Level Up (A5E) #1 Origins Playtest Document - (Heritage) Nitty Gritty Feedback

[clearstream]

Well before that can be answered for folks worshiping at the porcelain throne known as bounded accuracy we need to cut through the hyperbole & vague generalities devoid of context.

Spoiler: so lets break it down

• Expertise
  • Steam Tiefling culture - Choose one from Arcana, History, Investigation, Nature, or Religion. The only thing noteworthy is that it might result in expertise for folks specializing in areas other than thieve's tools stealth or diplomancering.
  • no more expertise...
• "Doubled"
  • Dragonbornragonbound->metalic dragon - choose one from history, nature, medicine, & religion to be proficient & have the bonus doubled.
  • Dwarf:Gifted artisan - Double proficiency bonus on an artisan tool. This could be triple or quintuple & have the same effect. Until we seeing playtest stuff for things like "a crafting system for magic items" or "a more detailed skill system" this has basically zero effect on any game or bounded accuracy because tihieve's tools are not an artisan tool
  • Mountain Dwarf culture - doubled proficiency on history(int) related to the origin of stonework. In an edition where int is the ultimate dump stat & int skills are devalued history is not even one of the better int skills & is really just a pseudo catchall last ditch "g needs to get some info & the party flubbed arcana/religion/etc." Total nonissue till we start seeing that more detailed skill system even in a game like mine where the gm tries hard to lean on history.
  • Hill dwarf culture - Double proficiency bonus on survival(wis). Given that the core phb ranger literally has a poorly regarded ribbon granting them immunity to getting lost/slowed by difficult terrain/slowed by moving stealthily with no skill check & one of the core phb backgrounds can automatically find enough food & water to supply a party of six while traveling with no skill check time spent or slow in travel speed you don't get to be outraged over this nonissue & we really cab't even judge it util we start seeing playtest packets involving other areas.
  • Double proficiency on history or arcana when making checks related to magical alchemical or technological items. This is sligtly more useful than the mountain dwarf stonework history but still not an issue since it's not significantly different from something gnomes already have in core.
  • Forgotten folx - once per long rest you can give an ally doubled proficiency bonus to something you are helping them with as well as rolling with advantage.. This falls far enough short from "you cast disintegrate without using a spell slot once per long rest" so isn't a big deal since its a really impressive hail mary ace in the hole but is also something that could easily go unused a significant umber of long rest cycles. The sky is not falling.
  • Halfling kithbain culture - Double insight proficiency checks. What is most notable is that it has a chance of thwarting diplomancy. The players usually know when an npc is feeding them a line of creative truths & alternative facts. All this does is make bob likely to figure it out & maybe give their character a reason to cast their 1/rest detect thoughts. again not an issue
  • Humanie hard survivor - double your con bonus for determining how long you can go without food. Even as someone who thinks it's too easy to ignore & bypass hurdles related to carrying/finding food & water this one is a total nonissue beside bob being proficient in death saves because I'm pretty sure that size small creatures already do that or did it in old versions & it was not a huge deal even then.
  • profiteer culture - double bonus with cartographer's & navigator's tools. total nonissue... see notes on ranger/outlander in hill dwarf. There are literally discussions about how this culture might be too weak & need some improvements & people have made actual sound arguments involving more than vague nothingness & hyperbole supporting such an action.
  • orcish communal culture - choose any one skill to be proficient in & double your proficiency bonus on. Cool but not a big deal.
  • demon cultist culture undead graft option - double proficiency bonus on athletics checks to grapple sove & performother combat maneuvers. Given that those are pretty terrible ways of wasting an attack in the vast majority of situations we can't really even judge it until we start seeing playtest packets touching on areas like "A range of martial maneuvers to give non-spellcasters more options in combat" , "a more tactical combat system", & maybe "a more detailed skill system"
  • nomad culture - Proficient in land vehicles along with tinkers tools and double your proficiency bonus to control navigate or repair them... stop the presses & notify eliminster about this new threat to the realm y0! See also ranger/outlander blurb in hill dwarf.

In short... chill out & stop wasting everyone's time because you can't be bothered to make your argument about any specific heritage/culture/background or realize how weak that point is so instead chose to argue the sky is falling & hope nobody takes the time to check.

edit: Can't help but notice that my ctrl-f found only about a quarter as many instances as your inflated citation of 40 & dozen plus .

When I ctrl-F on the pdf, and type in "advantage" I get 45 cases. Checking them, most are legitimately advantage. I assume a few might be narrative. What term did you search for?

That's more than one use per two pages of the document. I call that overuse. I'm not interested in arguing that it is wrong to give X race advantage in Y rule: it is wrong to overuse the advantage mechanic this way.

[EDIT] Regarding Expertise/effective-Expertise: the right question to ask design-wise is if one needs to give such a bonus at all. Why not just give the relevant skill or tool proficiency, and leave it to Rogues and Bards to have their skill-monkey thing? And all those cases that are ribbons? It's the kind of design I exactly do not wish to see: nickel-and-diming. I would like to see crisp, impactful mechanics, that do what they need to, to make the race play as it should, and no more.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Why is it that the guard in your example lives and works as a guard in a world where magic exists as a provable fact seems incapable of noticing someone cast a spell near him while he's on duty?

Maybe because the GM wanted to make a scene in an adventure that let the arcane trickster strut his stuff a little bit? Maybe because different games have different themes and the bumbling guard is a very common trope to have in an adventure. Maybe because the GM assumes that because their class ability allows the Arcane Trickster to use Mage Hand to pick pockets then it should actually be possible for them to do so.

As far as real world goes....my mother-in-law and her husband were both security guards. She retired last year and he is still working. She is so blind that she doesn't drive a car. Not all security is paramilitary green beret trained super soldiers.

My previous job was working for a company that leased water machines (those things you put the big jug of water on top of that cools it for drinking). One of our clients was an Air Force Base. When the tech would be dispatched to the base to swap filters and refill the jugs, they would show their ID at the base gate. Once inside the base NOBODY ever once stopped them or asked them what they were doing there. One of the machines was located in a building that had higher security than the rest of the base. The tech stepped up to the door as a high ranking officer was leaving. The officer said to the tech "Here, let me get that for you." as he held open the door so the tech could walk in with his jug of water over one shoulder and a clipboard in the other hand. The real world isn't James Bond style infiltration capers....it's a bunch of people who work long hours for crap pay who want to go home at the end of the day.

 

[tetrasodium]

When I ctrl-F on the pdf, and type in "advantage" I get 45 cases. Checking them, most are legitimately advantage. I assume a few might be narrative. What term did you search for?

That's more than one use per two pages of the document. I call that overuse. I'm not interested in arguing that it is wrong to give X race advantage in Y rule: it is wrong to overuse the advantage mechanic this way.

[EDIT] Regarding Expertise/effective-Expertise: the right question to ask design-wise is if one needs to give such a bonus at all. Why not just give the relevant skill or tool proficiency, and leave it to Rogues and Bards to have their skill-monkey thing? And all those cases that are ribbons? It's the kind of design I exactly do not wish to see: nickel-and-diming. I would like to see crisp, impactful mechanics, that do what they need to, to make the race play as it should, and no more.real

Until we see what new form advantage takes it's not really possible to discuss advantage. I think at that point you will probably see a lot of those shift to something like advantage2 advantage5 or advantage10 as appropriate. Your concerns are misplaced as there is another thread discussing changes to advantage over here, you might want to start with this post Morrus made in it.

 

[clearstream]

Regarding expertise, I felt the general point was clear enough, but I can speak to some examples as I appreciate you want something concrete to think about.

Dwarf:Gifted artisan - Double proficiency bonus on an artisan tool. This could be triple or quintuple & have the same effect. Until we seeing playtest stuff for things like "a crafting system for magic items" or "a more detailed skill system" this has basically zero effect on any game or bounded accuracy because tihieve's tools are not an artisan tool

So why have expertise here at all? Why not just give them a proficiency on an artisan tool? If it is important to the racial identity, make it impactful. If not, delete it. Keep it as simple as possible. Don't design by a thousand cuts.

orcish communal culture - choose any one skill to be proficient in & double your proficiency bonus on. Cool but not a big deal.

When I started DMing 5e, it felt special to the "skill-monkey" classes to have expertise. Why have it here? What is it doing to deliver on "orcish communal culture" to let them apply it to any skill? The question for design is not why not, it is why?!

Hill dwarf culture - Double proficiency bonus on survival(wis). Given that the core phb ranger literally has a poorly regarded ribbon granting them immunity to getting lost/slowed by difficult terrain/slowed by moving stealthily with no skill check & one of the core phb backgrounds can automatically find enough food & water to supply a party of six while traveling with no skill check time spent or slow in travel speed you don't get to be outraged over this nonissue & we really cab't even judge it util we start seeing playtest packets involving other areas.

Boosting survival kicks the legs out from the exploration pillar, because it means that the DCs as written in a lot of material are passed too often to make what they are simulating, impactful to simulate. It's a problem that unfortunate design such as that in Outlander (i.e. Wanderer) already creates, sadly, but there's no reason to exacerbate it. The whole point of skill checks is that PCs fail them often enough to matter. For check chains such as are used in hexploration, this type of design just pushes DC inflation that in turn means some characters fail too often, or none fail often enough. It's undoing something 5e attempted to fix (over 3e).

Halfling kithbain culture - Double insight proficiency checks. What is most notable is that it has a chance of thwarting diplomancy. The players usually know when an npc is feeding them a line of creative truths & alternative facts. All this does is make bob likely to figure it out & maybe give their character a reason to cast their 1/rest detect thoughts. again not an issue

When a whole culture has it, then it is an issue. An approach to the design could be to say - we envision kithbain being especially insightful - and then do divergent thinking around that? Are they uniformly insightful, or just in certain areas? How can we give them an impactful mechanic. Do they even need this, if they have the more impactful free cast of detect thoughts?!

 

[clearstream]

Until we see what new form advantage takes it's not really possible to discuss advantage. I think at that point you will probably see a lot of those shift to something like advantage2 advantage5 or advantage10 as appropriate. Your concerns are misplaced as there is another thread discussing changes to advantage over here, you might want to start with this post Morrus made in it.

Yes, it is true that we can take some - maybe all - the mechanical parts of the document as placeholders for - X should be good at Y, actual mechanic to be inserted. I gave that feedback in my earlier posts to other threads as a high-level design concern.

I do not know why you see the need to say my concerns are misplaced in the same sentence as saying they are being addressed. My concerns are correct - literal 5e advantage should not be overused - and if there is a way that advantage can be varied so that it is not literal 5e advantage, then it will not be overused (because it is varied).

It's okay for us to agree

 

[CapnZapp]

Magnitude

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[Undrave]

Pop pop!

Eh?

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Eh?

 

[tetrasodium]

Yes, it is true that we can take some - maybe all - the mechanical parts of the document as placeholders for - X should be good at Y, actual mechanic to be inserted. I gave that feedback in my earlier posts to other threads as a high-level design concern.

I do not know why you see the need to say my concerns are misplaced in the same sentence as saying they are being addressed. My concerns are correct - literal 5e advantage should not be overused - and if there is a way that advantage can be varied so that it is not literal 5e advantage, then it will not be overused (because it is varied).

It's okay for us to agree

I don't like how expertise works either because it completely devours a huge chunk of design space, but I already mentioned that & how I rework it earlier n the thread. it's ok to agree, but arguments need to be made & there's been a lot of arguing vapor in this thread

Regarding expertise, I felt the general point was clear enough, but I can speak to some examples as I appreciate you want something concrete to think about.


So why have expertise here at all? Why not just give them a proficiency on an artisan tool? If it is important to the racial identity, make it impactful. If not, delete it. Keep it as simple as possible. Don't design by a thousand cuts.


When I started DMing 5e, it felt special to the "skill-monkey" classes to have expertise. Why have it here? What is it doing to deliver on "orcish communal culture" to let them apply it to any skill? The question for design is not why not, it is why?!


Boosting survival kicks the legs out from the exploration pillar, because it means that the DCs as written in a lot of material are passed too often to make what they are simulating, impactful to simulate. It's a problem that unfortunate design such as that in Outlander (i.e. Wanderer) already creates, sadly, but there's no reason to exacerbate it. The whole point of skill checks is that PCs fail them often enough to matter. For check chains such as are used in hexploration, this type of design just pushes DC inflation that in turn means some characters fail too often, or none fail often enough. It's undoing something 5e attempted to fix (over 3e).


When a whole culture has it, then it is an issue. An approach to the design could be to say - we envision kithbain being especially insightful - and then do divergent thinking around that? Are they uniformly insightful, or just in certain areas? How can we give them an impactful mechanic. Do they even need this, if they have the more impactful free cast of detect thoughts?!

The orcish communal passionate pursuit is trying to spotlight the whole noble savage thing that goes with their more positive deep feeling/passion core & it very much makes sense both as described as well as in eberron where that style of orcs was ahead of the curve & the norm for years now. In order to have the noble savage thing fit they need to be good at things. The bigger problem with orcs is that they need to move the warhordling out from the scary green/grey man over to an elves are better thing based on years of training & such where it fits some notable majority or subset of elves in literally every setting "of course I'm better at moving around in a fight (aggressive), good at intimidating folks (menacing), & able to make due with or put together substandard gear in a pinch (warhord weapon training/wartime scrounger) I trained at it longer than you will be when you die of old age and I'm just a fresh graduate you human" fits elves & aviods any negative stereotypes.

I don't mind certain cultures getting advantages with survival & feel like they make things more diverse with a greater chance of making survival matter because suddenly there is a good chance that any party has someone who can be functional with survival from either their race or class. If only a couple classes could fight in melee there wouldn't be much call for it but when you expand the pool of who can contribute there it makes that pillar into something the gm can use to challenge the group rather than sideline them while bob has an irrelevant adventure or something.

The kithbain culture gets insight expertise as something that makes sense because their whole thing is that rather than the orcish communal style focus on their passions their focus is on the family known as the whole community. It's a fitting matchup imo. It's too early to say if insight will be broken into multiple skills & I suspect that rather unlikely but the whole should the focus be narrowed falls into that sort of niche. What "areas" would it split into & if you cut the detect thoughts is expertise insight worth it to anyone?

@Undrave I think it's a reference to the tv show community this might help

 

[Stalker0]

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