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

 

[Azzy]

The game may not have started with ASIs, but they have been there since the first release of the 1st ed AD&D Player's Handbook in 1978. That's a long time, comprising nearly all of the game's history. Throwing out the fact that it wasn't technically part of the original rules to win debate points in light of that fact strikes me as an argument of questionable faith.

And you iugnore that throughout almost all of AD&D's life, the sister D&D line existed without ASIs altogether, and that's a mighty long time, too. D&D didn't start with ASI and it never needede them to be a fun game. Requiring ASIs is just a hangup that you and some others share.

 

[Azzy]

That gnomes are not as physically weak as halflings could be due to their relationship to "their cousins, the dwarves" (who tie for the second strongest race with half-orcs).

The funny thing between this and the racial min/max table is that halflings, despite having a -1 STR could never be as weak as the weakest elf.

 

[Mordhau]

And you iugnore that throughout almost all of AD&D's life, the sister D&D line existed without ASIs altogether, and that's a mighty long time, too. D&D didn't start with ASI and it never needede them to be a fun game. Requiring ASIs is just a hangup that you and some others share.

Because it did things in a different way.

In basic D&D you had minimum ability score requirements to get into various classes, including racial classes.

 

[Azzy]

Because it did things in a different way.

In basic D&D you had minimum ability score requirements to get into various classes, including racial classes.

We've covered that, thank you.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And you iugnore that throughout almost all of AD&D's life, the sister D&D line existed without ASIs altogether, and that's a mighty long time, too. D&D didn't start with ASI and it never needede them to be a fun game. Requiring ASIs is just a hangup that you and some others share.

What about race as class? That existed in the same hame line for nearly the same amount of time. I actually like race as class, but it has the same pedigree as lack of ASIs.

 

[Mordhau]

We've covered that, thank you.

Obviously not well enough, because you're still treating ASIs in isolation rather than consdering how the whole package works.

If you were paying attention you would have seen that I've covered that.

 

[Hussar]

I do have to ask: if it was never there, why are people making these arguments? Are we all that ignorant, or is it a bad faith thing? How does this keep happening if what you say is true?

I think that many people grow up in the game looking at it through a certain lens that is then constantly reinforced by the group they played with in their formative years of gaming, where groups barely read the rules and most certainly almost never actually followed them except in the most passing of ways.

Which means you have this group of players who insist on D&D being simulationist when even a cursory examination of the game proves that it isn't true.

The bigger question that you should be asking is, if D&D is meant to be simulationist in leaning, where's the proof? We've pointed to how, in every edition of the game, sim was barely a consideration and frequently didn't even come close to getting it right. Again, no one seems to be able to explain to me why mountain dwarves are among the best swimmers and long jumpers, two things that dwarves are famous for NOT being able to do. So, where's your evidence that D&D is meant to be simulationist?

A lot of times, I think, what happens is people just assume things about the game, play that way, but, never actually take the time to examine their assumptions and then, when the big old spotlight gets shone on the fact that their assumptions are not actually supported by the text, get very defensive and turtle up, refusing to even acknowledge the issue.

 

[Mordhau]

I find it hard to argue that Sim wasn't a consideration in 3rd edition.

See here. Was it a consistent and universal consideration? Not really, but a lot of sim considerations were added, it's just they crashed into sacred cows.

Kind of like in 5e where simplicity and the limitation of bonues is a major consideration which runs aground completely when it crashes into spells.

And why did Dwarves get Con bonuses and Elves dex in AD&D 1e? Did it have nothing at all to do with how they were portrayed in the Lord of the Rings?

Everything seems so absolute here. It doesn't simulate X so sim is never a goal anywhere. Y doesn't do a good job of simulating Z, so therefore it doesn't do it at all, and if we change things so it does an even less good job then really nothing has changed at all.

 

[Hussar]

What about race as class? That existed in the same hame line for nearly the same amount of time. I actually like race as class, but it has the same pedigree as lack of ASIs.

What about it?

The game designers decided to eject race as class three editions ago. And even the whole racial level limits were on the way out pretty much right from the get go - 1e's Unearthed Arcana massively changed the level restrictions, 2e then loosened them even further and then 3e dumped them completely.

IOW, the game changed and we got rid of an idea that people didn't like.

ASI's and racial restrictions are largely in the same boat. Racial restrictions on stats, again, on the way out in 2e, were dropped in 3e. The only hang on element now is the ASI's themselves.

In a system where you have no racial restrictions on class, no stat restrictions on class, it doesn't make any sense to have ASI's based on race. What's the point?

And no, none of this was based on some nebulous idea of realism. It was based on the fact that originally, in D&D, the developers assumed that everyone, or nearly everyone, would play a human. The settings were designed that way. Everything in the game was designed around making the game humanocentric because, well, when we're talking about fantasy in the 1970's, that's what fantasy was. You didn't have orc characters back then because orc characters didn't appear in genre fiction.

But, it's not 1970 anymore. There's more to fantasy than Conan or Bilbo. Eighty-seven different playable races in D&D. It makes ZERO sense to hang on to ASI's that don't actually achieve what you want them to.

 

[Hussar]

I find it hard to argue that Sim wasn't a consideration in 3rd edition.

See here. Was it a consistent and universal consideration? Not really, but a lot of sim considerations were added, it's just they crashed into sacred cows.

Kind of like in 5e where simplicity and the limitation of bonues is a major consideration which runs aground completely when it crashes into spells.

And why did Dwarves get Con bonuses and Elves dex in AD&D 1e? Did it have nothing at all to do with how they were portrayed in the Lord of the Rings?

Everything seems so absolute here. It doesn't simulate X so sim is never a goal anywhere. Y doesn't do a good job of simulating Z, so therefore it doesn't do it at all, and if we change things so it does an even less good job then really nothing has changed at all.

Yeah, pointing to the Alexandrian who was writing at the time to decry changes made by 4e is hardly a good example.

It's not a case of it not doing a good job in one or two specific instances. It's that it doesn't do a good job at all. I mean, even in his own example, a "good blacksmith" is among the smartest a human can possibly be. All good blacksmiths are geniuses, because of how the 3e stat system works. And then he calls that good simulation.

Again, can you explain to me why dwarves are the best swimmers and jumpers in the game?