D&D 5E A Compilation of all the Race Changes in Monsters of the Multiverse

Over on Reddit, user KingJackel went through the video leak which came out a few days ago and manually compiled a list of all the changes to races in the book. The changes are quite extensive, with only the fairy and harengon remaining unchanged. The book contains 33 races in total, compiled and updated from previous Dungeons & Dragons books.

D&D 5E - List of All 33 Races in Mordenkainen's Monsters of the Multiverse

Mordenkainen Presents Monsters of the Multiverse contains 33 races compiled from previous Dungeons & Dragons books. Aarackocra Assimar Bugbear Centaur Changeling Deep Gnome Duergar Eladrin Fairy Firbolg Genasi, Air Genasi, Earth Genasi, Fire Gennasi, Water Githyanki Githzerai Goblin Goliath...

www.enworld.org

D&D 5E - Full List of Monsters in Mordenkainen Presents Monsters of the Multiverse

Mordenkainen Presents Monsters of the Multiverse contains revamped stat blocks for 260 monsters previously published in previous Dungeons & Dragons 5E books. The list was compiled by YouTuber Bob Worldbuilder based on some blurry screenshots originally shared by Nerd Immersion (see the video...

www.enworld.org

 

[EzekielRaiden]

As I see it, those blatantly favorable methods for generating PCs (compared to their NPC fellows) makes the argument that ASIs should be individually based redundant and unnecessary.

Alternatively (and completely in keeping with simulationist logic) it could just be that adventurers are not a representative sample of the overall group. Which is almost surely factually correct, because adventurers do ridiculously dangerous things for money, or fame and glory, or out of a perceived moral imperative to do so. Much as how the vast majority of people in fictional worlds aren't Good or Evil, Lawful or Chaotic, and they may not even be True Neutral (being best described by "Unaligned"), yet almost all adventurers have a clear alignment and usually are pretty committed to it. The sample SHOULD be biased, if only because adventuring is a massive selective pressure that favors those who succeed more often, even if only marginally. Thus, racial ability bonuses being individual represents the much higher likelihood of weirdness (as I've said, repeatedly) while the overall high values represent the simple fact that player characters usually aren't ordinary, but are in various ways outliers before things even begin.

Each thing directly corresponds to an actual aspect of the world. Each one represents a (fictionally) real, measurable characteristic ("adventurers face heavy selection pressure" and "populations have very high variance and extremely low probability of all being average in all possible ways"), in a way that conforms surprisingly well to the actual dynamics one would expect of populations of living organisms. DMs either requesting that players stick to "expected" values unless there's (in their opinion) good reason not to, coupled with having NPCs that always use the "expected" values, will reinforce the overall statistical center, while players will represent the potential (but not always manifest) variance.

People keep making a big bugaboo about the HORRIBLE SPECTER of...a dwarf with slightly higher dexterity. But is that actually going to happen very much? Is there really going to be a flood of wimpy-twig half-orcs and Hollywood homely dragonborn? Is there really going to be such an enormous tidal wave of exactly defied expectations that things are going to suddenly and forevermore look totally bizarre?

I sincerely doubt it. Which makes all this "but simulation! But verisimilitude!" sound like a lot of hand-wringing over nothing whatever.

 

[billd91]

People keep making a big bugaboo about the HORRIBLE SPECTER of...a dwarf with slightly higher dexterity. But is that actually going to happen very much? Is there really going to be a flood of wimpy-twig half-orcs and Hollywood homely dragonborn? Is there really going to be such an enormous tidal wave of exactly defied expectations that things are going to suddenly and forevermore look totally bizarre?

I sincerely doubt it. Which makes all this "but simulation! But verisimilitude!" sound like a lot of hand-wringing over nothing whatever.

Depends. You may be tired of people grumbling about players going off archetype. But there are some of us also tired of the HORRIBLE SPECTER of playing a character whose main stat bonus is 1 point lower than it could have been or the claim that a class-race combo is non-viable because the ASI is in the “wrong” place for it.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Depends. You may be tired of people grumbling about players going off archetype. But there are some of us also tired of the HORRIBLE SPECTER of playing a character whose main stat bonus is 1 point lower than it could have been or the claim that a class-race combo is non-viable because the ASI is in the “wrong” place for it.

Dunno about you, but it seems pretty clear "there are slightly too many atypical characters" is a massively lower concern than "I have a permanent reduction in either success chances or resources that could have gone to making a more unique, interesting character."

Because you cannot tell me that these ability scores actually lead to having more Rogues with low Dex. It just leads to either on-type races getting more resources to play with (and, thus, off-type ones having fewer.)

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

You are incorrect, here, because by default rules that come even before that, such (sapient, playable) beings simply don't exist--the lowest ability score players can assign by point-buy or array is 8, and 5e doesn't have negative modifiers.

By the exact same logic, you wouldn't see Str 8 orcs or Dex 8 elves if you're using a ruleset with racial ASIs (and point buy).
Not getting Str 8 orcs or Dex 8 elves is absolutely as valid as not getting Str 7 orcs or Dex 7 elves. If the game rules limit the distribution of stats in the population, then that distribution of stats is dependent upon the rules and arguments based upon real-life distributions of people would not be valid.

 

[Cadence]

Holy cow, that gerbil is the size of an elephant!?!? Magic? Alien? Pym particles?

Nah, they're an adventuring gerbil. It happens.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Individuals vary, even with ASIs. Still a weak goliath is stronger than a weak halfling, average goliath is stronger than an average halfling, and a strong goliath is stronger than a strong halfling. You can still make a weak goliath, it just mean they're weak compared to other goliaths, and not necessarily weak compared to halflings. This is not weird, not a difficult concept. A weak bear is still probably rather strong compared to humans. I fully agree that the current (or PHB, really) system has flaws and weirdnesses, but the basic concept is reasonable. If for game balance reasons one doesn't like this, or just feel the system is too bugged otherwise to be fixed, I get that. But acting like the concept itself is somehow incoherent is just weird.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Earlier in this thread I think I was advocating to remove CON from the game (I hold to this belief!).

Con is pretty pointless and completely passive. We know strength is a common dump stat, so combine it with con. If we at the same time want to make strength less obviously to be about physical strength, rename the combined stat to 'fitness' or something like that. Is there more fantasyish word for that?

Maybe we should do what Crimson was suggesting earlier and just get rid of stats? Or is that one sacred cow too many?

Almost certainly. And that's a big part of the issue here. If one was building an ability system from scratch without the baggage of tradition, there is no way we'd end up with what we currently have.

Or we go the Pillars of Eternity route, and make all stats non-literal - Strength becomes Might and applies to spells and so on as well as melee because it's not measuring physical strength any more, more like a metaphysical summary of the power of your character.

That sounds a tad too far into vagueness for my liking, but could in theory work. But I'm not sure it would be a good fit for recognisable D&D archetypes. Powerful mage and a huge barbarian both have the same might score?

 

[AnotherGuy]

I'm not sure if someone has already mentioned it (too many pages to skim) but the resistance to sleep spells which the fey enjoyed which as now been moved to trance is a brilliant design, and for one important reason. In the first DL chronicles, fairly early on in the book, Raistlin used a sleep spell on a group of goblins. He would not have not used that particular spell if they were partially resistant due to their ancestry. So kudos to WotC for getting that right!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'm not sure if someone has already mentioned it (too many pages to skim) but the resistance to sleep spells which the fey enjoyed which as now been moved to trance is a brilliant design, and for one important reason. In the first DL chronicles, fairly early on in the book, Raistlin used a sleep spell on a group of goblins. He would not have not used that particular spell if they were partially resistant due to their ancestry. So kudos to WotC for getting that right!

Whilst I suspect it was more simply motivated by the fact that Trance is actually what prevents you needing to sleep, like, literally, it is helpful in that it keeps it so it's an "Elf thing".

We know strength is a common dump stat, so combine it with con. If we at the same time want to make strength less obviously to be about physical strength, rename the combined stat to 'fitness' or something like that. Is there more fantasyish word for that?

Vigour would be the most obvious one.

The only trouble with combining them is if we keep the stat increasing HP at the same rate, it effectively becomes the new "uber stat", moreso even than DEX is now.

Powerful mage and a huge barbarian both have the same might score?

Yup. It offended a lot of people and confused others so probably not ideal lol.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Powerful mage and a huge barbarian both have the same might score?

In fact, barbarian builds usually boosted Intelligence pretty hard because INT affected duration of beneficial effects, so you could Rage for way longer!