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

[TwoSix]

Or- and call me crazy- maybe it's okay if not every race is equally good at everything. Maybe it's all right if elves make better rangers than dwarves, if dwarves make better fighters than gnomes, and if gnomes make better wizards than dragonborn.

Because the things that make one race better at being a given class never ever stop another race from being good at that class.

Nah, I'd rather not. I'd much prefer either strict race-as-class (like OSE) or racial classes (like ACKS), or go the other direction and have race purely as an aesthetic and narrative distinction (more like WoW). Biasing race-class combinations by making lots of them inferior choices just strikes me as the worst of both worlds.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Then throw them away. Throw away the rules for every game, because none of them model the real world with 100% accuracy. That isn't the point.

But, if we acknowledge that the the game isn't meant to represent biological reality accurately... then stop getting hung up on biological reality and using it to justify game rules.

That the thing is not represented accurately, doesn't mean it isn't represented at all. Or that it shouldn't be represented at all. The game rules absolutely should in some way try to represent the fictional reality, or otherwise the rules simply lose all relatability and indeed their whole purpose.

 

[Yaarel]

That is some serious cherry picking. The 3e sun elves may have eschewed Dexterity (and that's specifically called out as an exception in 3e's FR campaign book which implies that Dexterity is still an important elven hallmark), but all of the other 4 elf flavors had a Dex bonus. And the eladrin in Mordenkainen's is an elf subrace - so the +2 to Dex would apply.

The 5e elf of the Zendikar setting has the Ability Score Improvement +2 for Wisdom. None of the elven nations have Dexterity but one.

The D&D elf tradition across the editions since the origins of D&D upto 5e today, make Dexterity nonessential for the elf concept.

 

[Faolyn]

And I disagree. Removal of race/lineage/species ASI, absolutely does remove part of the game.

Sure. But so did removing THAC0 and limits on how many spells a wizard could have in their spellbook and Strength caps on female characters.

The real question is, doesn't removing racial ASIs remove anything of value from the game? And I'd say no.

 

[Faolyn]

Goliaths should be better Barbarians with a +2 to Str, and should on average be stronger than Halfings or Gnomes.

But goliaths aren't going to be better barbarians due to Strength because, when it comes to weapon damage, Strength and Dexterity provide the exact same bonus. A goliath barbarian with an 18 Strength who is wielding a shortsword is going to be inflicting 1d6 + 4 damage from Str + whatever their rage bonus is. A gnome barbarian with an 18 Dexterity who is wielding a shortsword is going to be inflicting 1d6 + 4 damage from Dex + whatever their rage bonus is.

The difference here is that goliaths, because they are Medium, have no penalty when using Heavy weapons. Thus any Medium creature is automatically going to be a "better" barbarian than a Small creature because they can use Heavy weapons. No matter whether they get a +2 to Strength or not.

That, plus the fact that goliaths gain Powerful Build, means that goliaths are stronger than gnomes automatically. No need for an ASI to add to that.

(And, of course, that assumes that a "best" barbarian is the one who inflicts the most damage.)

(And the next question is, why is an 8-foot tall, sturdily-built goliath equally as strong as a 6-foot tall, slender githyanki but stronger than the equally tall but heavier loxodon, even though the loxodon also has powerful build, can lift much more than a higher-Strength githyanki could, and can heft a gnome using only its nose?)

 

[Scribe]

The real question is, doesn't removing racial ASIs remove anything of value from the game? And I'd say no.

Of course it does. It removes a meaningful way to differentiate between the various PC options at the crunch level.

How important that is, is a personal question. I'd say the literal thousands of words spilled over the topic would mean it is of value to some.

 

[Scribe]

But goliaths aren't going to be better barbarians due to Strength because, when it comes to weapon damage, Strength and Dexterity provide the exact same bonus. A goliath barbarian with an 18 Strength who is wielding a shortsword is going to be inflicting 1d6 + 4 damage from Str + whatever their rage bonus is. A gnome barbarian with an 18 Dexterity who is wielding a shortsword is going to be inflicting 1d6 + 4 damage from Dex + whatever their rage bonus is.

The difference here is that goliaths, because they are Medium, have no penalty when using Heavy weapons. Thus any Medium creature is automatically going to be a "better" barbarian than a Small creature because they can use Heavy weapons. No matter whether they get a +2 to Strength or not.

That, plus the fact that goliaths gain Powerful Build, means that goliaths are stronger than gnomes automatically. No need for an ASI to add to that.

(And, of course, that assumes that a "best" barbarian is the one who inflicts the most damage.)

(And the next question is, why is an 8-foot tall, sturdily-built goliath equally as strong as a 6-foot tall, slender githyanki but stronger than the equally tall but heavier loxodon, even though the loxodon also has powerful build, can lift much more than a higher-Strength githyanki could, and can heft a gnome using only its nose?)

All true! Which is why I further penalize small creatures with a str cap, and allow some to go over 20.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Nobody cares about elf. The Knife-eared snobs!

How about they just get to reroll a DEX save a number of times per day equal to their proficiency bonus?

I'm more interested in the question: "would any other published race need a houserule ability to replace what the ASI represents?"

 

[Faolyn]

Of course it does. It removes a meaningful way to differentiate between the various PC options at the crunch level.

How important that is, is a personal question. I'd say the literal thousands of words spilled over the topic would mean it is of value to some.

We already have meaningful ways to differentiate between the various PC options. They're called "traits." Powerful Build, Aggressive, Luck, Long-Limbed, Mask of the Wild, Draconic Ancestry, Dwarven Resiliance, innate spells, innate proficiencies, innate damage resistances.

 

[Faolyn]

And let's not forget that Nature VS Nurture is not a hard binary. It's a REALLY complicated issue.

Take, for exemple, Star Trek's Klingon. Their culture has a strong emphasis on honourable warriors with lots of ceremonial combat. In such a society, the strongest specimen would have a greater chance of being selected for reproduction, resulting in stronger children, over many generations. But it's not impossible for a Klingon to become an Engineer (otherwise they would have never discovered Warp Drives on their own).

In fact, there was one episode (I want to say DS9) that said that there were many "castes" of Klingons but the warrior caste took over and has the most prominence in their society. I think that this was the episode that featured a Klingon lawyer.