D&D 5E A First Look at Tasha’s Lineage System In AL Player’s Guide - Customizing Your Origin In D&D

The new player’s guide for the D&D Adventurers League has been released. Appendix 1 includes the new info from Tasha’s Cauldron on customizing your origin. It‘s a one-page appendix.

The D&D Adventurers League now uses this variant system from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything since it allows for a greater degree of customization. For ease of reference, the relevant information is included as an appendix to this document and doesn’t count against the PH + 1 rule.

You can do any of the following (obviously the full document has more detail):

1. Move your race ability score increases wherever your want to. “...take any ability score increase you gain in your race or subrace and apply it to an ability score of your choice.”​

2. Replace each language from your race with any language from a set list.​

3. Swap each proficiency for another of the same type.​

4. Alter behaviour/personality race-based descriptions.​

Its not clear if that’s the whole Lineage system or just part of it. You can download the player’s guide here.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

That is not my problem at all. It is the idea of opening the door for even more min/max ***, I don´t play point buy character creation RPGs and we dismissed skills and powers custom point buy race building for good reasons: you get eve more uniform characters instead of more diverse ones, because you stop having tradeoffs and always pick the best few combinations. The mountain dwarf wizard is just an example: why take something different than a dwarf that has +2 int, +2 con and medium armor proficiency if you want to bring the best wizard possible? If you don´t care about bringing the absolutely best? Then why start tinkering with races at all?
Replacing a minor feature here and there because story reasons? Yes please! Changing parts of the ability scores for story reasons? Yes, not problem! But not: I wan to play a dwarf but I actually don´t care about anything but the 2 +2s and the armor proficiency.

This is a slippery slope argument. Will we see more dwarf wizards with this change? Yes, we will, most likely. But, not every single wizard in the game will be a Mountain Dwarf as of this change. There's no way that's going to happen.

With this change, it's a fair bet that you can expect to see more of every class/race combination in the game. More kobold warlocks, hobgoblin clerics, and triton bladesingers. Is increasing the diversity of the character race/class combinations in the game a bad thing?

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Yes? That is what min/maxin does...

OR: No. If a newer player asks me I would probably allow, but not in combination with point buy. But with standard array or rolled stats, why not. Maybe with rolled stats I would allow it for players who rolled badly and nt for the ones rolling good stats.

I like powergaming, but also like roleplaying and choosing races based on a cool/thematic character concept. Being good at your designated role in the party doesn't make you incapable of roleplaying.

 

[teitan]

How do you think the designers came up with stuff the in the first place?

oh for sure but I think Pathfinder 2 handles it a lot better. This kinda removes the meaning entirely.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I like powergaming, but also like roleplaying and choosing races based on a cool/thematic character concept. Being good at your designated role in the party doesn't make you incapable of roleplaying.

Never denied that.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

This is a slippery slope argument. Will we see more dwarf wizards with this change? Yes, we will, most likely. But, not every single wizard in the game will be a Mountain Dwarf as of this change. There's no way that's going to happen.

With this change, it's a fair bet that you can expect to see more of every class/race combination in the game. More kobold warlocks, hobgoblin clerics, and triton bladesingers. Is increasing the diversity of the character race/class combinations in the game a bad thing?

No. But in my honest opinion, that change won't achieve its goal. You are just shifting optimal race for wizard from one race to a different one. So its a wash.

 

[billd91]

I like powergaming, but also like roleplaying and choosing races based on a cool/thematic character concept. Being good at your designated role in the party doesn't make you incapable of roleplaying.

Being good? Or being the best? I don't think lacking the +2 to the primary stat of choice for the class or concept precludes being good.

 

[billd91]

oh for sure but I think Pathfinder 2 handles it a lot better. This kinda removes the meaning entirely.

I don't think so, rather, it spreads out so many bonuses as part of the character generation process that the racial bonuses and penalties are a smaller part of the mix.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Its wild how violently explosive people get over +2 to an ability score. Reading through this thread, some people seem so absolutely terrified of the idea of a player having +1 to their spell save DC or attack rolls that they just cannot stomach the idea. Some you have actually said this is a terrible and horribly balanced rule that ruins the game. Crazy. Juuuuuuuuuuust crazy.

It's a line. Is the line arbitrary and subjective? Absolutely. Any sort of line like that will be. It's based on personal experiences, subjective evaluations, and a rough comparison to easily comparable alternatives. That doesn't make the line less real for the people who see it as existing.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Probably best would be redoing races altogether as I already said. Look at 4e. If you take their racial bonuses away and you still have a functional race.

 

[Parmandur]

oh for sure but I think Pathfinder 2 handles it a lot better. This kinda removes the meaning entirely.

We'll, this is the AL application, we don't have the whole story. The ASI is the less important part of a Race choice compared to their unique abilities.