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Message: <blockquote data-quote="squibbles" data-source="post: 8148830" data-attributes="member: 6937590">Man, thanks for both replying in good faith guys!I appreciate the sentiment of that last bit. Custom lineage as "I'm an elf, but my elf starts with better stuff than your elf" is not something the game needs. I think defaulting everybody to custom lineage would avoid that. But, from your perspective that's probably beside the point.Whether the PHB races deserve something unique, I disagree. I don't think there is anything about their setting fluff or their unique mechanics that merits special prominence; there are plenty of elves in fiction that sleep, for example.I'm just suggesting a different way to think about character creation. I believe it would work well, but I don't mean to be as hyperbolic and totalizing about that as the thread's clickbait title.I think having a prominent default lineage would make the game leaner. There are lots of features among the published races, that seem like bloated fiddly bits to me as well (example: hobgoblin's saving face: 1/rest they feel ingrained social pressure to not fail as part of their race... ffs). As to dwarves being strong and hearty, nothing about custom lineage prevents it--put that +2 in Strength, pick a feat that boosts Constitution, and chillax with your 15 Intelligence. But I think it's fine for a player to have his/her dwarf be a feeble genius too.The darkvision thing is definitely a problem with having everyone default to custom lineage. Functionally it would mean that almost all PCs have darkvision. I don't really have an answer for that. It'd be a dealbreaker for dungeoncrawling style games, I admit.If I had my druthers, custom lineage would have come with some options for creatures with very obviously consequential morphology. The benefits of being 10' tall, winged, aquatic, four-armed, nocturnal, etc. could have been written up with reasonable features and offset by losing some/all the Ability bonuses or the feat option.I think of powergaming as players leveraging abstruse rules (or the new power-creepy hotness) in cheesy ways to have advantages over other players--since game challenges can easily be made harder with bigger numbers and DM fiat. Setting baseline player power close to the top of what is possible, with options to go below the baseline for thematic reasons or niche specialties is meant to undercut powergaming. See again, "if everyone is super, no one is".</blockquote>

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