D&D (2024) 2024 Player's Handbook Reveal: Feats/Backgrounds/Species

[Parmandur]

As an aside, I've gamed with and had philosophical conversations with someone who earned a college degree in physics while living on the street, with no guaranteed place to sleep and no guaranteed source of food. As a result, there is nothing you can say to convince me a person living on the street, with no support network, cannot learn as much as a wealthy person with a private tutor. I have been shown incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.

Anyone can roll an 18.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

in 10 years of 5E, I have seen maybe 10 characters that do not have 14 Con.

I am not a min max guy but man I like a con bonus.

When you are out of hit points, you watch other people play which is no fun.

I guess it compares favorably to totally dead but

 

[Belen]

in 10 years of 5E, I have seen maybe 10 characters that do not have 14 Con.

I see it all the time. I often see 10s, 11s, 12s in Con. There are some players that do not care for the extra 1-2 HP if it means sacrificing a stat more important to their character.

 

[Blue]

i thing you're confusing influence over the rest of the character versus their weight of mechanics, i'm discussing the latter, i feel like this is only possible in your example for the background to be freely picked without repercussions as a result of removing the ASIs from background and giving them to class is my point though, your class now controls that extra few percent of determining your build by the ASI it provides, i want backgrounds and species to be freely pickable but i dont want them to be that as a result of them purely existing as ribbon features, i want them to have meaningful impact on a character's build but preferrably not in a way that limits creativity for optimisation choices.

Great, make them meaningful features, not ribbons. You even quoted where I talked about wanting to do that yet didn't reply.

Oh, and if I need to restrict background choices because of class, then class is at least partially dictating all of the background's mechanics, so that is increasing the class' mechanical influence.

Plus the option I was talking about from 13th Age 1e was that both race and class gave to ability scores, so it still wasn't putting all the mechanical of ability scores on class. It was just making sure class didn't have an oversized influence on picking the other ones.

 

[JEB]

And in general I agree. I would have been fine with keeping floating ASI.

But WotC seemingly views floating ASI as the implied equivalent of making ASI class-locked instead - which makes sense on some level, given that there are natural incentives to using them to boost whatever your character build is good at and any power gamer will do so by default.

The point of the bonus ASIs at character creation, apart from giving people who roll stats a small degree of control, is to help promote character build diversity. If everyone is just putting them where their class says they should, even if it's not strictly mandatory, then they're not serving that purpose.

IMHO "character build diversity" is a strong argument against floating ASI by default. But has Wizards hinted that this is their reason for this rather unexpected change? It's plausible, but I wasn't aware that they'd addressed it.

 

[MoonSong]

Do you have a copy of the new book?

So lets wait how it will be handled.
Whole section in the DMG about customizing origins could be possible. Only a sidebar in the PHB that will send you there?


If you refuse to use all materials, that is on you, not on the designers.

Let me restate the point, if it is not a standard option -or near standard like with feats and MC- it is entirely on the DMs hands, and the average DM out there is very stingy with optional stuff. It doesn't matter how generous I myself am as a DM, nothing I can do helps my chances of getting to do optional stuff. And I have no reason to doubt that it is any different for the average player, (and the player with access to a long standing group with a good DM is far from the average)

Also the lore is not gone. Noone can take that away.

Will we get more half-elf NPCS? In the art? Will a new player that starts with the new books even know? When was the last time you even thought of including a Deva NPC? Lore is created and taken away all the time.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Let me restate the point, if it is not a standard option -or near standard like with feats and MC- it is entirely on the DMs hands, and the average DM out there is very stingy with optional stuff. It doesn't matter how generous I myself am as a DM, nothing I can do helps my chances of getting to do optional stuff. And I have no reason to doubt that it is any different for the average player, (and the player with access to a long standing group with a good DM is far from the average)

The DMG can have standard options too.

Will we get more half-elf NPCS? In the art? Will a new player that starts with the new books even know? When was the last time you even thought of including a Deva NPC? Lore is created and taken away all the time.

Why should I include devas? I did nkt play them when they were in the 4e PHB.

But my first character wa a half-elf bard in 2e.
Becauseof lore? No.
Because they could be bards and compared to humans they had better stats.
So the only reason for me to be a half elf was optimizing from the start.

 

[mellored]

As an aside, I've gamed with and had philosophical conversations with someone who earned a college degree in physics while living on the street, with no guaranteed place to sleep and no guaranteed source of food. As a result, there is nothing you can say to convince me a person living on the street, with no support network, cannot learn as much as a wealthy person with a private tutor. I have been shown incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.

There is a very big difference with modern access to information than medieval access to information.

We have public libraries, mandatory public education, internet, cell phones, and student loans. Information is nearly free today. But it was very expensive before.

 

[Horwath]

I see it all the time. I often see 10s, 11s, 12s in Con. There are some players that do not care for the extra 1-2 HP if it means sacrificing a stat more important to their character.

you couldn't pay me to play a 10 CON character.

I once played 8 CON in 3.5e, 4th level fighter, archer, an Orc came into melee, one attack, crit with greataxe, -10 HP, Dead.
learned my lesson...

 

[cbwjm]

you couldn't pay me to play a 10 CON character.

I once played 8 CON in 3.5e, 4th level fighter, archer, an Orc came into melee, one attack, crit with greataxe, -10 HP, Dead.
learned my lesson...

I find having a 10 or 14 Con in 5e doesn't really matter much when it comes to hit points, at low levels anything that would kill you if you had 10 Con will probably also kill you at 14 and at high levels you typically have more than enough hp and/or allies that will help you back on your feet. I mostly increase Con for other effects, such as a barbarian's unarmoured defence or if I want my wizard to have a somewhat decent chance to keep concentrating (though not even that's a given).