Marandahir
Crown-Forester (he/him)
That's a pretty cool way of approaching it.Yeah, for example, the Alfar need to be good at both Bard (feminine mind magic) and Paladin (masculine protective magic), correctly with Charisma as primary, but then the secondary ability needs fluidity. Other mages like Wisdom Druid (berserkr shapeshifting, jotnar elementalism) are also prominent. Intelligence is important too, as logical thinkers and planners, as well as eloquent speakers.
As animists, actually personifying shamanic magic, any Alfar character gains the [Psionic] tag for their classes, for innate spellcasting without material components. Except they do speak or sing to help focus their thoughts. Depending on what the future Psion class looks like, it could be perfect for various aspects of the Alfar.
The point is, Tashas allows focus on the narrative tropes, without getting undermined by inappropriate mechanics.
Incidentally, I havent created a mechanic for it, but it is on mind. The reason for speaking and singing is to help to NOT cast spells. Viking magic is psionic mind magic. It is a trope that people often cast spells accidentally without realizing it, because their mind was wondering. I have done "accidental spells" narratively, in situations that made sense with narrative consequences and challenges. But it would be cool to have a mechanic that was simple, fun, and not too disruptive.
I DO think that some sort of guidelines of suggested ability scores for the more classic of lineages is important, though. Sure, for something like Dhampir or Hexblood or Reborn where your dominant lineage features are not directly related to your parentage and ancestry, then sure, no need to provide ability score guidance. But saying that in general, Elves are dextrous and dwarves are have high constitutions is helpful guidance for a new player.
I'm happy that Tasha's broke open the bottle of ability score swapping (though I think it needs refining; Mountain Dwarves and Half-Elves were designed around additional ability score bonuses and fewer other lineage features); I just want to make sure that we don't sacrifice ease of entry in the name of adding dials to the game.
There should always be a "basic" suggested option so that people can just plug and play. This should offer no mechanical benefits (like 3e favoured classes did) over other choices, just a way to jump in and play with the archetype without having to think too hard about the permutations of said archetypes. And then in a home campaign story bible you can create alternate base assumptions and hand them to your players at Session 0.