D&D (2024) D&D species article

[Micah Sweet]

I'd have to go look, but I think there are some similar things in LU. @Micah Sweet ?

If a more complex game is the goal, there are certainly ways to do it, but I dont think 5e first wants to be that, and second has really just failed to be consistent.

I again have to look at Fizbans Dragonborn, and just go 'why?'

There's a better way to make the species options, and we dont have to go hog wild to get there.

There are definitely similar things in LU, as has been discussed. It becomes a matter of your preference for a rules base.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I've heard there's something vaguely similar, but it isn't integrated together the way I would have done it.

I'm aware that 5e doesn't want to have any complexity. I'm also of the opinion that that's a stupid decision. Making the game EXCLUSIVELY complicated is bad, yes. Making it NEVER complicated is also bad. Their fear of ever having slightly complicated mechanics (for anything except spellcasting, of course!) has pushed them into numerous bad design decisions. Sometimes, the things they want to do are just complicated, there's no way to do them without some kind of complexity. Rather than accepting this fact, they've tried to run from it, to the detriment of the system. And this has ripple out effects. It's harder, even for something like Level Up*, to do more/better/interesting things, because you're either having to build an entirely new foundation and hope it jives with the existing stuff, or awkwardly extend from a foundation not at all ready or able to support such extensions.

*NGL, part of my avoidance of it is simply the naming, "Level Up" and "Advanced 5e" are both terrible product names.

I try never to let the name of a product deter me from the content (not that I have an issue with Level Up as a name).

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I can't wait to see a revised rules update of the Fairy. I imagine the video preview of the "glowed-up" Fairy will go something like this:

Talking guy: "The fantasy of the Fairy is getting to play a Tiny creature, so we've given the Fairy the ability to become Tiny for 10 minutes per Long Rest."

Nodding guy: "For that fleeting moment, the new Fairy really captures the feel of some other game system which has actual Tiny creatures as playable species. Well done."

Am I the the only one who likes the small instead of tiny Fairy? I mean it still leaves things open to a tiny Fey later.

 

[Scribe]

I mean it still leaves things open to a tiny Fey later.

Technically? Sure.

In reality, the Tiny Fairy died when they pushed a Small Fairy that can Shrink (a few times a day tops).

Just the worst.

 

[mellored]

Am I the the only one who likes the small instead of tiny Fairy? I mean it still leaves things open to a tiny Fey later.

I liked having a tiny option.

There are enough other small raced.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Am I the the only one who likes the small instead of tiny Fairy? I mean it still leaves things open to a tiny Fey later.

The reason why the Fairy is small isn’t to “leave things open for a tiny fey later.” It’s for the same reason why none of the big races (Minotaurs, Centaurs, Goliaths, Firbolg) are Large even if it would make sense for them to be/their monster equivalents are Large. It’s because 5e is not balanced to support any species that aren’t Small or Medium and WotC thinks it’s too hard to balance too be worth it.

WotC in general has been pretty hesitant to innovate on the 2014 system. They did this with playable creature types for a long time. It took 4 years to get a non-humanoid playable option (Ravnica’s Centaurs are Fey), and 4 more years after that to get one that wasn’t a Fey (Autognomes, Plasmoids, and Thri-Kreen in Spelljammer). And we still don’t have playable options for most of the creature types.

I highly doubt that there will be any Tiny or Large playable races in the foreseeable future of 5e, if they ever come. It’s not because WotC wants to leave the option of them open for future species, but because WotC has been extremely cautious about introducing new playable options that the system wasn’t designed to support.

 

[I'm A Banana]

One topic to tease out, here: there is a fundamental issue with size in D&D that is very difficult to resolve.

We want itty bitty fey folk and great big giant folk in our game. We want halflings and humans. We want size to matter.

The rules do not want size to matter. Size is part of power budget. A mechanically significant size decrease is a huge handicap across the power budget and a significant limiter on class choice. If, say, the best weapons are out of reach for you, you're pushed to make a character who doesn't use the best weapons, which means you can make a "bad choice" of being a Small character who is a Fighter, for instance. On the other side of the coin, if you're larger, and thus do more damage with weapons, you can make a "bad choice" of being anything other than the option that grants you Large status if you're a Fighter.

This is a solvable problem. The way WotC has currently chosen to solve that problem is to make size a temporary change with specific modifiers. Easier to account for in the power budget if it's not always on or if it has very specific results. Part of the problem there is that it fails to address the central fantasy - that of BEING a different size. You only get to be a different size sometimes. When it's not too inconvenient for the rules. In a certain, specific way that not everything is. For me, that's fundamentally unsatisfying. If I want to play a large character, I want that ALWAYS ON, I want to imagine my brick house of a character stooping to enter rooms and daintily picking up spoons. I want it to be something that I have to deal with as a player. If I don't care about playing a large character, then the appeal of growing large is purely a "is it time for my combat buff?" kind of question. Imagining them as being actually Large is secondary (at best). Fun sometimes, but not part of why I'm playing that character, really. Goliaths were always "as big as Medium gets," and that's fine. They don't need to also fill the niche of being Large, especially in such a half-hearted kind of way.

I'm sympathetic that it's hard to solve this problem for D&D in general. My preferred solution is typically to lean into abstract distances and Theater of the Mind combat, where things like reach and area of effect and occupied squares and whatnot disappear. D&D's legacy of tactical combat on a grid isn't going anywhere soon, so that's not really a viable path for the game officially.

I think they could lean into species being a more significant part of your character's power, which could give room for significant effects like large size, but it's looking like that's not the direction they chose, perhaps in a bid to make character creation easier (maybe?). Big effects like size differences, flight, or, idk, being a quadruped or a jellyfish, things that would disrupt some of the game's expectations of what an "adventurer" kind of looks like, these create weird and unknowable rules interactions that can be a big lift for various tables, and definitely aren't core-book material (don't want your giants and your fairies facing the newbies, really).

To me, giving Goliaths the ability to change size is a little bit like socks for Christmas. Okay, it's not nothing, it is useful, it might even be kind of cool and welcome, but it ain't really what I'm looking for under the tree, y'know?

 

[Neonchameleon]

Nope. This is the new paradigm; if it is supernatural, it is magic, and if it is magic, it is spells. A sufficient plurality agrees with this decision to prevent changing until it is far too late.

Last time I checked Soulknives, Psi Warriors, and World Tree Barbarians were all highly supernatural - but none of it was spells.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Last time I checked Soulknives, Psi Warriors, and World Tree Barbarians were all highly supernatural - but none of it was spells.

Haven't seen World Tree, so I can't comment on that. Soulknives and Psi Warriors are barely even supernatural; the former gets, what, a teleport? Some telepathy? Not exactly what I'd call "highly supernatural". Psi Warrior even less so--except when it casts the telekinesis spell. And, having looked it up, the World Tree Barbarian...is basically exactly the same as the Psi Warrior and Soulknife, having some teleport abilities, some shield abilities, and getting reach on weapons, and...that's it. It's not "highly supernatural". It barely registers a blip on my thaumometer; features like this can be completely mundane (see: the Chef feat, the Inspiring Leader feat, PDK, etc., etc.--not that all of these are GOOD, mind, just that they exist and are mundane.)

The fact that one of your three things still relies on nicking spellcasting rules to do its job is really funny though, I'll give you that much.

 

[Neonchameleon]

The reason why the Fairy is small isn’t to “leave things open for a tiny fey later.” It’s for the same reason why none of the big races (Minotaurs, Centaurs, Goliaths, Firbolg) are Large even if it would make sense for them to be/their monster equivalents are Large. It’s because 5e is not balanced to support any species that aren’t Small or Medium and WotC thinks it’s too hard to balance too be worth it.

It's not that it's "too hard to balance" - it's that 5e game design is about never breaking within normal parameters. Unless you have a weird race (e.g. plasmids) then large races are stopped cold by small doorways and the like. Which means that a lot of dungeons are simply going to fail.

5e's design is not about giving people the best experiences. It's about making sure that as few people as possible come away with outright negative play experiences. And an adventure grinding to a halt because someone can't fit through a door or down a corridor is a negative experience.