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

[barasawa]

...
I was wrong to champion race ability improvements.

The forumers who demanded ability flexibility to combine various races and classes, were right.

Nobody was right or wrong, it's a matter of opinion and choices.
You've changed your opinion on which you prefer, that doesn't mean you were wrong or they were right.

 

[Aldarc]

You know, one way to bake in abilities into race AND not make any race-class combination disfavored if classes don't have a preferred stat. Have class features that leverage Int for fighters or Str for wizards.

If attributes bonuses are a thing as part of character creation, a better method may be to tie them into Background and Class. Picking a Fighter gives you a choice of stat bonus: e.g., +2 Str or +2 Dex. But your background as say, for example, an Acolyte gives you a +1 Wis or +1 Cha.

I think it should be feasible to have all classes with at least 3 different stats as possible main stats without the need for multiclassing or feats.

That way lies 4e D&D, not that I mind.

 

[JEB]

Yeah, something like that certainly might be interesting. The real issue with removing racial ASIs mid-edition is that the game was really not originally designed to work that way. Without them, the races have very little mechanical weight left, and it also creates weird issues like mountain dwarves suddenly being the best choice for wizards and sorcerers.

Which is why I'm absolutely convinced that 2024 is bringing us at least a revised 5E, and possibly a full-fledged 6E (if Wizards becomes convinced that enough of the fanbase wants and will support more extensive changes). Either way, the old race designs don't work under the new paradigm, and keeping them unchanged in the core rules will look increasingly hypocritical and outdated.

 

[ad_hoc]

Which is why I'm absolutely convinced that 2024 is bringing us at least a revised 5E, and possibly a full-fledged 6E (if Wizards becomes convinced that enough of the fanbase wants and will support more extensive changes). Either way, the old race designs don't work under the new paradigm, and keeping them unchanged in the core rules will look increasingly hypocritical and outdated.

Yeah, I'm all for changing how races/lineages are done, I just don't like how Tasha's did it.

For me the only solution I see that I would like are more racial feats. Replace the +2 with a racial feat and you keep the flavour while not having a stat you don't want. At that point I wouldn't even mind having the +1 be floating (just not for Mountain Dwarfs).

 

[Scribe]

Yeah, I'm all for changing how races/lineages are done, I just don't like how Tasha's did it.

For me the only solution I see that I would like are more racial feats. Replace the +2 with a racial feat and you keep the flavour while not having a stat you don't want. At that point I wouldn't even mind having the +1 be floating (just not for Mountain Dwarfs).

If I had my way, I would have it broken down 3 ways.

A: 1 ASI for your race/lineage/species, and its limited to up to 3 of the abilities. (Elves wouldnt get Con as an option, Dwarves wouldnt get Dex, Halflings wouldnt get Str, etc).
B: 1 ASI for your background. Lets say Criminal Background: Deception (Cha) or Stealth (Dex).
C: 1 ASI for your Class. Rogue which provides an additional +1 Dex, +1 Con, or +1 Cha

Now, in my personal world (aka my games) I go further, but that would certainly be an acceptable compromise to me. Feats, or Paragon type abilities from past editions, are all good levers we can pull to further differentiate the various PC options at a crunch level.

 

[FrogReaver]

This thread brought up biological essentialism and biological determinism. There's another concept that seems to be getting lumped in with them and maybe it belongs or maybe it already has another name.

So far all the explanations of essentialism and determinism have been at the individual level. However, can such ideas not also be applied to groups? As someone previously noted, 'the available evidence shows that the group of all men is essentially and deterministically better at an activity like weight lifting than the group of all women' (at least with respect to the amount of weight lifted). If that shouldn't be called biologic essentialism or determinism then what should it be called?

Because up till now I've used those terms to describe that phenomenon (and others) and I'm thinking now that maybe I'm not the only one and maybe that is part of the broader disconnect in these discussions?

 

[Scott Christian]

For me in the context of typical humans being all +1: the +2 feels "more than human" and the +0 feels "less than human".

Thus the lack of a bonus is "terrible".

This is what people for ASIs has been telling the other side what they meant all along. The only reason to not have ASIs is because you need that extra +1 for your character. That is it. There is no other reason. Literally - +1.

I wouldn't go so far as to call it whining. We all want the character we envision. But there are some that can still envision their character, or even be open to other avenues of "winning," as opposed to "This must happen in order for my character to be viable."

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Whilst I like the species affecting ability scores, I actually think the original way it was done in 5e is not very good. Ubiquitous +1s indeed kinda makes it feel that you're punished if you're not getting it, and how the pricing in point buy system works with ASIs effectively means that some species will simply end up paying more for the same score than others. And Tasha's just of course gets rid of it altogether. I have completely redone the ability score generation for my home game, and I wish WotC would just rethink the whole thing from the scratch. What actually is the purpose of ability scores, what they are supposed to represent? What is the purpose of different playable species and how it is achieved?

 

[dave2008]

The ASIs weren't about individuals until 5e. They were about races, and how they generally appear. The individual idea is a very new construct that WotC is trying to convince us was always their intent, because modern culture. Even if it was never an accurate way to portray a population, that's what it was. Without that, we shouldn't have ASIs at level 1 at all.

ASI at level 1 is fine, but not at level 0. In fact, I think that makes a good argument for making them class based., not race based.

 

[dave2008]

Good thing you have Tasha's then to do with as you see fit.

For you to - now you can put them where you think they fit not WotC.