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.

 

[tetrasodium]

Can someone demonstrate how a build changed by this is broken? What is it doing that it could not do before that breaks the game? I'm still missing that piece in this discussion. I see an elven fighter might get a few extra tool proficiencies rather than seeing a few redundant weapon proficiencies go to waste. How does this meaningfully break the game? Why does a mountain dwarf getting two +2s break the game? Because they can get a monk up to +18 Dex and +18 wisdom at 4th level when using point buy (at the cost of having really weak other stats)? I'm just not seeing it.

It's a different more insidious toxin. I summarized it here & I'll quote it for ease

Tasha's introduced the ability to swap racial +N stat bumps for some other stat among other things to radically change which races can work for what classes. skillA for skillB, armor or simple weapon for Simple/martial weapon or tool, Martial weapon for Simple/martial weapon or tool, & toolA for toolB are useful sure, but none of those things are likely to make anyone suddenly decide race:class combo is suddenly great. Missing from that list are cantrips, presumably because eldritch blast shouldn't be a cantrip

By default mountain dwarf gives +2 con, poison resist, darkvision, battleaxe, handaxe, throwing hammer, and warhammer proficient, +2 strength, light & medium armor proficient. The weapons are fairly useless to a caster so convert to an easy 4 maybe 5 skills depending on if you can convert darkvision to a skill or not, two different +2 ability scores, along with light/medium armor proficiency most casters other than cleric will lack one or both of.

There are a few races that give a cantrip or some limited one off spells that are rarely top shelf spells & having spell slots doesn't mean you can use those slots on those spells. The dragonmark races add a bunch of spells to your class's spell list but you still need to learn/prepare them normally keeping them from really competing. What it really makes obvious is the lack of things like brutal critical/relentless endurance or even bugbear's reach level transformative racial stuff for casters. Goblin fury of the small could be awesome but exempts itself with1/long res

Anything that I'm missing?

The +2/+2 is a huge impact. because the standard array goes from 15/14/13/12/10/8 to something like 17/16/13/12/10/8 or 17/14/13/14/10/8 allowing great int, good to great con, enough dex to cap out that medium armor, & still ok wis/cha for saves if one of those doesn't get swapped with strength for whatever reason like heavy armor goal. Pairing that kind of am array with light/medium armor proficiency easily puts it a few steps ahead because AC is almost always useful while a panic button like a lot of races have just looks sad with things like ("i can cast x once/long rest but it doesn't count as known/prepared" or "I can do extra damage against larger foes once/long rest")

Take two optimizers like BacchusNL mentioned earlier call them Alice & bob. Alice is playing a mountain dwarf so pretty much always has better ac than bob & where it counts likely has better attributes outside "where did they put their low stats". Bob has played that mountain dwarf in a previous campaign & wants to play something different. On occasion bob might get a chance to use whatever racial goodies he got, but the limitations & corner case needs will always remind him of just how much better Alice's +N half plate & better attribute is.. I don't see it as a problem with mountain dwarf because the choices are still lots of good ones for martial classes, this is more a failing for races that synergize well with casters in ways other than "+2 to their prime stat"

 

[UngeheuerLich]

The numbers are nit made for that. A mountain dwarf gets 6 extra proficiencies, which correlate with +2 strength. Trading them one for one is too much.
Just group the weapons to martial weapons and simple weapons and you have a much more sane number.

 

[BacchusNL]

The numbers are nit made for that. A mountain dwarf gets 6 extra proficiencies, which correlate with +2 strength. Trading them one for one is too much.
Just group the weapons to martial weapons and simple weapons and you have a much more sane number.

You can never compare tool proffeciencies too stats like that. That's like saying "a sneeze is 1/4th of an orgasm so if i sneeze 4x in a row I climax." No. You'd need to sneeze 4x at the same time.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

You can never compare tool proffeciencies to stats like that. That's like saying "a sneeze is 1/4th of an orgasm so if i sneeze 4x in a row I climax." No. You'd need to sneeze 4x at the same time.

And if I can. I just did.

 

[BacchusNL]

And if I can. I just did.

I'll just have to take you on your word there

However on the real though, I think that for most campaigns you could give a Dwarf something like Religion or History proffeciency (or whatever fits their character) instead of 4 tools, if they want, and it would only add to the storytelling experience of the campaign. Just make sure that it's clear that you are offering RP-fluff, not a free perception proffeciency, if that is your goal/ concern.

 

[keynup]

I'd take it case by case but a dwarf wizard giving up armor prof would get more out of it than a dwarf fighter doing the same.