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

[le Redoutable]

hey! flurry of blows are for Monks, yes ?
so Songoku here is his third class :
Fighter/Monk/Elementalist ( this is for use with WFTMP lol )

 

[le Redoutable]

and Kenshiro would be
Fighter/Monk/Necromancer

( be it Elementalist or Necromancer, these are both Magic-user Classes )

 

[le Redoutable]

and ( let's go on pals ) if Assassins were hired to terminate people annoying, this sounds to me like Assassins using politics ( the P from WFTMP ) , combined with Magic because of Necromancers ( the M from WFTMP ) , then either Magic Major ( and thereof Politics minor ) or Politics Major ( you get the point )

 

[TerraDave]

It meaning "having responsibilities to our fellow humans"? What does exactly does that entail?

There's nothing exact about it. There is no specific list of dos and don'ts you can check off. Living with hundreds of millions of other humans is complicated and hard and dynamic.

But I agree.

How is this relevant?

Does someone making an elf with high dex, or low con for that matter, hinder our ability to live with our fellow humans?

Does a DM saying that an elf's con can't be higher than 16 make it harder to for us to live with hundreds of millions of other humans?

 

[cbwjm]

I'm really thinking that WotC needs to do a revision of 5e. Make each race a little more equivalent, remove things like proficiencies from every race (maybe replace them with advantage in some cases so that elves can still excel at perception) and then just make ability score increases something unconnected to race and instead connected to rolling for ability scores.

There are other things that need revisions, some of the older feats and subclasses could do with being upgraded to wordings used in Tashas, such as magic initiate allowing for spell slots and subclasses using proficiency bonus instead of ability scores for uses/long rest. I know that they are unlikely to do any of this, but with the way they've changed things, I really feel like they should.

 

[le Redoutable]

and Kenshiro would be
Fighter/Monk/Necromancer

( be it Elementalist or Necromancer, these are both Magic-user Classes )

now 1st Ed UA affiliated high level Druids to Elementalists;
( speculating on the solidity of WFTMP )
then Elementalists should mix Faith with Magic;
actually there seems like I should never speculate on the solidity of any system;

so now I use Druids as belonging to the CORNE system
Corps === > Body
Outils ===> Tools
Relation => Relation
Nature ==> Nature
Esprit ===> Mind

now CORNE is called BTRNM

so Druids belong to Nature

( I fear to get annoying pals )
let's delay and give time to time

 

[clearstream]

I must regretfully inform you that your character concepts will still be creatively limited. A frontline fighter will be terrible if he doesn't have Relentless Endurance, as will be a rogue if he doesn't have Lucky or a ranger if he only has 25ft of movement. Hopefully, next player options book should allow you to choose your movement speed, swap your race features and any proficiencies.

You point to a complexity that I feel is meaningful. Assaying a few designs for races using the Tasha's model of freely assignable ASIs brought me to reflect on that same question. I believe a difference that matters is that the six ability scores are shared... they are commensurable.

For example, no one can say of a human that they are somehow less because they lack the halfling Lucky feature. Lucky is just not something humans have. You are no less or more a human just because you don't have Lucky. Intelligence on the other hand is shared and an orc's intelligence is directly comparable to a human's intelligence.

When features are not commensurable, it becomes more like what I think you have talk about - differences in species. Further, designers can orient to positives - the virtues a race sees in itself - and subcultures (the ancestors of these halflings were blessed by Tymora, this other group are known for something else). I do however agree with your sense that other facets of race, like the anger thematic of all half-orc features, can also be problematic.

 

[TheAlkaizer]

I believe a difference that matters is that the six ability scores are shared... they are commensurable.

I agree. I was just being tacky. As I mentioned in some of my replies, I actually don't care much about ASI. They're not that exciting and ythey're not very imaginative. I just bite every time people say the reason they wanted it gone is to remove what shackled their creativity in making the characters they've been wanting to play for years, when the truth is that they couldn't bear to play a character that had a +2 instead of a +3 as a main modifier. They're nothing wrong in wanted that, but I'd prefer if people were honest about it.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It meaning "having responsibilities to our fellow humans"? What does exactly does that entail?

There's nothing exact about it. There is no specific list of dos and don'ts you can check off. Living with hundreds of millions of other humans is complicated and hard and dynamic.

Yes. That is trivially true. It just is that in any given actual situation we need to get into specifics.

I am really not trying to argue for any specific positions (though I obviously have opinions) or build some gotcha, I simply try to unpack what biological essentialism actually means in context of fantasy species.

To put it simply: it is racist to say that ethnic group A of humans is essentially different than ethnic group B (And I still think it remains true even if we get into qualifiers such as 'most' or 'usually'.)* So what does this mean for building fantasy species? Is it problematic to say that elves are essentially different to dwarves, or that humans are essentially different than aarakocra? Because if it is, I literally do not understand how these fantasy species could be depicted at all. And perhaps they shouldn't; that certainly is a perfectly possible conclusion. Ultimately I feel the discussion seems to elide the question of what is the purpose of having these fantasy species in the first place; why we have them, what are we trying to tell with them?

(*I'd really like not to use any real world racist language here as an example, hopefully people imagine what I mean.)

 

[Yaarel]

I agree. I was just being tacky. As I mentioned in some of my replies, I actually don't care much about ASI. They're not that exciting and ythey're not very imaginative. I just bite every time people say the reason they wanted it gone is to remove what shackled their creativity in making the characters they've been wanting to play for years, when the truth is that they couldn't bear to play a character that had a +2 instead of a +3 as a main modifier. They're nothing wrong in wanted that, but I'd prefer if people were honest about it.

For me, the mechanical bonus is FLAVOR. If I see the narrative of the elf being superlative Wizards, then I expect Intelligence +2. Because flavor. If I see the narrative of the elf being a magical people who are singers, who the Bards study, then I expect the elf to be mechanically among the best choices for a Bard. Because flavor.

Generally the race ability improvements impede character concepts, especially when the flavor involves excellence.