D&D 5E WotC On Tasha, Race, Alignment: A Several-Year Plan

WotC spoke to the site Dicebreaker about D&D race and alignment, and their plans for the future.

• On of the motivations of the changes [character customization] in Tasha's Cauldron was to decouple race from class.
• The 'tightrope' between honouring legacy and freedom of character choice has not been effectively walked.
• Alignment is turning into a roleplaying tool, and will not be used to describe entire cultures.
• This work will take several years to fully implement.

 

[Charlaquin]

How did I imply that by saying "movies 1 to 3?"

Are you being argumentative just to be argumentative? If so, I am down with that. Just checking where this is coming from?

Ok, here’s the exchange that occurred:

You do understand that 'Stormtrooper' is not a race?

Unsure if this tangent is worth going down, but...clones mang! They're literally all the same! At least, from movies 1 to 3.

So, in response to a comment claiming “stormtrooper is not a race” you said “but they’re clones.” Which is not accurate, storm troopers are not clones. You followed it up by saying “at least in movies 1 to 3,” which suggests that you are confident they are clones in those movies, but unsure about the other movies. I think it’s pretty clear where my misunderstanding came from. My intent was not to be argumentative, but to point out that no, they are not clones beyond movies 1 to 3. Since you e since clarified your meaning, I understand, but you’re being weirdly incredulous about the idea that anyone could possibly have misunderstood you. And again, I’m not the only one to have done so.

 

[DemoMonkey]

"Obviously if your PC can be an orc and doesn’t have to be evil, it is demonstrably not true that all orcs are evil."

sigh Well, if you're going to go by debate rules about it, sure. If all Orcs are evil and a PC is not, then they are not an Orc. They may be born of Orcs and raised by Orcs and contain only Orc genetic material, but they don't measure on the Evilometer so they aren't one.

They use the same stats, abilities, and artwork though.

 

[Lanefan]

I will disregard the humans with dark vision bit.

Giving Humans darkvision is likely just to relieve players of the unspeakable horror of having to keep track of their light sources and durations at low levels.

Sad.

 

[Lanefan]

I hate to break it to you, but “killing people and taking their stuff” hasn’t been what D&D is about for years.

I'll give you that "people" has slowly been changing to "monsters" over time and that this change is still in progress; but otherwise killing things and taking their stuff is every bit as front-and-center as ever.

 

[Charlaquin]

I think perhaps you don’t or some don’t but there are many who argue against racial differences very broadly and here on these very threads for very specific non game related reasons.

I’ve been in the same discussions you have. No one has ever suggested there be no mechanical differences between races. That you think they have shows you haven’t really been listening.

I doubt they draw attention to this example because it carries the argument to its illogical conclusion.

Except it isn’t a conclusion that follows from the arguments actually being made, logical or otherwise. These discussions could be a lot more productive if you engaged with the actual arguments being made instead of slippery slope versions of straw arguments you imagine they’re making.

 

[Charlaquin]

"Obviously if your PC can be an orc and doesn’t have to be evil, it is demonstrably not true that all orcs are evil."

sigh Well, if you're going to go by debate rules about it, sure. If all Orcs are evil and a PC is not, then they are not an Orc. They may be born of Orcs and raised by Orcs and contain only Orc genetic material, but they don't measure on the Evilometer so they aren't one.

They use the same stats, abilities, and artwork though.

Or maybe sometimes orcs aren’t evil.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Or maybe sometimes orcs aren’t evil.

Or even most times in most 5e worlds.

 

[Charlaquin]

Giving Humans darkvision is likely just to relieve players of the unspeakable horror of having to keep track of their light sources and durations at low levels.

Sad.

Ok, point of order. Humans don’t have Darkvision in Tasha’s. You can make a custom lineage with Darkvision that is otherwise mechanically similar to variant humans. There’s a big difference.

 

[tetrasodium]

I think there is a significant difference between

Spoiler: THESE orcs are bad

and

Spoiler: orcs are bad

Especially when it took so many years to even admit in print that the orcs in rising simply exist.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I’ve been in the same discussions you have. No one has ever suggested there be no mechanical differences between races. That you think they have shows you haven’t really been listening.

To be fair, some people have decried 'biological essentialism' and unless we replace it with 'cultural essentialism' the logical conclusion is that all differences between the races must be removed.