D&D 5E Unearthed Arcana: Gothic Lineages & New Race/Culture Distinction

The latest Unearthed Arcana contains the Dhampir, Reborn, and Hexblood races. The Dhampir is a half-vampire; the Hexblood is a character which has made a pact with a hag; and the Reborn is somebody brought back to life.

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Perhaps the bigger news is this declaration on how race is to be handled in future D&D books as it joins other games by stating that:

"...the race options in this article and in future D&D books lack the Ability Score Increase trait, the Language trait, the Alignment trait, and any other trait that is purely cultural. Racial traits henceforth reflect only the physical or magical realities of being a player character who’s a member of a particular lineage. Such traits include things like darkvision, a breath weapon (as in the dragonborn), or innate magical ability (as in the forest gnome). Such traits don’t include cultural characteristics, like language or training with a weapon or a tool, and the traits also don’t include an alignment suggestion, since alignment is a choice for each individual, not a characteristic shared by a lineage."

 

[tetrasodium]

l

And you have Tasha's soon to be the only official game in town, while I lose my system going forward as per the UA for anything new.

Fair?

The only thing you are losing is an unreasonable level of setting exclusivity baked into the core rules. As someone who typically runs a setting with baselines different from FR I've had more than one player literally attempt to use them with the goal of rules lawyering my game into FR. You can still say "in my world x race is always this combo & y race is always this other combo" if you want that level of curation rather than saying that z combo fits this group over here so lets work on making your character really fit the setting bob.

 

[Micah Sweet]

From my read of it, the lineages here would completely overwrite everything from your previous race/lineage except for the languages you know. Everything else is lost.

Might be easier to just start off as one of these, take Dhampir/Hexblood/Reborn as your race from Level 1.

As for the cultural element, I'm of the mind that the very attempt to try and mechanize culture at all is fraught, and best relegated to worldbuilding fluff. Working on that thought.

If you're going to do that, I hope that it is made explicit that a player will need to find their own way to represent their characters culture, as apparently the rules will no longer provide any assistance. Doable, but very different from the last 40+ years.

 

[Hurin70]

Sure. But what if I want to play a strong bodybuilding ungraceful elf, or a frail bespectacled orc scholar, or a dwarf with asthma? You say I'm not allowed to because it offends your sensibilities about what all elves or dwarves or orcs should be?

Just put your highest stat in STR if you want to play your bodybuilding Elf, your lowest stat in STR if you want to play your frail Orc, and your lowest stat in CON if you want to play your asthmatic Dwarf. The weaker Dwarf should still be a bit hardier than the weaker Elf.

I'm not telling you that you can't play those characters. All I'm personally saying is that Orcs tend to be stronger than Elves, and Dwarves tend to be hardier. You can still play whatever you want with the traditional rules D&D has always had. We don't need to throw the baby Minotaur out with the bathwater.

 

[Remathilis]

If you're going to do that, I hope that it is made explicit that a player will need to find their own way to represent their characters culture, as apparently the rules will no longer provide any assistance. Doable, but very different from the last 40+ years.

Not really. Humans have done it for 5+ editions easily. Plus, you have the option to say "my dhampir was an elf before he transformed" and borrow all-things elven and your culture.

 

[Scribe]

The only thing you are losing is an unreasonable level of setting exclusivity baked into the core rules

You see unreasonable exclusivity, I see basic expectation of a framework.

We dont need to begin calling other people's views unreasonable, I've done none of that at all throughout the thread.

 

[Faolyn]

While I really like the classic Ravenloft setting from the TSR era, I have to say that I wouldn't want gothic lineages where players can play half-vampires, revenants, etc. To me, the idea of Ravenloft is that these things are meant to be horrific, the monsters (or at least the tortured souls being punished by the Dark Powers). Giving players access to this material just seems a power fantasy that doesn't belong in that style of game.
I wouldn't be allowing any of it in my Ravenloft campaign.

While that's fine, of course, these lineages could also be used as the result of things that happen in-game. Like, someone gets bitten by a vampire and drops to 0 hp, They get stabilized, or brought back with revivify or raise dead, and you and the player might think switching to the dhampir makes for an interesting twist on events.

 

[dave2008]

It helps to think of dwarves not just as small humans, but as much more dense and probably broader. They may be shorter, but they have even more muscle mass than a human of the same weight - and an average dwarf weighs more than an average human.

But that is not how I think of dwarves. I see no need to change my concept to fit someone else's fiction when it is trivially to make it what I want

Also, the difference in strength between builds as different as Halflings, which average 40lbs, and Goliaths, which average 310lbs is only a +2. That, to put it bluntly, is "chump change" physiologically.
The difference in strength between builds as similar as human men and women is around +4 I think. Given that, a mere +2 difference between a humanoid the size of Arnold in his prime , and one the size of an infant school child seems mostly irrelevant. Since I have no intentions of actually applying a gender-based adjustment, I really don't worry too much about applying such a m

Yes this whole issue of a +2 to a stat is a but over blown

 

[Remathilis]

Can we have a moratorium on Tasha-based ability score debates. I'm having a strong sense of deja vu about halfling vs minotaur strength debates...

 

[PsyzhranV2]

I think they’re saying that they want races to be built like the PHB, and the Tasha’s rules to remain both available and optional.

Which supports both.

That would be WotC trying to have their cake and eat it too. Not good enough. This is exactly the mentality that led to the half-measures in Tasha's that failed to live up to the promises WotC made about addressing the issues of racial sensitivity in their game. Sure it offered players more flexibility in their chargen choices, but that was the problem: everything was focused on the player characters, who were presented as being "exceptional" and "unique"; nothing was there to address the issue of the portrayal of the general population beyond an anemic "do what you want".

The very notion that there must an "iconic" elf/dwarf/halfling/gnome/etc. is a problem in and of itself. Presenting a people as a monolith, and then codifying that monolithic depiction through mechanical reinforcement, is one of the biggest contributors to the racial essentialism that WotC themselves has acknowledged permeates their game, as unsatisfactory and incomplete their attempts to correct course have been so far. People in the thread have been talking about "elf culture", "dwarf culture", "gnome culture" - as if there ever could be a singular, all-encompassing culture for any of those species! As innocent as this desire may start off as, it leads to the typecasting and reinforcing of stereotypes that create a shallow and unrealistic notion of there being an "essential" ideal of an "elf", "dwarf", "gnome", etc. And that same typecasting impulse takes a darker turn when combined with the idea of some peoples being intrinsically less "pure" or more "evil" than others. Combine that with unconscious use of racialized language, and a binary, absolutist view of right and wrong reinforced by White privilege, and you get the racially insensitive portrayals of the "monstrous races", who are being essentialized and presented as a monolith, much like the dwarves and the elves but even moreso.

Wired recently published two articles on D&D that I think are relevant to the general discussion.

Dungeons & Dragons' Racial Reckoning Is Long Overdue

The tabletop game's storylines are infused with regressive stereotypes about race and power. Players are on a quest to rewrite the narrative.

www.wired.com

D&D Must Grapple With the Racism in Fantasy

And getting rid of it will take a lot of work.

www.wired.com

 

[Faolyn]

You just defined 'player character'.

We don't play average people. We're not playing Mrs Miggins who owns the pie shop. We play awesome heroes who save the world and defeat the great dragon Antrobraxranthraxus, Tyrannic Emperor of the 15 Multiverses! We play those outliers. We play legendary halfling strongmen and ogre ballet prodigies. Why should the rules prevent us from doing that?

But what if Mrs Miggins is actually a high-level warlock who got her powers from her patron, the Demon Princess of Pies? Hmmm?

...

Well, I now have a backup character idea.