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."

 

[Scott Christian]

Funny how few wood elf path of the eagle totem barbarians I've seen. You may be on to the next trend.

Yeah, I made him a few years ago. It wasn't a trend because either the barbarian's damage or con greatly suffered. And no one wants that. Now with the new rule, I suspect it'll be a trend. And that is the point I try to make about the racial ASI side. So one of my knobs, con or strength, suffered. I chose this to get the speed.
It doesn't work to say say you can still play a weak barbarian when you get nothing in return for playing a weak barbarian. The wood elf barbarian is a path less traveled (pre Tasha's) because of the trade offs. Most players are smart enough to see how to do it. But most were not willing to accept the trade off.
That is that two lane road I keep speaking to you about.

So, I refute your premise. I think the community has been pretty consistent about complaining when certain combinations of choices are so much clearly better than other choices that they become too common. And I complain not only because I see it, but because I personally don't want to have to make a choice between "clearly better" and "what I really want to roleplay."

I agree. The community is vocal. Which is why I said they'll just focus on a new knob that "limits" their character. If I remember correctly, when I said that, you said it would lead to communism.

 

[Scribe]

As far as I can tell, the only concepts that are prevented by floating ASIs is are ones that depend on other people at the table being worse than you at something..

No? Like not at all?

The concepts that are prevented, are the halfling player, and the goliath, having different max strength at level 1.

Me as the Tiefling Bard? I dont care if they have more strength than me, but I care the game world has presented a scenario that is nonsensical when both players are describing themselves as strong, and one would make the logical assumption that a halfling is not going to be as strong as a Goliath, assuming they are in any way versed in the setting.

If Wizards is going to go into a whole phase of Racial Feats, and expanded rules that are unique to each race and downplay what the Ability modifiers do in terms of describing ones race? Go nuts. Considering this has been part of the game since 2e, its understandable that this is something people have an expectation around. Dwarves are not hardy based on their special anti poison rule but due to +2Con, is the prevailing wisdom.

Would seem to me you need a new edition for all that, but whatever.

 

[TwoSix]

But you want to divorce what your PC race is from the reality of what that race is.

Exactly. PCs are exceptional. They are allowed (encouraged, in my games) to break the rules.

 

[Umbran]

Anybody else find it ironic that "people who pick their subrace for the stats are just dirty optimizers, and it's not that much of a bonus anyway" has now suddenly become "without racial ASIs on what basis are you going to pick your race? Looks? Hahahahahaha!"

Mod Note:

So, you are now talking about the people instead of the game and its rules. One person got kicked out of this thread already, and there have been warnings. So, I'm not sure how you came to the idea that this would be okay.

It isn't. Be respectful.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Yeah, I made him a few years ago. It wasn't a trend because either the barbarian's damage or con greatly suffered. And no one wants that. Now with the new rule, I suspect it'll be a trend. And that is the point I try to make about the racial ASI side. So one of my knobs, con or strength, suffered. I chose this to get the speed.
It doesn't work to say say you can still play a weak barbarian when you get nothing in return for playing a weak barbarian. The wood elf barbarian is a path less traveled (pre Tasha's) because of the trade offs. Most players are smart enough to see how to do it. But most were not willing to accept the trade off.
That is that two lane road I keep speaking to you about.

I agree. The community is vocal. Which is why I said they'll just focus on a new knob that "limits" their character. If I remember correctly, when I said that, you said it would lead to communism.

So maybe I misunderstood your comment. I thought you were saying that the community doesn't seem to care about any imbalances other than race/class, so I gave you some examples of other places where there are perceived "trap options", and the community is very vocal about it. (Maybe the only difference is that nobody suspects* political motives behind the campaign to abolish rapiers?)

But what you are describing is something that might get out of whack if racial ASIs are eliminated or turned into into floating ASIs. So are you saying that we aren't sufficiently considering the ramifications of such a change, and why aren't we worrying about those things?

If so, my answer is because it's so hard to predict what those will be. I doubt, for example, that Wood Elf Eagle Totem Barbarian is going to suddenly be the OP combo. But...it could be. In which case more adjustments will be required. Then probably more. That's how iterative game design works. I don't see a problem with that.

*If so, my scheme is working! Mwuhahahahahaha!

EDIT: And even if everybody who planned on going Eagle Totem Barbarian chose wood elf for the 5', I wouldn't really see that as a problem unless it was so powerful that everybody who wanted to play Barbarian felt compelled to choose Totem, and then choose Eagle. But given that we're talking about a sub-choice of a sub-choice of a choice, it's probably not that big of a deal.

 

[Azzy]

This is an interesting development, but I still have a few issues.

If we're going to keep 1st-level ASIs (and I don't think that they are necessary given that they didn't exist in the original game or half of its lineage), I think that they should at least be partially (if not wholly) moved to class, where they are more appropriate, instead of having floating ASIs vestigally attached to race/lineage.

Secondly, since culture is being divorced from race/lineage, there should be cultural packages (of languages and proficiencies that reflect the standard cultures of the current PHB) that can be applied on top of race/lineage. That way, if your character grew up among high elves, you could take the high elf cultural package to get proficiency with longswords and longbows, elvish, etc. This way you can choose have the archetypal racial abilities if you choose, but still have the option of having a different (or even custom) cultural package distinct from your race/lineage. Best of both worlds.

This would also be of use to a DM in world building as a DM can create custom cultural packages to reflect the culture of their setting rather than having to fght against what's in the PHB.

 

[Guest 6801328]

No? Like not at all?

The concepts that are prevented, are the halfling player, and the goliath, having different max strength at level 1.

But that's a comparative concept. "My strength is higher than yours." Or, not even that it necessarily is higher, but that the other guy cannot possibly have a score as high as you can possibly have.

I'm sorry, but I just have trouble seeing how that's a valid character concept.

Me as the Tiefling Bard? I dont care if they have more strength than me, but I care the game world has presented a scenario that is nonsensical when both players are describing themselves as strong, and one would make the logical assumption that a halfling is not going to be as strong as a Goliath, assuming they are in any way versed in the setting.

If Wizards is going to go into a whole phase of Racial Feats, and expanded rules that are unique to each race and downplay what the Ability modifiers do in terms of describing ones race? Go nuts. Considering this has been part of the game since 2e, its understandable that this is something people have an expectation around. Dwarves are not hardy based on their special anti poison rule but due to +2Con, is the prevailing wisdom.

Would seem to me you need a new edition for all that, but whatever.

Again, given all the utterly nonsensical things in RPG game worlds, it seems odd that you're fixated on this one thing.

I agree it would be strange, given the fluff in the texts, if all, or even most, halflings were as strong or stronger than goliaths. But just because this one particular halfing, one of the protagonists of the story, a hero in a game of heroes, is inexplicably strong, suddenly your game coherence comes crashing down?

Sorry, no sympathy.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

The concepts that are prevented, are the halfling player, and the goliath, having different max strength at level 1.

That isn't a character concept, that's just a description of mechanics of the rules. Are you saying the rule should support the character concept of "I am a goliath stronger than every halfling right-now but not necessarily later in my career" rather than "I am an orc who is weaker than an average human and will never get stronger"?

 

[JiffyPopTart]

The difference is that my way is coherent to the internal reality of the game world and yours is not. There is no logical reason that you should expect the strongest 1st level halfling you can make should be as strong or stronger than the strongest goliath that you can make.

At this point you are arguing against the design of 5e as it was released, not any changes that happened to it in the meantime. I actually would agree with you that its SHOULD be possible to have a stronger goliath than halfling, however that isn't the game that 5e is. Adding/changing, and removing bonuses to stats at character creation has no bearing on how strong a character can be in 5e, that has always been determined by the hard 20 cap (and the few pedantic exceptions).

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I don't like 1st level characters with more of 16 in abilitie scores. I don't want Abilitie Score Increment beyond 20, because PCs too powerful are as boring Mary Sue in my opinion.

Halflings may be good warriors, but halflings with heavy armors isn't the most optimal build for them. Maybe in the next year there is a playtesting of the martial adepts, with the swordsage class, a fighter class with light amor.

And halflings are better with a slinger than with a sword.