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

[UngeheuerLich]

I think, the goliath is one of the best designed races. Even if you take away +2 str or +1 con, they retain their strong, athlethic and tough flavour with their racial abilities and powers.

 

[clearstream]

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 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.)

It feels to me like they need to be different in ways that are incommensurable and positive. Dwarven resilience is a positive for dwarves, and lacking it says nothing negative about other races. Ideally, features should admit of variation. These dwarves have resilience, others may not.

 

[TwoSix]

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.

<shrug> I've always been completely upfront about that. A point-buy character with a starting +2 in their main stat makes me queasy. Since I won't do that, the old rules did put a constraint on my character creation. ("Shackled" is probably a bit overwrought. )

The last change I'd like them to put in is making a feat at 1st level the standard, and then give human some other feature.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It feels to me like they need to be different in ways that are incommensurable and positive. Dwarven resilience is a positive for dwarves, and lacking it says nothing negative about other races. Ideally, features should admit of variation. These dwarves have resilience, others may not.

Yet even positive stereotypes about real ethnicities would be racist. And as long this resilience is tied to dwarves it is a stereotype even if it wouldn’t apply to all of them.

 

[Umbran]

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

If one player does this for a character at their own table, no.

If a widely distributed work, for decades supports the idea that, "People like this are strong," and, "people like this are stupid," and, "people like this are ugly," and so on, we start to have difficulties.

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?

No particular individual DM is a cause for concern. When thousands of GMs are doing it, it becomes a problem for many reasons. For one...

It may be difficult to see, if you are in a demographic that's been more on the giving end than the receiving end of such stuff. But the minorities among us have been subject to, "people like that are..." for a long, long time. So, repeating that pattern looks like symbolically repeating the thing done to them, and enjoying it.

Now, one might want to argue that this is only gaming, even the biggest game doesn't really impact culture as a whole. To which I point out that almost every subset of culture can say that. And if they all do, then the entire culture fails to change. Plus, with the explosive growth of the game, the higher public visibility with actual play shows, and a major motion picture coming, the placement of gaming in culture seems on the rise.

We are each responsible for making the world a better place within our reach. This is a small thing, within our reach.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Yet even positive stereotypes about real ethnicities would be racist. And as long this resilience is tied to dwarves it is a stereotype even if it wouldn’t apply to all of them.

Yes. Lets not discuss real ethnicities.
But if you have a race that has a physiologically or metaphysically different body or mind or magical abilities, then this should be reflected in the stat block.

I think stat bonuses are outdated since point buy. They were just a nice statistical increase and I remember in ADnD, some races were limited to 18 or lower in a stat despite having a bonus.

As I said above and in a different thread: make abilities that are useful for every class and which feel like reflecting the diffefence.
The Goliath resilience allows a wizard to maintain concentration on a very low damage attack and the powerful build allows him to be loaded with a lot of spellbooks.

In 4e, the essential human had a 1/encounter ability to add +3 to any roll.
(a lot better than +1 to every stat).

Actually, since the design space drifts away from short rest powers for classes, I think it would be neat to give every race a short rest power.

 

[MGibster]

Yet even positive stereotypes about real ethnicities would be racist. And as long this resilience is tied to dwarves it is a stereotype even if it wouldn’t apply to all of them.

At least here in the United States, ethnicity and race aren't the same thing. I don't share an ethnic identity with Germans, Czechs, the French, or the Welsh even if at a glance you might not be able to us apart.

 

[Yaarel]

Yet even positive stereotypes about real ethnicities would be racist.

Yeah.

When one group is "high Intelligence", it says everything about all the other groups being less intelligent. It is better to diversify each race and culture.

I worry about the high elf being "intelligent" and civilized, while the wood elf is non-intelligent and uncivilized.

Heh, and I notice, the D&D "viking" concepts are never the high-Intelligence ones. Nordic-esque is always a subhuman savage! Maybe some diversity here too.

 

[the Jester]

I'm really thinking that WotC needs to do a revision of 5e.

No thanks. No more half-editions, please. Leave the core of the game alone or make a new one entirely.

 

[Geekoid]

It's time for me to eat some crow. I've been against separating ability score increases from race in D&D for some time now. My main opposition to removing it was because I felt as though it made choosing what race to play matter even less than it matters now.* But my character died tonight during the inaugural session for our new campaign and it's time to roll up a new character. After discussing it a bit with my group, I decided to make a the nephew of our half-elf druid and I will be a Circle of the Spores druid. One of my goals of this campaign is to play things I've never played before and that includes races. I mostly make humans so in the spirit of newness I decided to make an elf. Elves get that great Dexterity bonus but I wanted a Wisdom bonus, dammit! I had the option to use the Tasha rules but I just made a regular elf and took my +2 Dexterity bonus.

But you know what? All those who argued that getting rid of ASI were right. It allows you to make the character you want to make and that's always a good thing. You win. I am a reformed man.

*I know some of you will tell me in your campaigns it makes a difference whether your character is an elf or dwarf. I believe you. But in my experience it usually doesn't matter much.

Congrats, now all races are the same. Well done on making the game bland.