D&D (2024) First playtest thread! One D&D Character Origins.

[JEB]

I was looking through The Spelljammer books and noticed several (but not all) of the Astral Elf NPCs lack Starlight Step; one of the defining traits of Astral Elves!

It's a continued trend I've noticed in 5e that started with some pebbles as far back as Volo and is a full-on avalanche now: PC stats and NPC stats are not in concert with each other. There is nothing you can extrapolate from the word "goblin" or "elf" or "wizard" and assume it's similar to what a PC with the same keywords are. PCs are from Mars, NPCs from Venus, and an elf wizard NPC will not necessarily share anything in common with an elf wizard PC except maybe pointy ears.

I wonder if the 2024 MM or DMG will even suggest customizing NPCs with racial traits, or if generic NPC statblocks will be expected to reflect all races.

 

[Bill Zebub]

If we are going to change how D&D handles races due to echoes of real world racism within it...

You are badly misinterpreting what @Charlaquin is saying.

 

[Remathilis]

I wonder if the 2024 MM or DMG will even suggest customizing NPCs with racial traits, or if generic NPC statblocks will be expected to reflect all races.

My money is they won't bother, other than "add darkvision" or "add fey ancestry" if that.

 

[Charlaquin]

If we are going to change how D&D handles races due to echoes of real world racism within it...

It is generally agreed upon that requiring characters to have a specific language in order to communicate effectively does not lead to very interesting gameplay. That’s why everyone gets Common, because characters being unable to understand or be understood by other characters and NPCs mostly just leads to non-gameplay. So what are languages other than Common useful for, from a gameplay perspective? You don’t need any language other than Common to understand other characters and to be understood, which means the only thing left to use them for is to prevent others from understanding you. That’s not a commentary on languages in real life, it’s just an emergent quirk of gameplay. I’m not sure anything could be done to change it, short of removing languages as a mechanic.

 

[edosan]

Those are sample backgrounds and the default is custom. You can freely customize the sample backgrounds as well.

I get that and I hope they word it more succinctly in future revisions, but it feels like they’re devoting a lot of space for a bunch of examples no one is going to take as written when they could just say “tool proficiency, pick one.”

It just seems like some sort of simplified life path system would have flowed better than “here are a bunch of packages that you’re going to tweak anyway or just make one up”

Edit: I also feel like their reliance on “pick a package, then pick a different package, then pick a class” is an attempt to fix the race problem but they could do better - also it feels like again they are giving traits/ideals/bonds/flaws (something that goes toward making D&D more than a combat sim IMO) short shrift.

 

[Haplo781]

I get that and I hope they word it more succinctly in future revisions, but it feels like they’re devoting a lot of space for a bunch of examples no one is going to take as written when they could just say “tool proficiency, pick one.”

It just seems like some sort of simplified life path system would have flowed better than “here are a bunch of packages that you’re going to tweak anyway or just make one up”

They should definitely just toss out like 3 samples and say "no really - custom is the default."

 

[overgeeked]

They should definitely just toss out like 3 samples and say "no really - custom is the default."

They should, but they can’t. If they did, people would scream for more examples. When they provide example, people scream that they’re set in stone. Catch-22.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Why not? We are explicitly told this is the new way things will be going forward (with some allowance for changes based on feedback.) The whole document is geared toward explaining how things will change, and the disclaimer I noted is specifically about telling people "no, you cannot just use old stuff as is, mixed up however you like. If you wish to use the outdated model, you must make these alterations." That's...what using a piece of deprecated software is like. You're not told you can't use it, but the strong implication is that you shouldn't, and if you do, you will be required to modify the formatting to match the updated version. How is that not applicable?

The bolded part is the biggest issue. I do not see even a mild implication to that effect. The sidebar literally is there to show that you don’t need to be reticent about mixing things from across 5e’s publication.

 

[FireLance]

Well, they are. Look at the stats for any NPC that resembles a PC (Thug, Assassin, etc.). Obviously they are created using alternate, and inferior, rules.

One simply cannot extrapolate from PC chargen to logically reach any statistical conclusions about races.

While it may not have been explicitly stated, it was at least strongly implied in D&D up to 3.5E that PCs may be exceptional examples but were otherwise typical for their respective races. Statistically speaking, they were above average compared to the mean, but were still on the same bell curve.

PC-NPC equivalence is a separate issue and is much broader than just ability scores.

 

[Bill Zebub]

(Tried to write a computer simulation that would make a point. It didn't. Nothing to see here.)