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.

News Archive | Dungeons and Dragons

Read the full archives of Dungeons & Dragons news, Sage Advice, Unearthed Arcana, and D&D Studio Blogs.

dnd.wizards.com

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."

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The ship is still in the port of Rolemaster and other systems, so it can be done.

Well that's a completely nonsensical thing to say.

You might as well say that critical fumble tables involving invisible tortoises should/could be in D&D because they're in Rolemaster. It's a ridiculous POV. Or let's have guns and cyberware from Shadowrun. How about we take out all the stats and just go with a system like Spire? Like what the hell dude?

The ship has sailed on that for D&D. You cannot make the argument he's making unless there are minimum stats, and minimum stats aren't coming back.

 

[ART!]

Perhaps my greatest problem with the end of assigned ASI's is that it breaks the connection between the description of the race and its actual mechanical benefits.

Here for example are some of the things that the PHB says about Dwarves:

--It says that they are 'hardy'. But they're really no more 'hardy' than any other race now, at least in terms of their stats.
--Dwarves are 'solid and enduring like the mountains'. No, not any more than any other race.
--Hill Dwarves are known for their 'deep intuition'. Yeah, not really any more.

Elves
--Elves have 'otherworldly grace'. Again, not really.
--Wood Elves have 'keen senses and intuition'. Nope.
--High Elves have 'keen minds'. Not any keener than an Orc.

And you could go on and on like this. There's no connection anymore between the description/lore and the stats.

If this is D&D, then stats are much better in Rolemaster now. There, Race is nature, and culture is nurture. Race therefore affects stats and who gets Darkvision or Flying. Culture affects learned behavior like skills/proficiencies. That makes more sense to me. Just my opinion of course.

But dwarves still have "Dwarven Reslience", so they are inherently hardier - just not as broadly hardy as they were with the inherent ASI. I suspect future PHBs will rephrase the description to say dwarves tend to be hardy.

 

[Hurin70]

But dwarves still have "Dwarven Reslience", so they are inherently hardier - just not as broadly hardy as they were with the inherent ASI. I suspect future PHBs will rephrase the description to say dwarves tend to be hardy.

In what sense do Elves have 'keen minds' then? Or Intuition? Or any of the rest of it?

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

Perhaps my greatest problem with the end of assigned ASI's is that it breaks the connection between the description of the race and its actual mechanical benefits.

Here for example are some of the things that the PHB says about Dwarves:

--It says that they are 'hardy'. But they're really no more 'hardy' than any other race now, at least in terms of their stats.
--Dwarves are 'solid and enduring like the mountains'. No, not any more than any other race.
--Hill Dwarves are known for their 'deep intuition'. Yeah, not really any more.

Elves
--Elves have 'otherworldly grace'. Again, not really.
--Wood Elves have 'keen senses and intuition'. Nope.
--High Elves have 'keen minds'. Not any keener than an Orc.

And you could go on and on like this. There's no connection anymore between the description/lore and the stats.

If this is D&D, then stats are much better in Rolemaster now. There, Race is nature, and culture is nurture. Race therefore affects stats and who gets Darkvision or Flying. Culture affects learned behavior like skills/proficiencies. That makes more sense to me. Just my opinion of course.

If you can still assign an ASI in coherence of how a race is depicted, well this is not a great problem.
If you remove ASI and any other race related bonus/malus from game at all, well it is difficult to understand the need to have races.

 

[Hurin70]

Well that's a completely nonsensical thing to say.

You might as well say that critical fumble tables involving invisible tortoises should/could be in D&D because they're in Rolemaster. It's a ridiculous POV. Or let's have guns and cyberware from Shadowrun. How about we take out all the stats and just go with a system like Spire? Like what the hell dude?

I don't find it nonsensical to want the words to match the numbers. In fact I would say it is nonsensical to tell players Elves have 'keen minds' when in fact they're just the same as any race in that regard.

I also don't find it nonsensical to say, 'Other games do it better, and here's how D&D could do it.'

 

[Vaalingrade]

In what sense do Elves have 'keen minds' then? Or Intuition? Or any of the rest of it?

Maybe in the future we'll stop describing them as superior in every way entirely!

 

[Alzrius]

Maybe in the future we'll stop describing them

Fixed it for you.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I don't find it nonsensical to want the words to match the numbers. In fact I would say it is nonsensical to tell players Elves have 'keen minds' when in fact they're just the same as any race in that regard.

I also don't find it nonsensical to say, 'Other games do it better, and here's how D&D could do it.'

I mean, it is nonsensical to suggest that ship hasn't already sailed, because as a matter of well-recorded and not-at-all-arguable fact, it has sailed. The last time that was even arguably true in D&D was in 2E.

If you want to bring minimum stats back okay, you can campaign for that, let's see how many votes for that - I guessing that like not many people will support you though.

Elves further, have pretty much never had "keen minds" statistically. Some variants have, but not elves in general. So you're defeating your own argument there. If elves were really meant to have "keen minds" in 2E, say, why didn't all elves have +1 INT and a minimum of 11 INT or something? So your point is what, the stats never matched up with the description? Okay, cool, then that supports the flexible stat approach.

Fixed it for you.

I'm completely with you on your platform of removing elves from D&D. You go girl!

 

[Scribe]

In what sense do Elves have 'keen minds' then? Or Intuition? Or any of the rest of it?

The argument is that these kinds of things will become various mechanics, advantage or save bonus, etc.

The thing several people have issue with seems to be Ability Scores. Full stop.

Not that dwarves are hardy or strong, but that 'Strong' or 'Hardy' potentially through raw scores only, is not satisfactory.

So if Wizards decides to lean into the type of implementation that creates distinction though rules, instead of raw numbers (ASI) after sleeping on it....fine.

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

Maybe in the future we'll stop describing them as superior in every way entirely!

And why? it still will depend on your setting. In LOTR world Elves are superior to numenorean and numenorean are superior to humans. Hobbits are weaker than humans and humans are weaker than ents. Tolkien was racist or stupid for this? Maybe it is good to remove racial differences in a generic setting agnostic player's handbook, to let everybody build the world they want. But if you start to say halflings are 1 meter tall and orcs are 2 meters tall, it is very difficult to accept that the first is stronger than the second in statistic terms. Sorry but reality is harder than politics or zeitgast.