of a half elves two skill proficiencies?

It's interesting that there is a lot of flap about the ability score mods, but no one is concerned about the loss of elfishness that is trading your weapon proficiency and Perception skill as part of the Tasha rules.

Ho but we are. We absolutely are. But the debate has drifted almost immediately towards the ASI. This is why we say that races will now be generic and blendless.

 

[Remathilis]

Just as the rule for floating ASI is just making things even worse. Already other DM have shown me that half-elves will be the rage as they will be the best at everything. And this is without me telling them. But they do playtest too.

You know what half-elves won't be good at? Having a breath weapon. Flight. Breathing underwater. Starting with a feat at first level. Having resistance to an element. Or simply being anything other than a half-elf. If you are going solely on ASI, than half elf is good. Luckily, I suspect most people will opt to play something they want rather than eek out an extra +1 on point buy.

 

[Remathilis]

Ho but we are. We absolutely are. But the debate has drifted almost immediately towards the ASI. This is why we say that races will now be generic and blendless.

So it is your opinion that elves are born innately speaking Elvish and able to use straight bows?

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Bingo.

It's important to note that racial traits are a mix of biology, society and personal ability. An ridge elf's +2 Dex can be justified as biological, but what about his proficiency in bows or cantrip? An elves proficiency in Perception could be viewed as biological, but what of a half elves two skill proficiencies?

It's interesting that there is a lot of flap about the ability score mods, but no one is concerned about the loss of elfishness that is trading your weapon proficiency and Perception skill as part of the Tasha rules.

I think you put it well. Some things lend themselves to being more about culture. So no, if someone has a background of being an orphan or whatever adopted into a new culture it is not out of bounds to think they could know different languages.

for years, many player I know simply talk with the DM and make it happen. In 1e AD&D I had a thief who had been a wizards apprentice. The DM (gasp!) allowed me to use the ‘distract’ cantrip.

the problem for me is hard coding this stuff and prompting it. I suspect we will have new players think very little about archetypes and simply tinker for bonuses. In other words, I am more concerned about races becoming skins over time.

I don’t like it. It could be what the market wants. There is a lot of discussion about Tanks and aggro etc., things that never came up in our games before.

ultimately I don’t think it was the game that prompted the changes anyway which is in part why their effects will be interesting to observe on the wider discussion and experience about the game. Individual tables can of course keep it traditional if they wish.

 

[Helldritch]

So it is your opinion that elves are born innately speaking Elvish and able to use straight bows?

Nope. It is the whole package. You are putting words into my mouth. Take the comment for what it is and stop distorting the meaning. You asked a fair question earlier and I answered it. If the answer is not what you wanted to hear, too bad.

 

[Remathilis]

Nope. It is the whole package. You are putting words into my mouth. Take the comment for what it is and stop distorting the meaning. You asked a fair question earlier and I answered it. If the answer is not what you wanted to hear, too bad.

So your position is "no substitutions allowed for any reason." Got it.

 

[Aldarc]

So it is your opinion that elves are born innately speaking Elvish and able to use straight bows?

Coincidentally, it is the opinion of Keith Baker that elves (and half-elves) in Eberron are born innately speaking Elvish as a mystical connection to their fey heritage. He discusses this in one of his blog posts, but I doubt that people would want Eberroni explanations to represent the whole of D&D.

 

[jasper]

You are contradicting your own point. Narrowing it down to one example:

Fact: the racial traits (per the PHB) of a given race are universal to all members of the race. We'll accept this as given.
Fact: the hobgoblin PC race and MM entry have contradictory ability scores being modified (Str/Dex/Con vs Con/Int) and different racial traits (Martial Advantage vs Save Face).
Therefore: either the PC racial traits are not true of all hobgoblins (as the MM hobgoblin clearly shows) OR the PC hobgoblin is a distinct species different from the MM hobgoblin.

Occam's razor should tell you which is correct.

Fact Occam could not grow a beard and did not need his razor.
Fact Everyone knows the stats in the MM is for MONSTERS which average party of four will meet.
Fact The PC races traits are for pcs which the dm can apply to MM race if he want to.
Fact No Where in the history of D&D have the Editors did a super great job of making everything agree and mesh well.
And that is a fact Jack Remathlis. (BIG EVIL GRIN)