Level Up (A5E) Culture Tier List

[Zardnaar]

I thought I would do a tier list for the cultures in the playtest.

This is because anyone can take then and ability scores no longer matter as everybody can take them as well.

From a power gaming point if view this let's you unleash your inner munchkin as the playtest material is tuned to a higher level than the PHB.

I suspect a lot players will not be raised in their own cultures or will have generic cultures as several of the S tier options obsolete everything else.

Dragonborn won the genetic lottery. Who gets to roleplay cultural supremacy? I'll do this over the next few days. From top to bottom.

S tier. Unlimited power bwa ha ha.
A tier. Strong option.
B tier. Average.
C tier. Below average power level.
D. Very underpowered and/or actively makes you weaker

 

[Zardnaar]

Dragonborn.

Dragonbound

How good this depends on what boon you pick. Draconic diplomacy is very niche and campaign dependent. Several of the options are also a bit meh and/or niche. Overall this means Dragonbound gets a C.


Draconic National

This is very easy to rate. Basically you get pack tactics, a skill and tool proficiency and a language. Pack tactics is almost a no brainier for any type of melee character. Pack tactics I have seen on races in other 3pp but only on small races. This is more or less an A tier ability for any melee character and S tier if you have Great Weapon Master. If you're not eg a ranged spellcaster this is a C tier culture but can still have some uses.

Dragon Cultist
Boiled down you get two skills from a preselected list and one per long rest you get to do something for 1 minute. Two skills are always useful but the dragon umbras are kind of tied to your dragon heritage. Anyone can take this but yeah. B tier option for Dragonborn, D tier for everyone else there's just better options.

Draconic Exile.
You get +5 initiative, proficiency in deception, survival and disguise kits, require 1/4 of the food and get two languages. This is a really good selection of abilities and +5 initiative is quite good for Spellcasters. I like this culture a lot it's interesting, useful and powerful without being broken. Well done I would give this an A tier.

 

[Zardnaar]

Dwarf

Deep Dwarf

Well if you're not a Dwarf getting raised in their culture gives you 120' Darkvision. That's some awesome water they drink. You human sees better in the dark than other dwarves. You also get jump and enlarge 1/long rest each. Also you get advantage on saves vs illusions, charm and paralyzed. Niche but great when it matters. You get some racial weapons which generally is meh and the weapons are nothing exciting in any event. You get some languages as well. The Deep Dwarf is a hot mess and underpowered with a lot of niche and useless abilities. If you're not a Dwarf you can see better than a Dwarf. Overall a D tier culture.

Devoted Dwarf.

This culture is so awesome it's not even listed on the culture list at the start of the document. You get the guidance cantrip and bless/aid once per long rest. These are great spells to acquire and guidance is gold standard cantrip. You get proficiency in the religion skill, and advantage on any saves against wisdom and charisma saves. That's really good as those spells are high on the list of saves you don't want to flunk.
Dwarven teamwork is a bit niche. Looks good outside combat but you can use the help action easy enough there. Overall however the Devoted Dwarf is quite good and I would rate it in the A tier.

Mountain Dwarf

The PHB mountain Dwarf is kind of unique with +2 to two different stats. That doesn't matter here but you have had other candy added to compensate. You get Dwarven weapon training. Racial weapons are often semi useless in 5E due to classes that want to use weapons usually have better options. Still this has some ok weapons. You also get Dwarven armor. Yay hill Dwarf fighting wizard in medium armor with a battleaxe.

Except you are now missing +2 strength and con. Stone cunning might be useful but it's still kind of niche. Heart of the forge is nice as fire is one if the most common damage types. Mountain Born is mostly flavour, won't matter in most games I suspect. Anyone can take this culture but it's very niche and ability scores don't really matter. You can mage an armored wizard I suppose that's better than a phb Mountain Dwarf but you still won't be great with weapons outside rolled stats. Overall a C due to the way classes work in 5E. Looks good but doesn't really matter in a 5E context.

Ruined Dwarf

In effect a new subrace relative to the phb. You get improvised tools, looks cute but it's probably useless more often than not as you can usually buy tools. Roll with the punched depends on if your DM allows rerolled skill checks. Its also limited in terms of how often you can use it.

Eat like a bird. How often does food matter in the average game? Same theory goes for pat rack. Fleet of foot is nice however. Another hot mess. You get lots of abilities to keep track of but they are very niche and mostly don't matter. Overall a D tier culture although it might squeak in to C being generous. Advice is to avoid however.

Hill Dwarf

Very quick to sum up. The hill Dwarf us a skill monkey gaining 2-3 skills or 2 skills plus land vehicles. Also you get expertise in survival. And you get spells. This is roughly the equivalent of two feats. Maybe not great feats but this an A tier ability and could even be S although it lacks the raw power of the other S tier cultures. Getting raised by hill dwarves not a bad deal.

 

[tetrasodium]

I like that there are a lot of "I could do great things with this" but very few "you should really avoid binding one arm behind your back by not choosing this for $class"

• Deepdwarf is a culture that grants superior darkvision so I can see it being really useful to avoid this
  Spoiler: you lighthouse looking...

  
• Devoted dwarf gets guidance bless & aid for some interesting gish/skill monkey flavor but there are a ton of ways to get expertise or advantage to skills so not so much better as interesting
• Yea dragonborn get some real winner abilities
• Mountain dwarf could make some interesting rogues & maybe wizards with medium armor fire resist & some weapons.
• Hill dwarf. With charisma based friends & charm this might open the door to someinteresting diplomancer type combinations.
• elven paragon: elfsight - ignore partial cover ... this might be one of the few "your gonna regret not having this if you take some other heratige/option.
• High elf - an extra cantrio & the ability to use int for deception insight intimidation & persuade is definately going to make some interesting wizards. Also notable is that a cleric/druid/paladin/ranger/etc can use this to gain a wizard cantrip that uses their choice of int/wis/cha without needing to multiclass since there doesn't seem to be something else opening divine cantrips to caster attrib of choice. oh yea you get rapiers & longswords but probably wont care.
• shadow elf - another route to darkvision or improving existing darkvision.
• Gnome heritage start out with advantage to int/wis/cha saves against magic along with a teleport or ac bump & at add your choice of str/dex/com saves to advantage. There will be a lot of folks who praise this for saving their bacon regularly.
• deep gnome. advantage on stealth plus some interesting spells, these sneaky bastards will open some interesting doors.
• Forest gnome - If they fix barkskin to not suck so hard these will make some nteresting casters maybe, especially because they learn int based minor illusion & entangle too and ca communicate with small beasts.
• Burrowing halflings - They will need to give it an action cost of course... but there is a reason why it was nearly impossible to get a burrow speed in 3.5.
• Borougher - This is mildly interesting with 1d6 temphp to everyone on a rest if you cook but it doesn't scale at all or it would be seriously tempting for any party to have one pc.
• human die hard survivor/ingenious focus.. death save proficient/pseudo war caster saves are great for martial & caster types respectively
• Sheltered citizen - immune to lots of fear effects & half min one to max hp/ability damage makes for interesting possibilities.
• villager - improvized weapon proficient & use wis for history/nature/ religion will make some interesting combos
• orc ancestral blessing's radiant resist does't really stack up, but resistance cantrip & 1/day shield might make an interesting t=choice for a rogue or something. Things that give a spell 1/day without using a slot really need to include words about adding it to your spells known/spells prepared without counting against the known/prepared though & this is no exception.
• Orc biome native advantage on survival in your biome might be useful at some point, but adding resist one of cold/fire/ightning/necrotic is huge. These would be really great rangers if your biome counted as a free extra favored terrain too.
• Orc paragon - get an extra +1 ac when using a shield might be useful but probably not a huge deal. DR would be more attractive & less likely to encourage unhittable ac tanks
• Caravaner - That trampling charge might be really powerful if they can use it as a line.
• archdevil blooded tiefling - 1/day charisma based cook & book at third. Giving this no save spell to any class is just stupid so I'm guessing this will be reasinable after they go through the spells themselves.
• oops edit cause I accidentally hit submit:
• steam tiefling - expertise on grapple/shove might be really useful as the playtest packet expands to cover more areas
• imperial tiefling seems to add a spellcasting mod to attack rolls when you are at half health or less but usure on intet with wording. Might make some interesting build options.
• carnival tiefling - disengage as a bonus action makes a lot of tinteresting doors open without the goblin's small size suck to strength based types.
• demon cultist - bleeding brand & unsdead graft... wow...
• feudal subject. 1d8+con mod temp hp 1/rest is nice, the proficiencies are no big deal & you [robably have them if your likely to care about them... but that taunt forcing opponents to have disadvantage if they attack anyone else puts this in tip top shelf for some builds thay want to get attacked
• Lone wanderer - Gain a feat. Pending more areas expanded into the playtest packet this is far & away better than many of the existing options for a lot of builds.
• Religious devotee - While not especially powerful, that detect faith ability should probably show up on cleric & maybe some other divine classes at some point because it's just too cool & fitting.

 

[Faolyn]

I feel that the reduced food should actually be that you require less food, not that you go for longer between eating. Unless LU is seriously upping the importance of the exploration tier and going more heavily into resource management, in which case I guess it's fine. Although I'm not sure that we need more resource management.

Dragonborn: My biggest gripe that there's a huge list of subtypes. I'd prefer it if you could simply pick your damage type and if you wanted it in a cone or line. Not everyone wants 25 types of dragons in their world--or they may want dragons of a different type (ferrous dragons, Imperial/Asian dragons). And in the interest in not having dragons color-coded for your convenience, I'd change "chromatic" and "metallic" and other types to more generic dragon personality types (for instance, tyrannical, controlling manipulative, predatory, shepherding, etc.). And I'd get rid of force damage.

Dwarfs: I'd remove the inborn magic from Hill Dwarfs. It feels a bit weird. I can see them having proficiency in Persuasion, or being able to use Persuasion with a different attribute.

Elves: As I said in a different thread, I'd prefer if elves and others got Low-Light Vision instead of darkvision. I have a few other nitpicks, but nothing major.

Gnomes: I feel like the Folx should be turned into more of a brownie-type, and less like Forest Gnomes+. Give 'em a good ability to hide and a choice of prestidigitation or mending.

Halflings: The burrowing claws thing is weird. I guess the writers like Urdlen a lot. Half of their cultures seem to be on the dark side, which is also weird, but better than trying to recreate kender.

Human: Yes, humans are jerks, we get it. I'd call Profiteers Traders inside, which is more neutral in feeling. I'd also switch it Fine Print that it's more "really good at making contracts benefit them" rather than "really good at cheating others." A player can then decide whether they're good at making honest or exploitative contracts. As an Aspie with ADHD, though, I appreciate the Ingenious Focus trait.

Orcs: One problem I had with the playtest--and I wrote it in my feedback--is that their intro text tries too hard to make a setting. The Orcs exemplify this. The "Longstoics" are cool (I hate the name, though; just call them Stoics), but instead of going off on a huge tangent about special rites and rebellious youths, just say "many orcs instead master their emotions, whether through hard work or religious ritual or <whatever>."

Tieflings: Steam Tiefs WTF? And I've always hated the way they've made Tieflings the product of Asmodeus, as opposed to the way they were in 2e, when they could have the blood of any sort of fiend. Their cultures should (IMO) be Fiendish-blooded, Celestial-blooded, Elemental-blooded, Xaos-blooded, and Axiotic-blooded. Also IMO, they should be renamed Planetouched.