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."

 

[Aldarc]

I've been thinking about shrinking the attribute list down to Fitness, Wits, and Will, but I haven't decided yet if I want to.

Cypher System: Might, Speed, Intellect
Blades in the Dark: Insight, Prowess, Resolve

Additionally...

The One Ring: Body, Heart, Wits
Into the Odd and Maze Rats: Strength, Dexterity, Will
Cortex Prime (some variants): Physical, Mental, Social

and finally...

Warrior, Rogue, and Mage: Warrior, Rogue, Mage

I also think that four attributes are a nice set (e.g., Strength, Agility, Mind, and Spirit) as they can correspond fairly well with the base four classes (respectively): i.e., warrior, rogue, mage, and priest.

I also like Approaches from Fate (and elsewhere) as they are less about your character's intrinsic attributes and more about how your character prefers to "approach" problem-solving: e.g., Force, Guile, Panache, Reason, etc.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Part of this is a disconnect between how things work and how things are presented. I feel like this is easiest to show with Charisma, so let's pull it up.

A 14 Charisma is well above average. It is actually just as Charismatic as a Doppelganger, a shapeshifter whose entire purpose is to deceive others and convince them to do things. Therefore you should be amazing, 14 is an amazing score, higher than most of us would ever have in real life.

Let us say that this amazingly charismatic individual wanted to lie to someone, we can call that moderately difficult right? It isn't easy, but it isn't hard either. DC for Moderate is 15. With a 14 Charisma you only have a +2. Meaning that you need to roll a 13 or higher to actually lie to someone and them believe you. That is a 60% chance of failure.

In other words, more often than not, you fail at lying to people. Ah, but the solution is easy right? You get training in deception. You become a trained liar, a skill set that con men and grifters perfect that make you better than the average person at lying. So good in fact that they can pull schemes off on hundreds of people without fail.

That gets you a +4, meaning you need an 11 or better, meaning you have now brought it to a 50/50 chance that you, a professional liar who is literally trained in the art of deception and have immense charismatic abilities, have a coin flip chance in pulling off even the simplest con job.


And this is the problem. Sure, we can say that a 14 is far above the human average, it is massively impressive... in theory. In practice, with a 14 and proficiency, you are flipping a coin to accomplish even moderate tasks. Want to do something hard? Like sway a crowd? DC 20, total of +4, you would need a 16 or better, or in other words, you have a 75% chance of failing.

And then we translate that into AC for combat. With a 14/15 score and a prof of +2, you end up with that same +4, and against a basic AC of 16 (the AC of any 1st level fighter with scale and shield) you have a 60% chance of missing them. You will miss more often than you will hit.

So, granted, a person with 15 strength being able to lift above their head 450 lbs is impressively strong... And they will miss 60% of the time in combat against a foe with even starter level gear. Even Goblins have an AC of 15, meaning you have a 50/50 shot to hit them. So, great if you want to be a crane and lift heavy things, sucks if you want to engage in combat, or grapple someone, or try and bend bars, or try and tackle someone, or try and break down any but the weakest and flimsiest of doors.

Strong in the way least utilized by the game, weak in all of the others.

However, by the same logic, that 16 score that seems to be viewed as a requirement, is only a 5% (1 in 20) better chance of success.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Additionally...

The One Ring: Body, Heart, Wits
Into the Odd and Maze Rats: Strength, Dexterity, Will
Cortex Prime (some variants): Physical, Mental, Social

and finally...

Warrior, Rogue, and Mage: Warrior, Rogue, Mage

I also think that four attributes are a nice set (e.g., Strength, Agility, Mind, and Spirit) as they can correspond fairly well with the base four classes (respectively): i.e., warrior, rogue, mage, and priest.

I also like Approaches from Fate (and elsewhere) as they are less about your character's intrinsic attributes and more about how your character prefers to "approach" problem-solving: e.g., Force, Guile, Panache, Reason, etc.

Personally I would not be opposed of rearranging and renaming abilities, but that is probably not something that realistically can happen.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Because I want to be a wizard harry.

Why does my desire to play a Firbolg Wizard suddenly mean I want a classless system? I like clerics, play them quite a bit. I actually greatly enjoy exploring the different concepts of racial pantheons in DnD. Does that mean I should abandon DnD just because I want to play an Elven cleric?

You could always play an elven cleric (except in basic when elf was an class.)

You have jumped straight from "I want to build a character to match the story I want to tell" into demanding that I abandon DnD for something else, because DnD isn't about making a character for the story you want to tell? It is only for strict archetypes that can never be broken without guaranteeing you are less effective?

How does that make any sense?

You of course can play the game however you want, it just seems a bit weird to get hung up on one set of spat choices restricting what your character can do when the whole bloody game is build upon that very concept.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The one key difference I suspect is that the stat pools would likely not also double as HP in @doctorbadwolf's system.

Sort of. Health is currently being redesigned, and it is a damage threshold equal to 10+Fortitude(+any magic or armor). If a hit fails to exceed it, it’s a minor hit. If it exceeds it, it’s major. If it exceeds by 5+, it might automatically take you out of the fight.
So your real “hit points” (how many hits you can take) aren’t tied to any stat, but rather directly to level.

IMO, you got it mixed up: It's a fantasy setting pretending to be a sci-fi setting. The underpinnings of Numenera is D&D dungeon delving.

Dungeon delving isn’t inherently fantasy. I’ve done it in Star Wars, including in SW games that are much more Sci-Fi than the movies. The game presents magic items, and then says “they’re ancient tech lul”.

It's a trifling change for your games as it has no actual bearing on the mechanics.

It also appears that there are also some people who refuse to see someone with an ability score of 15 and a full standard array as extraordinary, no matter how amazing that is compared to the vast majority of the race's population.

Well, kind of. What I’m seeing is this:

• The PCs, and the challenges they face, define our perspective on what things like ability scores mean. So, if the game math makes a 14 or 15 “pretty good” or “good enough” or “a good level 1 score, but you’ll want to boost it sooner rather than later”, then it requires unconvincing mental gymnastics to force us to see 15 as extraordinary.
• A lot of us don’t see the PCs as ubermensch, and don’t want PCs to be that. They’re people.
• NPCs are weak and boring in 5e, partly because they tend toward having all 10’s in their scores, and thus suck at most checks.
• Because of the first bullet, that last one ends up feeling like NPCs suck, rather than like PCs are great and powerful.
• All that together means that 15 is a good score, not some extraordinary Superman score.
  
  

Yeah - advantage on death saves is way too powerful, IMHO.

Whereas I’d say that isn’t a very big deal. It’s a good ability, not a great one. No game changer.

 

[Faolyn]

Let's presume that Wizards produces a sourcebook that has, say, several brand new character races - not the lineages in the UA, but something new to 5E, like (random choices) Mystara's lupin and diabolus. And those writeups don't have any ability score suggestions. Are you arguing that there's nothing unfortunate about my friend having a harder time figuring out how to play these character races in a way he thinks is unusual and interesting? When a single sidebar with non-binding suggestions would solve all these problems for him and players like him?

See, now, if that were me, I'd look at the race's traits. Do lupins have interesting traits? Is the book's detailing of their culture interesting? Do I have a particular desire to play a wolf-person? Then I'd pick a class that I had wanted to play or would fill a gap in the party, if I didn't have a specific class in mind. Then I'd put that +2/+1 in whatever attributes work best for the background I develop or that would benefit the class.

I'm not sure how saying that all lupins get, say, a +2 Wis and +1 Con would actually help your friend.

 

[Aldarc]

Personally I would not be opposed of rearranging and renaming abilities, but that is probably not something that realistically can happen.

Most definitely not in D&D, but if the good @doctorbadwolf is making their own system, then they are not bound by such limitations.

Sort of. Health is currently being redesigned, and it is a damage threshold equal to 10+Fortitude(+any magic or armor). If a hit fails to exceed it, it’s a minor hit. If it exceeds it, it’s major. If it exceeds by 5+, it might automatically take you out of the fight.
So your real “hit points” (how many hits you can take) aren’t tied to any stat, but rather directly to level.

Neat. I would be curious to how it plays out.

Dungeon delving isn’t inherently fantasy. I’ve done it in Star Wars, including in SW games that are much more Sci-Fi than the movies. The game presents magic items, and then says “they’re ancient tech lul”.

I agree that dungeon delving is not inherently fantasy, but Numenera is transparently modeled around D&D style dungeon delving and archetypes (i.e., warrior, mage, rogue). It's a traditional fantasy TTRPG at its heart, but it's something of a strange hybrid of OSR with design elements of story games. It's use of Arthur C. Clarke's 3rd Law is clearly meant to justify magic masquerading as technological mumbo-jumbo.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Most definitely not in D&D, but if the good @doctorbadwolf is making their own system, then they are not bound by such limitations.


Neat. I would be curious to how it plays out.

Thanks! I'll definitely be posting about it here as I get it closer to an alpha playtest.

I agree that dungeon delving is not inherently fantasy, but Numenera is transparently modeled around D&D style dungeon delving and archetypes (i.e., warrior, mage, rogue). It's a traditional fantasy TTRPG at its heart, but it's something of a strange hybrid of OSR with design elements of story games. It's use of Arthur C. Clarke's 3rd Law is clearly meant to justify magic masquerading as technological mumbo-jumbo.

Right, and that "mumbo-jumbo" is specifically what I objected to. I don't really care what the gameplay is meant to be like, I dislike the world.

 

[Faolyn]

It also appears that there are also some people who refuse to see someone with an ability score of 15 and a full standard array as extraordinary, no matter how amazing that is compared to the vast majority of the race's population.

Sure, it's extraordinary. And? Why not let the stat be a 16?

I think that we're mostly using Strength partly because there is more of physical indicator, whereas a race's better reflexes aren't as outwardly visible. Mostly however, it is because it can be translated into an actual measurement, which other abilities can't. (Even Intelligence corresponding to IQ doesn't really work.)

Any rule that prohibits increasing Strength is also going to prohibit increasing every other stat as well. Unless you want to make it a rule that you can put that ASI in any stat except Strength?

And yes, Strength does have an actual measurement associated with it--most specifically, carrying capacity. Not damage, because a high-Dex halfling with a short sword inflicts as much damage as a high-Strength goliath with a short sword and nobody cares about that; it's considered precision with the halfling and force with the goliath. However: goliaths and other big races have Powerful Build, which lets them lift more than a halfling anyway.

And do most DMs really require their PCs to count up every pound they are carrying? Most of the time, carrying capacity is abstracted and only matters if the PC is trying to perform a singular feat of strength, like lifting a fallen boulder off the trap door, which most of the time, that would be an Athletics check (and goliaths are auto-proficient in Athletics).

And it would be perfectly legal for the DM to say "sure, Bobbo, you can try to lift the boulder, but it's physically larger than you so you're going to have disadvantage on your check."

(Unless Bobbo's player said that they wanted to roll the boulder out of the way, or improvise a lever. Those would also be Strength-based, but they aren't lifting.)

And let's face it: there's a trope we all know of the big burly fighter failing to perform a feat of strength because of a poor roll, but the weedy little mage manages to pull it off because of a good roll.

People who want to keep ASIs as an option are saying that a halfling being able to lift 450lbs (10x body weight) is fine.
You said that they can't imagine a strong halfling.

You can't seem to imagine a halfling with a Strength of 16. That's what I'm talking about.

Non-optimisers aren't going to pigeonhole halflings as weak: If they want to play a strong halfling character then they will.
Its only the optimisers who will pigeonhole a halfling as weak, because they must have that extra +1 to consider playing a character.

Nope.

And again, I hardly think that saying "my character worked hard to be where they are, therefore, it makes sense that they focused on this one stat that's needed for their class.

Can you point to three?
Just three people in the whole of this thread who have actually said that.

I am not going to go through a hundred pages of thread, but I will point out that Scribe has said that they prefer racial caps and racial penalties to stats, and have even gone so far as to suggest that they might play something other than D&D rather than allow floating ASIs. At least, that's what I got out of some of their posts.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

And again, I hardly think that saying "my character worked hard to be where they are, therefore, it makes sense that they focused on this one stat that's needed for their class.

That's what the 15 already represents! And of course any character with great score already focused on that thing. You say your halfling trained super hard to be really strong. OK. What you think that half-orc fighter did then? Slacked around? No, they of course trained just as hard, and as a result, would be even stronger than that halfling, as they are not three feet tall!