D&D 5E Wow! No more subraces. The Players Handbook races reformat to the new race format going forward.

[Maxperson]

Thats not the same thing.

The argument is not that there are ways to make rules beyond ASI. Obviously there are. The argument is that you can do both.

Not just can do both, but in my opinion they should do both. Both is far superior to either one alone.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

First, stronger should equate to hitting harder with weapons. Second, my house rule should be in place in the game. I raise the cap by the amount of the stat bonus. So goliaths can hit 22 with their +2, and 21 con with their +1. Halfings can hit 22 dex, etc. Even without that, though, at least the +2 allows for the race to be stronger on average than the halfling race, so yes goliaths are stronger than halflings. A few individual PC halflings who manage to hit 20 strength doesn't change that fact.

No. Your houserule is not in the game.
We are discussing the status quo.
I can also make up rules where a +2 bonus to str makes sense.
And maybe you hit stronger, but maybe no more effective. That is the thing in 5.x.

Breaking things is a strength ability check. Having only a +1 bonus over the halfling is ridiculous. You have not made the goliath be noticeably better at breaking things. Giving them advantage on such checks would do the trick.

Or giving a +8 bonus to strength. And then giving an arbitrary - 4 to attack bonus to balance the game again... that would have been the 3.x method. But since 5e trys not to be an exercise in math, the sinpler rule is better.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Not just can do both, but in my opinion they should do both. Both is far superior to either one alone.

No. Both is a jumbled mess. If you want a good and clear rules system, you should try to have not too many things affect the same stat, because it make the system unwieldy and intransparent.

 

[Chaosmancer]

No matter how much some people want to deny it, ASI are biological both on a individual level (thats what rolled stats/starting array represents) and on a racial level (rottweiler vs. poodle. That is what ASI is)

And the way they are written, with 20 capping them and the incredibly minute differences, then the biology of these "races" would be nearly identical to each other.

After all, if Ability Scores are biology, then everyone has the same potential in all areas. A Goliath with a 16 strength is no stronger than a human with a 16 strength than a robot with a 16 strength. Their actual builds don't matter at all. Figure out an explanation you can live with, but we've debated the issue into the ground over and over and over again.

The real nail in the coffin is the baseline human. The base, average, human is +1 in everything. That means that the biggest deviation from the average is a +1, which is an increase to the mod of +0.5 which is a +2.5% difference in whichever attribute you'd like to measure. Strength is always the go to because we have IRL weightlifters. The range of human weightlifting categories is 56 kg to 105+kg. Let's just make that 110 kg for easy math. That is a difference of 54 kg, or about a 50% difference. Think about this, a very strong, high end weightlifter is at least lifting 150% more than the lightweight division. There is probably another 200% for the best of the best. And that all still falls within the human expected range. But you want to declare biological differences that cause a 2.5% difference to be somehow incredibly important. That is the difference between an average day and a good day for the same athlete, let alone something that signifies anything about a person being "inhuman" in their abilities.

DnD is simply not designed to give you what you want. It can give you a shallow fascimile of it at best, and a lot of us have decided we'd rather stop with the pigeon-holed combos and try something different rather than worrying about if NPCs we don't stat out anyways are able to be "strong" or "graceful" enough to meet someone elses standards.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Giving these features without a corresponding stat bonuses causes schrodinger's stats. You are stronger than other races and also not stronger at the same time.

Yes those ways exist, but without the corresponding racial stat bonuses they and up with the schrodinger's stats nonsense above.

You know, in a different thread someone (I think it was Micah Sweet) called out a poster for saying their Giff was tough, because they don't get a bonus to Con that gives them a bonus to hp. You need hp to be tough, was the argument, because that is all Con is.

Hill dwarves get +1 hp per level. +2 con is +1hp per level. It is the same exact thing, they are tougher, without having more constitution.

And, as other posters have said, Strength is tied to lifting, but other than that it is just melee damage. And, I believe if we wanted to go full simulation then you would need to apply Dexterity and Strength, because you need to be able to aim and to hit, and then you subtract the damage type from the armor type, and we can make this super complicated.

So, maybe the Goliath gets a bonus to lifting things (is stronger) but isn't as accurate in his sword play so he doesn't get to double his melee damage. It isn't "stronger without being stronger" it is stronger, but less able to leverage their strength in combat. This isn't nonsense, it is dealing with an abstracted system. Not everything is 1 to 1. Heck, even a +2 INT doesn't actually make your character smarter. It just makes you better at magic.

 

[Maxperson]

No. Your houserule is not in the game.

Correct. Now that we both agree that I said that it wasn't...

We are discussing the status quo.

Correct. Now that I agree that we are talking about this...

And maybe you hit stronger, but maybe no more effective. That is the thing in 5.x.

Stronger hits more effectively, though. That's the thing about strength. Get yourself punched by someone who can bench 500 pounds and by someone who can only bench 250 and see which is more effective.

 

[Maxperson]

No. Both is a jumbled mess.

Really? Adding a simple +2 = jumbled mess to you.

 

[Maxperson]

You know, in a different thread someone (I think it was Micah Sweet) called out a poster for saying their Giff was tough, because they don't get a bonus to Con that gives them a bonus to hp. You need hp to be tough, was the argument, because that is all Con is.

Hill dwarves get +1 hp per level. +2 con is +1hp per level. It is the same exact thing, they are tougher, without having more constitution.

No. That person is wrong. Con also helps with con saves, which is also toughness.

And, as other posters have said, Strength is tied to lifting, but other than that it is just melee damage. And, I believe if we wanted to go full simulation then you would need to apply Dexterity and Strength, because you need to be able to aim and to hit, and then you subtract the damage type from the armor type, and we can make this super complicated.

So, maybe the Goliath gets a bonus to lifting things (is stronger) but isn't as accurate in his sword play so he doesn't get to double his melee damage. It isn't "stronger without being stronger" it is stronger, but less able to leverage their strength in combat. This isn't nonsense, it is dealing with an abstracted system. Not everything is 1 to 1. Heck, even a +2 INT doesn't actually make your character smarter. It just makes you better at magic.

That doesn't make any sense. If the sword makes contact and you are twice as strong as the next guy, you are going to do more damage with it. The small weak guy might need to hit you a dozen times to hurt enough to take you out in a fist fight. The strong guy who doesn't hit as often only needs to hit once. Why? Because strength = more damage when you hit. High dex can also = more damage with very fine precision hitting vital spots.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No. That person is wrong. Con also helps with con saves, which is also toughness.

That doesn't make any sense. If the sword makes contact and you are twice as strong as the next guy, you are going to do more damage with it. The small weak guy might need to hit you a dozen times to hurt enough to take you out in a fist fight. The strong guy who doesn't hit as often only needs to hit once. Why? Because strength = more damage when you hit. High dex can also = more damage with very fine precision hitting vital spots.

Con does help with Con saves, and contributes to toughness in that way as well. Mechanically, toughness is represented by Con, so a race that does not have a Con bonus (like the Giff) is not tough for any mechanical reason that has to do with their race. Now, you certainly could have a racial ability that represents toughness, like the hill dwarves got in the ancient, nigh-forgotten days of 2014, but of course the Giff don't have that either. The race has nothing that indicates toughness save for some lore verbiage (which we're being taught has no objective meaning in D&D anymore).

 

[Maxperson]

Con does help with Con saves, and contributes to toughness in that way as well. Mechanically, toughness is represented by Con, so a race that does not have a Con bonus (like the Giff) is not tough for any mechanical reason that has to do with their race. Now, you certainly could have a racial ability that represents toughness, like the hill dwarves got in the ancient, nigh-forgotten days of 2014, but of course the Giff don't have that either. The race has nothing that indicates toughness save for some lore verbiage (which we're being taught has no objective meaning in D&D anymore).

Unlike strength, there is at least one way to represent toughness that isn't tied to con, though. Resistances are independent of constitution, generally being more supernatural in nature.