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

[Scribe]

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?

That when they do re-release the original races, in whatever product comes next for them, that they wont have ASI assigned, it will be floating. I mean just like that thread where everyone was talking about the lineages (Reborn, Hexblood, Dhamphir) and how we were overreacting.

Well, Strixhaven will have the same thing, as we predicted.

Racial ASI is going away, and I find that to be a flaw. Simple as that.

 

[Scribe]

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

I want it prescribed. I'll never understand how people cannot understand this.

 

[Malmuria]

I want it prescribed. I'll never understand how people cannot understand this.

Well, because you haven't made an argument as to why it needs to be prescribed by the official publishers. What you have said is that it feels like a flaw for you, or lessens the game, and of course anyone can respect that. But that may or may not hold for anyone else, depending on how they feel.

 

[JEB]

I want it prescribed. I'll never understand how people cannot understand this.

You've said you're fine with both prescribed ASI and floating ASI as options. If the default assumption was floating ASI, would you be fine with that, so long as Wizards also provided an official (but optional) prescribed ASI for each race? (Basically as an archetype, example, or quick-build.)

 

[Crimson Longinus]

"That if the player decides to focus on the thing their PC's species is known for, they are guaranteed to be best in the party at it."

How does this not translate into "make them the best wizards"? Are gnomes known for being the best barbarians instead? Seems kind of like you made a very broad statement, and are now walking it back.

This discussion was about ability scores, not about classes.

In my preceding post I literally gave an example of how I handle this in my game with orc and eldri strength.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Well, because you haven't made an argument as to why it needs to be prescribed by the official publishers. What you have said is that it feels like a flaw for you, or lessens the game, and of course anyone can respect that. But that may or may not hold for anyone else, depending on how they feel.

This is a splat based game. You choose your race, you choose your class. People want these things to matter, they want the rules to support the archetypes. We could also remove classes and just let the players choose what features they want (via some sort of balancedish point buy) and it would work fine. A lot of games work this way, they don't have splats. But it would definitely feel different.

Now, it can be argued that racial ASIs are not terribly good way to enforce the archetype, and how they're currently handled I would even agree with that. But I don't think the concept itself should be particularly hard to get. Ultimately in a splat based game the splats need to have strong thematic identity that is supported by mechanics or they have no reason to exist.

Then again, I have seen a lot of similar tension with classes too. Some people simply do not seem to like the splat based design, they don't want "the game to tell me what sort of character I can make." And that's fine, I get that. I just don't get why you would then play a splat based game in the first place.

 

[dave2008]

I'm sure an anniversary 5e release, will have them removed.

I think your probably correct, though I am hoping they do a bit more than that. Like I said the ability scores don't bother me as we don't use them anyways.

 

[dave2008]

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.

I think Bill's point is that when it comes to PCs and ability scores, there is never a case of "All else being equal,..." to the general population. Adventurers are inherently different from the general population, so sticking to the norms isn't really relevant.

Yet another reason I prefer caps to bonuses.

 

[FrogReaver]

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.

This has came up a few times and I think it bears mentioning that when it comes to bell curves that a small change in the mean can have a profound change on the tail ends of the distribution.

For example, a fact about weight lifting that's true of only 1% of humans may be true of 5% of goliaths.

So minor variations in mean aren't trivial in all respects.

 

[FrogReaver]

Hmm. I guess I'm not communicating my question well. Let me try it a different way...

If you sat down at somebody else's table to start a new campaign, and the DM said, "Everybody use floating ASIs...just put +2 and +1 wherever you want, but not on the same ability" how would the game play differently that what you are used to now? Or even how might it play differently?

What if you gave goliaths +100 str? How would the game play differently then? You'd still roll dice, compute damage the same way, etc. Nothing fundamentally changes in the mechanical aspects of how the game is played.

Ah, but now goliaths (at least PC ones) would be clearly stronger than giants, dragons, gods, etc and by far. That's a clear change in the game.

On the game balance side, are golaiths now not the best Fighters/Paladins and Barbarians? That's a clear change in the game.

On the characters that players will (not can) choose to play? That's a clear change in the game.

Why do you think a floating +2/+1 for everyone would not produce similar changes (just to a less degree)?