D&D (2024) No Dwarf, Halfling, and Orc suborgins, lineages, and legacies

[DammitVictor]

I didn't want to poke at this because its irrelevant to the thread but. Let's analyse your points

Legit. Both this, and your analysis. You want to start another thread?

 

[Minigiant]

Agreed. I wasn't saying we should have 47 of anything, just that waiting till the first splatbook or whatever allows them to be mechanically designed to fill a niche people want to have filled for their build rather than having mechanics so bad nobody uses them while understanding how bad they are

Heck, most subraces in the TSR and most of the WOTC era were just excuses for different ASI

Grey Elf was +DEX -CON
Black Elf was +DEX +INT -CON CHA
Green Elf was +DEX +INT -CON -STR
Brown Elf was +DEX -STR
Blue Elf was +DEX -CON but swim speed and water dependence
Wing Elf was +DEX -CON but flight and XP penalty

When WOTC realized racial ASI were bad, they never bothered to develop the lore and mechanics of subspecies that were just ASI deviations like Stout Halflings and Mountain Dwarves.

The poor fans of them were given nothing. And it proves some of my suspicions of the style of gamers that are at the heads of Fantasy TTRPG development.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Sure. That argument can be used against any criticism of the rules, existing or proposed; if you can just "come up with your own" rules for separating ancestry and heritage, why do you need the official rules to allow it? (I'm not making that argument. There are good reasons to do it.) I think these rules, if made official, if made a part of the core... will have negative effects on gameplay at more tables than it will positive. Negative, predictable consequences because they've been happening for far longer than I've been predicting them.

Honestly... it's not even that I am predictably and obviously going to lose, because I've already lost. All the other changes I'm comparing this to happened before I recognized the problem for myself. (AD&D was before my time, and I was fully in favor of the changes in 3.0 and PF1; I didn't start arguing for race-as-class and AD&D restrictions until after I discovered the OSR.) I just want people to quit being so starry-eyed about it and acknowledge they're making a tradeoff and, in many cases, what they're sacrificing is the exact thing they're trying to accomplish: immersion.

what is the trade of then?

 

[DammitVictor]

I've already stated it several times: it overcomplicates character creation for little gain, it makes character ancestry an even less significant portion of most characters, and it encourages players to make ridiculously implausible characters at the expense of immersion.

 

[Micah Sweet]

When WOTC realized racial ASI were bad, they never bothered to develop the lore and mechanics of subspecies that were just ASI deviations like Stout Halflings and Mountain Dwarves.

Correction: when WotC decided the people telling them racial ASI were bad were right.

 

[Corinnguard]

AD&D was before my time, and I was fully in favor of the changes in 3.0 and PF1; I didn't start arguing for race-as-class and AD&D restrictions until after I discovered the OSR.

Are you by any chance referring to how AD&D placed restrictions on what classes the non-human races could take and how far they could advance in those classes?

 

[Mind of tempest]

Correction: when WotC decided the people telling them racial ASI were bad were right.

it concluded it was in its interest to listen to those people hence the change. I see the logic of all sides.

I've already stated it several times: it overcomplicates character creation for little gain, it makes character ancestry an even less significant portion of most characters, and it encourages players to make ridiculously implausible characters at the expense of immersion.

what makes them implausible?

Honestly... it's not even that I am predictably and obviously going to lose, because I've already lost. All the other changes I'm comparing this to happened before I recognized the problem for myself. (AD&D was before my time, and I was fully in favor of the changes in 3.0 and PF1; I didn't start arguing for race-as-class and AD&D restrictions until after I discovered the OSR.) I just want people to quit being so starry-eyed about it and acknowledge they're making a tradeoff and, in many cases, what they're sacrificing is the exact thing they're trying to accomplish: immersion.

why would you want race as class and class restrictions back? I can't this point could you please elaborate?

 

[TwoSix]

why would you want race as class and class restrictions back? I can't this point could you please elaborate?

Because when you add mechanics to prioritize races into certain classes (whether that be via racial ASI, XP bonuses and penalties, racial class and level restrictions, race-as-class, or some other mechanism), you're working to have the mechanics reify familiar tropes into the mainline play. Having dwarves be mostly fighters or fighter/clerics reinforces the narrative of them as tough, community-oriented defenders. Having halflings mostly be thieves reinforces their small size, nimbleness, and inquisitiveness.

The downside, of course, is that building up racial concept in the setting via mechanics necessarily limits the amount of player expression to define the character and their image to their own taste. The balance of "player authority to define their character" compared to "the ability of the system to define the setting" is an aesthetic consideration that needs to be decided by the table.

 

[Remathilis]

Because when you add mechanics to prioritize races into certain classes (whether that be via racial ASI, XP bonuses and penalties, racial class and level restrictions, race-as-class, or some other mechanism), you're working to have the mechanics reify familiar tropes into the mainline play. Having dwarves be mostly fighters or fighter/clerics reinforces the narrative of them as tough, community-oriented defenders. Having halflings mostly be thieves reinforces their small size, nimbleness, and inquisitiveness.

The downside, of course, is that building up racial concept in the setting via mechanics necessarily limits the amount of player expression to define the character and their image to their own taste. The balance of "player authority to define their character" compared to "the ability of the system to define the setting" is an aesthetic consideration that needs to be decided by the table.

Having played in that era, I'll say the amount of stereotyping and redundancy that it created was not worth the trope reinforcement. If dwarves are typically LG, very religious and martial, why can't they be paladins? If halflings were nimble and rural, why not rangers? If elven art is considered peak, why are there no elf bards? Why can gnomes only learn magic if it's based on illusion? Etc etc. Even BD&D was not immune to this as the gazetteers introduced dwarf clerics and elf high magic to bypass race as class. It's also why there are 31 flavors of elf (one with ASI that matches each class option).

Believe me, after several years of it, most players were happy to see it go. Like level limits, it had become a rule that really only existed on paper as there were plenty of ways (official and not) to bypass it.

 

[Corinnguard]

Because when you add mechanics to prioritize races into certain classes (whether that be via racial ASI, XP bonuses and penalties, racial class and level restrictions, race-as-class, or some other mechanism), you're working to have the mechanics reify familiar tropes into the mainline play. Having dwarves be mostly fighters or fighter/clerics reinforces the narrative of them as tough, community-oriented defenders. Having halflings mostly be thieves reinforces their small size, nimbleness, and inquisitiveness.

The downside, of course, is that building up racial concept in the setting via mechanics necessarily limits the amount of player expression to define the character and their image to their own taste. The balance of "player authority to define their character" compared to "the ability of the system to define the setting" is an aesthetic consideration that needs to be decided by the table.

Humans throughout the various editions of D&D weren't saddled by these restrictions like the other races were. They could apply an ASI to any one of their ability scores. They could pick any class they wanted to be and advance to any level they wanted to. They weren't given an XP penalty if their multiclassed character widened the gap between the two or more classes they were playing with.

It's almost like someone at TSR and later WoTC was worried that the other races would render humans obsolete. That no one would want to play a human when there were so many other interesting races to play in the RPG.

I am glad that D&D moved away from this.