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."

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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?

Sounds like pointless rule bloat to me. There are already rules that cover measuring how strong a creature is, it is called the strength score. Creating several overlapping mechanics to represent the same thing is terribly kludgy.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Also, it should probably not be lost that we have historical literature precedence for strong halflings. Per Tolkien:

Bandobras charged at Golfimbul and knocked off his head with a club. According to a legend, Golfimbul's head flew through the air for 100 yards and went down a rabbit hole.

Edit* Also, I should note that for the longest time, up until a couple years ago, I was totally on the other side of the argument, arguing why halflings shouldn't be as strong. After evaluating everything since then (like the above), I've changed my position.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Sounds like pointless rule bloat to me. There are already rules that cover measuring how strong a creature is, it is called the strength score. Creating several overlapping mechanics to represent the same thing is terribly kludgy.

Not at all. We already have them, like the goliath's powerful build trait.

 

[TwoSix]

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

Excessively skimpy!

 

[Vaalingrade]

Sounds like pointless rule bloat to me. There are already rules that cover measuring how strong a creature is, it is called the strength score. Creating several overlapping mechanics to represent the same thing is terribly kludgy.

Not what they're describing.

They're talking about, instead of races getting some dumb number that means nothing except your character's core competency which shouldn't be tied to your choice of race,, they get a cool thing they can do related to what their race is about instead like wielding really big weapons, jumping three times as far, lifting, carrying and most importantly throwing more, not having to pretend encumbrance is a game mechanics with a point, and many more.

Order now and we'll throw in something to make humans interesting besides being the only race that gets character customization standard… hopefully. Probably not. Actually it's never going to happen.

 

[Hurin70]

I'm only addressing the debate about whether culture can impact physical attributes.

My apologies then -- I misunderstood the post. Mea culpa.

 

[Vaalingrade]

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

How long does it take the wizard to cast their obstacle-obviating spell?

 

[Remathilis]

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



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.

So what should the halflings strength score be capped at? 10? 12? Also, what is the minimum strength of a goliath? I'm thinking 12 before modifiers, but all the extra meat is going to cap thier Dex at 14...

 

[Charlaquin]

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.

Yeah, I agree. My position is simply that the (in my opinion minuscule) verisimilitude gained by Goliaths having +2 strength is not a worthwhile tradeoff for the (in my opinion significant) imbalance it causes (or perception of imbalance, if you prefer).

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.

Absolutely! And I think we should apply that logic to all facets of D&D. I think it’s worth asking if the gameplay would be improved by making all weapons the same (my opinion would be no), and if so, whether it would be worth the verisimilitude tradeoff to make such a change (my opinion would obviously be no, because I think having different stats for different weapons has a positive gameplay impact.)

 

[TwoSix]

So what should the halflings strength score be capped at? 10? 12? Also, what is the minimum strength of a goliath? I'm thinking 12 before modifiers, but all the extra meat is going to cap thier Dex at 14...

I'd say 24 for halflings, running under the assumption that halflings are actually murder chimps.