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."

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Atribute bonuses should go the way of the dodo.
Powerful build represents exceptional strength better than a Str modifier. No matter how low your STR is, you can lift a lot. At the same time, being small should reduce the lifting capacity as in 3e.
You should rather see STR as general training in all things athletical and a small person can be equally good at those thongs as a big one. Climbing is a function of STR. Halflings used to be great climbers. So why not give them a bonus.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'm somewhat torn on this.

If I wanted to play a Half-Orc Wizard I would. I wouldn't be too bothered about the lack of a +2 in Intelligence - I feel it's overrated.

What I probably wouldn't do if I wasn'treally sure what race to pick is go "Why not a Half-Orc?". The thing that would annoy me most I think is less that I was 5% less effective as a wizard initially (that mostly gets lost in the wash - and if I'm the only wizard in the party who cares anyway?) But that the compensating factors were basically useless. A half-orc wizard could theorectically play against type for a wizard and get a 14 Strength without too much trouble but that doesn't really mean a lot in practice. It might be actually fun if I was the only Strength based character in the party, but if not well it seems just a waste. (And If I'm optimising I have Strength 10 rather than 8 which is pretty much no difference as it falls under the category of - try to avoid rolling ever). And the Half-Orc racial ablities, while not completely useless for a wizard also don't really give much of any worth either). Basically I'm not sure the issue is that I don't start with 16 Int, it's that I don't get anything that makes me effective in a different way. A Hill Dwarf with a 14 Strength and a 16 Con (with +1 Hit point) is different, the ability scores make a different style of Fighter, one that is less accurate and hits slightly less hard but is much tougher. Even the Wisdom bonus is useful as picking up Resilient Wisdom is always a good move for Fighters.

At the same time, it bothered me when playing 4E, that when I played a Mul Fighter and had to choose between human and dwarven racial features. I chose human for some fluff feats that really fit my character, but it really annoyed me that that meant I was making the obviously inferior choice as I was missing out on Dwarven Weapon training which was a racial feature which was clearly better than anything I could get as a human. (Of course this was in 4e when builds mattered a lot more).

I definitely agree that some races are lacking in the "effective in a different way" department, and I think primary stats are ever-so-slightly less vital for casters, because they impact fewer rolls - generally with a caster they set your Save DC, but an awful lot of what you're doing either doesn't have a save DC (utility spells, summons, a lot of zones/walls etc.), is some kind of multi-target spell where some people making the save is inevitable, and you don't typically get the bonus to damage.

I still value it myself and wouldn't have made a Wizard with a non-INT race unless I knew I was taking a low-save approach because I've seen way too many saves on cool spells hit by one point.

But with people making attack/damage rolls, especially as they get higher numbers of multiple attacks, it tends to be more obviously useful.

I also think maybe the majority of races in 5E have a pretty solid selection of broadly-useful (or broadly-useless) abilities, that aren't heavily class-dependent. So there are corner cases here still where a race is just really kind of underwhelming even with the correct ASI, or kind of highly desirable, but I think it's going to be much rarer that that influences things.

I mean, if I didn't think it would wind my group up, I'd be kind of tempted to start a new campaign with these rules, and see what they chose race-wise. If I look on Beyond I can see a 1:1 correlation between with having a racial ASI in the right stat across several groups I'm in. I mean, there are some a couple of Humans/VHumans, and a couple of other races with just a +1 racial ASI to the primary, but none with less than a +1.

(Also good god I think the highest INT in any group is 14 and that's on one of my PCs... whereas high CHA is everywhere... Ooooh nope there's an 18 INT Wizard, but that's the only one)

 

[Guest 6801328]

I definitely agree that some races are lacking in the "effective in a different way" department, and I think primary stats are ever-so-slightly less vital for casters, because they impact fewer rolls

# of spells known, for some casters.

Also counterspell. Possibly the most powerful spell in the game.

Also, as I noted above, many current class/subclass abilities are (primary attribute mod) times/day. That's changing in newer material from WotC, but as it stands now that's a thing.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

# of spells known, for some casters.

Also counterspell.

Also, as I noted above, many current class/subclass abilities are (primary attribute mod) times/day. That's changing in newer material from WotC, but as it stands now that's a thing.

Yeah all good points! And moving to Proficiency mod is very smart because that's another bit of weight taken off ASIs in general.

Remember when Tasha’s origins system was first revealed, and everyone was freaking out over how OP mountain dwarves were gonna be? I don’t know about the rest of y’all, but I haven’t seen an explosion in players playing mountain dwarves yet. Granted, the book hasn’t been out for that long, but even so, the mountain dwarf hype has already died down, exactly like I figured it would. The fact of the matter is, even players who aren’t dedicated min-maxers tend to look to races with ASIs in their primary class abilities first, unless they have a compelling reason to do otherwise. Removing that concern has mostly just opened up more viable race/class combos in most players’ eyes. Min-maxers may well latch on to other racial abilities, but that just isn’t how most people play the game.

Thinking on this a bit more and my players, one of who I was just chatting with about D&D, I think what this will do in my main group is kind shake-out the players into two categories, where currently everyone is actually taking at least +1 correct ASI as a sort of minimum bar.

1) Three of the players will pick just based on what they like/think sounds cool. None of those three I think will even consider how good racials are. Two will go wild, probably, and pick really off-the-wall stuff, and the third will be able to go to his "comfort zone" race-wise but is more likely to branch out class-wise.

2) The other three are more min-max-y and only play characters they think are cool/attractive (not a criticism!). I think at least two of them would have made different choices without ASIs, but they are going to factor racial ability quality in a bit, balanced against being cool/attractive of course.

 

[Scott Christian]

This is not even possibly correct, mathematically. I don't know what simulator you're using, but as a simple matter of math, there is zero possibility, that over 40 rounds, and presumably at least 40 attacks, even if some of them miss, a +1 damage on every hit translates to just 2 more damage.

You've screwed that up in some way. Or the simulator is not working right. +1 damage on every hit, dude, and hitting more often. If you point me to the simulator I can probably spot your error. Also, you say there are two rounds where the +5 Fighter hits and the +4 one doesn't, yet you're claiming only 2 more damage? Do you not see the obvious problem there? They'd have to have hit for only 1 damage each time - and to have done 0 damage more on every round where both hit. I mean what? Come on dude - this is why they still try to teach kids to do basic maths without a calculator - you need to be able to recognise when you've got an obviously-wrong result because your input was in error.

(One obvious error here could be you somehow set them to doing exactly 1 damage each on a hit - that would result in what you're describing.)

The only non-error possibility I see is if it's a weird mathematical artifact of choosing a Darkmantle specifically (low AC, high HP) resulting in some kind of overkill - this would be especially likely if you were using a fixed damage value. If so though, that's still an error on your part, just in the failing to think it through or understand the maths part, rather than an actual error-error.

I mean, just looking at a straightforward DPR calculator, for 1 attack and AC11, I'm seeing 7.35 DPR for +5, and 6.4 DPR for +4, which makes sense. Over 40 rounds that should mean the +5 Fighter does 38 points more damage.

As soon as you get an extra attack, the DPR difference is doubled, too - and that's level 5. Advantage also helps the +5 Fighter more, because it means he's more likely to land an attack when the +4 guy misses (please don't make me get into the detail maths here, it should be obvious to you why this is).

You are correct. Elfcrusher already pointed it out and I immediately stated what I said was incorrect.

That said, in a darkmantle fight, it would still only be three more points of damage in the entire fight. And that does not include initiative. So, three points is three points. And it can be a big deal, so can going first. So can all the other things that can happen in a fight. The point was an extra 1 damage point per round (or 2) or an extra +1 to hit should not be the exclusive factor for what makes a PC.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

So, as one of the folks who does think there’s a biological essentialism element to ability score increases, I want to clarify: depicting differences between the fantasy races isn’t the issue. I don’t think anyone would say it’s “problematic” to suggest that a people who average 7 feet tall and 300 pounds would tend to be stronger than a people who average 3 feet tall and 40 pounds. The problem is that ability score increases make characters of some races better suited to certain classes than others. It’s one thing to say “these people are much stronger on average than these other people.” It’s another to say “these people are naturally better fighters than these other people.”

Fortunately, I don’t think the biological essentialism angle is needed to defend the move to eliminate racial ASIs. This is primarily a game design issue for me, and if fixing the game design issue also happens to make the game more inclusive, then that’s a bonus as far as I’m concerned.

This is one reason that my own system doesn’t have skills (which govern all actions that require a roll) rely on an ability score, and instead ability scores are a pool of points you can spend to fuel abilities, bump a check up one success category, or spend when getting healed, etc, as well as being part of your defenses (defense DC is Ability Score +10 +any relevant buffs or penalties from magic or armor or whatever else. You can attack a stat if the attack makes sense to target that stat, with basic guidelines given for what makes sense.

 

[Faolyn]

The issue is though; humans (and we are, for the most part, all humans) tend to only see the world as we can see it. We tend to model our games after stereotypical cultures because 1.) it's what we know and 2.) it's what we imagine makes sense since we've seen it. Ergo, a race ends up taking on some aspect of a human culture we already know because it's really difficulty to create (let alone role-play) a culture or mindset that is utterly alien to us.

Yeah, but there's a difference from making a nonhuman species an expy of a particular real-world culture (often not good) and adapting dribs and drabs from various cultures and adding in stuff you make up (often quite fine)

 

[Faolyn]

Why? Why is combat so special? It is just one small part of the game.

Because a combat-related ability is usually pretty powerful and probably should be limited for balance reasons. And most abilities that D&D races have are at least somewhat combat-useful.

"This species can glow with pretty colors, shedding bright light to a 5-foot radius and dim light to a further 5 feet. They can turn off the light at will."

versus

"This species can create a brilliant light. All creatures within 10 feet of it must make a Con save or be blinded for 1 minute."

 

[JEB]

So I think it's a little disingenuous, and relies on a very selective use of evidence, to claim that racial ASIs are being dropped because of the bioessentialism argument.

Have Wizards designers at some point suggested that dropping racial ASIs was primarily a design decision, and not driven by the criticisms about bioessentialism? Everything I've seen them talk about is how they're trying to do better with race and make the game more inclusive, not "we thought this was bad design so we're changing it". I suppose they could be saying it's about race and inclusivity, and secretly it's about design... but shouldn't we take them at their word?

 

[Remathilis]

Yeah, but there's a difference from making a nonhuman species an expy of a particular real-world culture (often not good) and adapting dribs and drabs from various cultures and adding in stuff you make up (often quite fine)

However, adapting drips and drabs can also be seen as cultural appropriation. Taking something from a culture and giving it to another creates it's own problems, esp if it divorces it from the original concept. You can't give katanas to Spartans no matter how you remix it...