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."

 

[Vaalingrade]

Not Elfcrush, the Giants for the most part; Hill giants being one big fat joke none withstanding. Elemental races avoid this almost entirely. Lizardfolk in modern times are actually super-alien and don't really fall into the trap. Hobgoblins are military guys. Kobolds are usually cultists or scrappy survivors without much baked in tribal baggage. Ogres except for that infamous Pathfinder incident. Gnolls actually got upgraded in 5e and slapped back down into a different set of issues for 5e. I don't think grimlocks have a society at all.

I mean the others are still salvageable. We just have to be better at designing them mindfully and especially not designing them as 'race to be obliterated'. Villains can come from their ranks, but just being them shouldn't mean they're fair game to kill.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Hey, not that you're being unclear or that you bear the burden of proof in making this tropes and archetypes argument, but, if you're so inclined, could you go through some humanoids in the MM or other 5e publications which don't run afoul of the primitiveness trope.

Mind flayers are a good example but, at least in published material for 5e, they're all high CR. Are there any humanoids left to throw at a low level party once the orcs, goblinoids, gnolls, bullywugs, grimlocks, kobolds, lizardfolk, kuo-toa, troglodytes, etc. are excised? I'm asking in good faith, not as a gotcha.

I know the obvious answer is conventional bandits, soldiers, and cultists, or, maybe low CR demons and undead, but that seems... lacking.

Pixies? Elves? Gnomes?

Oh, wait, they're all "good guys" aren't they?

In all honestly I can't think of any low-level enemy humanoids that do a very good job of avoiding these tropes. I also haven't spent time studying it, though. I'm just kind of going through the list of traditional cannon fodder bad guys in my mind thinking, "Yup, same stereotype." Albeit to varying degrees, and emphasizing different stereotypes.

I guess maybe the evil Underdark variants of the good guys would come closest. E.g. Drow. They generally don't have the stupid/carnal/emotional/filthy/ugly thing going on. The criticism in those cases seems to be that they literally have black skin, but in my mind the whole white:good, black:evil problem is very different (and, honestly, one that I'm not as strongly sympathetic toward) from the problem involving the language of dehumanization and subjugation.

EDIT: The long term answer is to take a cue from human bandits (and pirates, and ninja, and....?). We don't kill them because they're humans, we kill them because we have identified them as bad humans. But I think it's a long path from here to there, because of all the baggage around orcs and others. When we get to the point where we meet orcs and wonder, "Are these good ones, or bad ones?" we will have made progress.

 

[Faolyn]

This is one of the great things about the OSR.

It just asked "do we really need all this accumulated cruft"? But mainstream D&D fandom still seems to be stuck in this same rut. People talking about reconceptualising Grumsh so he's less problematic - but it seems a bit...redundant. Do you you need Grumsh at all? What is he for? Just chuck him in the bin.

I think the problem here is people feel that they have to have everything, rather than picking and choosing the bits they like. Gruumsh could be a very interesting deity in a setting with a limited number of gods (like they did with 4e). You can make him the god that embodies the orc stereotype (Chaotic Evil god of chaos, violence, raiding and pillaging, destruction, natural disasters, storms, etc.) without making him the god of orcs. Maybe he never had anything to do with orcs in the setting, or maybe he created them but they mostly rejected him or vice versa. Something like that.

But no, you don't need Gruumsh and Talos and Hruggek and Erythnul and Ares and Set, unless you are going for a Masks of (the D&D) God(s) thing.

Ditto for orcs in general. They're the Big Tough Guys niche, which is absolutely fine, but you don't necessarily need orcs and minotaurs and bugbears. Kind of like there's another thread here asking if you need both halflings and gnomes.

So IMO there's no problem with having all the options. Not everyone likes the aesthetics of orcs and it's nice to have a variety of options. There should just be more emphasis on the idea that you don't need everything in your world--and perhaps, WotC (re)publishing more settings that have more a limited selection of races and deities.

 

[Faolyn]

In all honestly I can't think of any low-level enemy humanoids that do a very good job of avoiding these tropes. I also haven't spent time studying it, though. I'm just kind of going through the list of traditional cannon fodder bad guys in my mind thinking, "Yup, same stereotype." Albeit to varying degrees, and emphasizing different stereotypes.

That's why I like focusing on slavers, bandits, and evil cultists for cannon fodder, myself. I also have a fondness for blights, although they're not humanoid so it doesn't really count.

 

[Faolyn]

Grumish gets to stay simply for the act of drunk driving his plane into someone else's to start a fight.

?

I've viewed it that Evil deities are controlling, dominating, micromanaging, while Good ones allow Free Will and gives its followers the choice to follow them. I mean, few would willingly follow Gruumsh, but Moradin provides a reasonable reason to follow him.

Orcs, once given free will and removed from Gruumsh's influence might make similar choices, but that would take slaying gods to do...

But as I said, it's weird that the evil human gods don't generally do the same thing. Or why clerics of good gods don't try to convert orcs.

 

[Vaalingrade]

?

In 4e, Mr. Depth Perception crashed his entire divine realm into another god's that the opener to a centuries-spanning war.

 

[Remathilis]

But as I said, it's weird that the evil human gods don't generally do the same thing. Or why clerics of good gods don't try to convert orcs.

Humanity lacks a single "racial" God that they emulate, which is why they are wildcards. All manner of deity's scramble for them, like unclaimed donuts in a break room.

And some clerics might try to convert orcs and occasionally get some converts (half-orcs must come from somewhere), but the tight grip Gruumsh has means more times than not, the missionaries end up on the business end of an Eye of Gruumsh's spear.

 

[Remathilis]

Ditto for orcs in general. They're the Big Tough Guys niche, which is absolutely fine, but you don't necessarily need orcs and minotaurs and bugbears. Kind of like there's another thread here asking if you need both halflings and gnomes.

The one thing I will never get about D&D players, they are the only group I know who fight for less options, not more...

 

[Don Durito]

There's parts to him that's salvageable and able to be turned interesting ways. Same with Lolth. Problem is you've gotta get a bloody crowbar to seperate it from the cruft

Imagine a Lolth that actually cared about and acted like spiders, as in, y'know, loving parents who would sacrice their lives for their children!


D&D has handled gods absolutely, 100%, bloody awfully the whole way through and not realistic in the slightest. "Its the gods fault" is a piss-poor explanation for everything. A slapped on 'oh yeah the gods did it' is a deus ex machina response to cover up bad writing afraid to make what should be people into actual people.

Yes you could salvage them - but why?

I'm not arguing they're unsalvagable I'm questioning the desire to salvage them simply because they're there.. They're just stuff someone made up. It's not that hard to think up something else.

Even in the case of Lolth (who is somewhat more interesting than Grumsh) a salvage job brings with it all the baggage of the years of accumulated cruft.

Why not breathe some fresh air?

Lets' put aside discussions of whether Drow are problematic or the extent to which they are and consider the following:

• the concept of evil decadent elves (not necessarily dark skinned)
• a blank slate to deal with them, who they are, what they want.

It just seems to me that is so much more interesting as a GM and a player. As a GM I have so much I could do, as a player I actually get to feel like I'm experiencing something new (or at least a new take on an old concept), rather than an endless replay of the same idea that has become more and more dull over time.

 

[Faolyn]

In 4e, Mr. Depth Perception crashed his entire divine realm into another god's that the opener to a centuries-spanning war.

That's... different.