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.

News Archive | Dungeons and Dragons

Read the full archives of Dungeons & Dragons news, Sage Advice, Unearthed Arcana, and D&D Studio Blogs.

dnd.wizards.com

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."

 

[FireLance]

I actually half agree with you there. Subraces are awkward and rather problematic (imagine trying to give ability adjustments to human 'subraces.' ) Furthermore some races have about million subraces and some have none. So if you want to be an elf but are not so fussed about exactly which sort of an elf, you get a lot of flexibility, but if you want to be a goliath you're out of luck. I would give each species some fixed traits (including ASIs) and then some they can choose from. So all elves would get a Dex ASI, Trance, Keen Senses, Fey Ancestry and Darkvision as standard, but then they would get to choose their other ASI and choose from a list of some other bonus rules and proficiencies. The second ASI could be completely freely assignable (except of course not stackable with the first ASI) or it could be a limited list if one would for example not want to let small species to put it in strength (I definitely wouldn't.) But yeah, I feel something along these lines would be a sensible compromise option.

I'd go one step further and allow the fixed racial +2 ASI to be swappable for a racial feat, or for all races to get a racial feat swappable for an appropriate +2 ASI (it amounts to the same in practice, but some people have strong views on what gets presented as the default option).

The second ASI (also a +2 - another change from current) can be freely assigned to any other ability score.

Of course, the cynic in me thinks that the argument will now shift to how dwarf fighters can get +2 Con and the racial feat that gnome fighters can take in place of +2 Int doesn't make up for it.

 

[Scribe]

Please assume the following are written without priority given to one approach or the other, or indeed, you may prioritize the floating option as the 'Official' variant. (Please dont mind the templating, I'm sure it can be corrected.)

How big is a Dhampir? Are they 3 ft tall or 8 ft tall? Are they very skinny for their size, or very broad and muscular?

The rules say "small or medium" so, they can range from 3ft to 8ft, from 50lbs to 800 lbs. Therefore, what should their strength modifier be? +0? +2?

"While your physical appearance would seem to indicate you are a member of a specific race, your unique lineage has dramatically reinforced your physical form.

You may put your ability scores within Str, Dex, Con, or Cha, in any combination not with no increase greater than 2, up to a total of 4 ASI."

What if I decided to play A Dhampir who fed upon the dreams of the living? Should I have a bonus to intelligence? Or to Wisdom? Would a bonus to intelligence still make since if I chose to be a Dhampir who consumed raw meat like a ghoul?

What if my undead nature came from being hit by a blast of psionic energy that killed my body, but my mind was empowered and tried to force my body to still function, even though my heart was destroyed so I cannot pump blood? What if my character is actually a parasite piloting a corpse, who needs to consume various vital fluids and nutrients to maintain the body in good shape? Do those two concepts get the same bonuses?


These lineages as presented cover such a wide variety of ideas, how would narrow them down into a single +2 and a single +1?

"You may place a +2 in any attribute, and an additional +2 may be put in any other attribute or 2 other attributes may be increased by 1."

So... where is the downside, either here or in the future? That they might have more races like Humans that have floating ASIs? I'm fine with that. Humans don't need to be that unique, after all, there are about half a dozen races that have +2 str/+1 con. And Half-Elves, Changelings and Tritons already have floating scores. Shifters have multiple subraces, each with a different set of scores.

The downside, is that by default, an Elf should be more Dexterous than a Dwarf at level one if the elf wishes to focus on Dexterity, a Dwarf should be hardier than an Elf at level one if they focus on Dexterity, and a Goliath should have a higher strength, than a Halfling, if it desires to focus on Strength.

The 'why' behind those statements has been beaten into that horse shaped pile you see in the corner, I see no further value in splitting hairs on that.

Both systems can coexist, that is all I ask at this point.

 

[Maxperson]

I wrote a little bit of code to sim this out. Bearing in mind that the low AC of a darkmantle makes your case look better, what I did was look at how many swings (which means rounds, at levels 1-4) it takes to kill a single darkmantle. I assumed a 1d8 weapon. 10,000 iterations.

Str 15 vs. Str 16
2 swings: 0 (not possible) vs 1% (possible but highly unlikely)
3 swings: 10% vs 23%
4 swings: 22% vs 32%
5 or more swings: 77% vs 44%

As you can see*, the 16 Str fighter, all else being equal, is significantly more likely to kill the darkmantle in fewer rounds, just by being a little more likely to hit, and doing a little bit more damage. Maybe you don't think a couple points of damage are a significant difference, but how do you feel about an extra action? Or two?

*If you trust my code. Happy to share it.

Two things, because I like to pick nits sometimes it's a bit humorous. First, I think you transposed the "5 or more swings" numbers. Second, since the "5 or more swings" category includes "or more," shouldn't both numbers be 100%. Or more can include as many as it takes to kill it

 

[Charlaquin]

This should work

D&D UA Survey 54 (Gothic Lineages)

D&D UA Survey 54 (Gothic Lineages).

survey.alchemer.com

Thank you!

 

[PsyzhranV2]

I'm not some kind of "Twitter expert", but I visit it regularly and read it a lot, and I follow a ton of RPG creators and studios and I almost never see anything actually come up in a way that's useful unless I think to go directly to someone's page - which I usually don't for months - and even then half the time they're the kind of Twitter person who makes 30 re-Tweets or "personal life" posts for every game-related post, which means you need to dig like hell to find anything. Like, do I need to have Twitter constantly notifying me on my phone or something?

What I've found more useful with specific games/creators is Discord, generally, but YMMV.

Yeah, I hadn't considered that, but I can understand how that can be off-putting.

Rob Donoghue (@rdonoghue) and Paul Czege (@paulczege) are pretty good at keeping the "off topic" to a minimum from what I've seen. But other than that, you'll find most creators tend to promote their works and events they're participating in on the same account they post their personal stuff. I personally don't mind, but you do you.

An alternative would be to follow the studios themselves on Twitter. Cubicle 7, Evil Hat, Magpie, etc.

Most of the Discords I've come across are either dead or so active that I find it hard to keep up with, and most of the time it's other players, which is good for community discussion but not so much keeping up with the news.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

Also, I can't believe I didn't catch this before, but:

There's no 5e race with a listed weight of 800 lbs. The heaviest race so far is the tortle at 450 lbs.

I guess you could estimate a centaur being that heavy by comparing horse breeds that set at 12 horse hands height, since they don't have a listed weight, but that's it.

 

[Chaosmancer]

To expand, he forced her to keep trying to open it for six hours, even though she was in tears, and wouldn't let her stop.

I looked this up, because I had never heard of it.

It seems, from a brief bit, that he was exaggerating, or at least he was claiming to. Seems he didn't mean it to come across the way it did. Not sure how much to believe him, but worth to know that there was a clarification posted

 

[Faolyn]

I looked this up, because I had never heard of it.

It seems, from a brief bit, that he was exaggerating, or at least he was claiming to. Seems he didn't mean it to come across the way it did. Not sure how much to believe him, but worth to know that there was a clarification posted

He may have been exaggerating, or he may have tried to downplay what happened when people pointed out how abusive it was. We have no way to know, obviously. But we can say what he did was pretty horrible, since you don't just throw something at a kid and tell them "figure it out yourself" and still call it a "teaching moment." Since, you know, there was no teaching involved.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Or 14 dex versus 12. That would matter for ranged weapons and initiative and a boat load of skills. I mean, honestly, if a +1 is substantial, as you proved it was, then a +1 somewhere else, especially something associated with more of the character, is just as substantial.

False.

First of all, this varies between campaigns. In certain campaigns where combat tends to have a lot of enemies, instead of one BBEG or just a couple powerful enemies, initiative will be more important to have a bonus in than in the campaign with less enemies. This is because, on average, the less enemies there are the more likely you are going to be able to go before the majority of the enemies. It's easier for a paladin to wait 3 turns in order to take the boss out with a nova attack than it is for the paladin to wait through 10 turns as goblins wack them with sticks. Even though the goblins are less deadly than the more powerful bosses, the paladin will care about initiative more the more enemies there are. A player simply would rather wait through 3 turns of dramatic, BBEG-style combat than wait for goblins 1-11 to get over with their turn already.

My point here is, the importance of the different ability scores will differ between campaigns. The paladin with a +0 dex may appreciate the +1 dex in the campaign with a horde of goblins every combat, but the paladin with 2-3 BBEGs each combat will be more than willing to trade a +1 in initiative for an additional +1 to their attack/damage rolls or spell save DC.

Second of all, not all ability scores are created equal. For your example, you chose the most useful ability score in all of 5e, Dexterity. Dexterity and Charisma are objectively more useful in the game than Strength and Intelligence. No one will complain about having a higher Constitution, as that will give them more hit points, and most people won't complain about having a higher Wisdom, because then they get a higher passive Perception score and higher saves against charm/frighten effects. However, a Barbarian will (more often than not) not care about having a bonus to Intelligence or even care about it. A Rogue will not want or care about having a higher Strength score, as more of their features are Dexterity based than Strength based.

Dexterity is an ability score no one will complain about having more of. However, there are other ability scores that are not as good or as useful as Dexterity, so using it for your example is a bit of a fallacious argument.

Third of all, a +1/+2 to your main ability score is hell of a lot more useful than a +1 to an ability score that you don't care about. A paladin does not care about their Intelligence score (the majority of the time), but do care about their Strength (or sometimes Dexterity), Constitution, and Charisma scores. A Gnome/Mark of Making/(any race that gets an INT bonus) Paladin would way rather have a +1 to their Strength/Dexterity, Constitution, or Charisma modifier than their Intelligence modifier because they benefit way less from an INT boost than they did to one of those ability scores.

My point here is that not all ability scores are created equal between the classes themselves. An Inquisitor Rogue would way rather have a +1 to their Wisdom score than their Strength score, and a Moon Druid couldn't care less about their Charisma score. A Paladin that uses a halberd, plate armor, Great Weapon Master, and Polearm Master does not want or need that bonus to Dexterity. They typically don't care about initiative (since they don't have any mechanical advantages to going first in initiative), they don't care about ranged weapons because they're a paladin, and they don't base their AC off of Dexterity anyway.

---

Conclusion: Your argument is flawed. It is not equally beneficial for a character to get a +1 to any ability score as it would be to have a +1 to one of their main ability scores.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Building compelling fantasy cultures that are not directly analogous to real world cultures is hard. In my current setting I have endeavoured to do that. Nevertheless, avoiding any parallels is literally impossible. Some elements will always be reminiscent of some real cultures.

I know that feeling. I have a group of goblinoids in my world that worship magic and a group of psionic races that believe that psionics is the true way of life. They're meant to be sort of religious rivals, hating each others' guts and having a few long history of holy wars and conflicts.

After I made these peoples, I started to try and approach the cultures from an outside standpoint, and quickly noticed some issues with what I created, being a bit too close to the real world conflicts between Christianity/Judaism/Islam and progressivism. I never consciously decided that they would be kinda-sorta based off of them, and all of the similarities were unconsciously engrained in the races/cultures. I never meant to have the conflict be an analogue for the real world, but that's kind of where it ended up. I'm now in the process of trying to detach them from that, but it's hard. It's really hard to detach yourself from the real world, because that's all we have to base things off of. Even other sources of fiction that we can take inspiration from are directly or indirectly based off of/inspired by parts of the real world, so there's no perfect solution for any of this.

Parallels will happen, it's just in our best interest that we approach them with caution and from a perspective that would be non-offensive to most people.