D&D 5E DMG Excerpt: Creating a New Race

[Nellisir]

As someone who routinely disallows PHB races (halflings, half-orcs, drow, tieflings) and creates new ones (leshii, troldfolk, talvijotun, firjotun), I like what I see. It looks like it'll be guidelines and advice rather than rules and dictates.

Also, remember that ability bonuses aren't the only way to emphasize an ability score. I stuck to the PHB model, so firjotun (hill giant-blooded) only have a +2 Str bonus, but they have other abilities that reinforce it. Not every firjotun is stronger than every dwarf, but they use their Strength more. Talvijotun (frost giant-blooded) only have a +1 to Str (+2 Chr), but have some of the same features so they "feel" stronger than they are.

 

[The_Gneech]

Apropos of nothing, in ref. to the 4E eladrin, one of my players said the three elven races were the half-elf, the elf, and the elf-and-a-half.

In any case, the eladrin race is locked away in the DMG where it can't hurt you. I kinda wish the tieflings and dragonborn had been put there too, but I don't see that it's worth all this sturm and drang about.

-The Gneech

 

[thunktanker]

*looks around*

Shouldn't we wait until we see the entire section on Building New Races – heck, maybe the actual whole DMG – before casting aspersions on its success or failure regarding contents? We have here one page that isn't even an entity unto itself but begins in media res and ends likewise. Nor can we properly judge the full content of the "alternate rules" therein yet since there isn't a section simply titled Modules.

I vote for less kvetching and more going out and looking at leaves. They're colorful and pretty out there, but won't be anymore come time that the DMG comes out. Ergo, there will be plenty of inside-time to go over and roast the contents then when there aren't leaves to look at!

Hear, hear! [makes incomprehensibly British sounds of rumbling approval]

 

[prosfilaes]

I'm still not seeing the forcing. It's not as if the desire to follow canon is an irresistable addiction.

If you don't like the new canon, stick with the old canon!

So what are the stats for clerics of Leira in 3rd, 4th or 5th edition?

From a different perspective, if I'm using the current Forgotten Realms, I can hand that edition's Forgotten Realms Adventures to anyone who wants to know what's going on. If I hand someone the 2E Forgotten Realms Adventures and tell them to take the rules from the 5E book, I've upped the confusion a lot. That may not be a big deal for some gamers, but it is for casual or new players.

 

[ceiling90]

Use the Trickery Domain for a Cleric, and tweak it if it isn't satisfactory.

I think adventures sound pretty easy to convert, because most of the same ideas are still at play. Monsters and levels should be parallel enough that if the adventure says they meet x orcs in a alley, then you could probably do the same in this edition. DC's are also explained well enough, that traps and other hazards could be transferred without too much finagling - also, unless you're the DM, why would a casual player want to convert a 2e adventure to 5e? I think being a DM has a significant investment in the game system, so doing rough conversions could be doable - but it also involves some working idea on how 2e works...

But I mostly came here to say look at the Trickery Domain Cleric. Also I don't care too much about Canon or the general DnD lore.

 

[Evenglare]

This is by far the thing I wanted most in the DMG and they actually put it in. Holy crap this is such an instant buy. I know 3.5 addressed the issue but in 5e it feels like world/class/race/background building is being put in a larger spotlight than the past. This is easily the best news I have heard since the inception of 5e, the metagame rules and guidelines of creating your own stuff. Just... so much yes.

 

[PinkRose]

[MENTION=6677017]Sword of Spirit[/MENTION],
As long as the DMG hasn't changed much since the last time I saw it, you should be pleasantly surprised.
#InsideInfo

 

[Paraxis]

This is by far the thing I wanted most in the DMG and they actually put it in. Holy crap this is such an instant buy. I know 3.5 addressed the issue but in 5e it feels like world/class/race/background building is being put in a larger spotlight than the past. This is easily the best news I have heard since the inception of 5e, the metagame rules and guidelines of creating your own stuff. Just... so much yes.

Besides the common sense advice of make them like the races in the player's handbook, what rules and guidelines are you talking about?

Because I would love some real rules and guidelines and I am not seeing them.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

Besides the common sense advice of make them like the races in the player's handbook, what rules and guidelines are you talking about?

Because I would love some real rules and guidelines and I am not seeing them.

Well, it is the DMG: it's usually 5% traps, 15% magic items and 80% "gosh, aren't players annoying?!"

 

[pemerton]

just from this thread alone, I am officially tired of the (mildly) demeaning term "blink elf".

QFT!

The subrace problem was mostly a greyhawk one as the difference between high vs. grey vs. wood was subtle.

Not to mention the difference between Grey Elves and Valley Elves, and between Wood Elves and Grugach/Wild Elves.

I felt a little insulted. There were too many subraces but the solution is to reduce and streamline, not dump the whole idea.

<snip>

5e gets it just right. There are three major tropes of elf in D&D so there are three types of elf: high, wood, and drow. Those don't need to be different races, but neither do we need grey and wild.

You do realize, that the 5E high-wood-drow split is the EXACT SAME THING as the 4E eladrin-elf-drow split, right? Not in name or in rules, but in concept. And whether we make them, in the rules, three separate races or subraces is a sort of semantics.

What Dire Bare said.

What does it matter whether the three "sub-races" are presented as races or sub-races? Who cares? The 4e lore, including the sundering of the elves, is classic D&D seen through the prism of the Dawn War and the Feywild. I have a drow PC in my 4e game, whose goal for the whole campaign has been to kill Lolth and undo the sundering of the elves. The player of this PC has never played D&D prior to 4e, but has not had any trouble understanding the interrelationship of the three varieties of elf.

I didn't like how 4E handled the various 3E subraces of eladrin (if subraces is even the right word) like bralani and ghaele, however. It wasn't horrible, just not to my tastes and not very well detailed.

I don't know the "classic" eladrin other than as entries in the 3E Monster Manual. I used the Ghaele, Coure and Bralani (updated to MM3 stats) as envoys from the Prince of Frost to the Frost Giant Jarl. That seemed to work fine - the Ghaele and Bralani had cold and weather-type abilities, and the Coure played as a sneaky, evil fey.