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."

 

[Arial Black]

Can't speak for anyone else, but I've played fantasy games using that system - Elric/Stormbringer for example, and all it does is make SIZ a grossly powerful thing. You'd be wildly changing D&D's balance by adding a system like that in.

It would also operate as a "noob trap" in that players expect, based on decades of mainstream RPG, videogames, and so on, that stats are absolute, not relative. This is true even in Chaosium. Stats are still absolutely. It's just that melee damage, HP etc. are derived stats. You're a proposing a particularly confusing and hard-to-balance implementation.

I was replying to Charlequin, who said, "I’m pretty sure everyone on the anti-ASI side would agree that we like races having distinct identities, we just think ASIs are the least interesting (not to mention least effective) way to achieve that".

If they want to realistically model physiological species differences without involving ability score bonuses, then something like this is the way to do it.

How would you model in game mechanics the impact of weighing 600lbs instead of weighing 30lbs on damage inflicted with physical attacks?

 

[Charlaquin]

We could do this be redefining the Strength ability score. Instead of the score being an absolute measure of the ability to lift weight, do damage, etc), Strength could be a relative measure of how much you can lift, how much damage you do, etc. combined with a creature's mass/size. So an average halfling/human/minotaur would all have Str 10 (so ability bonuses for race/species are totally eliminated, which is what you say you want!), but each race would have notes like, "halflings have a -2 size penalty to damage and can lift 5 lbs per point of Str; humans have no bonus or penalty to damage and can lift 15lbs per point of Str; minotaurs have a +2 bonus to damage and can lift 30lbs per point of Str".

Chaosium Games did this over 40 years ago. They had seven ability scores: Strength, Size, Constitution/Endurance, Intelligence, Power, Dexterity, Charisma/Appearance.

When calculating damage, for example, they added both Strength AND Size and cross-referenced on a table to give them their damage bonus.

Would something like this satisfy you? Why, or why not?

I don’t think this really address the issue. I don’t care whether the ability scores are the same number, because the scores don’t really mean anything on their own. I care about the affect that the lower score has on gameplay. I don’t want players who want to play halfling Barbarians to be stuck playing crummy Barbarians. Giving them a size-based penalty to damage would kinda insure that all halflings are crummy Barbarians.

 

[Guest 6801328]

As usual, @Charlaquin is more eloquent than I, but I'll add my two cents:

This is what the non-ASI side eventually boils down to. I don't think those on the other side ever really need to argue about how a thri-keen might have a different mind than a human. They do, and it is accepted.
But the non-ASI side, in the end and from my interpretation always boils down to - we want character attributes to be on even footing at the start of the game. (And there is nothing wrong with that.)

Yup.

I have seen it argued it literally ruins their game to see two fighters, one with an extra +5% (not you Charaquin).

I have not seen that argued, and don't agree with it. I have seen arguments about how significant 5% is (including that +1 doesn't actually mean +5%: for example if you needed to roll a 19, and now you need a 18, that's actually a 50% increase in chance to succeed.)

But the relevant truth is not whether or not the +1 matters, or how much it matters, but simply that people believe it matters, and that affects the characters they are willing to play.

 

[Scott Christian]

Of course it can be multiple factors, but the fact is, those posters, seemingly including you, were implying that the core and dominant motivation was a purely political one.

They implied, especially me, that it could be one of the factors. (I actually implied that it was to build a more cohesive brand.)

 

[Arial Black]

I’d say that’s an accurate assessment of the position, yeah.

Yeah, I don’t think it ruins the game, but I do think it’s meaningfully harmful to the gaming experience of the player who’s fighter is 5% less accurate, does 1 less damage on all of their attacks, can’t carry as much, etc. just because they wanted to play an elf.

Well, that’s silly. It’s not “I want more stuff now,” it’s “I want the game to be fair to everyone.”

Sure. If it’s strongly felt that balance between races would need another pass if racial ASIs were to go away, I think there’s a much more productive discussion to be had about how best to do that, rather than whether or not to remove racial ASIs.

No, because the point isn’t that everyone should be able to max out their primary stat during the course of the campaign. The point is that nobody should, as a result of their race choice, be forced to play an inferior member of their class for a significant portion of the campaign. That they can eventually catch up doesn’t make up for the time they had to spend being worse than everyone else.

I think you are, yes. Different classes start with different HP and gain different amounts of HP on level up. That’s fine, because it’s solely dependent on your class choice. An elf barbarian doesn’t have less HP than a half-orc barbarian (unless they have lower constitution, but if they do, it’s because of an intentional choice the player made to put fewer points into con so they’d have more points to put into something else.) An elf barbarian does, however, have less strength than a half-orc barbarian. Now, if that was a choice the elf’s player made in order to boost something else, that would be fine. But with fixed racial ASIs, the elf barbarian has no choice in the matter. They either have to live with having a weak barbarian or pick another race.

What the ASI crowd wants is equal opportunity. If you don’t mind playing a weak barbarian, fine. But if you want to play a barbarian who’s on par with other Barbarians, you shouldn’t be locked out of playing some races.

Why do you think the player's choice of class leading to meaningful discrepancies is totally fair, but the player's choice of race leading to meaningful discrepancies is inherently unfair?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I was replying to Charlequin, who said, "I’m pretty sure everyone on the anti-ASI side would agree that we like races having distinct identities, we just think ASIs are the least interesting (not to mention least effective) way to achieve that".

If they want to realistically model physiological species differences without involving ability score bonuses, then something like this is the way to do it.

How would you model in game mechanics the impact of weighing 600lbs instead of weighing 30lbs on damage inflicted with physical attacks?

In D&D?

I wouldn't.

D&D can't possibly handle it. No edition of D&D has ever done. D&D is not a game about even semi-accurately modeling the size differences between different beings. A 12' tall 1000'lb humanoid should kill 6' 200lb ones pretty much instantly. The energies involved mean it would be a joke. That's like having a fist-fight with a rhino or an elephant or something, except the elephant has a sword larger than your entire body.

D&D is a game of abstractions. It literally always has been. The core of D&D is abstraction. People trying to force such an abstracted game into a simulationist approach like you describe trying to shove a square peg through a triangular hole half the size.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Why do you think the player's choice of class leading to meaningful discrepancies is totally fair, but the player's choice of race leading to meaningful discrepancies is inherently unfair?

I think you're artificially separating the two. It's about the race/class combination, not either one separately.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Why do you think the player's choice of class leading to meaningful discrepancies is totally fair, but the player's choice of race leading to meaningful discrepancies is inherently unfair?

Why do you think using bold like that is a useful discussion tactic and not just a way to sound like Chandler from Friends on the internet? Or is Chandlerisation the goal here? Honest question, because I am seriously reading your posts in Chandler voice right now.

 

[Guest 6801328]

D&D is a game of abstractions. It literally always has been. The core of D&D is abstraction. People trying to force such an abstracted game into a simulationist approach like you describe trying to shove a square peg through a triangular hole half the size.

Really it's like trying to fit in a cube into a tetrahedral space of half the size.

 

[Arial Black]

We don't really know the third bit, and the same logic applies to an awful lot of stuff you're not asking to have back. On top of that, the intentions of designers of previous editions don't really matter - and thank god - because otherwise we'd be saddled with dozens outmoded concepts and ideas, half the races being mentioned here wouldn't exist, and so on. If you want "the original ideas", well, retro-clones exist for a reason.

I was replying to a post that claimed the race fluff descriptions were written to match the already assigned racial bonuses. Your comment does not make sense in that context.

My motive has nothing to do with thinking that previous editions were better. It's all about the game mechanics making sense!