Blog (A5E) A Question of Culture & Destiny

thelordofthemorning · Oct 29, 2021

Ok, I'd just like to say I love what LU does with origins. In particular, I'm really glad you kept heritage related cultures; yes, individuals can be raised in different circumstances, and doing so will grant different abilities, values, skills, etc. But I do prefer the acknowledgement that other fantasy races/species/heritages do have their own native cultures, and that these are different from those others might have, without automatically imposing that culture on a particular player or individual character.

One thing I really dislike about how WotC has been handling race recently is that in an effort to fix some of the problems of race they really feel like they are stripping any sort of uniqueness or identity from different fantasy peoples, and the result is that the world feels far more generic with everyone just being a different looking human essentially. LU approach is much, much better.

Edit: Fixed typo

Masha · Oct 29, 2021

I stand fully behind RPGMajor on heritages & cultures.
A few questions on Destinies though (which as a concept I love):

Is there a DM advisory on the average level a player would be expected to fulfill their destiny? I mean... a level 1 player could theoretically sacrifice themselves protecting the party (Devotion)... but not sure I'd want to encourage that.

Overall inspiration seems to be encouraged more as a resource. (Excellence Destiny in my games will thrive... damn those Nat1s) Will there be suggestions on the frequency of handing out Inspiration? To balance the more narrative leaning ones (such as Dominion) vs the ones based in mechanics (Excellence).

Not a question, just an observation: Balance-wise I find the Excellence Fullfilment feature leaning strongly towards favouring spell-casters. Ability checks are more situational, maneuvers that get both attack & damage rolls seem to require at least 1 exertion from what we can tell so far. Magic School can benefit from this feature without expending any resources by way of cantrips.

Satirical Bard · Oct 30, 2021

[EDIT: Just saw Morrus' comment on another thread asking for a cease and desist on race/lineage politics, so removing my comments responding to RPGMajor. I'll just say I agree with them and move on]

I also really like the addition of destinies, and in particular giving them mechanical effects. I think they will really help newer players especially, and those who sometimes struggle to find the through-line for roleplaying their characters. I'm not sure I'd want to fully replace personality traits, bonds, ideals and flaws though - this seems more like a boosted Ideals to me?

thelordofthemorning · Oct 30, 2021

Ah, just recently started checking/posting on the forums, was not aware of that/ any previous discussion on the topic. Will note and remember going forward.

In the interest of adding something new and not related to that topic, I'll echo that I also really like the addition of destinies. Lots of plot hooks for players and DMs in that.

Masha · Oct 30, 2021

Satirical Bard said:
I also really like the addition of destinies, and in particular giving them mechanical effects. I think they will really help newer players especially, and those who sometimes struggle to find the through-line for roleplaying their characters. I'm not sure I'd want to fully replace personality traits, bonds, ideals and flaws though - this seems more like a boosted Ideals to me?

From what I can tell we do get amped up bonds via backgrounds (connections & mementos). I'm not sure if traits & flaws are completely removed or snuck into another category, but my best bet would have been cultures and that is not the case. That said, thinking on it, destinies are given more weight than ideals previously and I perceive it as encouraging us to build traits around said destinies. Also, in a way this allows for more freedom in character creation, rather than have a set of personality traits linked to X part of your origin that might not actually fit with your vision.
A bit sad though, I love getting inspired by a random flaw.

VanguardHero · Oct 30, 2021

RPGMajor said:
WotC has been handling race recently is that in an effort to fix some of the problems of race they really feel like they are stripping any sort of uniqueness or identity

So much of Tasha's was either a glorified errata, since WotC refuses to do 'errata' they get to charge people for it apparently, as well as 'fixes' to problems that have all the effort of a distracted DM going "Uhhh...just do whatever then, I guess?" instead of an actually designed system. They didn't care about fixing it, they cared about getting people to stop complaining.

Systems that have actually tackled the same issue by choice and not as a reaction to backlash, such as Pathfinder 2e and Level Up, have more interesting, nuanced takes that add to interesting character building instead of everything being samey and up to 'how you flavor it with no mechanical backing'. But that's o5e for you in a nutshell.

As for the Culture & Destiny, damn I really like these. Villager has some surprisingly nice perks for what seems like it should be the dullest mundane option, which I love to see. "Fighter from a farm" is so cliche I've ignored it like the plague, but with Expertise in nightwatch and knowledge from stories and legends, that seems like a character I'd actually want to play! Destiny is fantastic, tying it into Inspiration gives a solid baseline of interacting with roleplay oriented Inspiration, which keeps it in play in peoples' minds instead of being completely forgotten as seems to usually be the case in my o5e experience. As for the Devotion Sacrifice, all I could think of was a plot device from the webcomic Homestuck, where a death only 'counted' if it was either Heroic or Just. Seems the sensible way to run that.

Faolyn · Oct 30, 2021

Masha said:
Is there a DM advisory on the average level a player would be expected to fulfill their destiny? I mean... a level 1 player could theoretically sacrifice themselves protecting the party (Devotion)... but not sure I'd want to encourage that.

Well, doing so before you can be raised means your character is dead and therefore won't really benefit from fulfilling their Destiny...

I do wish there were more guideline, but I think that most of them seem pretty high-level. You probably shouldn't let people take Revenge if they're swearing revenge on their greedy 0th-level landlord, for example. It should be a target that requires at least 10-15th level to kill (or at least, that high a level to get past all their defenses).

Masha said:
Overall inspiration seems to be encouraged more as a resource. (Excellence Destiny in my games will thrive... damn those Nat1s) Will there be suggestions on the frequency of handing out Inspiration? To balance the more narrative leaning ones (such as Dominion) vs the ones based in mechanics (Excellence).

Yeah, Excellence is my only real gripe about Destiny. I'm not quite sure what I'd do instead, though, since it's hard to show Excellence in an ability, which is generally shown through good rolls, through pure roleplaying. Perhaps require the PC to describe how they failed and learned from that failure?

Masha said:
Not a question, just an observation: Balance-wise I find the Excellence Fullfilment feature leaning strongly towards favouring spell-casters. Ability checks are more situational, maneuvers that get both attack & damage rolls seem to require at least 1 exertion from what we can tell so far. Magic School can benefit from this feature without expending any resources by way of cantrips.

While I haven't converted her yet, my o5e swashbuckler rogue definitely had Excellence as her goal, as she wanted to be the best duelist. A +2 to attacks and damage would be pretty sweet.

Morrus mentioned that they're adding more schools of magic, although to me they seem more like the tags with 3.5 spells since they're things like "fire." So if these all count as proper schools rather than tags, then it could be that individual schools are a lot smaller. I don't know for sure, of course.

Masha said:
A bit sad though, I love getting inspired by a random flaw.

Totally agree here. Ideals and bonds are mostly covered by Destiny and Background, but I definitely want Flaws back.

Satirical Bard · Oct 30, 2021

RPGMajor said:
Ah, just recently started checking/posting on the forums, was not aware of that/ any previous discussion on the topic. Will note and remember going forward.

In the interest of adding something new and not related to that topic, I'll echo that I also really like the addition of destinies. Lots of plot hooks for players and DMs in that.

I think the main thing was that other posts have devolved into naughty word fights about contemporary politics (from what Morrus said, I'm fairly new here so haven't read those other posts. Your comment was a good one I think, and reinforced by Heroic Vanguard's remark about doing this through intentional design being the better approach. The one I deleted went further into the relationship between said design choices and IRL politics, so I thought it best that I not accidentally derail another thread.

The key point being: it sounds like we all appreciate the considered approach by Morrus' team with Level Up