D&D 5E Everyone Should Play Custom Lineage by Default

[PsyzhranV2]

Just a nitpick: the custom lineage rules let you choose between Small or Medium as your size. Don't know where this Medium halfling thing started from.

 

[reelo]

I would use this analogy. The great chef that can create a great set menu is the one who gets the highest praise. The great chef that has a menu that looks like Cheesecake Factory has a job and the title of chef.
When limitations exist, creativity is not suppressed, but rather encouraged. When no limitations exist, creativity (again) is not suppressed, but rarely encouraged.
All in my humble opinion.

In other words, if you take ALL the colours and mix them thoroughly together, you end up with...?

Wotking with a limited palette is so much more satisfying.

 

[Azzy]

In other words, if you take ALL the colours and mix them thoroughly together, you end up with...?

Wotking with a limited palette is so much more satisfying.

Mixing all colors together and working with an unlimited pallet isn't the same thing, so your analogy is rather lacking both coherence and substance.

Dactylic hexameter, iambic pentameter, sonnets, haiku, limmerick, blank verse, free verse, etc. are all forms and prosody of poetry—all equally valid as another. Some have rigid contraints (like rhyming patterns and meter), while others are less rigid, and some eschew contraints altogether (free verse). Having contraints doesn't make it better than not having constraints—limmericks have a proscribed meter and rhyming pattern, but I doubt you'll find many limmericks that are as venerated as, say, T.S. Elliot's "The Hollow Men" (which is free verse) or much of E.E. Cummings' work.

Perhaps you enjoy Homeric dactylic hexameter, and that's your choice. To others, it is too limited, quaint, and/or woefully outdated. Both opinions are "correct" subjectively (to the person holding the opinion), but neither "correct" objectively. At the end of the day, with or without artifical constraints, poetry (and all art) is only as good as it expresses what the artist intended to convey and if it impacts its audience in a meaningful way.

In this way, neither being hideboud to Tolkienian races, being open up to a Mos Eisley Cantina diversity, or anywhere on the spectrum in between is better or more nobel than another. Ultimately, what matters is if the gaming group enjoys the choice and everyone has fun.

 

[Olrox17]

Mixing all colors together and working with an unlimited pallet isn't the same thing, so your analogy is rather lacking both coherence and substance.

Dactylic hexameter, iambic pentameter, sonnets, haiku, limmerick, blank verse, free verse, etc. are all forms and prosody of poetry—all equally valid as another. Some have rigid contraints (like rhyming patterns and meter), while others are less rigid, and some eschew contraints altogether (free verse). Having contraints doesn't make it better than not having constraints—limmericks have a proscribed meter and rhyming pattern, but I doubt you'll find many limmericks that are as venerated as, say, T.S. Elliot's "The Hollow Men" (which is free verse) or much of E.E. Cummings' work.

Perhaps you enjoy Homeric dactylic hexameter, and that's your choice. To others, it is too limited, quaint, and/or woefully outdated. Both opinions are "correct" subjectively (to the person holding the opinion), but neither "correct" objectively. At the end of the day, with or without artifical constraints, poetry (and all art) is only as good as it expresses what the artist intended to convey and if it impacts its audience in a meaningful way.

In this way, neither being hideboud to Tolkienian races, being open up to a Mos Eisley Cantina diversity, or anywhere on the spectrum in between is better or more nobel than another. Ultimately, what matters is if the gaming group enjoys the choice and everyone has fun.

That’s a bit of a long winded way to say that every group has the right to play D&D however they want, which btw I’m sure is something nobody is disputing (at least here).

The discussion is about what should be the default rule. I think heavily codified, “rigid” races should be the default (as they are now), with custom races being the optional variant I can safely ignore if I so wish.

 

[akr71]

I think the world already has too much of people telling each other what they should do, and folks should choose for themselves what form they want, without folks declaring what everyone should do.

I was coming here to exactly this.

 

[DND_Reborn]

No, they would be halfling or human (if that's how they define themselves, and are accepted as in the game world).

Maybe the human (or halfling) has distant elven ancestry? Or was born that way and is a freak.

I mean the game is in a pretty good shape when the most 'broken' thing you can think of is 'they get darkvision instead of a bonus skill proficiency!"

No, they would not. If you do not select halfling or human as your race, you are not halfling or human--you are "something else". Biology defines you, not your preferences and such. Under Race (or whatever you label it on your character sheet) you should list "Custom", not "Custom Human" nor "Custom Halfling".

Play in my game without darkvision and you will see just how broken having it is compared to the PCs that have it. We have severely restricted the races that have darkvision in our game because WotC went way overboard and handed it out too freely:

We even debated heavily about giving it to all Dwarves.

Anyway, we hardly ever agree on anything, so I see no point in discussing it with you further. You do you.

 

[Maxperson]

I'm not suggesting that players should only play custom lineage. I'm suggesting that encouraging them to play custom lineage by default would have some cool advantages. If a player strongly prefers to play a lizardfolk with natural armor, a standard lightfoot halfling, or a cold+heights acclimated goliath that would be 100% cool--doubly so if aarakocra flight or triton underwater breathing is core to the character.

The major obstacle to this is that they are not default rules, so they can't use them by default. The custom lineage rule is specifically optional and may not be usable at all or in limited circumstances.

 

[Maxperson]

Thats not true at all.

Your custom lineage is an Elf if you say it is. Born to elven parents and raised in an elven community. If thats what you say it is.

Not by the rule it isn't an Elf. Custom lineage is explicitly instead of playing one of the game's races. You'd have to get the DM to house rule it to allow you to be an Elf. Otherwise the best you can do is to just look like an Elf.

 

[TwoSix]

I definitely feel that by 6E, race is going to be just like background. There's some defined archetypes, but rules-wise it's a mutable thing where you just pick several options for the mechanical benefit. Appearance and such will be up to player-DM negotiation as to what best works for the setting.

 

[Azzy]

That’s a bit of a long winded way to say that every group has the right to play D&D however they want, which btw I’m sure is something nobody is disputing (at least here).

No, it's a rebuke to those that keep using the tired old canard that somehow having more limitations is somehow superior, and the smugness that goes along with it. It's tiresome.

The discussion is about what should be the default rule. I think heavily codified, “rigid” races should be the default (as they are now), with custom races being the optional variant I can safely ignore if I so wish.

The post I quoted was about something else. Of course, design-your-own-races should be the optional rule.