D&D 5E Ability Score Increases (I've changed my mind.)

[Bill Zebub]

He is referring to this source (and there are a few more like it).

RPGBOT - DnD 5e - Classes

They show optimized classes and tell you what to choose. I have perused them, but never used them, as I find it much more fun to try and figure it out on my own. But, I have seen many players use them - word for word.

That one doesn't seem to include the options from Tasha's. Am I looking in the wrong place? What I'm looking for is whether post-Tasha's there are races that are rated higher than the best option pre-Tasha's.

For example, I looked at Monk and they gave Wood Elf the highest rating (sky blue color). With Tasha's, are there just a lot more races that are sky blue...which I think would be 100% fine...or do they downgrade Wood Elf because the only advantage it ever had was the ability scores? Because if the result is primarily that more races get top ratings, and therefore the sort of people who rely on these guides show more diversity, I think that's a good thing.

Really, though, what I'm hoping to see someday is data from D&DBeyond comparing pre- and post-Tasha's preferences.

In any event, it has become apparent that each of us is product of our experiences, which affects our viewpoint. I've seen the sort of toxic powergamer some people described, but only when I was for a while going to a big weekly Adventurer's League meeting at FLGS. But I don't go to that anymore, so it's not really a problem I have to deal with. My stance on all issues of player toxicity is that changing the rules doesn't change behavior and the only real solution is to not play with those people. But I can understand that if somebody has a really bad experience with a certain type of player it can produce a deeply-rooted emotional reaction to the conditions. (My wife got terrible food poisoning from seafood as a child, and still can't stand the smell of seafood.)

In my own group there's one player who always plays a powergamer build that I suspect he's researched, and the difference is clear during combat. However, he never tells other people how they should play, and when the DM overrules one of his shenanigans he immediately and graciously accepts it, with a slight smile that seems to acknowledge that he is pushing the boundaries. And then there are a couple people like me, who try to build mechanically effective characters, but will also make some sub-optimal choices (e.g. using daggers instead of short swords, or making in-character but tactically unwise decisions during play) when it seems like the fun thing to do. Thus, lacking any sort of emotional scars from toxic players, and having experienced "powergaming" as a largely benign yin to roleplaying's yang, it's hard for me to see floating ASIs as anything dangerous.

But this discussion has helped me better understand a range of viewpoints, and for those who were willing to repeat and clarify and discuss without getting angry and accusatory, this has been educational. Thanks.

 

[Lyxen]

From what I've seen, the biggest impact Tasha's race rules had was that everyone now defaults to Custom Lineage instead of defaulting to Variant Human, at least you can get the funny hat along with the feat too.

And that is because a whole gaggle of racial powers is usually better than a single feat. Hence the power creep, because you get stats which are as good as a previous variant human exactly where you want them, and you can simply pick the racial abilities (and some are very strong) that complement your class.

Power creep => attractive to powergamers.

 

[Scribe]

As you probably know, the 5e designers themselves have also said moving scores around is balanced.

1. They know what they are talking about.
2. Have people to doublecheck them.
3. Have a history of disliking and removing anything too powerful.
4. They are telling the truth.

....

Not in the slightest. Do you play competitively in other games? It's a rare developer that admits they are wrong, fixes it, and is truthful.

If you choose to believe that, great, but I certainly don't.

 

[Maxperson]

It has, it means that 5e is really flexible, that the DM can do whatever challenge he wants and therefore optimising/powergaming is not for reasons of survival.

I could do that with 3e too, though. My ability to compensate for imbalance in the game system doesn't mean that the game system is balanced. 3e was too imbalanced, despite my ability to compensate, and 5e is too balanced, despite my ability to throw challenging or unbeatable encounters at the group.

Except that these characters were pre-Tasha, and they certainly were optimised already. It would probably have been "worse" with Tasha.

It might be. For someone who cares and will look up guides and such, optimization will be better. For the rest of us it might or might not be worse, but it would be completely coincidental and not optimization.

You did not even read the guides.

Correct. I didn't even click the link above, because I just don't care about that sort of thing. One thing the guides can't do, though, is make +2 dex > +2 dex. It doesn't matter one whit to the rogue if his +2 dex comes from an elf or some other race. +2 dex is always going to be mechanically equal to +2 dex. Any increased mechanical optimization must come from other abilities that are allowed by floating ASIs.

Please don't make yourself more dense than necessary. As usual with optimisation, the difference come from the combination of stats and abilities, racial and class. Having floating ASIs allows you to have the same scores as before but pick a race that is mechanically more interesting for your class than with racial ASIs.

Wow. Don't call me dense and then say exactly what I said. It makes you look dense.

 

[Scott Christian]

That one doesn't seem to include the options from Tasha's. Am I looking in the wrong place? What I'm looking for is whether post-Tasha's there are races that are rated higher than the best option pre-Tasha's.

For example, I looked at Monk and they gave Wood Elf the highest rating (sky blue color). With Tasha's, are there just a lot more races that are sky blue...which I think would be 100% fine...or do they downgrade Wood Elf because the only advantage it ever had was the ability scores? Because if the result is primarily that more races get top ratings, and therefore the sort of people who rely on these guides show more diversity, I think that's a good thing.

Sorry Bill. My fault. I just looked up one of the optimized sites and threw in the link. I didn't check it thoroughly. But they are all similar. They color code fair/good/great/excellent race/class/feat combos, and try to optimize for damage per round and maybe a few other things.

Really, though, what I'm hoping to see someday is data from D&DBeyond comparing pre- and post-Tasha's preferences.

That would be awesome.

In any event, it has become apparent that each of us is product of our experiences, which affects our viewpoint. I've seen the sort of toxic powergamer some people described, but only when I was for a while going to a big weekly Adventurer's League meeting at FLGS. But I don't go to that anymore, so it's not really a problem I have to deal with. My stance on all issues of player toxicity is that changing the rules doesn't change behavior and the only real solution is to not play with those people. But I can understand that if somebody has a really bad experience with a certain type of player it can produce a deeply-rooted emotional reaction to the conditions. (My wife got terrible food poisoning from seafood as a child, and still can't stand the smell of seafood.)

This is great insight. I could not agree more. And sorry to hear about your wife. A bad experience, for some random reason, sometimes sticks or doesn't. Are minds are bizarre that way. (By the way, my wife won't eat shrimp because she says they look like cockroaches of the sea. So I feel you pain. )

In my own group there's one player who always plays a powergamer build that I suspect he's researched, and the difference is clear during combat. However, he never tells other people how they should play, and when the DM overrules one of his shenanigans he immediately and graciously accepts it, with a slight smile that seems to acknowledge that he is pushing the boundaries. And then there are a couple people like me, who try to build mechanically effective characters, but will also make some sub-optimal choices (e.g. using daggers instead of short swords, or making in-character but tactically unwise decisions during play) when it seems like the fun thing to do. Thus, lacking any sort of emotional scars from toxic players, and having experienced "powergaming" as a largely benign yin to roleplaying's yang, it's hard for me to see floating ASIs as anything dangerous.

Thanks for sharing your experiences. My guess is, there are many tables exactly like yours: a powergamer or two, an optimizer, the jokester or Leroy Jenkins, the rules lawyer, etc. They all have a place.

But this discussion has helped me better understand a range of viewpoints, and for those who were willing to repeat and clarify and discuss without getting angry and accusatory, this has been educational. Thanks.

Ditto.

 

[Bill Zebub]

The problem is that powergamers do not understand it. They think the DM has to be fair and abide by rules about encounter difficulty, that he has to respect the technical power of the characters.

Just out of curiosity, what's your evidence that "powergamers do not understand" this? With millions of D&D players, that seems to be a pretty broad statement.

Or do you mean that you have personally encountered powergamers who don't seem to understand this, and you are extrapolating?

Every group I have ever played with has understood...and expected, and desired...that the DM would adjust difficulty to the ability of the party.

P.S. I think you mentioned up-thread that you were a powergamer early in your career. Did YOU understand this?

 

[Maxperson]

Just out of curiosity, what's your evidence that "powergamers do not understand" this? With millions of D&D players, that seems to be a pretty broad statement.

Or do you mean that you have personally encountered powergamers who don't seem to understand this, and you are extrapolating?

Every group I have ever played with has understood...and expected, and desired...that the DM would adjust difficulty to the ability of the party.

Agreed. Most of the powergamers I've known over the years have wanted to be challenged, seeing just how much higher they could achieve than the game standard. The remaining few were the toxic type you mentioned who just wanted to be able to brag and show off how powerful they are.

 

[Maxperson]

....

Not in the slightest. Do you play competitively in other games? It's a rare developer that admits they are wrong, fixes it, and is truthful.

If you choose to believe that, great, but I certainly don't.

Designers: "5e uses the common usage of words."

Also Designers: : "A paladin cannot smite with a fist."

Players: "But the common usage of smite literally includes a fist."

Designers: "A paladin cannot smite with a fist!!"

 

[Scott Christian]

Agreed. Most of the powergamers I've known over the years have wanted to be challenged, seeing just how much higher they could achieve than the game standard. The remaining few were the toxic type you mentioned who just wanted to be able to brag and show off how powerful they are.

I can say this about the powergamers I have played with. One, I like them and learned from them. Two, none of them were braggards. That said, the optimization of their characters made others begin to question their choices. I mean, when you have a game that lasts four hours, and for most, one to two of those hours is combat, and one player is always in the spotlight - it makes others wonder if their character is as useful as it could be. This is true for experienced players as well as novices.
So I don't think the powergamer has to be demonstrative about their capabilities in order for it to affect other players at the table. They can just do what they would normally do, and through osmosis, it seeps.

 

[LadyElect]

It's no use denying the difference between the last two (read the guides), and because one of my aims is to reduce the power gap between casual and optimised characters, it's obvious why I don't want to use the option of Floating ASIs. They bring nothing positive to our tables.

So, I'm curious about this assertion, but only operating on the link @Scott Christian provided. And perhaps the below is a misunderstanding of that since it is a lot of text to peruse and I am mostly taking in their color/star coding.

However, glancing through a few of the class "handbooks" shows about what I'd expect, which is that the greatest number of entries using Customized Origin moves their assessment of a race/subrace from their "Bad" tier to "OK" or from "OK" to "Good". That suggests to me that the power gap is being leveled rather than increased. There only seem to be a handful of entries that jump 2 tiers and there are even a surprising number to me that actually move down under the Customized Origin option. The biggest power implications seem to be the relative uselessness of base Human and the expected boost to Yuan-Ti/Satyr or flying speed races under Customized Origin. I've brewed the latter issues out already in my own play, but I think those are fair entries to note given the strength of their traits. Still, nothing seems to suggest that the option creates a larger gap across the board or introduces singular options that exceed existing possible combination with default rules (say, a new tier).

Perhaps I am misreading that, though, so please correct me if so. But along those same lines, do you believe that existing racial ASIs are a core component to the existing combinations being balanced? Would eliminating the racial ASIs create the same power imbalance as floating them?