My musings... Welcome to the nitpicker's edition (not everything here is in good faith, though it's exact).
1. It is possible to mix and match original material and compatible material since there is a note about how you can't benefit from ASIs twice, so if you're part of an ASI-granting race, and you take an ASI-granting background, you can't benefit from both ASIs.
2. A background is your character background, since "custom" is the default, where you insert reasons have your ASIs at the right place for your build, where you got your two skills, your tool, your second language and how you got your feat and equipment. My guess: many characters will be extraordinarily perceptive children and love their wizard uncle who taught them arcana on Wednesday afternoons.
3. The world of adventurers will be one of learned people. Every hero being at least trilingual. Barbarians have a better education level than 21st century graduate students.
4. Half-races are much more open than in the past. Everyone can interbreed with anyone, and the result is a character functionnaly identical to one of the parent race, with averaged lifespan and a few cosmetic details. There is no explanation of what happens if the half-something breed. Can they? I'd assume so, since infertility of the subrace would be mentionned. Can the newborn character pick one of the four racial ancestries if an orc-elf mate with a tortle-gnome? Given the extreme cosmopolitanism of settings and race-blindness prevalent in them, after a few tens of generations a city like Waterdeep would certainly have a racial makeup of "100% crossbreed, any child can manifest the racial features of any race". It would help households : "look, honey, I know you're an elf, but it's perfectly possible one of your ancestors was an aardling, explaining the bunny ears of our child...". Or is the child being only able to manifest the racial traits expressed in their parents? So many questions left unanswered! It would open the way for people to customize their race the same way they customize their background, if they could express traits through atavism.
5. Fantasy Humans... First in the listing, because alphabetization is only for the remainder of races. They range from 2ft to 7ft, so they don't reach the tallest real life human but encompass the shortest ones. Fantasy humans are either Small of Medium and all go at a speed of 30 ft. There was some time when Small races had a modicum of lack of speed (which was often overlooked in TotM) but now everyone is moving 30ft, so it makes sense in a weird way. Heroes drawn from Fantasy Humans (because it is made explicit that non-hero don't necessarily have access to those) share in common the ability to get Inspiration after a long rest (it's called Resourceful, though Morning glory fits better for heroic characters...) they get an extra skill proficiency and gets either Skilled Feat or another feat. So that's a strange way to write that they get a feat?
5bis. Custom lineage (Small or Medium, check, 30 ft speed, check, darkvision or skill proficency (a little better if you need darkvision but can emulate the skillful trait) lacks a morning inspiration but gets an original feat, many of which are superior to the compatible feats.
6. I fully expect everyone to be Small, since there is no drawback to it (hit dice are determined by class for heroes and speed is the same for all size, and they get the same carrying capacity, while opening a whole lot of tricks involving bags of holding.
6. No race does seem to grant weapon proficiencies and background can't give you one, so I guess they will be given exclusively by class features right now? It seems that if you're a wizard, you'll have to forego your elven bow if created using the 2024 rules.
7. Humans were created on Sigil, so it looks like the Ring of Siberys prevented humans to reach Eberron. Keith Baker did a great job so far to integrate everything Wizards published into kanon, but I think he'll have a tough job with this one.
8. Ardlings are animal-headed humans (except you can't be 2 ft tall, only 3), but can still be Small. They have an ability called flight, that allows them to jump (they need to reach a solid surface not to fall). So basically, Angelic Flight should be renamed to Gimped Flight. Unless they are a half-rabbit jumping 30 ft high. The good luck is that with a reasonable STR score of even 10, a Small Ardling can carry his whole team of other Small heroes while jumping (a team of 68 2ft heroes to be exact). A 30 ft chasm problem is no longer a drawback starting at level 1. Also, they are resistant to radiant damage and can cast a cantrip (and later a 1st level spell and a 2nd level spell) that you can cast once per long rest. As written, you can only cast the cantrip once, as well (since cantrips are spells and you can't recast a spell before finishing a long rest) but it's probably just not intended.
9. Dragonborns... They are bipedal, wingless dragons. Too bad for the fan arts giving them humanoid features like, you now, some definitely mammal apparatus. I am glad this was clarified. Unfortunately, the 5e wording had them combining the best of both origins is no longer here, so using natural reading, we can conclude that One dragonborns don't have opposable thumbs. For them, the adventure "you start in a tavern" will always continue with "spilling your beer over". They have a weak breath weapon, damage resistance depending on their scale color, darkvision and can instinctively speak draconic. Since Tasha, however, you can swap a language with another language, so they speak a second language, like Fantasy Humans.
10. Dwarf. They are average-sized fantasy humans (4-5 ft falling right in the middle of the 2-7 ft Fantasy Humans), hence the medium size. They can't be small, unlike fantasy humans, because the very word dwarf evokes someone with a... great size, apparently. They are god-crafted by a stone and forge god. They get instinctive proficiency with two tools associated with dwarves (that can be swapped using Tasha, of course). If you want to be a wizard with an innate knowledge of the way of the bow and a light sword, then dwarf is your obvious choice. They get tremorsense as long as it's one stone and a HP per level.
11. Elves. If you're playing an Elf, your shapeshifting ancestors plotted with Lolth to overthrow Corellon, or you'd be born on the Arvandor plane. Too bad for you, since Corellon is the epitome of the loyal evil jerk, he punishes you for the crimes of your (millenia-long) dead ancestors. And he's still worshipped because he "forgave" you. Typical Stockholm syndrom! They get darkvision, proficiency in Perception that they could swap but never will, a limited spellcasting ability depending on lineage (any combination of spells is bound to appear as supplements give us the much needed 283 elven subtypes every decent campaign needs. Corellon also cursed you with Trance instad of sleep, so that means you'll be the designated guard during the night. Hey, you're even proficient in Perception... High elves are still the best (an arcane cantrip that you can change each rest, the moderately useful Detect Magic and Misty Step...)
12. While there is not a lot to say about gnomes, the compatible halflings are faster than the original ones. (Whether this is to harmonize tabletop playing through the One way of online playing remains to be seen.
13. Orcs are interesting. While Elves are all descendants of treacherous persons who betrayed their god, and such god was a jerk, the orcs were created by the benevolent Gruumsh, an "unstoppable warrior and powerful leader". This Alexander or Napoleon like god gave "gifts" to his children (what a tender and caring god) to fight monsters, not elves, silly. Orcs don't need to worship Gruumsh (but why wouldn't they, he's such a nice guy?), since he's so forgving that even if you lose your marbles and start worshipping Corellon, he'll continue giving you his gifts. They are told of their ancestors conflits (most probably, defensive wars initiated by humans, elves and dwarves) and just want to emulate their ancestor's glory in battle.
14. Now, backgrounds. They gives you ASIs (that you can't stack explicitely with racial ASIs... they saw the loophole of the original mountain dwarf warrior taking a compatible background and starting with +4 STR, +3 CON.
15. An original vuman or custom lineage would have a good time stacking the original Lucky and the compatible lucky. 5-8 rolls with advantage per long rest is often enough to last the day...
16. Taking the original half-feats would certainly be the optimum choice over taking a compatible feat to ensure starting with a 18 at tables that use the standard array or point-buy.
17. Characters are missing 5% of the time, even from extremely easy rolls. At least it's not a fumble, just a regular failure. Still, missing the tarrasque at point-blank range...
18. Rolling a 20 gives you inspiration, so it's not just a mechanism for rewarding good roleplaying. I expect that it will make people remember more about inspiration. And less about good roleplaying.
19. Critical hits are being nerfed, since you don't reroll and add all damage dice, but only the Weapon damage. No more sneak attacking rogues rolling buckets of d6s on a critical unless they word it carefully in the Rogue class description. It is also possible, now, to have a weapon damage that does... no damage dice. Net and blowguns, maybe? Were people using those routinely?
20. All musical instruments now cost 20gp. Starting characters should spend a few day constructing maracas to resell them at resell value (10gp) for a few days to finance their full plate armour. On the other hand, the situation of peasants in setting just got worse. They had a bad lot, but now they can't even play music to spend the time between two wandering monsters attack on their village. Maracas at 200 days of unskilled labor are a nerf to the peasantry of One.
1. It is possible to mix and match original material and compatible material since there is a note about how you can't benefit from ASIs twice, so if you're part of an ASI-granting race, and you take an ASI-granting background, you can't benefit from both ASIs.
2. A background is your character background, since "custom" is the default, where you insert reasons have your ASIs at the right place for your build, where you got your two skills, your tool, your second language and how you got your feat and equipment. My guess: many characters will be extraordinarily perceptive children and love their wizard uncle who taught them arcana on Wednesday afternoons.
3. The world of adventurers will be one of learned people. Every hero being at least trilingual. Barbarians have a better education level than 21st century graduate students.
4. Half-races are much more open than in the past. Everyone can interbreed with anyone, and the result is a character functionnaly identical to one of the parent race, with averaged lifespan and a few cosmetic details. There is no explanation of what happens if the half-something breed. Can they? I'd assume so, since infertility of the subrace would be mentionned. Can the newborn character pick one of the four racial ancestries if an orc-elf mate with a tortle-gnome? Given the extreme cosmopolitanism of settings and race-blindness prevalent in them, after a few tens of generations a city like Waterdeep would certainly have a racial makeup of "100% crossbreed, any child can manifest the racial features of any race". It would help households : "look, honey, I know you're an elf, but it's perfectly possible one of your ancestors was an aardling, explaining the bunny ears of our child...". Or is the child being only able to manifest the racial traits expressed in their parents? So many questions left unanswered! It would open the way for people to customize their race the same way they customize their background, if they could express traits through atavism.
5. Fantasy Humans... First in the listing, because alphabetization is only for the remainder of races. They range from 2ft to 7ft, so they don't reach the tallest real life human but encompass the shortest ones. Fantasy humans are either Small of Medium and all go at a speed of 30 ft. There was some time when Small races had a modicum of lack of speed (which was often overlooked in TotM) but now everyone is moving 30ft, so it makes sense in a weird way. Heroes drawn from Fantasy Humans (because it is made explicit that non-hero don't necessarily have access to those) share in common the ability to get Inspiration after a long rest (it's called Resourceful, though Morning glory fits better for heroic characters...) they get an extra skill proficiency and gets either Skilled Feat or another feat. So that's a strange way to write that they get a feat?
5bis. Custom lineage (Small or Medium, check, 30 ft speed, check, darkvision or skill proficency (a little better if you need darkvision but can emulate the skillful trait) lacks a morning inspiration but gets an original feat, many of which are superior to the compatible feats.
6. I fully expect everyone to be Small, since there is no drawback to it (hit dice are determined by class for heroes and speed is the same for all size, and they get the same carrying capacity, while opening a whole lot of tricks involving bags of holding.
6. No race does seem to grant weapon proficiencies and background can't give you one, so I guess they will be given exclusively by class features right now? It seems that if you're a wizard, you'll have to forego your elven bow if created using the 2024 rules.
7. Humans were created on Sigil, so it looks like the Ring of Siberys prevented humans to reach Eberron. Keith Baker did a great job so far to integrate everything Wizards published into kanon, but I think he'll have a tough job with this one.
8. Ardlings are animal-headed humans (except you can't be 2 ft tall, only 3), but can still be Small. They have an ability called flight, that allows them to jump (they need to reach a solid surface not to fall). So basically, Angelic Flight should be renamed to Gimped Flight. Unless they are a half-rabbit jumping 30 ft high. The good luck is that with a reasonable STR score of even 10, a Small Ardling can carry his whole team of other Small heroes while jumping (a team of 68 2ft heroes to be exact). A 30 ft chasm problem is no longer a drawback starting at level 1. Also, they are resistant to radiant damage and can cast a cantrip (and later a 1st level spell and a 2nd level spell) that you can cast once per long rest. As written, you can only cast the cantrip once, as well (since cantrips are spells and you can't recast a spell before finishing a long rest) but it's probably just not intended.
9. Dragonborns... They are bipedal, wingless dragons. Too bad for the fan arts giving them humanoid features like, you now, some definitely mammal apparatus. I am glad this was clarified. Unfortunately, the 5e wording had them combining the best of both origins is no longer here, so using natural reading, we can conclude that One dragonborns don't have opposable thumbs. For them, the adventure "you start in a tavern" will always continue with "spilling your beer over". They have a weak breath weapon, damage resistance depending on their scale color, darkvision and can instinctively speak draconic. Since Tasha, however, you can swap a language with another language, so they speak a second language, like Fantasy Humans.
10. Dwarf. They are average-sized fantasy humans (4-5 ft falling right in the middle of the 2-7 ft Fantasy Humans), hence the medium size. They can't be small, unlike fantasy humans, because the very word dwarf evokes someone with a... great size, apparently. They are god-crafted by a stone and forge god. They get instinctive proficiency with two tools associated with dwarves (that can be swapped using Tasha, of course). If you want to be a wizard with an innate knowledge of the way of the bow and a light sword, then dwarf is your obvious choice. They get tremorsense as long as it's one stone and a HP per level.
11. Elves. If you're playing an Elf, your shapeshifting ancestors plotted with Lolth to overthrow Corellon, or you'd be born on the Arvandor plane. Too bad for you, since Corellon is the epitome of the loyal evil jerk, he punishes you for the crimes of your (millenia-long) dead ancestors. And he's still worshipped because he "forgave" you. Typical Stockholm syndrom! They get darkvision, proficiency in Perception that they could swap but never will, a limited spellcasting ability depending on lineage (any combination of spells is bound to appear as supplements give us the much needed 283 elven subtypes every decent campaign needs. Corellon also cursed you with Trance instad of sleep, so that means you'll be the designated guard during the night. Hey, you're even proficient in Perception... High elves are still the best (an arcane cantrip that you can change each rest, the moderately useful Detect Magic and Misty Step...)
12. While there is not a lot to say about gnomes, the compatible halflings are faster than the original ones. (Whether this is to harmonize tabletop playing through the One way of online playing remains to be seen.
13. Orcs are interesting. While Elves are all descendants of treacherous persons who betrayed their god, and such god was a jerk, the orcs were created by the benevolent Gruumsh, an "unstoppable warrior and powerful leader". This Alexander or Napoleon like god gave "gifts" to his children (what a tender and caring god) to fight monsters, not elves, silly. Orcs don't need to worship Gruumsh (but why wouldn't they, he's such a nice guy?), since he's so forgving that even if you lose your marbles and start worshipping Corellon, he'll continue giving you his gifts. They are told of their ancestors conflits (most probably, defensive wars initiated by humans, elves and dwarves) and just want to emulate their ancestor's glory in battle.
14. Now, backgrounds. They gives you ASIs (that you can't stack explicitely with racial ASIs... they saw the loophole of the original mountain dwarf warrior taking a compatible background and starting with +4 STR, +3 CON.
15. An original vuman or custom lineage would have a good time stacking the original Lucky and the compatible lucky. 5-8 rolls with advantage per long rest is often enough to last the day...
16. Taking the original half-feats would certainly be the optimum choice over taking a compatible feat to ensure starting with a 18 at tables that use the standard array or point-buy.
17. Characters are missing 5% of the time, even from extremely easy rolls. At least it's not a fumble, just a regular failure. Still, missing the tarrasque at point-blank range...
18. Rolling a 20 gives you inspiration, so it's not just a mechanism for rewarding good roleplaying. I expect that it will make people remember more about inspiration. And less about good roleplaying.
19. Critical hits are being nerfed, since you don't reroll and add all damage dice, but only the Weapon damage. No more sneak attacking rogues rolling buckets of d6s on a critical unless they word it carefully in the Rogue class description. It is also possible, now, to have a weapon damage that does... no damage dice. Net and blowguns, maybe? Were people using those routinely?
20. All musical instruments now cost 20gp. Starting characters should spend a few day constructing maracas to resell them at resell value (10gp) for a few days to finance their full plate armour. On the other hand, the situation of peasants in setting just got worse. They had a bad lot, but now they can't even play music to spend the time between two wandering monsters attack on their village. Maracas at 200 days of unskilled labor are a nerf to the peasantry of One.
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