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

[Maxperson]

Do you have evil humans? How is that not forcing complex real world angst on the players but having a good hobgoblin is?

Evil human organizations are occasionally the bad guys. I don't do much in the way of politics with the humans. I also occasionally have a good orc or hobgoblin encountered. I just don't generally do it en masse.

And how would your players know to go looking for Good Hobgoblins if they never encounter them, never hear about them, and never see any evidence of their existence?

I know that. But if you say "Well, hobgoblins can be any alignment, but you will only see or hear about evil hobgoblins in my games" then you have to recognize that means you have effectively made all hobgoblins evil for your game.

No. I've just made virtually all hobgoblin encounters with evil hobgoblins. Even if I were to tell them that all the races have all alignments, they'd still primarily be encountering bad guys, because it's D&D. It's a game designed for lots of fights and good guys don't generally fight good guys.

And you have to be careful with that sort of thing. I was playing a game with friends where we were fighting gnolls, who were literal demon spawn, who were allied with literal neo-nazis (post apocalyptic earth) planning on killing all life on the planet... and we had to stop and figure out how we were approaching race and "evil" because the GM wanted us to get some information so he had a Gnoll surrender.

And one of the other players pointed out that since we were fighting nazis, having an entire race of people who were incapable of good and only capable of evil... reinforced the nazi's idealogy and made it really weird. DM didn't intend that to happen, they didn't want a complex game of real world angst, but they had stepped face first into it, and we had to halt the game and figure out what we were going to do about it.

It didn't, really, though. The Nazis weren't mass murdering a race that was actually evil. The gnoll thing would make it a little weird, but it wouldn't really reinforce the Nazi ideology.

But you can't do that. I'm sorry, you just can't. You cannot have a game about Good and Evil without getting into discussions of Good and Evil in the real world. You can minimize it as much as you want, you can try and ignore it, but in the end of the day, something is going to slip through and slam you with reality.

Huh. I wish I would have known that before I never got into discussions about real world good and evil when discussing the game until the invention of D&D internet forums.

So, Genasi get +2 Con, which character class is that?

As I said, not all races have a type. Were I going to make an attempt at it, though, I might go opposite the element. So maybe a Fire Genasi water/ice wizard or something.

See, here is my issue. You can be upset that you can't play against type for a dwarf... but what was playing against type for a dwarf? Being a wizard? I've seen a lot of dwarven wizards. They work, they make sense, they are kind of cool. It hasn't been "against type" for a while.

I've seen one dwarven wizard and it was in 2e. And yes, I know they couldn't be wizards in 2e. That's what made him cool. Dwarves are also typed in other ways as I mentioned in an earlier post.

And if it is okay for these other races not to have a type to play against... why isn't it okay for dwarves to broaden out so they no longer have a type to play against?

Why take something away from people? As I explained to you earlier in the thread. It's always better to add something than to take something away. People don't get nearly as upset when you add. Lots get upset when you try and take something away. Leave dwarves alone and enjoy your non-typed Genasi

I say they do matter. If Genasi and Humans and Aasimar can be popular and successful races without having a type to play against, then why can't elves and dwarves?

Why try to homogenize things? If you have both typed and untyped races, that's the best of both worlds. Everyone can play what they want. You can pick non-typed races to play and someone who wants to go against type can play the races that have types.

Homogenize things too much and there's no point in even having races. Just make everyone human and let them pick a few abilities or roll a few abilities from a table.

 

[Argyle King]

While a player can mix-and-match freely, the options can be presented in flavorful "pregen" ways.

I had thought that's what classes and races were.

I imagine that the flavorful packages would contain things which would categorize one flavorful thing as being different from another flavorful thing which fills the same character choice slots.

D&D has typically done those packages in larger chunks.

5 made some of the chunks smaller.

Other game systems have even smaller chunks (like lenses from Dungeon Fantasy).

Some rpgs have none of those chunks at all and you buy the aspects you want with character creation points (like GURPS or Hero System).

 

[Scribe]

Why? Born with a connection to the elements is a massively popular story trope. At least equal to dwarves.

Within the public consciousness of fantasy? Agree to disagree, completely.

Now, this is interesting. Because none of this is something that you can or can't do with certain classes. These are all story tropes. So, no matter what your ASIs or class, you could play "against type"

I'd disagree again. Something that is essentially 'Angelic ancestry' is way more than just some kind of story trope. Its not even that they are partially divine, or 'otherwordly' but that they are partially of a Good (capital G) entity with all the associations you would then be able to extrapolate from that.

When your Grand Dad is an actual Angel, a being of literal Goodness, its a bit more meaningful to 'go against type' and become a petty thief or thug anti-hero, than if you are 'just' a human.

And yet I don't think I've ever heard people say that a human druid is against type.

Druid's very much have their own definition, and while they are a class and modern game design doesnt limit classes very often, they are exceptional enough as is in terms of their (as often portrayed in FR/D&D anyway) as being fairly militant in their adherence to their own codes. I think they actually are essentially going against type.

 

[Argyle King]

So, how do you go from removing the +2 dex from all elves, and the +1 charisma from drow, to also removing their innate magic? Are we saying that their magic is taught?

But, I guess if I take you at your point, and there is no difference between drow and high elves other than one being evil and the other not... then yeah, there is no point in keeping Drow. We don't have a special word for evil humans, so why would we keep them for evil elves? But I don't think we are going to quite get to that point.

I don't know.

In the past, I had thought that some of the D&D races had some innate connection to deities and cosmic forces.

I had previously thought that Drow being colorized in essentially what is the opposite of how High Elves were described was a way to indicate that their deity (Lolth) had broken away from the rest of the pantheon and taught her followers a radically different outlook on life, causing those who were her followers to physically change because of their connection to her and being marked with some manner of divine influence. I had thought their inner magic likewise changed to be different spells.

If none of that is correct, I admittedly don't have a solid explanation. I guess it could be taught, like how Sith and Jedi learn different force techniques.

I'm not someone who has an emotional investment in Drow culture... never really got into Forgotten Realms, Drizzt, and such. What's above were what I had thought, based on the handful of lore in the 3E core books I had when I started playing D&D and the bits and pieces I've picked up about the Drow racial template from discussions with other people who play D&D.

 

[Maxperson]

And elves being "haughty" is a really deeply ingrained stereotype. To the point where I'm not sure if it is explicitly not all elves or not, who are said to be this way. And paternalistically thinking "we need to care for and guide these lesser races" is still haughty, just not rude about it.

It is explicitly not all elves. The PHB says that they can be haughty. That puts the possibility out there without being all of them. Heck, that doesn't even imply most of them.

 

[Yaarel]

I had thought that's what classes and races were.

I imagine that the flavorful packages would contain things which would categorize one flavorful thing as being different from another flavorful thing which fills the same character choice slots.

D&D has typically done those packages in larger chunks.

5 made some of the chunks smaller.

Other game systems have even smaller chunks (like lenses from Dungeon Fantasy).

Some rpgs have none of those chunks at all and you buy the aspects you want with character creation points (like GURPS or Hero System).

The "one flavorful thing" is what each race feat is.

I consider a feat the right amount design space.

(For example, Pathfinder ancestry tweaks feel too small and inconsequential. But anything larger than a feat starts to force unwanted features.)

The design space of a feat allows an elf character to have both half feats, Elven Accuracy and Fey Teleportation, at level 1 (without their ability increases). That feels substantial. It defines a certain kind of elf concept.

 

[Argyle King]

The "one flavorful thing" is what each race feat is.

I consider a feat the right amount design space.

(For example, Pathfinder ancestry tweaks feel too small and inconsequential. But anything larger than a feat starts to force unwanted features.)

The design space of a feat allows an elf character to have both half feats, Elven Accuracy and Fey Teleportation, at level 1 (without their ability increases). That feels substantial. It defines a certain kind of elf concept.

With limited feat choices in 5E, how would you make racial feats competitive with other options?

 

[Yaarel]

With limited feat choices in 5E, how would you make racial feats competitive with other options?

Not sure what you mean by "other options". Rephrase the question?

Maybe you mean?

At higher levels, an elf character can gain a new feat, thus choose an other race elf feat.

Sure, the merit of each race feat needs to stand on its own, alongside other feats that a player can choose from.

I was looking at my "Fey Knight" feat above. I purposely only included features that the Players Handbook high elf has. But the high elf feels slightly underpowered to me, and the resulting feat feels slightly underpowered to me. I wouldnt choose this feat. I would want the feat to have something slightly beefier. But I didnt want to add anything extra because of illustrating how to support a 5e high elf concept as a feat, even when there are no subraces.

A race feat needs to be worth a feat, and a nice one.

 

[Argyle King]

Not sure what you mean by "other options". Rephrase the question?

Maybe you mean?

At higher levels, an elf character can gain a new feat, thus choose an other race elf feat.

Sure, the merit of each race feat needs to stand on its own, alongside other feats that a player can choose from.

I was looking at my "Mindful Clarity" and "Fey Knight" half feats above. I purposely only included features that the Players Handbook high elf has. But the high elf feels slightly underpowered to me, and both of the resulting half feats feel slightly underpowered to me. I wouldnt choose these feats. I would want each of the half feats to have something slightly extra, like maybe the Mindful Clarity adding Insight skill, and Fey Knight being slightly beefier. But I didnt want to add anything extra because of illustrating how to support a 5e high elf concept as a feat, even when there are no subraces.

A race feat needs to be worth a feat, and a nice one.

What I mean is that 5E already offers very limited feat selections.

Would character creation involve selecting a racial feat as a separate part of character creation?

If no, what would entice a player to choose one of the racial feats over something like Sharpshooter for one of their limited choices?

Also, would a class which gets more feat choices allow a character to learn to be more elfy than other classes?

I'm not opposed to the idea. I'm trying to gain a better idea of what it looks like in D&D 5E.

Dungeon Fantasy does something similar by offering racial power-ups as advancement options.

 

[Malmuria]

What I mean is that 5E already offers very limited feat selections.

Would character creation involve selecting a racial feat as a separate part of character creation?

If no, what would entice a player to choose one of the racial feats over something like Sharpshooter for one of their limited choices?

Also, would a class which gets more feat choices allow a character to learn to be more elfy than other classes?

I'm not opposed to the idea. I'm trying to gain a better idea of what it looks like in D&D 5E.

Dungeon Fantasy does something similar by offering racial power-ups as advancement options.

I would think such a system would operate a bit like pathfinder 2, where you select racial feats separate from your class (I haven't played that game and only looked through the srd a bit). Probably fewer, more powerful, more thematic options.