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Companion thread to 5E Survivor: Species
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<blockquote data-quote="CleverNickName" data-source="post: 8870971" data-attributes="member: 50987"><p>I've been asking myself that as well.</p><p></p><p>A good 'species' needs more than just stat boosts. Because--hot take--species ASIs are more a hinderance than anything else and we should get rid of 'em.</p><p></p><p> At my table, I noticed the players would immediately gravitate to the Ability Score Increases and sort all of the options into optimal choices for whatever class they wanted to play. If that all-important +2 wasn't in their key ability score, the species was completely off the table--no halfling or gnome barbarians, it's either mountain dwarf or half-orc <em>every single time.</em> It started feeling very repetitive, and my players started joke-complaining about it...so I started letting the players distribute those ability scores however they wished. (This was several years before <em>Tasha's </em>came out.)</p><p></p><p>The result was a lot more variety in the party's composition. Players started asking themselves "what would a tiefling barbarian look like?" instead of rolling up the same cookie-cutter half-orc with an axe. Variant Human was no longer the most popular choice at the table; I started seeing more dragonborn and firbolgs and aasimar.</p><p></p><p>So that was the big take-away. Make ASIs flexible/customizable, or remove them from the species traits altogether and just add them at character creation ("Okay guys, roll your stats using the 4d6 method. Then increase one by +2, and a different one by +1"). They're not doing us any favors as-written in the <em>Player's Handbook.</em></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="CleverNickName, post: 8870971, member: 50987"] I've been asking myself that as well. A good 'species' needs more than just stat boosts. Because--hot take--species ASIs are more a hinderance than anything else and we should get rid of 'em. At my table, I noticed the players would immediately gravitate to the Ability Score Increases and sort all of the options into optimal choices for whatever class they wanted to play. If that all-important +2 wasn't in their key ability score, the species was completely off the table--no halfling or gnome barbarians, it's either mountain dwarf or half-orc [I]every single time.[/I] It started feeling very repetitive, and my players started joke-complaining about it...so I started letting the players distribute those ability scores however they wished. (This was several years before [I]Tasha's [/I]came out.) The result was a lot more variety in the party's composition. Players started asking themselves "what would a tiefling barbarian look like?" instead of rolling up the same cookie-cutter half-orc with an axe. Variant Human was no longer the most popular choice at the table; I started seeing more dragonborn and firbolgs and aasimar. So that was the big take-away. Make ASIs flexible/customizable, or remove them from the species traits altogether and just add them at character creation ("Okay guys, roll your stats using the 4d6 method. Then increase one by +2, and a different one by +1"). They're not doing us any favors as-written in the [I]Player's Handbook.[/I] [/QUOTE]
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