D&D 5E Are proficiency swaps too strong for some races?

[ScuroNotte]

You can swap out armor or a weapon for a weapon or tool. In the example, an elf can swap a long sword for a tool as per page 8. So if a player playing an Elf martial character who already gains martial weapons through the class, can swap the 4 weapons (longsword, shortsword, shortbow, longbow) for 4 tools. Or a martial Mountain Dwarf character can exchange 4 weapons and 2 armor proficiencies for 6 tools.
Or am I over reacting.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Dragonborn stink mechanically. These rules just make them worse.

Elves and Dwarves are just better now.

You'd be surprised how many people will straight-up deny that 5e Dragonborn suck.

 

[Zardnaar]

You'd be surprised how many people will straight-up deny that 5e Dragonborn suck.

Yeah I'm just gonna ban or replace them with Dragonkin.

Usually didn't bother then I had a newb who insisted on running one lasted two sessions left group, went to another group and left that one.

Couldn't make his Dragonborn cleric of the raven queen work. He rolled ok in my group other group was stat array/point buy only.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

But like I said, it doesnt break anything does it? Or if it does, then your game is a lot more fragile than mine!

I do agree it's silly though. If a Player tried it on me, I likely wouldn't be playing with that player.

I'd likely let them swap all weapon proficiencies for a single tool (not thieves tools).

As Zardnaar said, it's not that it breaks anything that wasn't already broken. It's just....some races are much less powerful than the bulk, and the more nuance the game adds, the more obvious the break becomes.

 

[BacchusNL]

I don't see how tool profficiencies are an issue, 99% of 5E campaigns fully ignore them. They had to make a seperate feat to make poison a thing because the system was so under-developed and underused.

And please don't use Dragonborn to drag all the other races down with them. That's uncalled for

 

[DEFCON 1]

It is impossible to say whether any of this stuff is broken or not.

Because every game has a different DM, and thus the rules and results that occur will all be different. Some DMs won't actually allow some or all of these rules, and some will modify them to make them work for their table. Plus... some DMs think Tool proficiencies are the bees knees, others think they are virtually useless. So no one can say anything general about these rules... all you can suggest is that IF a certain DM allows certain rules AND that DM uses things like Xanathar's rules for making Tool proficiencies have more import AND the players care so much about character power that they forsake the race they're playing and just flip everything they have to bulk themselves up... sure, a DM might find issues.

But then again... if that happens, then that DM learns a valuable lesson and has a good sit-down with the player and they come to a more reasonable compromise.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It is impossible to say whether any of this stuff is broken or not.

Because every game has a different DM, and thus the rules and results that occur will all be different. Some DMs won't actually allow some or all of these rules, and some will modify them to make them work for their table. Plus... some DMs think Tool proficiencies are the bees knees, others think they are virtually useless.

Again: thieves' tools, disguise kit, herbalism kit. All tool proficiencies, and all have objective uses without any need to invoke strong optional rule support. (Herbalism kit is maybe a stretch there, but the text DOES explicitly support crafting healing potions with one.) Thieves' tools and disguise kit though are unambiguously useful in essentially all campaigns; picking locks and concealing identities are both simply useful things to do, even if you play a pure murderhobo game.

 

[BacchusNL]

Again: thieves' tools, disguise kit, herbalism kit. All tool proficiencies, and all have objective uses without any need to invoke strong optional rule support. (Herbalism kit is maybe a stretch there, but the text DOES explicitly support crafting healing potions with one.) Thieves' tools and disguise kit though are unambiguously useful in essentially all campaigns; picking locks and concealing identities are both simply useful things to do, even if you play a pure murderhobo game.

That's not how most tables play it imo. As I mentioned earlier, even after Xanathar's attempt to make tools useful WotC still had to introduce special feats like Poisoner and Chef to create a system that allows some very minor crafting.

Tools by themselfs are useless unless the DM makes a special effort to make them worth it and create his own system around it, I think.

 

[Charlaquin]

Getting the equivalent of a weak feat on top of all the great benefits a Wood Elf normally gets is still getting a clear benefit. Sure, it's not as intensely potent as "get for free your choice of the best feats in the game," but it's something as opposed to the nothing that Dragonborn get. The list of Dragonborn racial features quite literally starts and stops at "breath weapon and resistance." And you cannot tell me that "resistance to one element of choice and a terribly-scaling breath weapon 1/rest" is equivalent to the pile of things elves get AND an admittedly mediocre feat used to its maximum benefit (thieves tools, disguise kit, and herbalism kit DO actually have practical uses, after all). For God's sake, at least Tieflings got darkvision.

(The irony, of course, is that the devs massively over-valued spell-equivalents on racial features and under-valued passive always-on benefits, and did exactly the reverse with passive always-on class benefits vs. spell-slot-based abilities. The breath weapon is a 1/rest poor man's burning hands, just with the possibility of other elements besides fire, while the elemental resistance would be much better than protection from energy....it just doesn't let you pick which element, which makes it nowhere near as good. Meanwhile, it literally takes 7+ typical-length combats--as in, 28 rounds of combat or more per day, with at least two short rests along the way--for the Champion to actually keep up with Battlemaster damage, to say nothing of a judicious Paladin's Divine Smite damage.)

Oh, yeah, Dragonborn are seriously underpowered. No doubt about it.

 

[tetrasodium]

That's not how most tables play it imo. As I mentioned earlier, even after Xanathar's attempt to make tools useful WotC still had to introduce special feats like Poisoner and Chef to create a system that allows some very minor crafting.

Tools by themselfs are useless unless the DM makes a special effort to make them worth it and create his own system around it, I think.

I'm going to second this. The most useful example of a tool I've seen in all of 5e was when the players came across a fountain of holy water & wanted to collect some.. it played out like this

• I don't mind if you can find some way fof storing it. does anyone have a bottle/keg/whatever to store it in?
• What about potion bottles?
• Are you going to dump one out or does your sheet right now have a count for empty potion bottles you've been picking up to save whenever someone uses one?
• no it doesn't...
• artificer: "I have brewers tools they have"
  Spoiler: this

  
  I want to fill the "large glass jug with holy water". Many sessions later they used the jug of holy water for something.0

Replacing the 2cp jug from the phb150 adventuring equipment table is hardly rising to the level of usefulness some are suggesting. Every other instance of a tool other than maybe navigation related ones was pretty much entirely because the gm bent or created rules to make it useful

 

[Olrox17]

It isn't exactly overpowered, but it's very very silly and a likely candidate for errata or clarification.