Level Up (A5E) Do Player Characters Have Average Population Stat Distributions?

[Minigiant]

But you have to have somewhere to start from, and D&D is a fantasy game, drawing inspiration from fantasy literature. Like I said, if you'd prefer your orc wizard get an int bonus instead of strength, read my sidebar and talk to your group. That's what session 0 is for.

But this all goes back to setting.
Why is one setting's assumption the base?
Why is the wizard designed to not benefit from Strength?
Why is the base orc tribal and not based on a modern or ancient civilization?

A lot of people don't use the old traditional setting so baking those ideas into races might not be the right idea for the base game.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I think we're on the same page.

I am someone who liked race-class synergy ... because I liked how the resulting cluster of favorable classes informed the flavor of the race. For example, if an eladrin was mechanically good at being a wizard and a bard, and a wood elf mechanically good at being a druid and a ranger, that distinction between magical preferences seems interesting.

Designwise, I value when "flavor" actually happens mechanically during gameplay. The coherence between flavor and mechanics is a priority.

One of my frustrations with 1e was a "flavor" that the elf was good at being a wizard, but mechanically the elf in fact sucked. It made the "flavor" feel ridiculous, and even pathetic in the sense that I felt sorry for the players who were "pretending" the elf was a good wizard when such was untrue. If the character has the flavor of being able to fly, there had better be mechanical wings, before jumping off of a cliff.

Agree with all of this. Disagree with the assertion made by some that ASIs are the best way to address it.

Similarly, I feel frustration with 5e claiming the elf is good at wizard (in fact, the 5e elf is mediocre and the cantrip less significant for an actual wizard), and also with 5e claiming the elf is good at art and poetry (in fact, the 5e elf is inferior at Charisma and is a poor choice for bard or performance or persuasion or poetry or art).

Oh, right, you just reminded me that I had meant to respond to an earlier poster who cherrypicked part of the description about elves to conclude that +2 Dex was necessary, while ignoring other parts of the fluff that were unsupported mechanically.

Anyway, when factual, the synergy between race and class was a way to actualize the flavor mechanically.

Agree.

Now, however, I feel increasing discomfort with the "racism" of the D&D races. The discomfort surpasses the enjoyment.

Understandable. And I strongly suspect some people mistakenly think the racial ASI discussion is secretly really about racism and political correctness. I don't think it is. Not for me, anyway.

I am optimistic about giving each heritage a feat, and the moving ability improvements to backgrounds.

4e had an interesting feat for each race, such as Misty Step for eladrin. It made the choice of race fun and meaningful during gameplay. 5e removed this feat from the races, and I miss this aspect of 4e.

Ideally, Advanced 5e can offer each heritage a choice from several feats to help shore up the flavors of the heritage mechanically.

And...yes. Absolutely. It seems obvious to me that the solution is to provide more feat-like powers that convey the flavor, without needing to go with ASIs. It's better (in my opinion) in nearly every way.

The bitter resistance to that solution continues to mystify me.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But this all goes back to setting.
Why is one setting's assumption the base?
Why is the wizard designed to not benefit from Strength?
Why is the base orc tribal and not based on a modern or ancient civilization?

A lot of people don't use the old traditional setting so baking those ideas into races might not be the right idea for the base game.

It you don't establish the rudiments of a base setting, then the game becomes a generic system like GURPS. D&D is a fantasy game. You can change anything you want (and there should be rules in the PH that encourage you to do that), but you have to have something to change it from.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Better bards than paladins, I always say.

Paladins are fine. At least they don't go around singing....

I thought spells were only true in fairy tales
Meant for someone else but not for me
Wizards were out to get me
That's the way it seemed
Disappointment haunted all of my dreams

Then I saw 5e, now I'm a believer
Not a trace of doubt in my mind
I'm a bard
I'm a full caster, I couldn't stop plying this lute if I tried


.....Lutes. Full casters. And they are annoying. Bonus fact: it's an anagram for DRAB.

We all know Gygax stuck them in an appendix ... BECAUSE THE APPENDIX WAS MADE TO BE REMOVED!

 

[Doug McCrae]

But you have to have somewhere to start from, and D&D is a fantasy game, drawing inspiration from fantasy literature. Like I said, if you'd prefer your orc wizard get an int bonus instead of strength, read my sidebar and talk to your group. That's what session 0 is for.

Which fantasy literature? There's no reason to think, based on Tolkien, that orcs should get a strength bonus or an intelligence penalty. Those are D&D-isms. The goblins in The Hobbit are clever, albeit evil, crafters:

Now goblins are cruel, wicked, and bad-hearted. They make no beautiful things, but they make many clever ones. They can tunnel and mine as well as any but the most skilled dwarves, when they take the trouble, though they are usually untidy and dirty. Hammers, axes, swords, daggers, pickaxes, tongs, and also instruments of torture, they make very well, or get other people to make to their design, prisoners and slaves that have to work till they die for want of air and light. It is not unlikely that they invented some of the machines that have since troubled the world, especially the ingenious devices for killing large numbers of people at once, for wheels and engines and explosions always delighted them, and also not working with their own hands more than they could help; but in those days and those wild parts they had not advanced (as it is called) so far.​

 

[Guest 6801328]

It you don't establish the rudiments of a base setting, then the game becomes a generic system like GURPS. D&D is a fantasy game. You can change anything you want (and there should be rules in the PH that encourage you to do that), but you have to have something to change it from.

I both agree with that, and disagree that racial ASIs are the line that, if crossed, turn it into a generic system. Or would even move the needle meaningfully in that direction.

In fact, if I compare racial features like Fey Ancestry, Relentless Endurance, and Halfling Luck to ASIs, the ASIs feel WAY more generic. Change the names of the races to something we don't recognize, and a handful of races with various ASIs could be from any genre, any setting.

If you want to establish a baseline setting, replace racial ASIs with something more colorful.

 

[Cadence]

If the assumption in the setting is, for example, that there are very few orc wizards, I don't see any value in making that also hold true among PCs. In fact, the opposite: if it's true that orc wizards are very, very, very rare in (insert setting)...in fact, let's assume there's only one single orc wizard in the entire world...I think it would be great if that one orc wizard is a PC, not an NPC.

I like the way this was phrased... a lot!

 

[Maxperson]

Heh, to the dispute over the word "encourage", I might characterize 5e as being more "forgiving" of bad subpar choices, rather than "encouraging" them.

Probably it is because 5e made an effort to remove aspects of previous editions that were too powerful, broken.

So the contrast is more likely to be between a bad choice versus a reasonable choice − rather than a bad choice and an incredibly good choice.

I disagree that the choice is between bad and reasonable. The choice is more accurately between good(since you can play the game well with a 14) and slightly better, since +1 more is only slightly better.

 

[TwoSix]

Random thought: What if race provided a stat floor, rather than a bonus? Just as an example, if you were playing an elf, and your Dex was less than 13, it would became a 13.

That way, you're still getting that setting building that comes from the tie between race and stat, but it doesn't benefit any particular class build, except by favoring multiclassing into classes with the related stat.

 

[Phoebasss]

I disagree that the choice is between bad and reasonable. The choice is more accurately between good(since you can play the game well with a 14) and slightly better, since +1 more is only slightly better.

Quit only cherry picking the arguments you think you can distort. I'm pretty close to being done with you but I'll give this one more shot. Does 5e give more benefits to some race/class combinations than others? And if it does, is that good?