D&D 5E Is Tasha's Broken?

[Vaalingrade]

Because that's how one sensibly designs games! You have rules for some comprehensible reason!

If that means having ASIs and de-incentivizing not playing your species stereotype class, then we should not design game sensibly, but with an eye toward fun and inclusion and customization.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Because that's how one sensibly designs games! You have rules for some comprehensible reason!

so as long as the str score represents how much cuscle mass your character has that is okay right?mu

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It's a free +2 regardless of the cost of that +2 on the PB schema.

It simply is a discount. It makes the point buy more complicated by having methods with two different costs mixed for no reason.

It effectively makes your first high score cheaper. I don't think that this even is a desirable result, because the first high score is actually the most valuable. If anything, it should be more expensive, not less.

 

[Maxperson]

As I mentioned 20 pages ago, better to have floating ASI than 10 elven subraces like in 3.5e just to get every possible ASI out there.

And as I've mentioned in other places, it's even better to have both. Default to racial bonuses and include a blurb for the optional. Or go the other way and default to floating, but have each race include racial bonuses that are listed as optional. And as for 10 elven subraces, a lot of us like having a variety of various subraces for reasons other than the racial bonuses.

 

[Maxperson]

Yeah, that's fair. I think subraces were a mistake. I think a nice middle point compromise position could have been making the subrace's worth of the race mechanics floating. (So for example all elves get +2 to dex and basic elven things like the trance etc, then they have floating +1 and get to choose one additional trait from a list of elfy traits.)

That would work as well, though as I mentioned above, I like subraces for more than the stats. I've also suggested +2 racial and a floating +2. It doesn't hurt balance in 5e since stats don't mean as much as a lot of people think, unlike in prior editions.

 

[Maxperson]

This is putting WAY too much importance on ability scores as a means of differentiating characters rather than the combination of everything else: racial traits, class features, background, item loadout, etc.

Racial bonuses aren't about differentiation, though. That's something you guys keep misunderstanding it seems. Racial bonuses are because they make sense given a given race's fluff and to not have them doesn't make sense. Give each race a racial +2 and a floating +2. It's win/win. Each side gets what they want.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

so as long as the str score represents how much cuscle mass your character has that is okay right?mu

It doesn't necessarily need to be that. And it is not about just the strength. But if the ability scores exist, they should represent something that is true in the fiction, they should tell us something about the character.

I have many time said in these discussions, that the designers should really answer these two questions: 1) What is the purpose of the ability scores? 2) What is the purpose of having playable fantasy species?

 

[Dausuul]

Racial bonuses aren't about differentiation, though. That's something you guys keep misunderstanding it seems. Racial bonuses are because they make sense given a given race's fluff and to not have them doesn't make sense. Give each race a racial +2 and a floating +2. It's win/win. Each side gets what they want.

They don't "make sense." They are a vague gesture in the direction of making sense; a fig leaf over the fact that D&D is utterly unrealistic about such things and has never tried to be anything else.

Since people keep bringing up the halfling and goliath, let's take a closer look at that one. Halflings are three feet tall. That's the size of a four-year-old child. No edition of D&D has ever handed out a stat modifier that could represent that scale of difference. +2 is absurdly inadequate--you'd need something like +10.

Furthermore, both races have the same Strength cap at 20, so the difference will be erased anyway at sufficiently high level. Again, this makes no sense at all.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That's circular.

Hearing one side of a conversation is weird (I'm assuming you're talking to @Vaalingrade).

 

[Maxperson]

They don't "make sense." They are a vague gesture in the direction of making sense; a fig leaf over the fact that D&D is utterly unrealistic about such things and has never tried to be anything else.

It's absolutely not "utterly unrealistic about such things." Strength represents your ability to lift, deal physical damage, carry, push, etc. That's realism. Dexterity is your quickness and reactions. That's realism. Constitution is your health and ability to withstand and recover from damage. That's realism. Intelligence is your knowledge, memory, mental acuity, etc. That's realism. And so on.

There's a ton of realism involved with D&D stats, even if they don't make the attempt to simulate reality.

Since people keep bringing up the halfling and goliath, let's take a closer look at that one. Halflings are three feet tall. That's the size of a four-year-old child. No edition of D&D has ever handed out a stat modifier that could represent that scale of difference. +2 is absurdly inadequate--you'd need something like +10.

Yes. Balance is required. That doesn't make the +2 to strength for the goliath any less realism. It just doesn't make it as realistic as +10 would be.

Furthermore, both races have the same Strength cap at 20, so the difference will be erased anyway at sufficiently high level. Again, this makes no sense at all.

The vast majority of halflings will never reach 20. It's not much of an "erasure" and one that I eliminated in my game anyway. Goliaths cap strength at 22. Halflings cap at 20. Halflings cap dex at 22. Goliaths cap at 20.