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."

 

[Scribe]

The rest had planetouched versions, at least on the evil alignment side.

I'm certainly against the current (4e) tiefling implementation, but I've wasted enough words on that.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yes, as a template. It never made sense to me why Tieflings/Genasi/Aasimar had to be descended from humans.

I’ve never treated any of them as descended from humans. They just don’t retain any big impactful parts of their parent race. To me, an air genasi isn’t an elemental human, they are elemental mortals.

 

[Charlaquin]

Counterpoint: none of them ever pumped a single iron and they have the sad baby arms to prove it.

With that giant head and huge bite strength, they were clearly the nerds that Yutyrannus and Giganottasaurus wedgied into extinction.

Then again, they got more chicks than Carnotaurus, whose primary behavior was dipping their tiny drummies in butter and hot sauce in order to lure prey into its mouth.

Actually with the discovery that the arms were probably positioned on the front of the chest rather than the sides, it’s looking like they would have been much more useful than we used to think. Now if you want to talk big dumb head and tiny useless arms, majungasaurus should truly be the object of ridicule.

 

[Guest 6801328]

If I were to ask you the question "Which animal is stronger, an ant or a human?", what would your answer be? Can you think of a fair definition of "stonger" that would allow ant to be correct? How about is there a definition that would allow human to be correct?

My definition is "How many times your body weight can you lift over your head?"

Who wins?

 

[Guest 6801328]

Because the PCs and NPCs are just people in the setting, belong to the same species, are made of the same stuff. I understand that some people want the PCs to be some sort of unique superheroes that are not bound by normal limitations, but not everyone wants to play like that.

So a halfling that starts with 15 strength and eventually gets to 20 is fine, but a halfling that starts with 16 strength and stays there is "some sort of unique superhero not bound by normal limitations"?

I'm confused again.

 

[occam]

So, I think this is pretty revealing. I honestly struggle to understand why people are so attached to racial ASIs, and so resistant to change, and the only reason I find persuasive is that it's just knee-jerk resistance to anything that smells of political correctness. Certainly none of the attempts at "logical" support for racial ASIs that I've read are very convincing.

Just getting this out of the way: I don't have a problem with dropping things like languages, proficiencies, or cultural features like Stonecunning from D&D racial traits. Those have been nagging annoyances to me for a long time. So let's talk about racial ASIs.

Set aside the arguments based on PC exceptionalism, simulationism (or anti-simulationism), or real-life racial history. Just look at the mechanics.

One of the PCs I've played the longest in 5e was a mountain dwarf warlock. Strength was actually his dump stat. That seems kinda dumb; I basically threw away what is probably the mountain dwarf's most compelling feature, but it was worth it to me for the medium armor proficiency, which would mean being able to forgo Armor of Shadows in favor of some other invocation. (And the unorthodox combo, including the fact that it was unorthodox, contributed to an interesting story.) That's how the mountain dwarf is designed: no class that makes prominent use of Strength needs the armor proficiency, and conversely, no class that lacks the armor proficiency demands a high Strength. In nearly all cases, a mountain dwarf PC makes good use of one or the other feature, not both. The subrace presents a mechanical tradeoff.

Now, if I were customizing my origin according to Tasha's, it would be silly of me to have kept that +2 to Strength for a dwarf warlock; I should've, and would've, moved it to Charisma. Would that have made the character more compelling? No; arguably it would've been less so. Would it have had a noticeable effect on game play? Not much of one, if at all.

I often play nontraditional race/class combos, especially in 5e, which is really forgiving about it. Other favorites include a half-orc bard, and a halfling warlock. (Yes, I like warlocks.) In every case I have to think outside the box, since I'm not getting the most favorable ASIs for those classes, and that contributes to my interest in playing those characters. I find it much less appealing for all of those characters to have taken the +2 to Charisma. Personally, I think a world in which essentially every wizard has a +2 to Intelligence, and every rogue has a +2 to Dexterity, and every druid has a +2 to Wisdom, is a less interesting one.

Sure, I could just choose to place the racial ASIs in their traditional places, or at least not apply them to the most obviously optimal abilities. But that just feels obstinate, vs. selecting a race with assigned racial ASIs that don't easily fit with your class but making things work with other racial features, which is interesting. Those kinds of tradeoffs are lost with floating ASIs. D&D races weren't designed for non-ASI racial features alone to impose interesting tradeoffs. They could be, by expanding the design space for races (or lineages), in which case I might be okay with removing ASIs from them, but that's not the case now; every existing race would need a redesign.

Also note, for those arguing that floating ASIs make more race/class combos appealing: That may not be the case. It may be that it only makes different race/class combos appealing. For instance, using Tasha's, I don't know why I'd play a perennial favorite (and classic) high elf wizard anymore; I get an extra cantrip, and some proficiencies I probably don't care about? Why not play a mountain dwarf; keep the +2 Con to make up for the small hit die, get a +2 Int (better than a high elf!), and instead of burning a slot on mage armor, wear real armor, for an even higher AC. We'll see whether we start getting a lot more mountain dwarf wizards in our future. The change to floating ASIs doesn't make all races equally suitable for all classes.

My dislike of dropping assigned racial ASIs, given 5e's design, has absolutely nothing to do with political correctness or the lack of it, and I find the assertion that it does offensive. It's about game mechanics.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So a halfling that starts with 15 strength and eventually gets to 20 is fine, but a halfling that starts with 16 strength and stays there is "some sort of unique superhero not bound by normal limitations"?

I'm confused again.

High level D&D characters are superheroes, that is to be expected. But in my mind the low level ones should not be.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Just getting this out of the way: I don't have a problem with dropping things like languages, proficiencies, or cultural features like Stonecunning from D&D racial traits. Those have been nagging annoyances to me for a long time. So let's talk about racial ASIs.

Set aside the arguments based on PC exceptionalism, simulationism (or anti-simulationism), or real-life racial history. Just look at the mechanics.

One of the PCs I've played the longest in 5e was a mountain dwarf warlock. Strength was actually his dump stat. That seems kinda dumb; I basically threw away what is probably the mountain dwarf's most compelling feature, but it was worth it to me for the medium armor proficiency, which would mean being able to forgo Armor of Shadows in favor of some other invocation. (And the unorthodox combo, including the fact that it was unorthodox, contributed to an interesting story.) That's how the mountain dwarf is designed: no class that makes prominent use of Strength needs the armor proficiency, and conversely, no class that lacks the armor proficiency demands a high Strength. In nearly all cases, a mountain dwarf PC makes good use of one or the other feature, not both. The subrace presents a mechanical tradeoff.

Now, if I were customizing my origin according to Tasha's, it would be silly of me to have kept that +2 to Strength for a dwarf warlock; I should've, and would've, moved it to Charisma. Would that have made the character more compelling? No; arguably it would've been less so. Would it have had a noticeable effect on game play? Not much of one, if at all.

I often play nontraditional race/class combos, especially in 5e, which is really forgiving about it. Other favorites include a half-orc bard, and a halfling warlock. (Yes, I like warlocks.) In every case I have to think outside the box, since I'm not getting the most favorable ASIs for those classes, and that contributes to my interest in playing those characters. I find it much less appealing for all of those characters to have taken the +2 to Charisma. Personally, I think a world in which essentially every wizard has a +2 to Intelligence, and every rogue has a +2 to Dexterity, and every druid has a +2 to Wisdom, is a less interesting one.

Sure, I could just choose to place the racial ASIs in their traditional places, or at least not apply them to the most obviously optimal abilities. But that just feels obstinate, vs. selecting a race with assigned racial ASIs that don't easily fit with your class but making things work with other racial features, which is interesting. Those kinds of tradeoffs are lost with floating ASIs. D&D races weren't designed for non-ASI racial features alone to impose interesting tradeoffs. They could be, by expanding the design space for races (or lineages), in which case I might be okay with removing ASIs from them, but that's not the case now; every existing race would need a redesign.

Also note, for those arguing that floating ASIs make more race/class combos appealing: That may not be the case. It may be that it only makes different race/class combos appealing. For instance, using Tasha's, I don't know why I'd play a perennial favorite (and classic) high elf wizard anymore; I get an extra cantrip, and some proficiencies I probably don't care about? Why not play a mountain dwarf; keep the +2 Con to make up for the small hit die, get a +2 Int (better than a high elf!), and instead of burning a slot on mage armor, wear real armor, for an even higher AC. We'll see whether we start getting a lot more mountain dwarf wizards in our future. The change to floating ASIs doesn't make all races equally suitable for all classes.

My dislike of dropping assigned racial ASIs, given 5e's design, has absolutely nothing to do with political correctness or the lack of it, and I find the assertion that it does offensive. It's about game mechanics.

I wish more players made choices like you.

But what's awesome about floating ASIs is that you can still do all the above.

Cool, huh?

 

[Guest 6801328]

High level D&D characters are superheroes, that is to be expected. But in my mind the low level ones should not be.

Ok, so 15 is fine, but 16 is over-the-top superhero?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Ok, so 15 is fine, but 16 is over-the-top superhero?

It's not particularly over the top, but if 15 is the normal halfling starting maximum, then it obviously is noticeably better. (I mean if it weren't, then certainly you wouldn't care about having it so much, right?) This tangent was started by you wondering how people don't get that PCs are special and not need to follow the same limitations than the rest of the populace, and I am trying to explain to you that not everyone wants PCs to start 'special'. I mean earlier in the thread someone literally used halfling with the Superman's backstory as an example to explain their greater than normal strength. They presumably were at least semi-serious with that, and I'm sure there are campaigns in which that would work. But I am not interested in either playing in or running such. I want starting characters in D&D to be gifted but ultimately rather 'normal' members of their species; they may become mythic heroes with superpowers later at higher levels, should they survive that long. That was my issue with Zidi the halfling titan, or whatever they were called that was brought up as an character concept earlier. Halfling that goes around routinely overpowering minotaurs in contests of strength simply doesn't match my image of a low-level D&D character; as a high level concept it is more understandable.