D&D (2024) 5e Aasimar are in the Players Handbook − what should the flavor be?

[Henadic Theologian]

A question I've come across on the net is why did they change their mind on Aasimar, apparently Jeremy Crawford had nixed the idea after the Ardling sort of failed, so they must have changed their mind for some reason, why?

Some suggest he got over ruled by the marketing department, but I don't see why Marketing would concider Aasimar must haves.

My thinking is either fter they decided all the core books should be the same size, they had some leftover space they had to fill, and turning Ardling 1.0 into a new Aasimar was just the easiest way to fill it OR perhaps more likely it was a request from Video Game and/or TV/Movie partners that wanted the previous Aasimar replaced and made PHB, because it makes Aasimar a lot easier to adapt to video games and possibly other media. The VGtM and MotM Aasimar would be very diificult to put in a video game, and a lot of video studios like using Aasimar in their videl

 

[Kurotowa]

Then why not just change it a nimbus of light around the head? You can still call that a halo, and as you can see from the Wikipedia article, that's not specific to just one religion. Anyway, the "floating golden ring" is just an alternate way of representing that idea.

Slightly less objectionable, but still not great. It only fully clears one of the issues I raised. How do you clearly and consistently depict it in the art? How does it function in-game with respect to lighting and stealth and disguise effects?

I'm not saying it's a terrible or unworkable idea. But I'm the sort of guy who immediately kicks the tires and checks for practical considerations, and I still see problems with it. Maybe those problems can also be solved, but they definitely can't be ignored or handwaved.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

You could always go with a more naturalistic type of halo...

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

A question I've come across on the net is why did they change their mind on Aasimar, apparently Jeremy Crawford had nixed the idea after the Ardling sort of failed, so they must have changed their mind for some reason, why?

I suspect it boils down to the same reason they tried the ardling in the first place - they wanted a celestial planetouched option in the PHB to parallel the tiefling.

Player feedback redirected the ardling's core concept away from "celestial planetouched" and toward a stricter focus on their "anthropomorphic animal" aspects, which meant that, on top of not hitting the feedback thresholds, they weren't really fulfilling their original purpose anymore, so they made the decision to cut them.

I also imagine there was a not insignificant number of people asking "If they want celestial planetouched, why not just bring in the aasimar in the first place?" I wasn't among them, as I like the idea of there being a distinction between "celestial" (i.e. upper planar/non-angelic) and "divine" (i.e. angelic/godly), but that's beside the point.

Ultimately, it would seem the "Why not just use aasimar?" crowd won.

I think the chances of ardling getting a second attempt somewhere down the road aren't too bad, since it would give them a unified "anthropomorphic animal" framework and keep them from having to build an entirely new species block every time they introduce a new population of animal people, but that clearly wasn't enough to get them over the finish line to make it into the '24 PHB.

I do hope they at least repurpose the first round ardling's Heavenly/Idyllic/Exalted lineage options into new aasimar lineages, so that they can pick up the broader celestial connections to mirror the new tiefling's Infernal/Chthonic/Abyssal options, but we'll just have to wait and see.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Slightly less objectionable, but still not great. It only fully clears one of the issues I raised. How do you clearly and consistently depict it in the art?

Same way they do with tieflings and shifters and everything else - broadly.

How does it function in-game with respect to lighting and stealth and disguise effects?

Same way they do with tieflings: Wear a hood if you want to hide it. Or if the player is really worried, they can choose not to have it on their character.

I'm not saying it's a terrible or unworkable idea. But I'm the sort of guy who immediately kicks the tires and checks for practical considerations, and I still see problems with it. Maybe those problems can also be solved, but they definitely can't be ignored or handwaved.

You're confusing "this should be the default guidance for official art" with "all games must be played this way, no exceptions."

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I suspect it boils down to the same reason they tried the ardling in the first place - they wanted a celestial planetouched option in the PHB to parallel the tiefling.

Player feedback redirected the ardling's core concept away from "celestial planetouched" and toward a stricter focus on their "anthropomorphic animal" aspects, which meant that, on top of not hitting the feedback thresholds, they weren't really fulfilling their original purpose anymore, so they made the decision to cut them.

I also imagine there was a not insignificant number of people asking "If they want celestial planetouched, why not just bring in the aasimar in the first place?" I wasn't among them, as I like the idea of there being a distinction between "celestial" (i.e. non-angelic) and "divine" (i.e. angelic), but that's beside the point.

Ultimately, it would seem the "Why not just use aasimar?" crowd won.

I think the chances of ardling getting a second attempt somewhere down the road aren't too bad, since it would give them a unified "anthropomorphic animal" framework and keep them from having to build an entirely new species block every time they introduce a new population of animal people, but that clearly wasn't enough to get them over the finish line to make it into the '24 PHB.

I do hope they at least repurpose the first round ardling's Heavenly/Idyllic/Exalted lineage options into new aasimar lineages, so that they can pick up the broader celestial connections to mirror the new tiefling's Infernal/Chthonic/Abyssal options, but we'll just have to wait and see.

Given they called Aasimar Planetouched I'm pretty sure it'll be something like the 1.0 Ardling with Planar subraces tied to the rule of 3, 3 lineages each of whom.is connected to 3 planes (Exalted connected to Arborea, Ysgard, Beastlands), Idyllic (Connected to Beastlands, Elysium, and Byopia), and Heavenly (Connected to Mount Celestial, Arcadia, and Bytopia).

Side note: Each Aasimar lineage has 1 plane tied to it is from Greek Mythology. Heavenly have Arcadia where great God Pan is said to Dwell, Idyllic has the most obvious Elysium, and Exalted has Olympus (part of Arborea's full name).

This is also true of the Tieflings, Abyssal has Tartarus (part of the full name of Cacari), Chthonic Tieflings have Hades, and Infernal Tieflings have Archeron (named after a River God of the Underworld).

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I suspect it boils down to the same reason they tried the ardling in the first place - they wanted a celestial planetouched option in the PHB to parallel the tiefling.

Player feedback redirected the ardling's core concept away from "celestial planetouched" and toward a stricter focus on their "anthropomorphic animal" aspects, which meant that, on top of not hitting the feedback thresholds, they weren't really fulfilling their original purpose anymore, so they made the decision to cut them.

I also imagine there was a not insignificant number of people asking "If they want celestial planetouched, why not just bring in the aasimar in the first place?" I wasn't among them, as I like the idea of there being a distinction between "celestial" (i.e. non-angelic) and "divine" (i.e. angelic), but that's beside the point.

Ultimately, it would seem the "Why not just use aasimar?" crowd won.

I think the chances of ardling getting a second attempt somewhere down the road aren't too bad, since it would give them a unified "anthropomorphic animal" framework and keep them from having to build an entirely new species block every time they introduce a new population of animal people, but that clearly wasn't enough to get them over the finish line to make it into the '24 PHB.

I do hope they at least repurpose the first round ardling's Heavenly/Idyllic/Exalted lineage options into new aasimar lineages, so that they can pick up the broader celestial connections to mirror the new tiefling's Infernal/Chthonic/Abyssal options, but we'll just have to wait and see.

Yeah but wouldn't there have been a sign that Aasimar was right away in if it was just a matter of survey feed back, instead of Mr. Crawford hinting it wasn't in until rescently? Something had to have changed, that came later.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

Yeah but wouldn't there have been a sign that Aasimar was right away in if it was just a matter of survey feed back, instead of Mr. Crawford hinting it wasn't in until rescently? Something had to have changed, that came later.

Admittedly been a bit out of the loop these past few months, so I can't really claim to know precisely what Crawford said or didn't say.

It may just have taken time to parse out exactly what the feedback was telling them. They may have known that the ardling didn't make the cut fairly quickly, but needed extra time to hone in on exactly why. Feedback saying "the ardling should be more anthro-animal than planetouched" doesn't necessarily mean that the core idea of including celestial planetouched in the PHB wasn't popular, just that the ardling itself didn't fulfill that goal.

Aasimar have a proven track record on that front, and the decision to also add in goliaths had already cracked the proverbial seal on pulling options from Monsters of the Multiverse into the PHB (orcs get a pass, since...well... gestures to the void where half-orcs used to exist), so I'd imagine there would have been less resistance to the idea of also tackling the aasimar once they reached the conclusion that a slot for "celestial planetouched" wasn't entirely off the table.

 

[Yaarel]

All of the species in the 2024 Players Handbook are the most popular ones, according to the DnDBeyond stat, and corroborated elsewhere in other surveys.

The only surprise is, the Genasi are missing from the list of most popular. The Genasi are between Gnome and Orc in popularity.


The Aaracockra are next in the list just after Aasimar. Then there is a notable gap in popularity until the next species, the Van Richten gothic species, Tashas "custom" species, then Tabaxi.

The DnDBeyond popularity skews because some species are available free and some are behind paywalls. All of the most popular ones have been available free.


Here is the DnDBeyond list for comparison. It combines the "Half" species with the species. So, together all of the versions of Elves and Half Elves are more popular than the Human species.

Elf, Human,

Dwarf, Tiefling, Dragonborn,

Halfling, Orc, Genasi, Gnome, Goliath,

Aasimar, Aarakocra,

[Van Richten], [Tashas Custom],

Tabaxi, Tortle, Kenku, Lizardfolk, Goblin, Yuan-ti,

Firbolg, Bugbear, Kobold,

Triton, Hobgoblin,

Warforged, Changeling, Minotaur, Shifter,

Kobold, Centaur, Satyr, Loxodon,

Mousefolk,

Awakened Undead,

Vampire, Kalashtar, Kitsune, Bearkin, Dhampir,

Bullywug, Tentamouth,

 

[Henadic Theologian]

All of the species in the 2024 Players Handbook are the most popular ones, according to the DnDBeyond stat, and corroborated elsewhere in other surveys.

The only surprise is, the Genasi are missing from the list of most popular. The Genasi are between Gnome and Orc in popularity.


The Aaracockra are next in the list just after Aasimar. Then there is a notable gap in popularity until the next species, the Van Richten gothic species, Tashas "custom" species, then Tabaxi.

The DnDBeyond popularity skews because some species are available free and some are behind paywalls. All of the most popular ones have been available free.


Here is the DnDBeyond list for comparison. It combines the "Half" species with the species. So, together all of the versions of Elves and Half Elves are more popular than the Human species.

Elf, Human,

Dwarf, Tiefling, Dragonborn,

Halfling, Orc, Genasi, Gnome, Goliath,

Aasimar, Aarakocra,

[Van Richten], [Tashas Custom],

Tabaxi, Tortle, Kenku, Lizardfolk, Goblin, Yuan-ti,

Firbolg, Bugbear, Kobold,

Triton, Hobgoblin,

Warforged, Changeling, Minotaur, Shifter,

Kobold, Centaur, Satyr, Loxodon,

Mousefolk,

Awakened Undead,

Vampire, Kalashtar, Kitsune, Bearkin, Dhampir,

Bullywug, Tentamouth,

I suspect Aacrokra's popularity was a mix of being free and flight, favourite of minmaxers, more then the races lore, so I don't really count it.

We don't know if we have the full list anymore of PHB species, since the addition of Aasimar have changed what we have been told, so Genasi could be in it too, just not mentioned yet.