D&D General How do you like your ASIs?

[Lanefan]

Humans never were a newbie race in any edition.

I gotta disagree here. Humans have always been the easiest creature for a new player to start with, in that there's just that much less to adjust to. And yes, in the older editions Humans were unlimited in advancement; but one hopes that by the time those new players' characters had got to that kind of level they'd have figured the game out some.

 

[Lyxen]

They usually have concept in their head and ask for help building it.

Exactly, it's usually a stronger concept than from more experienced players, and needs some work to adapt to the rules, but also to the power level of level 1, I have done hundreds of initiations, and one of the problems is people wanting either to play a strong hero from the genre with tons of powers and capabilities, which does not work with level 1, or wanting to play a complete beginner to gently approach the game, which is then too low compared to the experience and capabilities of a level 1 character.

In most cases, a level 1 character is usually not that complicated and has few powers, the most difficult parts are not there but about the game concepts like combat and actions, etc. There is really no need for "newbie" concepts in terms of characters, and no reason to force people or even entice them in that direction.

 

[Helldritch]

I gotta disagree here. Humans have always been the easiest creature for a new player to start with, in that there's just that much less to adjust to. And yes, in the older editions Humans were unlimited in advancement; but one hopes that by the time those new players' characters had got to that kind of level they'd have figured the game out some.

Nahhhhh.... Humans never were newbie race of choice. Nor any races for that matter.
I could bet my shirt you've had this at least once in your game in 1ed.
Ok you're new. You should play a... fighter.
Ok. I'll be a dwarf like Gimli!
Ok. Dwarf fighter it will be.
Or a Legolas (fighter with bow), a Boromir (human fighter) or.... you get the picture.

And in OD&D, the choices were quite restrictives. Dwarf? Fighter. Halflings? Fighter (sort of), Elves (M-U/Fighters), and Humans would be the rest, fighter, m-u, thief or cleric. Nothing else. The game complexified itself a bit over the editions, culminating with 3.xed, but we are now at manageable level (kind of).

 

[Minigiant]

Nahhhhh.... Humans never were newbie race of choice. Nor any races for that matter.
I could bet my shirt you've had this at least once in your game in 1ed.
Ok you're new. You should play a... fighter.
Ok. I'll be a dwarf like Gimli!
Ok. Dwarf fighter it will be.
Or a Legolas (fighter with bow), a Boromir (human fighter) or.... you get the picture.

And in OD&D, the choices were quite restrictives. Dwarf? Fighter. Halflings? Fighter (sort of), Elves (M-U/Fighters), and Humans would be the rest, fighter, m-u, thief or cleric. Nothing else. The game complexified itself a bit over the editions, culminating with 3.xed, but we are now at manageable level (kind of).

Of course it was always by force.

The 5e Human and 5e Champion fighter were made because they was a lot of fans in the playtest writing in their surveys to make the two simple for newbies.

There are a lot of D&D fans who think that "Give the new players the vanilla human fighter, vanilla bean dwarf fighter, or french vanilla elf fighter" is the way to go.

Once you design such simple concepts in the base, you have little room and space to design other aspects until years pass and you've collected a chunk of data.

 

[Vaalingrade]

The 5e Human and 5e Champion fighter were made because they was a lot of fans in the playtest writing in their surveys to make the two simple for newbies.

That's where I started doubting the value of WotC's playtest method. It was more about establishing the orthodoxy than making sure them game worked.

There are a lot of D&D fans who think that "Give the new players the vanilla human fighter, vanilla bean dwarf fighter, or french vanilla elf fighter" is the way to go.

Vanilla implies flavor. Let's not give that much credit.

Once you design such simple concepts in the base, you have little room and space to design other aspects until years pass and you've collected a chunk of data.

The subclass system contributed a lot to that. Once you decide the game needed a newbie class, the core version of the class has to accommodate that, so the entire class is pretty much tainted by 'simple' because the core restricts how much the subclass can be built out.

 

[Minigiant]

That's where I started doubting the value of WotC's playtest method. It was more about establishing the orthodoxy than making sure them game worked.

The playtest wasn't valueless. However the high barrier needed for acceptance meant the orthodox factions of the community had too much say and the designers were not willing to stnd up to the psuedo-veto power they set up.

So you have a situation like now when a group forces WOTC to design Humans for newbie and another faction being offended because they want to play Human but not called newbies. Or you have the sorcerer where all the new ideas are shot down then people are made we ended up with a watered down wizard and metamgic was locked into them.

Oohh the 6e playtest is gonna be fun with this influx of new fans. I hope the designers are fans of whiskey,

The subclass system contributed a lot to that. Once you decide the game needed a newbie class, the core version of the class has to accommodate that, so the entire class is pretty much tainted by 'simple' because the core restricts how much the subclass can be built out.

More relating to topic: once you design the base Human as the newbie race and want to make sure it isn't a weak choice, you handcuff yourself on race design in that system.

 

[Helldritch]

I still do not know where you got that humans are the newbie race. Nothing could be further from the truth.
There is only one thing for noobs. And it is the Champion. All other classes are meant to be played by everyone.
And even the Champion can get a bit too much to chew on for a newbie depending on the DM and the Campaign being at hand.

This is entirely a matter of personal perception. All races in the PHB have their ups and downs. A new player needs a bit of guidance, but the fun of 5ed is that the entry level to be good is quite accessible to all.

 

[Minigiant]

I still do not know where you got that humans are the newbie race. Nothing could be further from the truth.
There is only one thing for noobs. And it is the Champion. All other classes are meant to be played by everyone.
And even the Champion can get a bit too much to chew on for a newbie depending on the DM and the Campaign being at hand.

This is entirely a matter of personal perception. All races in the PHB have their ups and downs. A new player needs a bit of guidance, but the fun of 5ed is that the entry level to be good is quite accessible to all.

again:

There is a difference between "Humans are a newbie race" and "Humans were designed simplistic so that newbies have access to a race with no extra bells and whistles"

The 5e Humans and the 5e Champion Fighter were designed to give a completely new player an easy PC to create and run.

Human isn't the newbie race.

Human is the race chosen to be easy to understand and run. "+1 to all ability scores" is no way flavorful nor matching humans in real life, fantasy, nor D&D. It doesn't match any human in any previous edition.

The Variant Human is likely the true way the designers see Humans. It is similar to the 3e and 4e human. However feats are optional in 5e so it had to be a variant.

 

[Bill Zebub]

The playtest wasn't valueless. However the high barrier needed for acceptance meant the orthodox factions of the community had too much say and the designers were not willing to stnd up to the psuedo-veto power they set up.

So you have a situation like now when a group forces WOTC to design Humans for newbie and another faction being offended because they want to play Human but not called newbies. Or you have the sorcerer where all the new ideas are shot down then people are made we ended up with a watered down wizard and metamgic was locked into them.

Oohh the 6e playtest is gonna be fun with this influx of new fans. I hope the designers are fans of whiskey,


More relating to topic: once you design the base Human as the newbie race and want to make sure it isn't a weak choice, you handcuff yourself on race design in that system.

This post may have set a record for greatest number of unprovable assertions about WotC’s decision-making process.

 

[Minigiant]

This post may have set a record for greatest number of unprovable assertions about WotC’s decision-making process.

Not really.
The bar for acceptance for content in the DNDN playtest was rather high. Higher than UA. This was stated several times by the 5e team. This gave a lot of power to the opinions of traditionalists. Since there were a lot of them taking the playtest, you couldn't get a high Satisfactory score without their support.

And I've hear many times from many fans to give newbies human fighters because it's easy and simple.