D&D (2024) D&D species article

[Chaosmancer]

Otoh, if they can grow and retract their wings, their smiths and tailors could ergonomically design armor and clothing that were built with their fellow Dragonborn in mind.

After all, 14th-level Draconic Sorcerers have to deal with the same problem whenever they use their Dragon Wings feature.

Which is exactly why I will guarantee the sorcerer feature is likely to call out those wings are made of energy as well.

And sure, Dragonborn smiths will do that... but what if you got magical armor off of a hobgoblin warlord, are you going to be unable to use your feature until you can find a dragonborn smith? That is exactly the thinking that led to all wings that are formed being energy. Because instead of just handwaving that sort of thing as not an issue, people would insist on making a huge deal out of it. Especially since flight is so heavily feared by the community.

 

[Hriston]

No, the game requires my character to speak Dwarven,

This is false. There is no requirement for your dwarf PC to ever utter a word of Dwarven.

be proficient with those weapons,

That weapon list is redundant. Very few characters would ever use all of them, which shows you don't have to use any of them.

and put extra points into constitution plus strength or wisdom.

Which doesn't prevent your PC from having a low Constitution, Strength, or Wisdom. You, the player, get to decide how to assign your ability scores.

I literally have to do those things. RAW. What I wrote was exactly accurate. I'm not sure what you are not getting.

None of this prevents you from creating and playing the character you've described.

Why? Why does being a dwarf make you automatically proficient in fighting with a hammer, for example?

To give players of dwarf PCs the option of using "dwarfy" weapons.

Is it, like, genetically coded into dwarves?

No, unless you want that to be the fiction about your character.

Now, it's true that I could ignore those required proficiencies and have sub-optimal ability scores for my wizard. But why should I have to? What if I want to play a dwarf without being required to waste proficiencies and ability score points?

I really don't know what you're talking about here.

 

[Corinnguard]

And sure, Dragonborn smiths will do that... but what if you got magical armor off of a hobgoblin warlord, are you going to be unable to use your feature until you can find a dragonborn smith?

If my Dragonborn fighter got his claws on a suit of magical armor off of a hobgoblin warlord, I think he would make a choice between wearing the new armor or using his feature. It would depend, of course, on what kind of magical armor it happens to be. What properties does it have? Would those properties really benefit him and so forth? Or would another martial character in my party benefit even more than my character would with the new armor?

If I found out that they could benefit him, I would have him wait on wearing the new armor until he saw a smith who could make the appropriate adjustments. Then my character would still benefit from using his wings and the new armor.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I do want to take a step back, take a moment, and consider WHY spells instead of abilities, rather than just knee-jerking that this is a terrible atrocity against all that is good and sacred. Because I think there is a good reason for it, even if I don't necessarily always agree with it.

Let us take the Forest Gnomes.

In 2014, we had this: "Speak with Small Beasts: Through sounds and gestures, you can communicate simple ideas with Small or smaller beasts. Forest gnomes love animals and often keep squirrels, badgers, rabbits, moles, woodpeckers, and other creatures as beloved pets." The bolded is the ONLY rules text here.

Now, let us look at Speak with Animals from 2014: "You gain the ability to comprehend and verbally communicate with beasts for the duration. The knowledge and awareness of many beasts is limited by their intelligence, but at minimum, beasts can give you information about nearby locations and monsters, including whatever they can perceive or have perceived within the past day. You might be able to persuade a beast to perform a small favor for you, at the DM's discretion."

By making this "all things are spells!!!" change.... you actually get a LOT more stuff. Forest Gnomes before could not understand animals, or at the least it was very vague if they could, because you can communicate simple ideas with them, but that doesn't mean they can communicate simple ideas with you. Also, this ability just got a lot stronger, because before you were limited to small or tiny beasts, now you can speak with any beast of any size. Additionally, you have more guidance on what the beast can say to you, how long their memory might last, and ect.

Now, would I like this to be a permanent, always on ability.... actually no, because then the player would ask what the dogs are saying when I say they hear dogs barking. Constantly. But making it an at-will, non-spell ability would be fine for me... but even if I do that, I would keep the reference to this spell because it tells me a lot more about how this ability works than the previous version.

Looking to the issue between Misty Step and Astral Step, there are a few details we don't know that can change things. Specifically, we know that the rules on spellcasting have been altered, but we don't know how. How does this comparison look if you can cast spells with an action and a bonus action? How would the comparison look if you only can't spend two spell slots in the same turn, meaning a non-spell slot use of a spell would allow you to double cast? And even if they change nothing about it... it is rather trivial to say "when you use this ability, it does not count as casting a spell" and be done with it.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

TSR and WOTC designers historically and currently can't help putting their own preferences above the desires of their customers. They rarely try new ideas in a fair sensible manner if at all.

I mean. Who buys that stuff?
More seriously: do you mean they do not design what you like?

Not that the species are how I would do them, but the designers' job is to make a game that people buy. People buy 5e, so they are right by default.
If you don't like it, don't buy it. If enough people don't buy it, maybe they try something different.

 

[Chaosmancer]

If my Dragonborn fighter got his claws on a suit of magical armor off of a hobgoblin warlord, I think he would make a choice between wearing the new armor or using his feature. It would depend, of course, on what kind of magical armor it happens to be. What properties does it have? Would those properties really benefit him and so forth? Or would another martial character in my party benefit even more than my character would with the new armor?

If I found out that they could benefit him, I would have him wait on wearing the new armor until he saw a smith who could make the appropriate adjustments. Then my character would still benefit from using his wings and the new armor.

Exactly.

SO they made it energy wings, so none of that comes up and matters.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

And becomes more magical every time they release another book.

 

[Corinnguard]

Exactly.

SO they made it energy wings, so none of that comes up and matters.

And thus remove any need for the player to role-play this particular moment within an adventure with their character. Kind of takes all of the fun out of it for me. I would rather deal with the challenge of having my character find an armor smith who could make the adjustments to my newly acquired suit of armor.

 

[the Jester]

No, but I think most would agree that these were clear upgrades. And I don’t think there’s a huge “Mask of the Wild” contingent out there.

True enough.

Is everything being powered up a good thing though? I dislike some of these changes more than anything else I have seen so far about the 2024 rules.

 

[Minigiant]

I mean. Who buys that stuff?
More seriously: do you mean they do not design what you like?

Not that the species are how I would do them, but the designers' job is to make a game that people buy. People buy 5e, so they are right by default.
If you don't like it, don't buy it. If enough people don't buy it, maybe they try something different.

No I said what I said.

The designers design what they like and only adapt to what the minimum required that the consumers agree with. Nor do they carefully introduce new ideas.

That's why the original Dragonborn and tiefling had problems.

That's why they reversed course on the Tasha's race rules.

That's why the species includes cantrips and spells but they don't include the new general ideas of Weapon Masteries and Expertise.

There's always an attempt to walk back into traditional ideas of D&D while new ideas are displayed in a sloppy or slapdash matter with bad mechanics and/or unfocused lore.