D&D 5E Ability Score Increases (I've changed my mind.)

[Scribe]

You've said you're fine with both prescribed ASI and floating ASI as options. If the default assumption was floating ASI, would you be fine with that, so long as Wizards also provided an official (but optional) prescribed ASI for each race? (Basically as an archetype, example, or quick-build.)

Yes.

 

[FrogReaver]

The benefits of hard coded racial ASI's.

• They help reinforce basic facts and tropes about the races of the world.
• Allows players to go against the grain, but this has a cost which tends to make it a more interesting choice.
• They have been part of D&D for at least the last 20 years or so.
• It's much easier to house rule a change of them from hard coded to floating than the other way around.
• For anything I've not included...

The benefits of floating racial ASI's

1. They help alleviate some peoples concerns about racist ideas in the game
2. They make it easier for players to choose to play a race/class combination they want to without sacrificing performance
3. For anything I've not included...

It also just struck me that this is essentially the same kind of thing that happened with gender bonuses.

 

[abirdcall]

Hmm. I guess I'm not communicating my question well. Let me try it a different way...

If you sat down at somebody else's table to start a new campaign, and the DM said, "Everybody use floating ASIs...just put +2 and +1 wherever you want, but not on the same ability" how would the game play differently that what you are used to now? Or even how might it play differently?

(And if the answer is "I would get up and leave" I would still ask the same question: how would it change the game, such that you wouldn't want to be part of it?)

If there were 5 tables using regular rules and 5 with Tasha's I would expect to see more human PCs at the regular tables and more non-humans played as though they were human at the Tasha's tables.

 

[Maxperson]

Are they really stronger? Like, honestly and truly, the scale of human achievements in strength seems to go from (translating human IRL to DnD) 8 to 36 for men, and 8 to 24 for women. "Human" is a scale that has that broad of a spread.

Yes they are. No matter what scale you use for humans, goliaths are stronger.

Goliaths are a single point stronger on average? That's nothing if we are talking about real life. Human men have a scale of 28 points to work with, do we really think that Goliaths going from 9 to 37 is some grand difference that changes everything?

Um, no. First, +2 would make it 10-38. Second, since you're putting humans on an 8-36 scale due to lifting ability and goliaths can lift double what a human can, the goliath strength scale is 20-72. That's what I would call stronger.

D&D needing to balance things just gives goliaths +2 to strength, though. That's bad enough. No bonus over humans would be even more absurd.

That is 27 points of overlap, larger than the entire SCALE of DnD attributes. This is trivial. A difference of 30 lbs. It might be incredibly impress at the high end, when athletes are competing for ounces, but in day to day living? It doesn't mean a thing.

So, why raise such a fuss about it? In terms of mechanics, I can see it making a difference, but in terms of "realism" this is ludicrous.

Excellent. I'm not the one arguing realism, though. So don't attribute that to me please. I'm saying, and it is factually true, that goliaths are stronger than humans and should get a strength bonus to represent that.

Sure you can, we call it "improving". Something we've done for a long long time. Also, it was broken, because a lot of us feel a lot more free with our concepts now, so clearly something wasn't working. Maybe go back and reread the first few posts in this thread, before people came to start decrying the ruin of DnD again, where people were saying "you know, this really did make a difference"

No you can't. "Improving" is improving, not "fixing." They are different words for a reason. Racial bonuses are not broken and so cannot be fixed. As for improved, that's subjective and I'm sure it did make a difference for some people. If you prefer it, as I said in my last response to you, then you'll like it better. It won't be "fixed," though.

So, the peak of achievement in the 1920's is nowhere near the peak of achievment in the 1920's? I'm not comparing him to someone in the modern era, I'm comparing him to someone from his own era. So, how does this work? A guy at the peak of manly achievement in the 20's was beaten by a woman because she was a time traveler who knew modern training regimes? What are you trying to argue here?

I'm arguing the facts. If you were able to time travel and went back in time with modern training knowledge and machines, you could maximize both of their potentials and he would be stronger. Even then the max potential for men and women were different. They just didn't achieve those potentials. She trained better than he did is all. She doesn't somehow prove that physiology was different 100 years ago.

 

[Maxperson]

Well, because you haven't made an argument as to why it needs to be prescribed by the official publishers. What you have said is that it feels like a flaw for you, or lessens the game, and of course anyone can respect that. But that may or may not hold for anyone else, depending on how they feel.

The argument has been made many times. Elves as a race are more dexterous than humans, so that should be prescribed in the racial bonuses. Dwarves are more hardy(+2 con) so that should be prescribed in the racial bonuses. You can argue that you don't agree, but you can't argue that the arguments have not been made.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

I'm saying, and it is factually true, that goliaths are stronger than humans and should get a strength bonus to represent that.

Says who?

Elves as a race are more dexterous than humans, so that should be prescribed in the racial bonuses.

Again, says who? The authors? Because they can change things up whenever they wish. There does not exist some inherent essence of "goliath" or "elf" that necessitates them always being stronger or more dexteous than humans.

 

[Maxperson]

I think Bill's point is that when it comes to PCs and ability scores, there is never a case of "All else being equal,..." to the general population. Adventurers are inherently different from the general population, so sticking to the norms isn't really relevant.

Yet another reason I prefer caps to bonuses.

He's right and wrong. He's right in that adventurers differ from the normal populations. He's wrong in that they differ completely from their race. An elven adventurer will still have +2 to dex. He's just more likely to have a 20 dex than some Joe Shmoe farmer elf. Adventurers have higher stats to begin with, but all else being equal(adventurer human vs. adventurer elf), the elf will have a higher dex on average than the human will.

 

[Maxperson]

Says who?

Says the game. Goliaths can lift double what a human can. That translates into the ability to hit harder.

Again, says who? The authors? Because they can change things up whenever they wish. There does not exist some inherent essence of "goliath" or "elf" that necessitates them always being stronger or more dexteous than humans.

The authors said in their write ups of those races. If those authors remove the vastly increased strength from goliaths and all improved grace from elves, THEN removal of those bonuses will be valid. In order to get all races to be humans in ability, you have to make them pretty much human. We don't need 40 more variants of human running around the game.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Wow I've missed a lot since I logged in last night.

So what I think I'm hearing is:

@Maxperson thinks that floating ASIs would carry an implication that the race as a whole isn't exceptional in a particular, thematic way. (For example, that elves aren't more dextrous than most other races.). In other words, the rules for PC chargen are also the "rules" for the race as a whole.

@ad_hoc believes that...if I have this right...that with floating ASIs other people at their table would choose non-human races but play them as if they were human. (For the record, I would predict the opposite: with floating ASIs people would be more likely to choose the race they actually want to play for roleplaying reasons, instead of optimizing for ASIs. But we both have our own opinions so I respect yours.)

@Scribe worries that other people at their table would play characters that "shouldn't exist" at 1st level (such as halflings with 16 strength, or elves with 16 constitution)

Is that right?

P.S. there's no "gotcha" here. If I do have that right I'm not going to try to talk you out of it or tell you why you're wrong. I just want to understand the objections.

 

[Maxperson]

@Maxperson thinks that floating ASIs would carry an implication that the race as a whole isn't exceptional in a particular, thematic way. (For example, that elves aren't more dextrous than most other races.). In other words, the rules for PC chargen are also the "rules" for the race as a whole.

Yep. Bonuses are representative of the fluff and/or mechanics of a race. Elves are more graceful and dexterous. Goliaths bigger and stronger. Dwarves more hardy. And so on. Those translate into specific stat bonuses.

@ad_hoc believes that...if I have this right...that with floating ASIs other people at their table would choose non-human races but play them as if they were human. (For the record, I would predict the opposite: with floating ASIs people would be more likely to choose the race they actually want to play for roleplaying reasons, instead of optimizing for ASIs. But we both have our own opinions so I respect yours.)

I have a third view. My view is that even with prescribed stat bonuses most people play these races as if they were human. Floating ASI's aren't going to change that and make it worse, but it would reinforce the "humanity" of the non-human races. The primary thing about being human was the versatility of the race. Making every race versatile just makes them more human.

@Scribe worries that other people at their table would play characters that "shouldn't exist" at 1st level (such as halflings with 16 strength, or elves with 16 constitution)

This one doesn't bother me. There are exceptional individuals of every race.