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

[Bill Zebub]

I'm speaking about someone showing a character like my halfling warlock (with racial ASIs) but with floating ASIs, where he has not used the floating ASIs to compound even further his racial and class synergies.

Should not be that difficult if it exists.

Ahhhhh. Now I understand.

But...um....how would that demonstrate anything?

A) If you made a halfling warlock at a table that was using Tasha's rules, you would still put the ASI in Dexterity, right? Thus you know such a thing would exist, so you shouldn't need proof of its existence.
B) If I were to make a halfling warlock at a table that was using Tasha's rules, I would absolutely put the ASI in Charisma. That is the entire point of floating ASIs! So how on earth would doing anything else prove a point that I have been making? I am genuinely confused here.

There's also C) What in the heck do you mean by "further compounding his racial and class synergies"? There currently isn't racial/class synergy for halfling warlocks, so there's nothing to compound. I would say, rather, that it now (with Tasha's) has synergy roughly equal to (although really still less than) half-elf, drow, and tiefling warlocks.

 

[Scribe]

I'm not sure how you would rank "small" or "large" but I will agree it's "readily apparent". But, even then, in 5e I really believe it is only party about character optimization, and more about rules mastery and decision making. If those two players swapped characters, I think the optimizer would still be more effective.

While I agree with your conclusion, it would seem to me that there remains a large enough gap in effectiveness that people feel not having floating (to say nothing of VHuman and Custom Lineage) is a meaningful detriment.

Therefore, the balance most not be good enough.

 

[Bill Zebub]

And again, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that if this is what you are expecting of the game.

Note however, your use of the word "solo" above. Lots of people writing the game or wanting to optimise it do it in a vacuum, with no consequence to the game, and again I have nothing against this if it is what is floating their boat.

But at our tables, we have a completely different mindset, see what the devs think:

• "To play D&D, and to play it well, you don’t need to read all the rules, memorize every detail of the game, or master the fine art of rolling funny looking dice. None of those things have any bearing on what’s best about the game."
• "Playing D&D is an exercise in collaborative creation. You and your friends create epic stories filled with tension and memorable drama."

When you want to achieve this, and you have people at your table who just want harder difficulty on technical fights (whereas we think it does not matter because the fight difficulty is not an aim at all), you can see that there is an incompatibility here...

It does not prevent powergamers to play with us, and once their instincts are curbed by the realisation that their powergaming does not matter and that their collective roleplaying is what makes it better for the group, they can be fantastic players.



I think I get it perfectly well, see above.

If I'm following the above argument, you are saying that powergaming and cooperative roleplaying are mutually exclusive, or at least that they conflict. Is that correct?

(And maybe my story about computer games clouded the issue. First, computer games are not TTRPGs, of course. Also, when I said "solo" mode I didn't mean without other players, I meant that you're only controlling one character rather than controlling your own character plus a number of NPCs, which is how many computer RPGs work.)

 

[Maxperson]

I can say this about the powergamers I have played with. One, I like them and learned from them. Two, none of them were braggards. That said, the optimization of their characters made others begin to question their choices. I mean, when you have a game that lasts four hours, and for most, one to two of those hours is combat, and one player is always in the spotlight - it makes others wonder if their character is as useful as it could be. This is true for experienced players as well as novices.
So I don't think the powergamer has to be demonstrative about their capabilities in order for it to affect other players at the table. They can just do what they would normally do, and through osmosis, it seeps.

My groups haven't been like that. A powergamer usually focuses on combat, which is a minority of the game. Most of the game is exploration and social, with combats happening a fair amount, but less than the other two combined. I let them shine in combat where I'm still effective, and then I shine in the other areas with my ideas and other skills.

 

[Bill Zebub]

While I agree with your conclusion, it would seem to me that there remains a large enough gap in effectiveness that people feel not having floating (to say nothing of VHuman and Custom Lineage) is a meaningful detriment.

Therefore, the balance most not be good enough.

Sorry* but I read this several times and I'm not following the part in bold. Can you clarify/elaborate?

*that's in the apologetic not ironic sense.

 

[Zubatcarteira]

The thing that you don't understand is that non powergamers absolutely accept that their racial ASIs will not support completely the class, like my halfling sorceress with racial ASIs.

I don't need floating ASIs to totally enjoy that character, I can create the concept perfectly well with racial ASIs.

People don't necessarily "need" anything, they just gotta "want" it, since this is a game for fun, they can ask for options that'll make the game more enjoyable for them. If they want to be powerful or play in a hard campaign, it's completely reasonable to want the ASIs to match their class.

 

[ReshiIRE]

The thing that you don't understand is that non powergamers absolutely accept that their racial ASIs will not support completely the class, like my halfling sorceress with racial ASIs.

I don't need floating ASIs to totally enjoy that character, I can create the concept perfectly well with racial ASIs.

Dexterity is pretty good on a Sorcerer due to a lack of armour profiency. You won't have a +3 for Charisma, but you do get extra AC, Lucky is pretty strong, a lot of mobility with Halfing Nimbleness, etc.

Especially considering how MAD Sorcerer is, it isn't the optimal chocie but it's not a bad one.

A better example might be a Firbolg, although as a sorcerer you'd synch well with the Speech of Beast and Leaf.

To add onto the conversation, I have been watching but forgive me, I do have a question.

People (I think somewhat rightly) have said that a +1 gained from racial ASIs doesn't have a huge amount of impact on gameplay. This sounds pretty true for most games played.

But that does bring up a point. If that +1 doesn't matter, that 5% doesn't matter...

Does that not apply on a population level as well? Where the 5% differenfce doesn't make a difference at all to what different populations of races can do? Especially in comparison to features like Lucky, or Speech of Beast and Leaf?

By the way, I do think it should be pointed out that for a lot of races, floating ASIs won't make them the strongest ever as they often have a number of features that don't necessarily align with great classes you could play with them if they had floating ASIs. For example, Lizardborn probably would good Dexterity fighters or Rogues thanks to Natural Armour if you assigned your +1 to say Dexterity... but you wouldn't get any use out of Bite if you, say, dumped Strength. And vice versa for Strength based characters.

In fact the races that got power boosted aspects from floating ASIs a lot of the time didn't have racial features reflecting their ASIs at all... which means that they probably would be really strong at any class they would play thanks to those features regardless (Flight, a feature for Aarackora, is strong for any class, after all), and the fictgion of the race doesn't really reflect their ASI?

 

[Maxperson]

It's by definition. What's the point of wanting to be more powerful when the DM will in any case adjust the difficulty of the encounter ?

I can understand this in a game where the difficulty is fixed, like a computer game, but in a TTRPG, it is just bizarre.

As I've already pointed out, a great many powergamers want to achieve greater challenges. Where a non-powergamer might be content fighting orcs as a challenge at level 1, a group of powergamers might want to take on a hill giant at level 1.

A DM who increases the power level of the encounters isn't taking away the reason for the powergaming, he's validating it.

 

[Lyxen]

Ahhhhh. Now I understand.
But...um....how would that demonstrate anything?

A) If you made a halfling warlock at a table that was using Tasha's rules, you would still put the ASI in Dexterity, right? Thus you know such a thing would exist, so you shouldn't need proof of its existence.

No, it exists with racial ASIs, not floating ASIs as we do not allow them at our table.

B) If I were to make a halfling warlock at a table that was using Tasha's rules, I would absolutely put the ASI in Charisma. That is the entire point of floating ASIs! So how on earth would doing anything else prove a point that I have been making? I am genuinely confused here.

That is the character that I'm asking for. But I'm telling you that my feeling is that, even with Tasha, that character will not exist because it is still less optimal than a drow half-elf, kobold, etc.

I just want to see that people are using Floating ASIs to play race/class combinations that are truly unusual (because they really want to test that combination), not the ones that the guides say are now the strongest.

There's also C) What in the heck do you mean by "further compounding his racial and class synergies"? There currently isn't racial/class synergy for halfling warlocks, so there's nothing to compound. I would say, rather, that it now has synergy roughly equal to (although really still less than) half-elf, drow, and tiefling warlocks.

See here.

 

[Maxperson]

Yeah the thing I've alluded to in this thread, but really the elephant in the room is that I (as an optimizer) almost never play non-humans anyway. vHuman is just too compelling, largely because all you need is a 16; the 17 is superfluous. So anything that makes vHuman relatively less attractive is probably a good thing.

I did try a wood elf monk once. I just couldn't get past the part about "wood elf" + "monk" and lost interest.

Here's something that powergamers and those like @Lyxen don't seem to understand. We all optimize. All optimization is, is choosing the best option to achieve your goal. For powergamers that's typically combat, but it also applies to literally every other goal. Someone whose goal is to be good at the social pillar is optimizing when he takes social skills and feats. Someone who loves roleplay and theme is optimizing when they pick something that fits their character concept, even if it's weak in combat or another pillar.

If @Lyxen is correct and optimization = powergaming, then we are literally all powergamers.