D&D 5E What To Do With Racial ASIs?

Parmandur · Jul 27, 2020

dnd4vr said:
You know, the very fact you doubt what I say I am is pretty rude IMO. So, I've erased my response.

I mean, you see the irony in being offended at "not being believed" given the context, right?

Parmandur · Jul 27, 2020

dnd4vr said:
As a mathematician and statistician, I don't trust their data any more than the poll results here. Statistics can nearly always be twisted and turned to favor those collecting the data. So, until I get to see the WotC data first-hand (which I know isn't going to happen), I am not going to trust it any more than what we can get from here doing polls.

Also, as I have said repeatedly about the D&D Beyond data, a significant amount of those builds are PCs that are never played, which is another reason.

Finally, I think WotC skewed the information (not intentionally, btw) by presenting Feats as optional instead of the standard, with picking an ASI +2 as the option.

Anyway, IIRC you don't play with feats, do you? (I could be wrong and might be thinking of another poster...)

D&D Beyond controls for builds not being used, and controlled that way has a sample size of tens of Millions of characters.

Even granted maximum pessimism about Beyond's data, and we assumed that all D&D Beyond character builds were tests, it would remain significant that 3 out of 5 of the tens of Millions of such builds didn't bother with Feats still.

Guest 6801328 · Jul 27, 2020

Parmandur said:
D&D Beyond controls for builds not being used, and controlled that way has a sample size of tens of Millions of characters.

Even granted maximum pessimism about Beyond's data, and we assumed that all D&D Beyond character builds were tests, it would remain significant that 3 out of 5 of the tens of Millions of such builds didn't bother with Feats still.

Back off man. He's a statistician.

Maxperson · Jul 27, 2020

I just tried to make a character on D&D Beyond with the basic package. I chose a variant human to get a feat and it let me choose.........Grappler. That's it. My one choice. Grappler. No wonder people aren't picking feats.

doctorbadwolf · Jul 27, 2020

Parmandur said:
As a demonstrative excercise, count how many new Feats have been published since the PHB (18: 15 racial Feats in XGtE, 2 in Eberron and one Deep Gnome Feat in the Elemental Evil Guide from 2015), and divide it by the number of books with player crunch (10). Big contrast.

Or, look at the percentage of Feats from past UA articles made it into a book (out of 27 Racial Feats tested, only 15 made it into Xanathar's Guide, and all 17 Skill Feats were rejected, along with Greater Dragonmarks: can't recall any other major batch of Feats). It's kind of a meat grinder for Feats out there, probably because most are indifferent or hostile to them.

Well, we know from the video recently that the skill feats got axed because some of them were soundly rejected, and they felt it would be unsatisfying to have half the skills have a feat, so they decided to rethink how to let people specialize in a skill via feats, which lead to Practiced Expert.

So, I wouldn’t rush to conclude that fairly few feats make it through because of the general disinterest in them, necessarily.

Parmandur · Jul 27, 2020

Maxperson said:
I just tried to make a character on D&D Beyond with the basic package. I chose a variant human to get a feat and it let me choose.........Grappler. That's it. My one choice. Grappler. No wonder people aren't picking feats.

The most people don't use Feats data also holds for people who have paid for all of the books, per D&D Beyond's own data they have released in the past. 3 out of 5 characters that are actively used and have access to every option still don't use Feats. Most Human characters made are not even Variant Humans!

Parmandur · Jul 27, 2020

doctorbadwolf said:
Well, we know from the video recently that the skill feats got axed because some of them were soundly rejected, and they felt it would be unsatisfying to have half the skills have a feat, so they decided to rethink how to let people specialize in a skill via feats, which lead to Practiced Expert.

So, I wouldn’t rush to conclude that fairly few feats make it through because of the general disinterest in them, necessarily.

No, obviously some have made it through: but I have a hard time imagining that people who don't use Feats often give great ratings to them, and the ratio is still pretty stark.

I mean, I never use Feats and don't like them, but I do still give some Feats good marks when they look decent and give them a fair shake: the recent batch I gave all 1 or 4 on their scale (did not like the damage Feats, liked the Multiclassing Lite Feats and Practiced Expert).

Guest 6801328 · Jul 27, 2020

Parmandur said:
The most people don't use Feats data also holds for people who have paid for all of the books, per D&D Beyond's own data they have released in the past. 3 out of 5 characters that are actively used and have access to every option still don't use Feats. Most Human characters made are not even Variant Humans!

One of the many things that amaze me about these discussions is the (arrogant?) assumption that the people releasing D&D Beyond data are idiots and haven't done even the simplest, most obvious data scrubbing.

Maxperson · Jul 27, 2020

Parmandur said:
The most people don't use Feats data also holds for people who have paid for all of the books, per D&D Beyond's own data they have released in the past. 3 out of 5 characters that are actively used and have access to every option still don't use Feats. Most Human characters made are not even Variant Humans!

Um, not really. A huge number(possibly most) of the users use the base program, which is why the leading subclasses were primarily what the base program offers. So you have huge number of their users who are UNABLE to use feats, which skews the results terribly.

They've basically designed a system to skew the results in favor of their narrative.

Guest 6801328 · Jul 27, 2020

Maxperson said:
Um, not really. A huge number(possibly most) of the users use the base program, which is why the leading subclasses were primarily what the base program offers. So you have huge number of their users who are UNABLE to use feats, which skews the results terribly.

They've basically designed a system to skew the results in favor of their narrative.

First, D&D Beyond was not written by, nor is it owned by, WotC or Hasbro.

Aside from that point, that's quite an accusation you just made. Any evidence?

In the absence of that, I'll assume that people who are smart enough to write D&D Beyond are smart enough to scrub their own data. And that you are stating blatant, data-less conjecture as some kind of established fact.

D&D 5E What To Do With Racial ASIs?

What would you like to see done with racial trait ASIs?

Leave them alone! It makes the races more distinctive.

Make them floating +2 and +1 where you want them.

Move them to class and/or background instead.

Just get rid of them and boost point buy and the standard array.

Remove them and forget them, they just aren't needed.

Got another idea? Share it!

Ok, I said leave them alone, darn it! (second vote)

No, make them floating (second vote).

Come on, just move them the class and/or backgrounds (second vote).

Aw, just bump stuff so we don't need them (second vote).

Or, just remove them and don't worry about it (second vote).

But I said I have another idea to share! (second vote).

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