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

[Maxperson]

Sure, I could always say "in my world, goblins are any alignment but all dragons, even the metallic ones, are evil." But not a single official source would ever include anything like that, because goblins are evil and metallic dragons are good.

You're still objectively wrong about that. There have been official sources that included non-evil goblins and I've shown them to you more than once.

 

[Bill Zebub]

It's not about the elf you want, though. It's about the race as a whole. Elves are more dexterous as a race than humans are. Dwarves are more hardy than humans or elves.

This is confusing me. How does a player giving their Elf +2 Strength (or whatever) change the elven race as a whole?

 

[Maxperson]

This is confusing me. How does a player giving their Elf +2 Strength (or whatever) change the elven race as a whole?

It defies what the elven race is. It takes that PC and stops him from being more dexterous than a human with an equal starting roll or point buy total, instead of having an advantage at dex over a human like the entire elven race has. Further, it then makes that PC elf's as strong as a goliath with an equal roll or point buy total, which is ridiculous as goliaths as a race are much stronger than elves as a race. All else being equal, the goliath will be stronger than the elf.

 

[Scribe]

I read this several times, and I think what you are saying the material change would be is that you would see some starting characters that had attributes you wouldn't otherwise see. Which, I agree, is something an observer would be able to detect.

Is it fair to say you wouldn't...or don't intend to...do this yourself? E.g., you wouldn't personally play a halfling with a starting Strength of 16 or 17? If so, does that mean the part that would detract from your game experience is seeing other people at your table playing Strength 17 halflings?

See characters that you wouldnt see because they do not fit the niche or archetype that they have been intended for, for decades. That is not a positive to me.

Note: I try and say 'me' often to indicate that what YOU do is up to you. I dont care if you run Tasha's, the fact it existed as an option is only a positive for the game. When it is the ONLY option, that is a flaw to ME.

And no, I would never use Tasha's, and any game I run will not use Tasha's, and I will update any PC option to work within my system with defined, limited, racial attributes.

Like Tasha's? Fantastic. Go nuts.

Making it the ONLY option? That is an absolute failure on the part of the developers of the game that I pay for, to me.

 

[Maxperson]

Note: I try and say 'me' often to indicate that what YOU do is up to you. I dont care if you run Tasha's, the fact it existed as an option is only a positive for the game. When it is the ONLY option, that is a flaw to ME.

This.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Care to wager?

Wager what? that they've announced it? Or that they haven't announced it?

Sure. I'll wager they haven't announced anything. What do I win?

 

[Malmuria]

This is confusing me. How does a player giving their Elf +2 Strength (or whatever) change the elven race as a whole?

It doesn't change the elven race as a whole and it is barely noticeable at the game table. Playing to archetype would be, for example, an ability that gives elves advantage on stealth while not wearing metal armor (similar to a mechanic from 1e). That's a noticeable advantage at the table because it's not a +1 to your roll, as in an ASI, but a +5 effectively. That would make an elf feel dexterous in play, and thus reinforce the archetype. It would also pose a dilemma to our theoretical elf fighter as to whether to wear heavy armor to have this stealth advantage.

ASI are based less around archetype and more around an attempt to simulate a fantasy race (and doesn't really work in a game that abstracts the complexity of any creature into, basically, six stats). An elf fighter hitting things with a +2 Str ASI and a longsword or with a +2 dex ASI and a rapier is the same mechanically. So I'm just as lost as you are when it comes to how it actually matters in 5e except that it's tradition, and I guess you have the comfort of knowing that the half orc wizard did not get a bonus to intelligence, even though at level 4 they've managed to get theirs to 19, and thus the core rules are modeling (in an extremely poor way) fantasy species difference.

 

[Chaosmancer]

In between mirroring real life and nothing mattering at all, there's the fact that in D&D the races really are different. They are not so close to the average human as to be indistinguishable. That's why racial bonuses are appropriate. Goliaths really are stronger on average than the average human. Elves really are more dexterous on average than the average human. And so on.

Are they really stronger? Like, honestly and truly, the scale of human achievements in strength seems to go from (translating human IRL to DnD) 8 to 36 for men, and 8 to 24 for women. "Human" is a scale that has that broad of a spread.

Goliaths are a single point stronger on average? That's nothing if we are talking about real life. Human men have a scale of 28 points to work with, do we really think that Goliaths going from 9 to 37 is some grand difference that changes everything? That is 27 points of overlap, larger than the entire SCALE of DnD attributes. This is trivial. A difference of 30 lbs. It might be incredibly impress at the high end, when athletes are competing for ounces, but in day to day living? It doesn't mean a thing.

So, why raise such a fuss about it? In terms of mechanics, I can see it making a difference, but in terms of "realism" this is ludicrous.

You can prefer a change, but it doesn't actually fix anything. You can't fix something that isn't broken.

Sure you can, we call it "improving". Something we've done for a long long time. Also, it was broken, because a lot of us feel a lot more free with our concepts now, so clearly something wasn't working. Maybe go back and reread the first few posts in this thread, before people came to start decrying the ruin of DnD again, where people were saying "you know, this really did make a difference"

I don't think he was too weak to be a strongman in that era, but he wasn't anywhere near the peak that someone born physically male can achieve.

So, the peak of achievement in the 1920's is nowhere near the peak of achievment in the 1920's? I'm not comparing him to someone in the modern era, I'm comparing him to someone from his own era. So, how does this work? A guy at the peak of manly achievement in the 20's was beaten by a woman because she was a time traveler who knew modern training regimes? What are you trying to argue here?

 

[Chaosmancer]

See characters that you wouldnt see because they do not fit the niche or archetype that they have been intended for, for decades. That is not a positive to me.

Note: I try and say 'me' often to indicate that what YOU do is up to you. I dont care if you run Tasha's, the fact it existed as an option is only a positive for the game. When it is the ONLY option, that is a flaw to ME.

And no, I would never use Tasha's, and any game I run will not use Tasha's, and I will update any PC option to work within my system with defined, limited, racial attributes.

Like Tasha's? Fantastic. Go nuts.

Making it the ONLY option? That is an absolute failure on the part of the developers of the game that I pay for, to me.

I will never get over this argument. It ruins the game for you that you might have to choose yourself to stick to the niches you expect, instead of WoTC forcing it on you.

Nothing prevents you from making a high elf, giving them +2 Dex and +1 Int, if Tasha's was the law of the land for every table. You can do exactly what you want, you just... have to do it, instead of it being prescribed

 

[Chaosmancer]

This is confusing me. How does a player giving their Elf +2 Strength (or whatever) change the elven race as a whole?

The argument, just to make sure there is some clarity, is that DnD is meant to be a population simulator. Back in 1e when the game was being designed, that was why they went with a 3d6 roll down the line method of stat generation, because it produced a bell curve that closely matched an ideal population distribution. The bonuses and penalties to stats then shifted that bell curve, to provide the "different averages" for each race.


See, it doesn't matter if you are rolling 3d6+2 for the goliath and getting a total of 14 and then roll 3d6 for the elf and get an 18, because what they care about is if you rolled ten thousand goliaths and ten thousand elves, you would get that bell curve distribution of population averages that make the game seem like it models reality. This is why there are always calls to "biological realism" and claims that "goliaths are stronger" or "elves are more dexterous" because they see the reality of the game as the population bell curve being shifted.