D&D (2024) Do you think they will add more races to PHB2024 to make up for dropping other stuff?

[Parmandur]

How about then we get rid of orc in the PHB (since orc and half-orc are statistically the same and largely redundant. Then the PHB is just the 2014 races plus goliaths. And if you relegate them back to supplemental race status, you can have all the 2014 races again and once again completely backtrack on any proposed changes to the PHB. Golly gee, I'm so glad this new PHB is an opportunity to change absolutely nothing!

Per Jeremy Crawford at GenCon, the results for all the Species stuff in that packet, aside from Ardling and Dragonborn, passed with flying colors.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

Heh... that's the same feeling every single species in D&D has ever had-- a small handful of inconsequential mechanics that no one cares about once your character reaches like Level 3.

And yet, the suggestion to let people mix and match those inconsequential mechanics to some degree in order to better support mixed-ancestry characters is immediately met with furious backlash.

Because true roleplayers don't need species mechanics, min-maxers can go stuff themselves, and nothing exists between those two binary, mutually exclusive options to bother concerning ourselves with.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

Per Jeremy Crawford at GenCon, the results for all the Species stuff in that packet, aside from Ardling and Dragonborn, passed with flying colors.

As I recall, they didn't even ask about the mixed-ancestry stuff in the survey(s).

 

[mamba]

Most Planetouched are derived from Humans, Tieflings, Aasimar, Genasi and the rest are not exclusive to Human bloodlines. It's the planar part that's dominant, among the lineages. A child of a Tiefling and a Human is a Tiefling, a child of a Genasi and an Orc is a Genasi, a child of an Aasimar and a Goblin is an Aasimar. The influence of the immortal on the mortal bloodline is a strong one that lasts many generations.

what do you base this on?

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I can't believe that people are arguing about genetics as if that's even a thing in a fantasy setting.

D&D species can interbreed or not interbreed, have DNA or not have DNA, be made of flesh or not made of flesh, etc, etc, as the DM wants, as the World Lore goes, and no one can tell anyone else otherwise.

It's all made up.

And I'm getting tired of the "slippery slope"-type arguments I'm seeing around here. Just because someone might want to mix an elf and a gnome doesn't mean that they'd want to mix an Aasimar and a Tortle. (Or perhaps they would: Koopa Paratroopa, anyone?) And if they DID, that would be for their own game, and under the rules set by their DM, their table preferences, or their game world, depending on what they care about. And no one can tell them otherwise.

 

[RareBreed]

In short, the wave is very much that two sentient beings can fall in love despite biological differences and procreate, because with magic/science/the Force/whatever, all things are possible.

Which is the problem with presenting half elf and half orc as separate from other species mixing is to tacitly imply they are "acceptable" pairings in the games rules, and somewhat to imply that other options are frowned upon. It's what the game does now; you are at the mercy of your DM to allow a given combo to exist and what kind of stats it will produce, unless your choice is a human/elf or human/orc, then the game has blessed those unions with unique species traits and deemed them explicitly allowed.

This is an interesting take.

Part of the reason I don't really like the Fantasy genre anymore, is that "anything goes". It makes it hard for me to suspend my disbelief and feel some kind of relatability to the world. Perhaps it is a generational thing, as I think today's generation doesn't like being fixed by boundaries or constraints, and that's why D&D has become more and more appealing (in the 80s and early 90s, D&D's dominance wasn't like it is today; my best friend's father had a hobby store and I was privy to sales numbers). In fact, I sometimes wonder if the younger generations are so disgruntled with anything resembling the real world, that they actively want their settings to be as unfettered as possible?

Perhaps part of the problem is that D&D is setting agnostic, while also trying to maintain some kind of lore. But how can you really have lore when world X can have something contradictory to world Y in the multiverse of D&D? The problem is when you change the lore of setting X over time. Instead of appropriating setting X and changing it, why not create a new setting Y with the new background and rationale?

One of the few fantasy RPG's that is still kind of interesting to me is Runequest. Its almost 50 years worth of lore for the same setting is unparalleled, and the Bronze Age feel is more interesting to me than the fantasy-clockwork-steampunk that Pathfinder has gone, or the superhero-fantasy D&D has seem to become. Runequest's world setting hasn't needed any real retcons (that I know of) for 45+ years.

That's the kind of language WotC explicitly wants to avoid, and unfortunately that means half-elves and half-orcs lose their privileged status as the acceptable hybrids. It's a generational thing that WotC is going to want to get ahead of.

If any ancestry is biologically compatible with any other ancestry, then sure...go ahead, mix them as you please. But at least also somewhat mix up the physiological differences. A liger is not 100% a tiger or lion and a liger is really "just aesthetics". Same with a mule. For that matter, even mixes within the same genus (think dogs of different breeds) have different physiological characteristics. This is why mixed ethnicity people like me find it somewhat racist to be boiled down to just one ethnicity or the other. Acknowledge the differences (whether physiological from a game perspective, or cultural, from a game or real world one).

I also understand that accounting for mixed game mechanic advantages is more challenging from a game design perspective. Instead of 1 or 2 compatible mixes, you now have N x (N - 1) possible mixes (where N is the number of ancestries). But in the real world, only species (and below) can interbreed. At least for me, there needs to be some kind of rationale for how any ancestry can intermix with every other ancestry.

Even if WoTC wants to hand wave it away with magic and say all ancestries are biologically compatible with each other, it still becomes somewhat offensive to say "well, yeah, but you're really just 100% of one ancestry or the other...it's just a game after all". Then if the logic is "it's just a game", why change the term races to ancestries? Why remove that certain ancestries are inherently evil? They are tacitly admitting that the game does touch on real world matters and can influence how gamers see things in the real world.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I legit wonder how many people who are upset about this are really only upset about half-elves and don't care if half-orcs were removed/replaced by orcs?

I'd say most of them.

But the argument that sways me in favor of a more nuanced mixing system than the "pick your parent" is made by people of mixed lineage - that they are different than just one of their parents and are feeling erased by this... erasure.

IMO, something must be done about that. I'm not sure that I know what, but I don't think that they can just go with the "pick a parent" sidebar. It seems to me that it's worse (marginalizing real humans - wise) than the existing "half-races".

 

[Scribe]

For my the game for my 14yo and his friends, the races are the one thing so purchased all of for on Beyond... and they are sure into using a wide variety.

I can't believe that people are arguing about genetics as if that's even a thing in a fantasy setting.

D&D species can interbreed or not interbreed, have DNA or not have DNA, be made of flesh or not made of flesh, etc, etc, as the DM wants, as the World Lore goes, and no one can tell anyone else otherwise.

It's all made up.

And I'm getting tired of the "slippery slope"-type arguments I'm seeing around here. Just because someone might want to mix an elf and a gnome doesn't mean that they'd want to mix an Aasimar and a Tortle. (Or perhaps they would: Koopa Paratroopa, anyone?) And if they DID, that would be for their own game, and under the rules set by their DM, their table preferences, or their game world, depending on what they care about. And no one can tell them otherwise.

You are completely right. There's no slippery slope here though, it's the actual position.

Either everything valid, or nothing is.

Which is why my position is, Grandfather in the PHB half orc and elf, and grab bag custom the rest.

 

[Cadence]

This is an interesting take.

Part of the reason I don't really like the Fantasy genre anymore, is that "anything goes". It makes it hard for me to suspend my disbelief and feel some kind of relatability to the world. Perhaps it is a generational thing, as I think today's generation doesn't like being fixed by boundaries or constraints, and that's why D&D has become more and more appealing (in the 80s and early 90s, D&D's dominance wasn't like it is today; my best friend's father had a hobby store and I was privy to sales numbers). In fact, I sometimes wonder if the younger generations are so disgruntled with anything resembling the real world, that they actively want their settings to be as unfettered as possible?

Perhaps part of the problem is that D&D is setting agnostic, while also trying to maintain some kind of lore. But how can you really have lore when world X can have something contradictory to world Y in the multiverse of D&D? The problem is when you change the lore of setting X over time. Instead of appropriating setting X and changing it, why not create a new setting Y with the new background and rationale?

One of the few fantasy RPG's that is still kind of interesting to me is Runequest. Its almost 50 years worth of lore for the same setting is unparalleled, and the Bronze Age feel is more interesting to me than the fantasy-clockwork-steampunk that Pathfinder has gone, or the superhero-fantasy D&D has seem to become. Runequest's the world setting hasn't needed any real retcons (that I know of) for 45+ years.


If any ancestry is biologically compatible with any other ancestry, then sure...go ahead, mix them as you please. But at least also somewhat mix up the physiological differences. A liger is not 100% a tiger or lion and a liger is really "just aesthetics". Same with a mule. For that matter, even mixes within the same genus (think dogs of different breeds) have different physiological characteristics. This is why mixed ethnicity people like me find it somewhat racist to be boiled down to just one ethnicity or the other. Acknowledge the differences (whether physiological from a game perspective, or cultural, from a game or real world one).

I also understand that accounting for mixed game mechanic advantages is more challenging from a game design perspective. Instead of 1 or 2 compatible mixes, you now have N x (N - 1) possible mixes (where N is the number of ancestries). But in the real world, only species (and below) can interbreed. At least for me, there needs to be some kind of rationale for how any ancestry can intermix with every other ancestry.

Even if WoTC wants to hand wave it away with magic and say all ancestries are biologically compatible with each other, it still becomes somewhat offensive to say "well, yeah, but you're really just 100% of one ancestry or the other...it's just a game after all". Then if the logic is "it's just a game", why change the term races to ancestries? Why remove that certain ancestries are inherently evil? They are tacitly admitting that the game does touch on real world matters and can influence how gamers see things in the real world.

It kind of feels bad to me to have any of the combinations be possible - unless it's explicitly passed off as magic and not interbreeding. If it's described as them all able to interbreed, then it kind of feels to me like treating groups of people like breeds of dogs. Which can go to yeuchy places pretty darn quickly.

 

[Parmandur]

And yet, the suggestion to let people mix and match those inconsequential mechanics to some degree to better support mixed-ancestry characters is immediately met with furious backlash.

Because true roleplayers don't need species mechanics, min-maxers can go stuff themselves, and nothing exists between those two binary, mutually exclusive options to bother concerning ourselves with.

Well, a MotM/playtest packet Species is worth about two Feats: ergo, it should be doable to make a Feat that gives some of the flavor of one of these Species, and make it available as a Level 1 Feat to use as a Background foundation. That will work much better than random mixing and matching.