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

[Helldritch]

I agree with that. But can I confirm that this is the logic you are describing:
- When the rules for Dwarven PCs confer certain strengths and weaknesses (for example, good at swinging at battle axe, bad at casting spells) it follows that intelligent NPC monsters would be surprised by a Dwarven Wizard
- If the rules change such that Dwarven PC's are equally good at swinging axes and casting spells, it follows that intelligent NPC monsters would no longer be surprised by a Dwarven Wizard.

Is that it? Because, if so, can't you just decide by DM fiat that in your game world Dwarven Wizards are rare? (Maybe, as I suggested previously, because Wizards obviously prefer to live in towers, and Dwarves tend to live underground.)

In essence you're right on spot. It is, as always, a bit more than that as I often use premises made by the game decades ago. I see D&D as a whole and every editions brought something good for the game. And that thing is lore. Ignoring the basic lore of D&D is not a good thing as this should be the basis on which we should base our discussions. That dwarves are the best wizard in the world in such and such campaign and only thieves in an other should have no bearing on our discussions as I might have these campaign worlds but not the person I am discussing with. I much prefer to keep the discussion aligned with PHB, DMG and MM assumptions. Official source books are ok, but it is also a delicate matter. Not everyone bought TCoE or MToF or VGtM for that matter.

But basically, that is my point of view that you described. Fixed ASI create expectations and assumptions but not floating ones.

 

[Bill Zebub]

In essence you're right on spot. It is, as always, a bit more than that as I often use premises made by the game decades ago. I see D&D as a whole and every editions brought something good for the game. And that thing is lore. Ignoring the basic lore of D&D is not a good thing as this should be the basis on which we should base our discussions. That dwarves are the best wizard in the world in such and such campaign and only thieves in an other should have no bearing on our discussions as I might have these campaign worlds but not the person I am discussing with. I much prefer to keep the discussion aligned with PHB, DMG and MM assumptions. Official source books are ok, but it is also a delicate matter. Not everyone bought TCoE or MToF or VGtM for that matter.

But basically, that is my point of view that you described. Fixed ASI create expectations and assumptions but not floating ones.

Ok, got it, thanks. I think I understand your position better now.

 

[Chaosmancer]

You got it the wrong way again. Show me a single example in which the examples I gave you. And here I will repeat:" The examples that I gave you."
So find me a dwarven wizard or an halfling barbarian based on strength. You did not find any and thus changed what you consider, in your mind, a good second choice to prove your point.

Ok, so first off, I want to point something out. It wasn't that I couldn't find a dwarven wizard, it was that you were very specific that "a dwarf in armor casting wall of fire" is suddenly shocking to these creatures, because Dwarves can't do that. When, it is literally a domain spell for the Forge cleric, and dwarven Forge clerics are common place.

But fine, I just need to show you one, just one dwarven wizard was an official product.

Theoderus Stoneblood from the Mysteries of Moonsea by Thomas M. Reid, Sean K. Reynolds, Darrin Drader, Wil Upchurch

I also considered Drake Thunderbrand and the Thunderbrand clan from Exandria, but technically, only the continent of Wildemount is official, while the continent of Tal'dorie is unofficial.

I additionally considered checking into the dwarves of the House of Kundarak from Eberron, since they are masters of abjuration magic. They likely have some famous wizards, but I didn't want to get into a discussion about Eberron "not counting" so I went for the low-hanging fruit.

Now, what was the other race/class combo I have to show you in an official product, because we all know if it doesn't show up in an official product, it can't exist.

Ah right, Halfling Barbarian. A bit harder, because halflings are rarely heroes and wizards and clerics are much more commonly side-characters.

Not a named character, but according to the FR wiki barbarians can be found among the tribes of the Chondalwood, which includes tribes of Ghostwise halflings. And it does specifically call them out as having a barbarian tradition "Barbarians from other races were relatively rare, though among elves there were the wild elves, among halflings the ghostwise, and among dwarves the wild dwarves, each of which possessed barbarian traditions." Seems this came from the Races of Faerun by Eric L. Boyd, Matt Forbeck, and James Jacobs

AHA, there we go, just had to look up more Ghostwise lore, Perinsa Falmarya would be your halfling Barbarian, seems she was from an Wizards of the Coast article titles " Perinsa Falmarya the Wanderer" by Robert Wiese in 2003.


So, there you go. An official Dwarven Wizard and an official Halfling barbarian, from a subrace of halfling barbarians, which is in 5e. They were introduced in the SCAG

And by the way. It is very strange that for one advocating that you need floating ASI so that every character concepts can have a 16 in their main stat to encourage diversity of builds because lower than 16 is too weak that all of a sudden a 12 or 14 is quite great.


I sense a great contradiction.... or maybe you forgot what you were advocating earlier?

No contradiction. For a strength fighter a 12 isn't anywhere nearly good enough.

But to pick up and move 200 lbs, a 12 to 13 is plenty. Heck, a guy with strength 10 can lift 300 lbs over his head. He also can't swing a sword worth a crap and will do pathetic damage with a strength based weapon.

The contradiction isn't with me.

 

[Malmuria]

Only for powergamers. Other play by the intent of the devs: "The Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game is about storytelling in worlds of swords and sorcery." and "You and your friends create epic stories filled with tension and memorable drama. You create silly in-jokes that make you laugh years later. The dice will be cruel to you, but you will soldier on. Your collective creativity will build stories that you will tell again and again, ranging from the utterly absurd to the stuff of legend."

One is not more right than the other, but if you think that the intent of the game is gaining power, without any insult or judgment, you are a powergamer.

I'm confused as to how leveling up would not count as "powergaming" under this definition. You get more powerful abilities, spells, floating asi every 4 levels, etc, and in turn face greater challenges. This is true across editions, and why dnd more of a "challenge-based" game than a "story game."

Anyway, the focus on supposed designer intent doesn't tell us very much for a variety of reasons. The core books are the presentation of the game, not design notes. More importantly, ttrpg designers cannot constrain how their games are interpreted and how they run at the table. This was true of dnd from the beginning, as a variety of playstyles, rules interpretations, and homebrew changes defined the game as much as the official material (sometimes to the vexation of gygax).

But even if we look at the design of dnd, as mentioned above, it's a challenged-based game. You gain experience points, in early editions for acquiring treasure, in later editions for defeating level-appropriate monsters. You advance farther into the dungeon (early editions) or face increasingly powerful foes connected to bbeg (later editions). By the end of a campaign your character gains a stronghold, advances from being "basic" to being "immortal," or reaches "tier 4." I don't think playing the game with levels is "powergaming," nor is it obviously antithetical to being interested in "story." But there are other games that are not about that slow acquisition of abilities, or where such acquisition comes at great costs (CoC); dnd is not one of those games.

 

[Helldritch]

Ok, so first off, I want to point something out. It wasn't that I couldn't find a dwarven wizard, it was that you were very specific that "a dwarf in armor casting wall of fire" is suddenly shocking to these creatures, because Dwarves can't do that. When, it is literally a domain spell for the Forge cleric, and dwarven Forge clerics are common place.

But fine, I just need to show you one, just one dwarven wizard was an official product.

Theoderus Stoneblood from the Mysteries of Moonsea by Thomas M. Reid, Sean K. Reynolds, Darrin Drader, Wil Upchurch

I also considered Drake Thunderbrand and the Thunderbrand clan from Exandria, but technically, only the continent of Wildemount is official, while the continent of Tal'dorie is unofficial.

I additionally considered checking into the dwarves of the House of Kundarak from Eberron, since they are masters of abjuration magic. They likely have some famous wizards, but I didn't want to get into a discussion about Eberron "not counting" so I went for the low-hanging fruit.

Now, what was the other race/class combo I have to show you in an official product, because we all know if it doesn't show up in an official product, it can't exist.

Ah right, Halfling Barbarian. A bit harder, because halflings are rarely heroes and wizards and clerics are much more commonly side-characters.

Not a named character, but according to the FR wiki barbarians can be found among the tribes of the Chondalwood, which includes tribes of Ghostwise halflings. And it does specifically call them out as having a barbarian tradition "Barbarians from other races were relatively rare, though among elves there were the wild elves, among halflings the ghostwise, and among dwarves the wild dwarves, each of which possessed barbarian traditions." Seems this came from the Races of Faerun by Eric L. Boyd, Matt Forbeck, and James Jacobs

AHA, there we go, just had to look up more Ghostwise lore, Perinsa Falmarya would be your halfling Barbarian, seems she was from an Wizards of the Coast article titles " Perinsa Falmarya the Wanderer" by Robert Wiese in 2003.


So, there you go. An official Dwarven Wizard and an official Halfling barbarian, from a subrace of halfling barbarians, which is in 5e. They were introduced in the SCAG





No contradiction. For a strength fighter a 12 isn't anywhere nearly good enough.

But to pick up and move 200 lbs, a 12 to 13 is plenty. Heck, a guy with strength 10 can lift 300 lbs over his head. He also can't swing a sword worth a crap and will do pathetic damage with a strength based weapon.

The contradiction isn't with me.

Excellent! Thank you. And all these comes from a period where there were only fixed ability score increase! And even then, if you read the books, these are the exceptions and not the norm! And yet, you went in products that were not using the as based race (wild dwarves and ghostwise halflings are not in the core rule of any editions) But since I failed to mention core rules, I must give you that one and yet, instead only working in your favor, it works in mine as these are still exceptions and not the norm. You see there are two ways to look at things, the fact that you had to search for fringed official products and went for exceptions and not a "common" sight to prove your point just proved mine.

There are no dwarven wizards in any core rules (save 4ed but we all know how this edition was received...). The same goes for barbarian halflings. You need to go for fringed character, articles and products to find meaningful examples and even then, they are the exceptions and not the norm. My point stands.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Alright, then please let us know what the intent of the game is, according to the developers. But it would be nice if it was supported by something that they actually wrote rather than snippets of sentences.

The intent of the game is to have fun. That's it. Nothing else matters. The rules as written or intended don't matter, what WotC and their staff wrote/writes about how to DM/play D&D, the only thing that matters is if the table is having fun. That's the intent of the game.

Wealth matters in D&D, but it depends on the table and the campaign (my Eberron campaign had the players come across a giant Siberys Dragonshard that crashed down from the sky and was worth 5 million gold pieces, so they sold it to House Cannith and got uber-rich at level 6, while in my Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign they're level 8 and don't even have 1,000 gold pieces all put together).

Power matters in D&D (elsewise we wouldn't have levels beyond level 1), but how much it matters is also campaign dependent (some people like having really powerful players, and love maximizing how much their characters and fellow players have). The same applies to roleplay, exploration, combat, and every other aspect of the game. These things matter, but how much they matter is campaign dependent, and WotC's "intent" about these things don't matter at all. It doesn't matter if 5e is called "the world's greatest roleplaying game", because that's just a title. Roleplaying isn't enforced, and playing 5e is a strictly murderhobo fashion is a valid way to play the game, whether or not WotC favors that type of play.

The intent of the game is to have fun. Fun is subjective between table, campaign, and even players at the same table (but you do want the players at the table to have fun in similar enough ways that they can enjoy playing at the same table).

What the game designers say/said doesn't matter, because the intent of the game is to have fun. Nothing else matters.

 

[LadyElect]

In essence you're right on spot. It is, as always, a bit more than that as I often use premises made by the game decades ago. I see D&D as a whole and every editions brought something good for the game. And that thing is lore. Ignoring the basic lore of D&D is not a good thing as this should be the basis on which we should base our discussions. That dwarves are the best wizard in the world in such and such campaign and only thieves in an other should have no bearing on our discussions as I might have these campaign worlds but not the person I am discussing with. I much prefer to keep the discussion aligned with PHB, DMG and MM assumptions. Official source books are ok, but it is also a delicate matter. Not everyone bought TCoE or MToF or VGtM for that matter.

I’m understand this feeling, but it’s amusing how differently my own outlook tends to fall. I think one of D&D’s biggest strengths is its extensibility and love looking toward its mechanics as a way to better enable that. I’m on board with a default setting spotlight since it draws in players and is beloved by so many. However, I think the game has benefited just as much from the way its lore has grown over time and incorporated new settings and ideas (all while enabling such amazing homebrew culture). It can be taken to extremes that risk alienation, but if a change can improve that extensibility and still allow you to build back to that D&D essence alongside the default depictions then I see it as a win-win myself.

 

[clearstream]

This can almost litterally be only done through RP. Floating ASI do not create expectations so foes should not have them.

Literally, it would be simply done through words.

 

[Lyxen]

It's supported by more than half the rules of the game. The combat section, class section, monster books, magic item section, spell section, etc. all deal with how to get exp, gold, magic items and level up to more powerful levels. Gaining power is at LEAST as much a part of the game as roleplaying is.

Just as I thought, not able to provide a single quote to support your position. Once more, all these rules are tools only (again, these are the devs' words), not the intent of the game.

Edit: Note that gaining power is not the same as powergaming. Gaining power is an unavoidable part of D&D since it is entirely baked in everywhere. It doesn't matter what kind of PC you make for what goal, power is going to go up. You(personally) cannot make a PC that doesn't gain power as an inherent part of the game.

First, I absolutely can. I spent a long time about 35 years ago playing a woodsman in the woods not gaining anything.

Second, I completely agree that "gaining power is not the same as powergaming", actually. It's all in the intent. For us, the aim is to tell stories, it so happens that, by doing this, and exactly like in books/movies of the genre, our characters grow, change, and get more powerful, but it's a side effect, not the aim of the game.

Whereas, obviously, you play the game to get more xps, levels, and magic items, you just want more power, so it's powergaming. Again, nothing wrong with this in itself, it's a perfectly legitimate way to play the game.

 

[Helldritch]

I’m understand this feeling, but it’s amusing how differently my own outlook tends to fall. I think one of D&D’s biggest strengths is its extensibility and love looking toward its mechanics as a way to better enable that. I’m on board with a default setting spotlight since it draws in players and is beloved by so many. However, I think the game has benefited just as much from the way its lore has grown over time and incorporated new settings and ideas (all while enabling such amazing homebrew culture). It can be taken to extremes that risk alienation, but if a change can improve that extensibility and still allow you to build back to that D&D essence alongside the default depictions then I see it as a win-win myself.

And kudo to you. I too consider the extension of the lore with many settings to be an invaluable addition. I own almost all settings myself (those officially produced by either TSR or WotC that is) and each setting is unique. But they are not core. Ebberon is Ebberon and what it brings might be suitable for an other setting such as Krynn for example. I prefer to keep to core books as it is the common ground we all share.