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.

 

[jasper]

Context my friend! Context!

I heard of Con crud but never con text. Is that something you can get from going to the remote cons? ARRRGHHH!

 

[Azzy]

Nope. I did not start the discussion with that +1 bonus. I just don't think you are pigeonholed because you don't have +2 to your main stat as some people think.

Look, some of us very well don't care about whether we have the optimal +2 from a race to be a certain class. Some of us don't feel that we are more apt to buy something priced at $1.99 as opposed to $2.00. However, human psychology is, as an article I linked to previously, subconsiously and conscously by numbers, number bias, and how numbers are presented. So, while you and I may not consciously balk at not having a relevant +2, it is something that does steer people into pingeon-holing subcounciously.

 

[Maxperson]

I heard of Con crud but never con text. Is that something you can get from going to the remote cons? ARRRGHHH!

Nah. Those come from phones smuggled into prisons.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Look, some of us very well don't care about whether we have the optimal +2 from a race to be a certain class. Some of us don't feel that we are more apt to buy something priced at $1.99 as opposed to $2.00. However, human psychology is, as an article I linked to previously, subconsiously and conscously by numbers, number bias, and how numbers are presented. So, while you and I may not consciously balk at not having a relevant +2, it is something that does steer people into pingeon-holing subcounciously.

This is why I would ditch bonuses for race altogether and Instead give universally useful abilities that are thematic.

I bet the subconsciousness will steer more people to half elves and mountain dwarves now. So I repeat what someone else said: The idea is good, but the execution seems bad.

An example: The halfling second chance ability from 4e: have an enemy reroll an attack role against you helps any class.
Or the elven accuracy ability from 4e which allowed to reroll an attack roll also helps every class.

In Xanathar's guide, a lot of those powers are made into feats. Maybe allowing to give up your ability score increases to take the appropriate racial feat instead could be a good variant. Just shifting bonuses is not. (giving everyone a +2 and a +1 would be better or just ditch and increase point buy values and standard array).

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Show me where in the rules that weight is defined.

The social contract says don't be a jerk, so making truly bad characters like a wizard with a stat penalty would be a violation. However, beyond that there is nothing wrong with playing a substandard race/class combo.

I really wanted to play a mountain dwarf abjurer with 8 int for a long time now.
When I was ready to do it, I rolled 16, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12 or so... It was still a mountain dwarf abjuration wizard but with "slightly" better int... stuck at level 1 right now for realworld reasons...

Edit: but its just fair... My highest level character is a variant human arcane trickster rogue 3/blade bard 5/divine soul sorcerer 1 with ritual casting starting feat and starting stats after human bonus: Str 10/Dex 14/Con 11/Int 13/wis 11/Cha 14...

 

[Maxperson]

I really wanted to play a mountain dwarf abjurer with 8 int for a long time now.
When I was ready to do it, I rolled 16, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12 or so... It was still a mountain dwarf abjuration wizard but with "slightly" better int... stuck at level 1 right now for realworld reasons...

Edit: but its just fair... My highest level character is a variant human arcane trickster rogue 3/blade bard 5/divine soul sorcerer 1 with ritual casting starting feat and starting stats after human bonus: Str 10/Dex 14/Con 11/Int 13/wis 11/Cha 14...

That sounds fun. There are of course exceptions to what I said. An 8 int wizard avoiding spells with saves would be viable. If you were in my game I'd have allowed you to knock one of those 16s down to an 8.

 

[Azzy]

This is why I would ditch bonuses for race altogether and Instead give universally useful abilities that are thematic.

I bet the subconsciousness will steer more people to half elves and mountain dwarves now. So I repeat what someone else said: The idea is good, but the execution seems bad.

An example: The halfling second chance ability from 4e: have an enemy reroll an attack role against you helps any class.
Or the elven accuracy ability from 4e which allowed to reroll an attack roll also helps every class.

In Xanathar's guide, a lot of those powers are made into feats. Maybe allowing to give up your ability score increases to take the appropriate racial feat instead could be a good variant. Just shifting bonuses is not. (giving everyone a +2 and a +1 would be better or just ditch and increase point buy values and standard array).

I could get on board with these suggestions, and think that it would be the best way going forward with a subsequent edition. From a point-buy perspective, 1st-level ASIs really don't feel like they belong. In another game system I was running, that is entirely point-buy, I ran into this issue when I was creating different PC species—I thought, what's the point of caving a +n bonus/penalty to a starting stat when you can arrange points in such a way that it makes them irrelevant.

The rules, as we are seeing them thus far, admittedly seem like a bit of a kludge in an attempt to not alter the rules of the PHB too much while ostensibly providing more racial variance and customization. I'd like to see the full rules in Tasha's before praising or condemning the rules, but I agree that there could have been better ways to achieve the advertised goal.

 

[Cadence]

At tier 4, if you're not fulfilling your role, you really messed up with your character. At that level, it's typically not that big of a deal.

How useful is someone pretty optimized in their tier 4 class as compared to someone missing the ASI's in the right spot for a tier 1 class but otherwise pretty optimized? (Is someone playing a tier 4 class as much of a drag on party success as the off race player?).

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

How useful is someone pretty optimized in their tier 4 class as compared to someone missing the ASI's in the right spot for a tier 1 class but otherwise pretty optimized? (Is someone playing a tier 4 class as much of a drag on party success as the off race player?).

Minutiae, such as racial ability score bonuses, are much more important at lower levels than high ones. At a later level, an enemy with a +13 to saving throws against your 18 vs a maximized 19 for spell save DC doesn't matter much, especially because most saving throws spells still deal significant damage on a success at that level. Also, level 1 characters are much squishier, and you need to get the best use out of your features as possible.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

That sounds fun. There are of course exceptions to what I said. An 8 int wizard avoiding spells with saves would be viable. If you were in my game I'd have allowed you to knock one of those 16s down to an 8.

That would have been very kind of you.

I should have said, that I have never wanted to multiclass, but we are in a 2 PC party where we did our PCs secretly... and the other player had a similar concept with different classes. We lacked a healer so I multiclassed to bard and the other player from wizard (which he took for rituals) to druid... after a while my sage was a sneaky damage dealer and we were both scions of a reborn god... (so I became divine sorcerer). My stats are much better now, because I have a headband of intellect for a while and recently found gauntlets of ogre stength...