D&D 5E A Compilation of all the Race Changes in Monsters of the Multiverse

Over on Reddit, user KingJackel went through the video leak which came out a few days ago and manually compiled a list of all the changes to races in the book. The changes are quite extensive, with only the fairy and harengon remaining unchanged. The book contains 33 races in total, compiled and updated from previous Dungeons & Dragons books.

D&D 5E - List of All 33 Races in Mordenkainen's Monsters of the Multiverse

Mordenkainen Presents Monsters of the Multiverse contains 33 races compiled from previous Dungeons & Dragons books. Aarackocra Assimar Bugbear Centaur Changeling Deep Gnome Duergar Eladrin Fairy Firbolg Genasi, Air Genasi, Earth Genasi, Fire Gennasi, Water Githyanki Githzerai Goblin Goliath...

www.enworld.org

D&D 5E - Full List of Monsters in Mordenkainen Presents Monsters of the Multiverse

Mordenkainen Presents Monsters of the Multiverse contains revamped stat blocks for 260 monsters previously published in previous Dungeons & Dragons 5E books. The list was compiled by YouTuber Bob Worldbuilder based on some blurry screenshots originally shared by Nerd Immersion (see the video...

www.enworld.org

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yeah, it is probably false. On the other hand, you’re not helping by calling some other hypothetical player dumb for not optimizing to your satisfaction. That opinion you should keep to yourself.

Yeah the elitist gatekeeping in the D&D community doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Oh well.

Anyway, there are rather a lot of stats, statements by wotc and dndbeyond folks, and other evidence that suggest most people don’t care much about optimization. The argument about it has been rehashed a dozen times so I won’t go further into it here.

Also. Anyone who thinks it’s such a big deal to “waste” an ASI on improving a low score, that they’ll belittle someone over it and claim they “don’t understand the game at all”, is probably the one that has a stunted understanding of the game. 5e just isn’t built in a way where maxed stats are actually necessary, at all.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So...where do these numbers come from? How are you saying "X race has <stat> far enough above/below baseline that a modifier is required"? These numbers don't just appear from nowhere. They come from something. That's the whole point of simulationism: numbers come from something, they're not just there because we declare they're there.

If they don't come from the average measurements of that race, what on earth DO they come from?

Why are you conflating most individuals not being average with determining the average being impossible? Are bears on average stronger than humans are humans on average smarter than chimps? You can answer these questions just fine, despite most bears humans and chimps not being average.

 

[ART!]

I think the end proccess of all this, or at least the way the logic is leading is to some kind of fate like aspects. But the fanbase would never wear that, so I think we're doomed to continued incoherence.

"doomed to continued incoherence" is my new favorite phrase!

I wonder why they keep ASI in races at this point, if everyone has floating ASIs, what's the point of duplicating the text about +2/+1 in each and every race instead of having : roll 4d6, drop lowest, assign then add a 2 and a 1 as part of stat generation process?

Yeah - anything you can remove form each race description is going to save a lot of space when you've got 30 some-odd races. Floating ASIs and movement of 30'- that's two lines of text right there that every single race doesn't need to have.

I suppose what they could do is have a dmg (or a dmg2 or whatever) that shows people how to use variant rules as dials to make the generic 5e game into the game they want to play.

I really, really want this in the 2022 DMG. They can flesh things out out in sourcebooks.

Regarding the discussion of Ability Scores and the question of "why have Ability Scores at all": assuming the classic Abilities are things one wants to keep in D&D, I wonder if they can be transmogrified a bit into something more like Approaches in the Fate rpg. There are 6 of them, and they're probably modeled after the 6 ability scores: Careful, Clever, Flashy, Forceful, Quick, Sneaky. There's some iteration of Fate that literally just gives them the names of the D&D abilities, so in the same order it would be WIS, INT, CHA, STR, CON, DEX. I may be off on something there, but you get the point.

Approaches work a lot like Abilities, in that you add the relevant Approach score when you describe an action that it makes sense to use that Approach for.

But I wonder if you could expand this for use in D&D, maybe folding in Personality Traits. Approaches are literally descriptions of how good your character is at approaching problems in certain ways.

I'm at work so I've kind of lost my train of thought, and I don't know how you would smoosh Abilities and Personality Traits together mechanically in a way that makes sense in D&D, but anyway, there it is.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Why are you conflating most individuals not being average with determining the average being impossible? Are bears on average stronger than humans are humans on average smarter than chimps? You can answer these questions just fine, despite most bears humans and chimps not being average.

I'm not.

What I'm saying is, you're using these averages, aren't you? Which means they're coming from data about those creatures, within the simulation. That's what simulationism is all about. But those averages are deeply misleading, because they give the impression that EVERY member of the population fits those averages. And those averages are, quite literally, the only thing that the racial ability score bonuses can be derived from.

But if you're deriving bonuses that every member of the race must have, you are enforcing that all members of the race are average, physiologically. That is factually untrue, and specifically a purely-gamist abstraction applied to real populations which will deviate from that, sometimes very significantly.

Yes, training should matter. But we're not talking about training, here. We're not talking about ASIs from levels. We're talking about racial ability scores. And it is simply, factually, not true that "the average dragonborn is stronger than the average human" equates to "all dragonborn are naturally +2 Str compared to all humans, regardless of other factors." Those modifiers simply, factually, cannot capture the real variability that real, living populations express. No simulation predicated on this abstraction will produce results that conform to an expectation of real-population-like dynamics, because that's simply not how real populations work.

The average, as a numerical value, exists. That does not, in any way, imply that that reflects a fundamental attribute of the population in question. Deviations--sometimes dramatic ones!--will exist. Those deviations are far more likely to occur in special subsets of the population that differ from the norm in other ways, and adventurers are about as unique a subset as one can get.

Hence: The way the actual averages of real populations work exactly contradicts this effort at simulating things. An actual simulation of things would indicate that, while the average exists numerically and describes a trend observable in that population, it not only does not but cannot be used to preclude the existence of (say) a few elves that are just as uncoordinated and slow as an uncoordinated and slow dwarf. (Or, likewise, the existence of a few dwarves that are just as dextrous as the most dextrous of elves.) And, thus, we get a step closer to actually simulating a population of distinct beings by having not just variability, but varying degrees of variability, dancing around those central tendencies, which will never be directly observable by players because they aren't taking surveys of 4000 elves to find out what the average elf's dexterity is to begin with.

 

[Faolyn]

@Faolyn @AcererakTriple6

Both ASIs and traits are mechanics that give the creature a capability or enhance existing capability in order to simulate how the creature is in the fiction. Similar machinal capability may or may not be possible to acquire with other means. Usually it is. Proficiencies, flight speed, unarmed damage etc, all can be acquired by means other than the race.

ASIs can be acquired by anyone. Whatever the stat is, multiple races give it as a bonus. There are nine races that give a +2 to Strength. Three of them, plus one sub-race, give +2 Str/+1 Con. ASIs are granted by classes and by some feats. There is nothing unique or race-specific about ASIs.

However, the traits, specifically the combination of traits, are unique to each race and sub-race. Sure, there's several ways to get unarmed damage, but getting claws and super-fast zoomies (and darkvision and Perception and Stealth proficiencies)? Only one race has that combination, to the point that you likely were able to immediately identify that race as a tabaxi. And sure, there's several ways to gain flight--but they're all magical and most of them are short-term. Only way to have constant, non-magical flight ability is by playing one of the three flying races.

And again, there is an enormous difference between an individual member of a race and the entire race, and an enormous difference between a +2 in a stat that anyone can get in multiple different ways, and a grouping of trait that only members who were born as a particular race can get.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think one of the problems is, while it certainly makes sense that an adventurer would deviant in significant ways from the average for his race, and that the average can still largely hold true (in aggregate at least) for the world outside of the PCs, the fact remains that the PCs are far and away the most visible representatives of their species, particularly if they are nonhuman. And if they are an outlier from their people, those traits will become what the race is like in the game, regardless of DM intentions, simply because that's what we see. Bob the mighty 20 Strength halfling might be considered unusual by halfling standards, but if we don't see many other halflings (and in many cases we won't) then that means exactly nothing. They might as well all be like Bob, because that's where the spotlight is.

 

[Faolyn]

I think one of the problems is, while it certainly makes sense that an adventurer would deviant in significant ways from the average for his race, and that the average can still largely hold true (in aggregate at least) for the world outside of the PCs, the fact remains that the PCs are far and away the most visible representatives of their species, particularly if they are nonhuman. And if they are an outlier from their people, those traits will become what the race is like in the game, regardless of DM intentions, simply because that's what we see. Bob the mighty 20 Strength halfling might be considered unusual by halfling standards, but if we don't see many other halflings (and in many cases we won't) then that means exactly nothing. They might as well all be like Bob, because that's where the spotlight is.

That's a problem for the DM, not for the game, though. The DM can just say that one of the towns the PCs pass through is a halfling town.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

This seems like an attempt to shift the argument away from what it's actually about, which is humanoid beings in a fantasy world. It also helps illustrate how limited D&D's stats are for measuring this sort of thing.

Further, you're still on about STR. That seems to be the only stat you care about. Literally you have no arguments that don't involve STR. DEX, CON, INT, WIS, and CHA can all go to hell, I guess? If your point was valid, you'd be able to argue it about any stat, but you can't. You can only even try to argue it about STR.

I mean, what's got higher DEX, a wolf or a bear? Wolves clearly have extremely quick reflexes, but can't climb for toast. Bears can climb well and do all sorts of dextrous stuff with their paws. What's got higher CON? Bears can probably survive nastier injuries, but wolves likely have better endurance. Who has a higher INT? And so on.

If STR is really the sole concern for you, maybe say so and we can focus on that? If not, lets hear about other stats and why they should have fixed mods.

The same logic certainly applies to all ability scores. But yes, strength is the most obvious case, because it is rather clearly definable and because the massive differences in the sizes of PC species makes it being same for everyone most blatantly jarring. So yeah, I fully admit that the strength issue is the most pressing for my disbelief suspenders. If strength had a cap tied to the size* then that could be enough to solve the matter for me, and might be even better than the current method. And as you can effectively fight with dex, this really wouldn't even be a balance issue (as long as barbarian is fixed to allow functioning dex build.)

* E.G.
Small 16
Medium 20
Large 24

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I'm not.

What I'm saying is, you're using these averages, aren't you? Which means they're coming from data about those creatures, within the simulation. That's what simulationism is all about. But those averages are deeply misleading, because they give the impression that EVERY member of the population fits those averages. And those averages are, quite literally, the only thing that the racial ability score bonuses can be derived from.

But if you're deriving bonuses that every member of the race must have, you are enforcing that all members of the race are average, physiologically. That is factually untrue, and specifically a purely-gamist abstraction applied to real populations which will deviate from that, sometimes very significantly.

No! Why on earth would you think that? Half-orc with Str 10 (8 + racial ASI 2)= weaker than average half orc. Halfling with Str 12 (12 + racial ASI 0)= slightly stronger than average halfling. Neither is average, ASIs are in play.

Different species have different ranges in which their individual members vary in the given area of competence. Both dogs and chimps vary in intelligence, but an average chimp is smarter than an average dog and a smart dog is still not as smart as as a smart chimp. (Do you deny this?) This shift in range is what ASIs simulate. It is a perfectly coherent concept.

I understand that people might not care to have such attention detail in their fantasy game, or value balance over such attempts at simulationism. I fully get it; I have different preferences, but I get it. But frankly, I have no idea what you're trying to do, your argument simply makes no sense to me.

 

[Mordhau]

And this is why powerful build (little giant) is the right way of representing the strength of a goliath. No matter how much str the halfling has, they can't compete with the goliath. (ok a 20 str halfling can compete with a 10 str goliath. And that seems about right.

In something that really doesn't matter.

It's a bit like saying to the Dragonborn you can have a form of dragon's breath, but you can only use it to start campfires.