D&D 5E Everyone Should Play Custom Lineage by Default

[DND_Reborn]

Then are you really playing one?

It is like saying, "I want to play a giraffe, but don't want a long neck, four legs, two eyes, or spots on my hide. Can I still be a giraffe?"

Or, "I want to ride this giant tortoise as my steed, but it doesn't go as fast as the riding horses everyone else has. Can we bump its speed up so I can keep up. It's still a giant tortoise, though, right?"

Frankly, of course you can do what you want in your game, and using custom lineage or your own homebrew to develop custom races is fine of course, but then you are no longer the race--especially once you start changing the racial traits--they are what define a race as a race IMO.

 

[nevin]

The new Tasha's custom lineage is one of the strongest PC options published--pick a feat, potentially choose an Ability to start at 18, have darkvision.

Why not have it be conventional practice that players always build a custom lineage, regardless of the 'race' they want to play i.e.:

wanna play a dwarf? --> custom lineage: +2 Str, Sentinel​

wanna play an elf? --> custom lineage: +2 Dex, Elven Accuracy​

wanna play a purple eight-eyed anthropomorphic psychic badger? --> custom lineage: +2 Int, Telekinetic​

and so on​

The upside is that DMs wouldn't have to be picky about allowing other options for players who want more thematically unified mechanics. Since custom lineage is almost always gonna be mechanically better, nothing else is likely to unbalance the game.

I think this convention would ultimately allow players to play what they want without feeling like they're straightjacketed by the rules AND--because total freedom undermines creativity more than constraints do--mean that a lot of players will flavor their PC as generically human or demihuman. The freedom to go gonzo is there but most of the players most of the time won't want to.

Finally, it'd be less oppressive to worldbuilding, since there's no default assumption that the PHB races need to exist in the setting. So, say, in my setting I decide everyone is dragonborn. Players can decide to look like dragonborn, and be locals, or look like elves, and be inter-dimensional party crashers--mechanically it doesn't matter, roleplay what you want.

What do you guys think?

No. believe it or not some players like standard fantasy races. Requiring that now makes them do it your way so that you and your crowd are happy. Options are good, requirements are bad.

 

[Zardnaar]

I take issue with this one. Badness is in the eye of the beholder. Someone's bad is another's normal or even overpowered.

It's so you don't have someone deliberately play a crap PC. Basically have a 16 where it matters.

 

[Remathilis]

Then are you really playing one?

It is like saying, "I want to play a giraffe, but don't want a long neck, four legs, two eyes, or spots on my hide. Can I still be a giraffe?"

Or, "I want to ride this giant tortoise as my steed, but it doesn't go as fast as the riding horses everyone else has. Can we bump its speed up so I can keep up. It's still a giant tortoise, though, right?"

Frankly, of course you can do what you want in your game, and using custom lineage or your own homebrew to develop custom races is fine of course, but then you are no longer the race--especially once you start changing the racial traits--they are what define a race as a race IMO.

It really starts to question what DOES define a race now.

So an elf by default has +2 dex, age, alignment, M size, 30 ft speed, darkvision, keen senses, trance, fey ancestry, two languages, and a subrace. Subraces can change your speed. Tasha says we can swap the ASI's for any ones we want. Alignment as a racial trait is going the way of the dodo (see the goliath reprint in IWD). Languages and proficiencies are swappable. Then, Custom lineage-as-race comes in and says: you can pick size S or M. You can select a skill instead of darkvision, and trade trance, fey ancestry and your subrace for a feat.

The only immutable elven trait: age.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It's so you don't have someone deliberately play a crap PC. Basically have a 16 where it matters.

Right. Due this sad power gaming attitude WotC had to break the whole race mechanics because people couldn't handle not having a 16 in a stat (and even if it wasn't their character!)

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Right. Due this sad power gaming attitude WotC had to break the whole race mechanics because people couldn't handle not having a 16 in a stat (and even if it wasn't their character!)

Yes to this. No other player should be telling another player how they must play their character in general or how they must slot their stats specifically. If someone starts with a 14 instead of a 16 in their primary stat, is the +1 ability modifier difference really going to ruin the campaign? If so, sounds like there's bigger issues at hand for that table.

 

[DND_Reborn]

It really starts to question what DOES define a race now.

Not at all. The same thing that always has: a list of set traits that creatures have in common, along with a biological make-up that defines you as that creature apart from others that might have similar traits.

In short, you do not have elven traits if you do not have:

an elf by default has +2 dex, age, alignment, M size, 30 ft speed, darkvision, keen senses, trance, fey ancestry, two languages, and a subrace.

You are not an elf. You are something else, a unique being. Are there others like you, which share your biological make-up and have the same traits you do? Then pick a new name for yourselves and voila a new race!

So, Tasha's says float this, customize that, blah blah blah. When you are done, guess what... you have something called HOMEBREW which is what people have been doing for decades. A lot of tables have house-ruled floating ASIs for so long it is ridiculous. So, ALL WotC has done is basically tell everyone, "Go ahead, check with your DM, and homebrew the crap out of your game."

FWIW, as far as ASIs are concerned, I've been saying for a long time just get rid of them entirely. Don't float them, we don't need them, get rid of them. Represent racial traits through more meaningful concepts like instead of STR +2 give a race Powerful Build, etc.

Tasha's basically said, "Ok, let's give power gamers and option so they can play something other than variant human to get a feat at level 1 and throw in darkvision, after all, over half the races still don't have it."

Spoiler: Rant

Finally, yeah, I know it is all "optional", well good because 90% of it is all crap IMO. 300-ft darkvision??? Are you f'ing kidding me? On top of that, let's make it so you can give to all willing creatures within 10 feet of you for an hour! The more I read the book the more I am SO glad I didn't buy it.

 

[cbwjm]

Yes to this. No other player should be telling another player how they must play their character in general or how they must slot their stats specifically. If someone starts with a 14 instead of a 16 in their primary stat, is the +1 ability modifier difference really going to ruin the campaign? If so, sounds like there's bigger issues at hand for that table.

The game works well with a 14 in your main stat, anything over is a bonus. Below that, I think it starts to show a bit but otherwise a 14 works fine.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Yes to this. No other player should be telling another player how they must play their character in general or how they must slot their stats specifically. If someone starts with a 14 instead of a 16 in their primary stat, is the +1 ability modifier difference really going to ruin the campaign? If so, sounds like there's bigger issues at hand for that table.

How does one player even know what the scores are for another PC?

I could have a Fighter with STR and DEX 10, and just tell the DM, "I missed. I missed again." etc. No one else needs to know what my PCs stats are.

 

[Crit]

It really starts to question what DOES define a race now.

So an elf by default has +2 dex, age, alignment, M size, 30 ft speed, darkvision, keen senses, trance, fey ancestry, two languages, and a subrace. Subraces can change your speed. Tasha says we can swap the ASI's for any ones we want. Alignment as a racial trait is going the way of the dodo (see the goliath reprint in IWD). Languages and proficiencies are swappable. Then, Custom lineage-as-race comes in and says: you can pick size S or M. You can select a skill instead of darkvision, and trade trance, fey ancestry and your subrace for a feat.

The only immutable elven trait: age.

The only thing moved around right now is ASIs and alignment. I looked at a lot of the races, and to me, 90% of their identity is other things. The origins and engrained features (flight, powerful build, innate spell casting, teifling heritage, Simic Hybrid anatomy) are still the same. To me, those matter the most as well as whatever the setting says.

I don't think a Custom Lineage "Elf," depending on how the DM treats Trance + Fey Ancestry, is really the same as a normal Elf. Age is only immutable if you decide Trance and whatever else to be disposable, which has to be chosen. What it means to play each race depends on stuff like that-- I personally would put Custom Lineage forward only for non-existing races and species. Not to mention, Custom Lineage does seem to lack a lot of meat-on-the-bone compared to actually playing a regular race. I don't think these things are on their way out.

The reason ASIs and Alignment were tagged out was because there wasn't much of a reason for them to be coupled as they were. I agree with the idea of ASIs and alignment being determined by environmental factors, rather than unnecessary mention where not needed. Why list something like alignment statistics per race if it, frankly, offers so little? Should it not be a DM's prerogative to say what place or culture results in what alignments? Separately, if you had an Elf who was solely raised amongst Gnomes, why would they know Elvish and not Gnomish? I think that's better- the race alignment suggestions, I think, encourage the generalizations into existing.

Right. Due this sad power gaming attitude WotC had to break the whole race mechanics because people couldn't handle not having a 16 in a stat (and even if it wasn't their character!)

I don't agree with that. Nothing was "broken" from "power gaming." I think it's more than fair that no-one is mechanically punished or disadvantaged from race choice. Now you are free to pick whether or not you're disadvantaged, by moving around your ASIs.