Mainstream News Discovers D&D's Species Terminology Change

Several mainstream news sites have discovered that Dungeons & Dragons now refers to a character's species instead of race. The New York Times ended 2024 with a profile on Dungeons & Dragons, with a specific focus on the 2024 Player's Handbook's changes on character creation, the in-game terminology change from race to species, and the removal of Ability Score Increases tied to a character's species. The article included quotes by Robert J. Kuntz and John Stavropoulos and also referenced Elon Musk's outrage over Jason Tondro's forward in The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons.

The piece sparked additional commentary on a variety of sites, including Fox News and The Telegraph, most of which focused on how the changes were "woke." Around the same time, Wargamer.com published a more nuanced piece about the presentation of orcs in the 2024 Player's Handbook, although its headline noted that the changes were "doomed" because players would inevitably replace the orc's traditional role as aggressor against civilization with some other monstrous group whose motivations and sentience would need to be ignored in order for adventurers to properly bash their heads in.

[Update--the Guardian has joined in also, now.]

Generally speaking, the mainstream news pieces failed to address the non-"culture war" reasons for many of these changes - namely that Dungeons & Dragons has gradually evolved from a game that promoted a specific traditional fantasy story to a more generalized system meant to capture any kind of fantasy story. Although some campaign settings and stories certainly have and still do lean into traditional fantasy roles, the kinds that work well with Ability Score Increases tied to a character's species/race, many other D&D campaigns lean away from these aspects or ignore them entirely. From a pragmatic standpoint, uncoupling Ability Score Increases from species not only removes the problematic bioessentialism from the game, it also makes the game more marketable to a wider variety of players.

Of course, the timing of many of these pieces is a bit odd, given that the 2024 Player's Handbook came out months ago and Wizards of the Coast announced plans to make these changes back in 2022. It's likely that mainstream news is slow to pick up on these types of stories. However, it's a bit surprising that some intrepid reporter didn't discover these changes for four months given the increased pervasiveness of Dungeons & Dragons in mainstream culture.

We'll add that EN World has covered the D&D species/race terminology changes as they developed and looks forward to covering new developments and news about Dungeons & Dragons in 2025 and beyond.

 

[ezo]

I'd only eat pasture-raised orcs. Anything else is immoral.

Good luck finding ones without growth hormones.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Point. All this grumbling around superstrong halflings is a strawman, to distract from the real issue, which is intelligence. At the beginning of 5e orcs had a penalty to intelligence, which meant that with rolled stats they could have an intelligence of 2 - equal to a cow. So clearly nothing morally wrong in enslaving them. Or eating them.

Mindflayers are equally strong, but they are more dextrous, more resistant and vastly more charismatic and wise as well as being intelligent beyond imagination. There is a point to be made that they should be the master race and we should go the way of the Neanderthal next to them as it would allow a more efficient use of natural resources. Surprisingly, we just label them evil instead of accepting that we lost the evolutionary race with them and we should fade to leave them their right place in the spotlight for the greater good...

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

missing the forest for the trees… then take any of the playable species with no bonus to intelligence. The point is that basing that decision on minimum possible intelligence rather than average is hugely flawed

The default way is standard array now, so nothing under 8. Non-heroes don't roll, they use the NPC stat block (so they all have the same stats, the general variety within a species being contained mostly within that same point, so having a 12 is already much above average, borderly... superhuman). So only a hero could possibly roll a 3 (by rolling 4 ones on 4d6, since it's 4d6-keep-highest). That's a very low % of heroes with cow-like intelligence. Even a 4 INT human wouldn't be in this case above animal level intelligence: in 5e, the baboon, the giant weasel and the octopus, have 4 INT.

Heroes are not typical, they are exceptions, we're told. Why not one with child-like intelligence? That's your Hans im Glück tale.

 

[Remathilis]

Good luck finding ones without growth hormones.

That +2 strength has to come from somewhere.

 

[CreamCloud0]

That doesn't make sense with how the game actually functions. Giants actually have higher strength than smaller species in the game, they don't just have 11, as an average giant strength. Same applies to basically everything.

giants however, are not a player character species, their balance does not need to be tied to how players stats are scaled.

Nor do mechanics reflect your idea. Strength gives similar bonus to ability checks and damage regardless of your species. If strength 14 halfling is actually weaker than a strength 14 human or orc, certainly they would not hit as hard, would not be as good at breaking doors, etc.

this is partially what size is meant to impose but i don't especially care to make a halfling 'worse' at strength than a human so long as the orc is better than either of the other two, which their species traits should be providing bonuses to make them better at those things.

 

[FrozenNorth]

At 1st level you gained two fixed ability score boosts (a +2), a fixed ability score flaw (-2) and a free ability score boost (which could be added to any of the ability scores not covered by the two fixed ability score boosts. You could even use it to negate the ability score flaw if you wanted to) from your Ancestry. The Backgrounds gave you one fixed and one floating ability score boost. Your character class gave you an ability score boost. Lastly, you were also given four free ability score boosts. 1st level characters initially had an ability score cap at 18 and all ability scores started at 10.

And they very quickly backed off the fixed ability scores stat boosts when their customers complained about not being able to make Dwarf Bards or Sorcerers, or the Elf Constitution penalty limited a bunch of Elf characters.

Even before the revised edition came out, you could take the « two free stat boosts » on all ancestry options.

 

[Remathilis]

And they very quickly backed off the fixed ability scores stat boosts when their customers complained about not being able to make Dwarf Bards or Sorcerers, or the Elf Constitution penalty limited a bunch of Elf characters.

Even before the revised edition came out, you could take the « two free stat boosts » on all ancestry options.

So Paizo basically Tasha'd their ancestry based attribute mods?

I'm shocked. Shocked! Well, not that shocked.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

giants however, are not a player character species, their balance does not need to be tied to how players stats are scaled.

this is partially what size is meant to impose but i don't especially care to make a halfling 'worse' at strength than a human so long as the orc is better than either of the other two, which their species traits should be providing bonuses to make them better at those things.

As an orc, a species created by Gruumsh, who actually loved war, you get an innate ability to wield melee weapons. The voice of Gruumsh resonate in your mind and helps you wield them better. Get +1 to hit and +1 damage with melee weapon. Also, he built you with a strong frame, get +1 to any STR ability check.

On the other hand, Gruumsh's voice makes it harder to concentrate on complex, abstract problems as he's easily distracted and this constant noise gives a penalty of 1 to any INT ability check and spellcasting ability.

You have the exact same thing as +2 STR, an explanation that emphasize that raspeciancestries aren't biological as the Gods create life, not DNA -- that's how you can have cross-species or even cross-class (as in reptiles and mammals) children, and nothing that would evoke anything on our real world, and one can rate every species on a 3-18 scale -- An homebrew Hill giants PCs would get a +4 raspeciancestral ability to bash people's head. Is everyone happy with my vorcs ?

 

[CreamCloud0]

As an orc, a species created by Gruumsh, who actually loved war, you get an innate ability to wield melee weapons. The voice of Gruumsh resonate in your mind and helps you wield them better. Get +1 to hit and +1 damage with melee weapon. Also, he built you with a strong frame, get +1 to any STR ability check.

You have the exact same thing as +2 STR, an explanation that emphasize that raspeciancestries aren't biological as the Gods create life, not DNA, and nothing that would evoke anything on our real world. Is everyone happy with my vorcs ?

that's the same thing as +2 STR because all you've done is just rewritten the benefits of +2 STR (and martial weapon proficiency) out as an 'ability',

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

that's the same thing as +2 STR because all you've done is just rewritten the benefits of +2 STR (and martial weapon proficiency) out as an 'ability',

Exactly!

That's mechanicall the same thing, except it avoid the problem of saying "this species is stronger and less intelligent" which is making people uncomfortable due to real world associations. It also removes any relation between biological species and ability (it's not that orcs are strong, it's your hero who was blessed in such away by the orc-creating god, not all orcs aren't necessarily like you -- refer to the NPC stat block for the average orc, or human).

It sure makes orcs heroes better fighters than any other species' heroes (and less apt wizards), but the jury seemed split on whether this is a good idea (some saying it is necessary to play against type, other saying it will force any STR-build martial character to be an orc to be top effective and sometime you want to play an halfling barbarian), but since these goal are openly conflicting, it's difficult to please both sides at the same time.