D&D 5E 50th Anniversary and beyond

[Faolyn]

So, the iconic image of a tall and slim elf, a pair of slightly less-tall humans, a short and bulky dwarf and a handfull of small and not particularly heavy halflings is no longer a thing. Everyone is build within the much smaller range of humans. It is even more "rubberhead ear" than before. The "problem" it fixes is the complaint about "how can a 60 cm tall halfling have 16 STR when the 2m10 minotaur has the same starting STR? It's not realistic". The answer is: "because they have the same size and muscle/fat ratio. Your minotaur can't be taller than the halfling since both fluctuate within the same (modern Earth human) range". It's a logical consequence of floating ASIs, I'd guess.

Those are completely two separate issues.

The height/weight thing... I generally agree with. Although I should point out that in D&D elves are usually shorter than humans, which goes to show that the "iconic" image is not a universal one.

But I don't think that D&D would have lost anything by keeping racial physical builds. I'm pretty sure nobody is saying it's somehow offensive for elves to be slightly shorter (or taller, whatever) than humans on average. That being said, this does let people play skinny halflings or fat elves, if they want to, without bodyshaming either players or PCs for not playing a "typical" individual, and opens up the idea of particularly short or tall PCs--or even PCs with dwarfism or gigantism (I was in a GURPS game once with a gnome with Gigantism).

However, this doesn't actually "fix the complaint" about racial ASIs, though, because D&D is about a party of exceptional individuals doing exceptional things. Which means that a halfling with a 16, 18, or even 20 Strength is fine because this individual halfling PC is exceptional.

What's really funny is that the people who're against floating ASIs have, in my experience, already claimed the muscle/fat ratio (and general skeletal structure) as the reason for not letting halflings have a high Strength (or, apparently, allowing for high Int halflings either. I dunno, maybe they all read GURPS Biotech which included a suggestion of lower IQ for very tiny gengineered creatures?) Anyway, this indicates that floating ASIs and making all races physically similar are not, in fact, connected.

 

[Faolyn]

I’m just guessing as to how I imagine it might be laid out, not trying to place a value judgment on if that’d be a good way to do it or not. I could also be totally off-base with my speculation; I have no special insight into the matter, so my guess is as good as anyone else’s.

In the Level Up Monstrous Menagerie, in the NPCs section, they have a few things which are effectively "heritage templates". For instance, next to the Guard statblock, they have "Variant: Stout Halfling Guard" which reads "The guard is proficient in Insight (+2) and Nature (+2) and has an expertise die (+1d4) in Perception. The guard’s passive Perception score is 14."

Now, it might be too much to do for every statblock, especially when you get 50+ D&D races, but you know how in the DMG there's a table of mini-templates ("Creating NPCs From Scratch")? That should be in the MM. The Racial Modifiers column would be footnoted with "Most NPCs of this race have a +2 in this stat."

 

[Scribe]

The biggest take away I have from all this, is that Wizards position, rules, and process around race and character creation are just...pathetic.

Levelup did a bit to help, but the more I've looked at other systems the more underwhelmed I am with anything Wizards has put out.

So, if they change or not, who cares? It's bad changes on top of a bare bones, dry, boring implementation anyway.

I guess for those who need a standard implemented system it sucks, but yeah, very little they have done with races is interesting in 5e.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

What's really funny is that the people who're against floating ASIs have, in my experience, already claimed the muscle/fat ratio (and general skeletal structure) as the reason for not letting halflings have a high Strength (or, apparently, allowing for high Int halflings either. I dunno, maybe they all read GURPS Biotech which included a suggestion of lower IQ for very tiny gengineered creatures?) Anyway, this indicates that floating ASIs and making all races physically similar are not, in fact, connected.

Err... I don't follow your logic there.

My take :

Wizard: "we want floating ASIs going forward"
Some people : "yay!"
Other people : "boo!"
Wizard: "how do we maximize our sales? Let's try to get a maximum of people onboard! What are they complaining about?"
Other people: "halfing can't have high STR, they are small and feeble!
Wizard: "OK, halfling are no longer small and feeble (at least the ones you play) because everyone is the the same size now!"
Other people: "ah, ok, then, there is no problem with floating ASI.
Wizard: "Profit!"

The fact that people against floating ASIs claimed muscle/fat ratio as an example of problem against floating STR, linking STR and DEX to body type, I see that as a strengthening of my point, yet you claim it's opposing it. I am not sure I communicate it well, then.

 

[Retreater]

Yeah, I'm fine not getting the 50th anniversary revisions. I haven't been too impressed with much that WotC has released in the past couple years, largely because my D&D collection has already reached critical mass - there is simply nothing I need to buy for the system.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Again, only a wild guess, but unless 5e starts doing really badly in the coming 2 years, they will not kill the golden goose, there will be a few clarifications, some options will be pruned out and others added, so overall the game will be a bit more streamlined than today, but no major change and certainly no incompatibilities, which means that, in turn, it should not be too hard for DDB to survive the change. And the same thing with the other digital implementations. They are a big part of what makes the D&D ecosystem work, and again it would be very foolish for WotC to make them suffer too much, they would be hit by the backlash.

Yeah, I don't think so mate.

We've already established enough changes, including the execution of at least one sacred cow (stat mods) that there are "major changes". Sure, it's likely more like 1E to 2E, but if that's not enough to qualify as "major change", then the problem is with your definition of "major change". So that's already definite.

There will absolutely be incompatibilities. It's just likely that they'll be soft incompatibilities, rather than hard ones. Again, this is the pattern from 1E to 2E. There will be spells that work differently in some fairly major way in 5E. That's an incompatibility. There will be class features changed such that some previous subclasses don't work cleanly with them - that is almost certain.

As for DDB, WotC has relatively little incentive to help them. It's an open secret that WotC has their own DDB-equivalent (w/VTT) on the way. There is no question that will basically eat DDB's lunch unless WotC's implementation is terrible. As for "the backlash", what backlash? The only backlash will be if WotC refuse to give licences to DDB, Roll 20 and so on, which they won't do. If they just instead undermine them by release their own service in "beta" with access to 5.5E before them, or similar, there will not be meaningful "backlash". And do you really think DDB could cope with the number of updates/changes we're likely to see? I am skeptical. I've used DDB for years, but they're been very bad at keeping up with updates, changes, and additions, especially anything truly new. They can't even handle UA. I think it's highly likely that they'll do only a partial implementation of 5.5/6E at first, and that will be on them, and the people who own them and prefer to extract cash instead of investing in their site.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

These are not the 2024 release - we already have all of these. They aren't worth talking about for the 2024 release. Continuing what we already have is sort of the assumed default. It would only be worth talking about if you thought one of the new trends wouldn't be there.

What we actually suspect for the 50th Anniversary Release is that with an in-depth class-feature survey and an individual spell survey they are likely to be redoing a number of things from the PHB, while "maintaining compatibility". If ti was just class features they could maintain full compatibility by just having new features you could sub in for problematic ones like they did with the ranger, but the spells also being investigated they may do more than that.

I think it's worth mentioning the first few either way, because they're mostly optional and likely to become non-optional (with the current situation becoming "optional" or removed entirely) though I agree there's only much discussion if you think they won't make it.

Re: class/spells, I agree. The level of investigation here is not what you're doing if you're planning 100% compatibility, it's what you do if you're planning strong compatibility, but where it doesn't have to be 100%. If we don't see at least a few class features getting changed, and some different subclasses in the PHB, I'll be shocked. I think we'll also see quite a lot of spells shifted in how they function, probably almost all of the changes nerfs or simplifications.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The height/weight thing doesn't bother me. I mean I'm like a lot of people who didn't see it as a big deal to have it so it's removal seems unnecessary... but I also already know what all these races generally have for heights and weights so their removal doesn't impact me in the least. Especially considering I still have the baseline PHB... which means if I really need to know what the race's general heights/weights are, or what their standard ability score bonuses were, I can just reference that book, rather than the new one.

It's like monster ecology in the MM-- if they put some in for new players, great. But I have 40 years of past ecology to reference if I ever need to, so who gives a hoot if the new MM changes it for some reason? More often than not I was never reading or referencing it anyway.

 

[Faolyn]

Err... I don't follow your logic there.

My take :

Wizard: "we want floating ASIs going forward"
Some people : "yay!"
Other people : "boo!"
Wizard: "how do we maximize our sales? Let's try to get a maximum of people onboard! What are they complaining about?"
Other people: "halfing can't have high STR, they are small and feeble!
Wizard: "OK, halfling are no longer small and feeble (at least the ones you play) because everyone is the the same size now!"
Other people: "ah, ok, then, there is no problem with floating ASI.
Wizard: "Profit!"

The fact that people against floating ASIs claimed muscle/fat ratio as an example of problem against floating STR, linking STR and DEX to body type, I see that as a strengthening of my point, yet you claim it's opposing it. I am not sure I communicate it well, then.

I pointed that out because it's an argument people have been using since before WotC decided to let people choose if their character is Small or Medium. In other words, being able to be Small or Medium didn't prompt floating ASIs, and I seriously doubt anyone at WotC said "People may want to put their +2 in Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma, so we better make sure that the race can be the right size to accommodate that."

It might be worth noting that in the Travelers of the Multiverse UA, there were five races presented, but only three could be either Small or Medium. Giff are Medium, and autognomes are Small. I don't know the rationale behind the thri-kreen (and I have a sneaking suspicion that they might end up being always Medium), but it makes sense for both the oozy, shapeless plasmoids and the primate-based hadozee to have that choice. Primates come in such a wide variety of sizes anyway; why not let the hadozee reflect that. But I also wouldn't be surprised if they make always Medium as well.

 

[HammerMan]

Yeah, I think that decision was pretty baffling to, like, everyone. The only way I can square it is to figure they wanted to make a broad rule that PC races only tell you what your individual character is like, not about the lineage broadly. Your individual elf character can have +2/+1 to any ability scores, and the race rules for elves won’t tell you any differently. If you want to know what most elves’ ability scores are like, it’s in the monster manual. Likewise, your individual elf character can be anywhere from 1’9” to 9’11” tall, and the rules for the elf race won’t tell you any differently. If you want to know how tall most elves are, it’s in the random heights and weights table.

That’s my speculation on it, anyway,

that is both my guess and my preferred way as well.