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."

 

[Guest 6801328]

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.

PCs are a tiny, tiny fraction of all the characters in the world, and NPC entries for elves, dwarves, etc. still have ability scores that support those descriptions.

Another way of looking at it is that you are free to put your lowest stat in your Elf's dexterity, or in your Dwarf's constitution, which totally breaks those generalizations. The proper response, of course, is that on average Elf's have high dexterity and Dwarf's have high constitution. And I'm completely fine with "on average". And a handful of PCs is not going to change the average.

But note that if you give the races special abilities that emphasize the same thing...e.g. an elven ability "otherworldly grace" with a mechanic that emphasizes that aspect...then even the elves with low dexterity will be examples of the trope.

 

[Guest 6801328]

And you seem to believe that the real reason to remove "medium orc is stronger than medium halfling" is for what?

For realism? i doubt it giving the origin of the halflings (hobbit) and an evident difference in physical complexion.

To give DM an opportunity to build a world in which the more little is the creature the more is stronger?

To what reason, giving the fact that assume it as political is the only thing the Occam Razor and the timing of the choice in relation to real world cultural events suggests?

I, and others, have said it over and over and over again: it's so that players rolling up new characters won't feel constrained in their race/class combinations. Just that. Nothing else.

We can argue about whether players should feel that way, whether a +1 bonus that can eventually be regained is worth the angst, or whether this is bad roleplaying, or munchkinism, or whatever. But the reality is that players do make decisions based on the ASIs.

Note what's missing in our arguments: nobody (that I've seen) is saying that the NPC entries for "elf" and "dwarf" be given identical stats.

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

PCs are a tiny, tiny fraction of all the characters in the world, and NPC entries for elves, dwarves, etc. still have ability scores that support those descriptions.

Another way of looking at it is that you are free to put your lowest stat in your Elf's dexterity, or in your Dwarf's constitution, which totally breaks those generalizations. The proper response, of course, is that on average Elf's have high dexterity and Dwarf's have high constitution. And I'm completely fine with "on average". And a handful of PCs is not going to change the average.

But note that if you give the races special abilities that emphasize the same thing...e.g. an elven ability "otherworldly grace" with a mechanic that emphasizes that aspect...then even the elves with low dexterity will be examples of it.

I agree with you that if the game still allows me to put ASI in realistic and coherent way there is nothing wrong in free ASI from race.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Frankly, once they started pushing ASI as an alternative to character customization by making feats optional, just use ASI instead, I'm now pro-removing all ASI forever.

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

I, and others, have said it over and over and over again: it's so that players rolling up new characters won't feel constrained in their race/class combinations. Just that. Nothing else.

Unfortunately for your idea, there are a lot of coincidence in timing between this operation and the mood around in society to ignore it. But maybe I'm a foolish conspiracy theorist . We both don't have ultimate proof of our different idea so I suggest to close this topic.

 

[Charlaquin]

Interesting, but why only have that information in the Monster Manual? Seems like you could put it in the PHB as a "quick build" option, like they already do for classes. (That would also be a good place to put typical proficiencies for that race... assuming those will still be around in some form under the new approach.)

Sure, that’d work.

 

[Remathilis]

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.

You do realize that even in the PHB, an elf's grace is equal to a halflings, gnomes have keener minds than elves, and your non-variant human is inferior to other races in one score, equal in another, and superior in four others? It's almost like ability scores were arbitrary and the lore came after to justify them...

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Moving from the pointless attempts to "Do the Time Warp" on racial stats, I think one thing worth noting about this article is that all three of origins/races are pretty damn cool and fulfil common player fantasies that existing races didn't fill, and could not easily fill (that 3E would have handled with templates). I was pretty impressed.

Also makes the theoretical Ravenloft setting slightly more credible for those who are keen on that.

 

[ART!]

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

Well, they literally have the Keen Senses feature, so I don't know what to tell you.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well, they literally have the Keen Senses feature, so I don't know what to tell you.

Since that is a skill proficiency, Tasha's has altered it to "choose a skill proficiency". It no longer has to have anything to do with keen senses.