D&D (2024) D&D species article

[Tales and Chronicles]

Dragonborn and Goliath do get "magical" abilities though - breath weapon and self-enlargement. And dwarfs have a temporary tremorsense which feels kind of magical, though I could see it as simply requiring a level of hyperfocus that wasn't indefinitely sustainable.

Yup. That my (small) grippe with this design.

 

[Corinnguard]

Dragonborn and Goliath do get "magical" abilities though

Only if someone were to update the Metabreath Spells and Metabreath Feats from 3e's Draconomicon for the Dragonborn. Since the number of uses for their breath weapon is tied to their PB, it would be very cool if they could gain the means to alter what they can do with it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

And this is exactly why I pin it on social media. They (Wizards) didnt even fix anything they just played a shell game in the hopes of placating people.

Yeah maybe. I mean, it is very weird to watch a game company fix a major and common complaint with the game, fix it from multiple angles, that fix gains broad acceptance, and then... they reverse the fix into something that's going to annoy people a lot lol! It annoys the by-species people, and it annoys the free-choice people, and together that's probably the vast majority of D&D players. And it wasn't playtested!

Honestly they could so easily have just said "Your DM will have picked X, Y or Z" (or "Your group including the DM should together decide on...) where X is free choice, Y is background-limited, and Z is fixed by species) and pleased pretty much everyone. But they think they know better!

Also do we know anything about 2024's report to non-single-species characters? Because the deleting half-races thing was a mixed bag social-justice-wise (erase biracial people to please people concerned about racist implications, like great lol very borrowing from Peter to pay Paul) and the replacement approach WotC had in the very early 2024 playtest was absolutely ghastly and had much stronger "racist implications" than half-races did - you could look like whatever, but you had to only have the specific abilities from one race, which you were mechanically. If that's what they've stuck with, WotC haven't been listening to social media even, they've just been designing in a vacuum and ignoring input (very much fitting the crude stereotype of the "well-meaning white liberal designer who thinks he knows exactly how to fix all this stuff" but who actually is pretty ignorant, which was proven to be somewhat true by a number of videogame companies in the '00s and '10s - like whoever decided Jacob's backstory, behaviour and plot development in ME2/3, good god).

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The experience has tought the PC races/species should avoid possible typecasting about classes, for example the gnome in the past too focused into to be rogue or illusionist.

The racial feats should help each PC specie could have got its own style.

I would rather gnomes can speak with all animals like Disney princesses and not only with a little number.

I love the idea "racial spellike abilies" can be reloaded spending spell slots.

I suspect we will see again in UA articles the ardlings and the glitchlings. Maybe changes about the lore. The question is how are going to sell the ardlings when there are lots of furry PC species by 3PPs.

 

[Parmandur]

Unfortunately 2024 throws that approach away in favour of limiting you by background instead of race

I mean, it's a pretty huge difference: the Background choices in the 2024 book are really each a half-Tasha's with 7 possible combos for each Background. It isn't "all Acolytes are +2 Wisdom and +1 Intelligence", it is +2 floating choice between Wis, Int, and Cha, with a floating +1 for the same set. Or +1 to all three.

Very different from "all Wood Elves are This".

 

[Charlaquin]

Dragonborn and Goliath do get "magical" abilities though - breath weapon and self-enlargement. And dwarfs have a temporary tremorsense which feels kind of magical, though I could see it as simply requiring a level of hyperfocus that wasn't indefinitely sustainable.

Sure. If you want a completely nonmagical character, your options are very limited. Though, 5e D&D probably isn’t the game for you in that case, as magic suffuses practically everything in its world. Even most ostensibly nonmagical characters tend to have extraordinary capabilities that one might reasonably consider magical.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Reading the article I personally find this bit slightly ominous:

While these ten species have seen revisions for the 2024 Player’s Handbook, you can still use species and backgrounds from previous books. A sidebar in the character creation rules chapter gives you suggestions for how to adapt backgrounds and species from older books when creating new characters for the 2024 core rules.

So like, you can't just use an older species? I mean, obviously with a background, some adaptation would be necessary, but a species? That is a bit worrying. Why would they be "adapted"? Given how extremely inconsistently they were designed, I can't think of any guidelines that aren't going to cause a huge mess and really back 2014 further incompatible with 2024, despite previous claims.

I guess they idea is they've moved from stuff from the race/species design-space to the background design space, but it seem to me that the backwards-compatible and sensible approach would be "please use 2014 backgrounds with 2014 races", not "play around trying to adapt both when race/species were completely inconsistently designed in 2014".

Also there's kind of vibe that you're "not allowed" to use the 2014 rules to create new characters from this, which is seems new and weird.

 

[Hriston]

Exactly this. And, on a philosophical level, I hated that we took things like not only ability scores but also languages and proficiencies and tied them so emphatically to "race." Like there couldn't be a skinny, nerdy dwarf who just wanted to study magic and didn't automatically know how to use a hammer while speaking a genetically imbued language.

This seems like an intentional misunderstanding of the 2014 rules. I mean, what about them suggests there couldn't be a dwarf like that?

 

[Parmandur]

Reading the article I personally find this bit slightly ominous:



So like, you can't just use an older species? I mean, obviously with a background, some adaptation would be necessary, but a species? That is a bit worrying. Why would they be "adapted"? Given how extremely inconsistently they were designed, I can't think of any guidelines that aren't going to cause a huge mess and really back 2014 further incompatible with 2024, despite previous claims.

I guess they idea is they've moved from stuff from the race/species design-space to the background design space, but it seem to me that the backwards-compatible and sensible approach would be "please use 2014 backgrounds with 2014 races", not "play around trying to adapt both when race/species were completely inconsistently designed in 2014".

Also there's kind of vibe that you're "not allowed" to use the 2014 rules to create new characters from this, which is seems new and weird.

Nothing terribly concerning there, we got this in the first UA:

I can imagine they might have suggestions on adding Feats to Backgrounds that don't already have them, and assigning ASI.

 

[Corinnguard]

The question is how are going to sell the ardlings when there are lots of furry PC species by 3PPs.

If they were to bring them up again. Their debut as the Tiefling's opposite number didn't make much sense to begin with, not when the Aasimar had the role for several editions. It would have made more sense if we had been told that they were going to be Guardinal-descended Aasimar. Then I would have been very happy to try one out.

They could have been like PF1's Idyllkin Aasimar.

Idyllkin often possess bestial qualities such as dragon scales, fish scales, fur, manes, or talons. Slit pupils, pronounced canines, and furry ears are all common indicators of an aasimar’s agathion background. Just as agathions take on different traits depending on their animal aspect, so too do idyllkin. Descendants of avorals often possess feathery hair and enjoy wide-open areas such as plains, while the progeny of leonals are aggressive and often have sharp, clawlike fingernails. Many idyllkin, regardless of their animal aspect, feel called to walk the path of the druid, and idyllkin are among the most likely aasimars to become such protectors of nature.