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

[Malmuria]

I often wonder how accurately online discussions reflect the attitudes of people in general. The number of us who discuss game related topics in online forums such as this are a minority of the gaming population. All of us here are weirdos in a sense. It's not that any of us aren't real fans, I just don't know if anyone of us are representative of RPG enthusiast as a whole. At any rate, given my age, I'm pretty sure I'm not representative. I could very well seeing WotC going back to ASI in a future where fewer people have any moral concerns about it. I'm not going to argue that this will happen but you never know.

I think people are more likely to view the topic of racial asi in terms of the mechanical implications (ie, optimization) than in terms of its world building implications. Which, again, is fine, but I think the easier route would be to increase the standard array/point buy a bit or include character creation asi with class instead of race.

 

[Undrave]

I often wonder how accurately online discussions reflect the attitudes of people in general. The number of us who discuss game related topics in online forums such as this are a minority of the gaming population. All of us here are weirdos in a sense. It's not that any of us aren't real fans, I just don't know if anyone of us are representative of RPG enthusiast as a whole. At any rate, given my age, I'm pretty sure I'm not representative. I could very well seeing WotC going back to ASI in a future where fewer people have any moral concerns about it. I'm not going to argue that this will happen but you never know.

I'm totally a weirdo and totally not the majority. I'm also not super attached to ASI. It's fun as a character building challenge, but it could be linked to background and it would be the same.

Personally, my ideal character building would probably involve a few more steps:

You'd have your Lineage, which gives you at least one 'Major Feature' and a handful of 'Minor Feature' (these are your Halfling Luck, your Trance, your size, your dark vision etc) and you can create hybrids by just swapping minor features around

Then you'd have your 'Homeland', AKA, the physical environement you grew up in. Was it by the sea? In a deep forest? In a mountainous region? In the middle of a desert? This would give you another feature related to exploraton as well as one of your ASI.

Then you'd have your 'Culture'. Was the culture you grew up in ruled by a powerful church? By a cadre of Wizards? Were merchants really powerful? Were you raised in a warrior culture where everybody got to learn how to use a weapon before they were ten? This would give you another some minor feature with a bent toward social but not necessarily (mostly skills and proficiencies)

And then your Background, what you did before being an adventurer. This one would give you your second ASI as well as the usual stuff.

And THEN you'd pick your class.

Probably too many steps for people who think it's too complicated but I also feel like it would build a richer and stronger backstory for your character.

EDIT: Also, the DM could be empowered to create a few specific places of origins that PC could pick by simply matching Homelands and Culture together. "Here are the five places you can come from for this campagn, a Theocratic Desert society, a Militaristic Coastal society, a Magocratic Coastal society, a Nomadic Culture also in the Desert and a culture or Merchants in the Mountains"

Probably some suggested places already made in the book introducing this system.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Ooof... Careful there, you're two steps away from "The kids on Social Media aren't REAL fans".

Oh, I'm sure they are real fans (although I admit I'm a grumpy old man these days). I'm just not sure how representative of "the market", by which I mean people who actually buy the products, they are. I dont expect I'm all that representative myself at this point.

 

[CubicsRube]

meeerde! " don't speak religion !"
that's it ?

It's the rules of the forum. No religion. No politics.

And I believe swearing is frowned upon too. Even in another language.

 

[le Redoutable]

It's the rules of the forum. No religion. No politics.

And I believe swearing is frowned upon too. Even in another language.

so obviously we won't use the WFTMP system

 

[Maxperson]

I don't have a strong opinion for or against the ability score bonuses tied to races, but I've always refused that specific argument. It was already possible to make these characters and creative campaigns. What people mean is "I couldn't do the character I had in mind and bear to not have an optimal spread of ability scores". I've always liked unusual combinations of races and classes, and they were always viable.

This. For my group choice matters and we like stats to be tied to race. We also don't care if we don't get the optimum stats and do creative groups anyway just fine.

I don't think it's wrong to divorce stat bonuses from race. As long as you are having fun you are doing it right. It's just not for us.

 

[Maxperson]

Two things-

1. If you were really old school, you wouldn't be against ASIs for races. You'd be against ASIs, period. "In my day, we got our abilities the old fashioned way; we EARNED THEM by rolling 'em. Not just handing 'em out like candy every few levels."

2. Never go full Elf. Just ask Sean Penn.

And none of this +1 for a 12 stuff. You need at least a 15 to even begin to get bonuses!

 

[AverageMojito]

Which is exactly why Eberron has never appealed to me, and I will forever use a system which ties race/lineage/species (whatever we are calling it today) to ASI.

For clarification, I only cited Eberron because it breaks from some of the usual tropes. So it helped with the example in hand. The setting has nothing to do with free-form ASI.

As for appealing, to each their own, of course. I, for one, have no desire to play the same tropes for decades. Recently, I've become very fond of "unbalanced roles" in a party, for example. Go figure...

 

[Yaarel]

I'm totally a weirdo and totally not the majority. I'm also not super attached to ASI. It's fun as a character building challenge, but it could be linked to background and it would be the same.

Personally, my ideal character building would probably involve a few more steps:

You'd have your Lineage, which gives you at least one 'Major Feature' and a handful of 'Minor Feature' (these are your Halfling Luck, your Trance, your size, your dark vision etc) and you can create hybrids by just swapping minor features around

Then you'd have your 'Homeland', AKA, the physical environement you grew up in. Was it by the sea? In a deep forest? In a mountainous region? In the middle of a desert? This would give you another feature related to exploraton as well as one of your ASI.

Then you'd have your 'Culture'. Was the culture you grew up in ruled by a powerful church? By a cadre of Wizards? Were merchants really powerful? Were you raised in a warrior culture where everybody got to learn how to use a weapon before they were ten? This would give you another some minor feature with a bent toward social but not necessarily (mostly skills and proficiencies)

And then your Background, what you did before being an adventurer. This one would give you your second ASI as well as the usual stuff.

And THEN you'd pick your class.

Probably too many steps for people who think it's too complicated but I also feel like it would build a richer and stronger backstory for your character.

EDIT: Also, the DM could be empowered to create a few specific places of origins that PC could pick by simply matching Homelands and Culture together. "Here are the five places you can come from for this campagn, a Theocratic Desert society, a Militaristic Coastal society, a Magocratic Coastal society, a Nomadic Culture also in the Desert and a culture or Merchants in the Mountains"

Probably some suggested places already made in the book introducing this system.

These are the things that a player can be thinking about when building a character concept. Some of these steps can combine into a single step.

Step 1. Select lineage. Choose a major feature and three minor features.

Step 2. Select culture. Each background can relate to the environment of a culture (pearl diver, field farmer, ice fisher, mountain herbalist, Underdark lizard rancher, desert nomadic merchant family), or it can be a cultural institution (wizard schooler, Lolth priestess, glassteel maker, elven chain smith, griffon rider, mountain dwarf clan warrior, a family member of the mayor of a town, a spell component shop keeper). The character is part of this culture before venturing off into the unknown. What the character did before adventuring, is the same thing as defines the kinds of institutions that construct this culture. A background can be general, like Farmer or Sailor, applying similarly to numerous cultures, or can be specific, like Star Enclave Clothing Conjurer or High Elf Wild Farmer (magically cultivating complex ecosystems that look natural but yield high produce). When the DM constructs a culture, it looks like an assemblage of backgrounds. A player picks from this assemblage. A background might work better as a choice of feat or two half feats, depending on what exactly this background is doing.

Step 3. Select class.

 

[le Redoutable]

This. For my group choice matters and we like stats to be tied to race. We also don't care if we don't get the optimum stats and do creative groups anyway just fine.

I don't think it's wrong to divorce stat bonuses from race. As long as you are having fun you are doing it right. It's just not for us.

Songoku is a Fighter / Elementalist;
he uses flurry of blows, just like Hokuto Kenshiro, but doesn't live in Love when he gets hit by Necromantic blows;
to the contrary ( cf the movie " Fist Of The North Star " ) of ( Assassins are Necromancers , again " Fist of the North Star " )
the movie, featuring Gary Daniels