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]

If they replace racial adjust to strength score? Please!!

RIGHT!?!?!!?

How awesome would it be for various races that are supposed to be "Strong" had an evocative ability, with a cool name, that emphasized the ways in which they are strong?

 

[Charlaquin]

My son asked me: pa why orcs are so cruel? My response was: "because in this story (LOTR), orcs are perverted by evil that make them greedy, rabid and ultimately stupid, do you know that once upon a time they were elves?" (eyes and mouth wide open) "In real world things a little more messy, because people like them exist but are not easily recognizable as green horrid guys. Fortunately this is a story and it is simple to know who the bad ones are".

I get the impression that you meant for this story to demonstrate how compartmentalizing fantasy from real-world morals is a good thing, but from my perspective you’ve done the opposite. It’s like Bean Dad thinking he was telling an amusing story about a bonding moment with his daughter and half the internet being horrified and shocked he would publicly tell on himself like that (not saying the story itself is even remotely similar to Bean Dad, just remarking on how people with different worldviews can get completely opposite impressions from the same story.)

 

[Scribe]

"All other things being equal, is it acceptable that in an make-believe world where all sorts of totally ridiculous, high unrealistic things happen, that the rules allow for a case that where, when the story begins, a 3' tall hero could possibly be as strong as an 8' hero, if doing so might encourage more creative storytelling?"

Or we could drop the parts that are simply not what I'm asking.

"All other things being equal, is it acceptable that in an make-believe world where the rules allow for a case that where, when the story begins, a 3' tall hero could possibly be as strong as an 8' hero?"

Which, essentially is what I said.

If both are focusing on strength, why does it make sense if one is looking at the world from a place of any kind of logical suspension of disbelief, for a 3 foot tall 'often confused for a child' being, to be as strong, as an 8 foot tall literal giant (in our world).

If you have trained in any sport with contact, in your life, you would realize this is nonsense.

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

I get the impression that you meant for this story to demonstrate how compartmentalizing fantasy from real-world morals is a good thing, but from my perspective you’ve done the opposite. It’s like Bean Dad thinking he was telling an amusing story about a bonding moment with his daughter and half the internet being horrified and shocked he would publicly tell on himself like that (not saying the story itself is even remotely similar to Bean Dad, just remarking on how people with different worldviews can get completely opposite impressions from the same story.)

I must humbly give you my excuses but my poor english prevent me to understand the real meaning of your message. Maybe because I do not know Bean Dad. I can only say that I like to inform my son about the presence of evil in the world and that the real world is not so easy to understand as a fictional world. When he will grow up I'll explain him what are the origins of evil but this is another story and this is not the place to tell it. The sense of my post was that the orc issue in fantasy is a philosophical issue that can be explained even to a young guy.
Please forgive me if I didn't answer to your post in a proper way.

P.S. ok maybe caught the point: I don't want that my son compartimentalize fiction from reality. I want that my son is capable of analyze differences between reality and fiction to appreciate the importance of the metaphore in literature (And to do not make the error of changing ASI because of racism ).

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Is it "supposed to be 2/3" of the game? I mean, yes, there are 3 pillars, but what evidence do you have that they are supposed to be equal pillars?

Yep. 1/3 of the time spent on combat would definitely be excessive!

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Y'all have thoroughly ruined what should be a normal thread about new race options with the same tired debate about whether D&D is racist or not.

It's a GAME. Can't we just talk about whether being able to play a Dhampir is cool or not, and take this old argument to a different thread?

 

[Charlaquin]

I must humbly give you my excuses but my poor english prevent me to understand the real meaning of your message. Maybe because I do not know Bean Dad. I can only say that I like to inform my son about the presence of evil in the world and that the real world is not so easy to understand as a fictional world. When he will grow up I'll explain him what are the origins of evil but this is another story and this is not the place to tell it. The sense of my post was that the orc issue in fantasy is a philosophical issue that can be explained even to a young guy.
Please forgive me if I didn't understand to your post in a proper way.

Sorry, I should clarify. Bean Dad is a reference to a recent event where the frontman of a fairly well-known band posted a story on Twitter about a time when he “taught” his daughter to use a manual can opener by telling her neither of them could eat until she figured out how to open a can of beans by herself. He thought this was an amusing story about an innocent parenting moment, but a lot of people thought it was abusive, and couldn’t believe he would share such a story in such a public way.

To be 100% clear, I’m not saying your story of your interaction with your son was anything like the can opener story, or in any way abusive. Rather, I was comparing the way a story can look totally different to people with different perspectives. I assume you shared that story because you thought it was a positive example of teaching your son to separate evil in fantasy from real-world evil. To me, it looked like an example of muddying the waters between the two. I don’t have kids myself, but if I did, I would handle a situation like that very differently.

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

Y'all have thoroughly ruined what should be a normal thread about new race options with the same tired debate about whether D&D is racist or not.

It's a GAME. Can't we just talk about whether being able to play a Dhampir is cool or not, and take this old argument to a different thread?

There is truth in what you say. I beg your pardon.

 

[Sacrosanct]

If you have trained in any sport with contact, in your life, you would realize this is nonsense.

Well, I have done lots of physical sports and competitions over my lifetime. But I can't say I've ever wrestled with a halfling, orc, or goliath. Also, Flavio Baccianini (4'10") is much stronger than Robert Wadlow (8'11") ever was.

As an aside, I've always just justified it as that we have real life examples of something being smaller than a human but much stronger by weight (like a chimp), so it's not unreasonable to have a halfling that just a strong. Well, being a fantasy world with heroes is all the justification we really need, but if you want more, then I go by the other justification as well.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

If we’re talking about orders of magnitude of difference, I don’t think +2 strength even begins to adequately model such difference.

This is why I don’t find the argument from verisimilitude compelling. The mechanic it’s being used to defend is such a poor way to express the concept it’s meant to model. The idea that one can accept that the only difference between characters of different sizes is +1 to hit and damage, but take away that +1 and your suspension of disbelief is shattered... Seems like such an arbitrary line to draw in the sand.

D&D models a lot of things 'poorly'. It is a compromise between balance and verisimilitude. This is common practice in game design. For example in the lore of the Warhammer 40K one space marine is worth of at least ten normal soldiers, but in the game they're only worth about four. Still significantly tougher, but doesn't require one player to field ten times the amount of models. And that such compromise has been made for playability, doesn't to me at all mean that we can just jettison the small amount of verisimilitude currently present without any harm. We could start to apply the same logic of to all facets of D&D, differnt weapons are not represented accurately, so just give all weapons the same rules etc.