D&D 5E Evolution of D&D, and choices

[doctorbadwolf]

If my decision to retain race-based ability score adjustments in my games means that you call me racist, then so be it.

I will just have to endure your poor opinion of me.

Literally no one is saying that, but okay.

 

[Neonchameleon]

?? Why are you so stuck on Oofta tripping someone with a hammer? It was a DMs call in a game you weren't in.
I'm also positive that I've got examples of Captain America doing non-lethal trip stunts with his shield. I can't give you issue #s without venturing into the attic & digging through the long boxes though....

Oofta's character was using a weapon designed to be lethal (which Captain America's shield wasn't) against a child in response to a petty crime. I'd only consider the Captain America analogy vaguely comparable if Cap was known to kill regularly with his shield.

So you can grasp the Law/Chaos axis, but not the Good/Evil? Did you miss your childhood somehow? Because you generally learn the concept of Good vs Evil 1st & fairly young. Good guys/Bad guys, in religion, myth, fairy tales, super heroes vs super villains, Star Wars.....

Good and evil is one thing. Good and evil as presented in D&D is another. And in the good and evil I learned about as a kid the side that said "people are evil because of the colour of their skin" or "almost all people of a specific race are evil" were the ones wearing white sheets - and very definitely a flavour of evil. Even if we look at one of the worst societies to have existed in the 20th Century, Nazi Germany was as a society that was very definitely evil - but your average German of the time was neutral, trying to get on with their lives in the middle of a police state. The Nazis at the top and the SS were basically all evil but that doesn't mean everyone was.

And that's before you get into the utterly inane version of D&D alignment advocated for by Dragonlance (among others) which says that you must keep the balance between good and evil.

The original battle of Law vs Chaos was one based on Westerns in which you could draw a bright line. Those trying to "civilise" the wilderness were lawful. Those trying to push back against the encroaching "civilisation" were chaotic. And those trying to just live there and liked things the way it was were neutral. Or, to put things into explicit terms the army and the law coming from the 'Folks back East were lawful, the "Indians" were chaotic, and the cowboys an farmers were mostly neutral, just trying to live their best lives while being crushed from both sides, neither of which were good. I'd strongly argue that that framing bears little resemblance to the reality of the Old West - but it's one that makes thematic sense.

Meanwhile good vs evil is an entirely different thematic clash and, unlike in the Old West you can not say that "because this person was either born there or looks like that they are likely to be good and because that person was either born there or looks like that they are likely to be evil" the way in the Old West if someone looked like a Native American they were likely to be on one side and if they looked as if they were from the city they were from another. This doesn't make one good and the other evil, but does make likely which way they will be pushing.

This doesn't, of course, say that a Maw Demon isn't inimical and needs to be stopped from eating everyone. Or that the Empire isn't evil with its willingness to blow up Alderaan. But no I did not miss my childhood. My childhood taught me that good was as good did, evil was as evil did, that almost no one was purely one or the other (which is partly why codes that lack forgiveness like the Paladin's or Jedi's are toxic) and that you couldn't judge which a person was by the colour of their skin even if that skin was green. I'm kinda worried if you missed these lessons from yours.

 

[Catolias]

5e won’t ever be designed for granular options, and if there is a 6e, it won’t be either.

It will look like variant Tieflings or like something similar to the variant options for classes UA.

If we are lucky, it will be a simple rule that states that the player can choose any +2 and any +1, and ignore the race bonuses. Hopefully with a caveat that mountain dwarves get a +1 to strength even when using this rule, since their entire subrace is basically the fact they get +2 strength rather than +1.

Maybe give them Powerful Build and a bonus to melee damage, instead.

The point is, what you’re suggesting is extremely unlikely, and not necessary.

Sadly, I agree with you. I like 5e and have fun DM-ing it, but.... — that’s for another thread.

 

[Catolias]

The massive protests for justice for black Americans seems to have rushed the scheduling of some things that WotC were working on, but it seems like it was stuff that they were planning to do eventually anyway. Depending on the particular issue, the progress can feel protracted − two steps forward and one step back. In general, WotC seems genuine and moving in the right direction.

The world we live in now has moved faster than anyone thought possible back in January 2020. This is a year like no other.

5e brought change. It introduced artwork that is positive and inclusive. It is a step in the right direction. But for many it is one that took too long and was resisted.

I can’t talk what WotC may have planned to do or not back in January. It was a different world then. No one anticipated the amazing change we all see in sentiment of support for BLM in the US or other countries with disadvantaged indigenous peoples.

5e will always be here. But, it is the past. A pre-2020 world that is different from the one we find ourselves in. D&D will evolve, but I think the scale of the evolution will be greater than we might want to admit. It is certainly more than I thought at first.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

A race is not traditionally agile when it is not more agile than everyone else.
Why should a gnome not be more intelligent than most others? Or a kobold weaker than most? Or yes, the orc be on average less intelligent? That is part of biology the same as having darkvision or not (imo it was a mistake to begin with to not have negative ability adjustments in the first place). Either you argue that races should have biological differences, then they should also have different attributes, or all races must be the same and thus essentially humans.

Ok, you're objecting to 5E in general, well, have fun with that dude. The idea that a race which is "traditionally agile" also has to be "more agile than everyone else" is just laughable, I note. That's not logic. You can be "traditionally" something without having any kind of actual modifier, let alone being the very best at it.

More generally on this thread, I strongly suspect WotC were already planning some of these changes, including the disassociation of stats and races as an option (for the long suspected Xanathars-2 which will presumably have the CFVs and so on as well), and I don't for a second believe a 6E would have been published with races still called races. Honestly it was slightly surprising in 2014. So they're just pushing that forwards. I think the orc/drow stuff is more a case of house-cleaning rather than having planned it.

So you can grasp the Law/Chaos axis, but not the Good/Evil? Did you miss your childhood somehow? Because you generally learn the concept of Good vs Evil 1st & fairly young. Good guys/Bad guys, in religion, myth, fairy tales, super heroes vs super villains, Star Wars.....

The key difference is the definitions of what is Good and what is Evil not only vary wildly in the examples you've given right there, but that they actively contradict each other. In myth and fairy tales in particular, a lot of stuff the stories themselves clearly regard as "good" or "righteous" is diabolically evil by superhero standards, and would be something a villain would do in Star Wars. Even in more modern stuff, some action heroes are seemingly murderous psychopaths we're supposed to see as "good" (hello many iterations of James Bond), and some villains have films have motivations which would line up much better with conventional D&D definitions of "Good" than D&D "Evil". You attempt to claim people learn Good and Evil early on, but that's demonstrably untrue - humans learn allowed and not allowed, which is different. Humans with empathy learn "hurts people/doesn't hurt people". But those aren't the same as Good and Evil. Especially not D&D's Good and Evil. D&D for example puts individual freedom of choice in as a "Good" value. That's fine, but that's in stark contrast to much of myth, fairy tales, and many historical and philosophical views on "good".

You basically nuked your own argument from orbit with your own examples there. Anyone actually familiar with the examples can immediately see that Good and Evil are not consist concepts. Even within societies, there's often stark disagreement about morality. I won't go into examples, as it could lead into politics, but denying that is denying reality.

Whereas Law and Chaos represent more specific and consistent forces/conceptual poles. Ideas about them from ancient Babylon, or classical Greece, or middle ages Europe, or China circa 200AD all seem to line up pretty well. Certainly they line up vast, almost infinitely better than ideas about good and evil. Nor are they a moral judgement on someone or something in the same way. They're also themes that crop up in plays, literature, and so on, through the ages, and again are consistent to a degree ridiculously far beyond good/evil.

 

[Lanefan]

Ok, you're objecting to 5E in general, well, have fun with that dude. The idea that a race which is "traditionally agile" also has to be "more agile than everyone else" is just laughable, I note. That's not logic. You can be "traditionally" something without having any kind of actual modifier.

There's a big difference between "more agile than everyone else" and simply skewing that creature's agility bell curve higher, which is what the stat bonus does.

The average Dex of a Human is 10.5; the average Dex of an Elf is 12.5. Same bell curve, just skewed two points higher. But there's still lots of overlap, such that one can meet a Human (Dex 14) and an Elf (Dex 12) and find the Human is the more dextrous of the two.

Or you could get even fancier and assign each stat for each creature its own bell curve (so Elf Dexterity might be assigned a bell curve of 6-18) and then convert results from the standard 3-18 curve to suit*. Way more flexible in design than flat +/- modifiers, but a bit more complicated at char-gen; I speak from experience as we've used a converted-bell-curve system for about 35 years now.

* - thus if you rolled a 3 it'd go up to 6, if you rolled an 8 it'd go to 10, a rolled 13 would become 14, but a rolled 18 would stay 18.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

There's a big difference between "more agile than everyone else" and simply skewing that creature's agility bell curve higher, which is what the stat bonus does.

The average Dex of a Human is 10.5; the average Dex of an Elf is 12.5. Same bell curve, just skewed two points higher. But there's still lots of overlap, such that one can meet a Human (Dex 14) and an Elf (Dex 12) and find the Human is the more dextrous of the two.

Or you could get even fancier and assign each stat for each creature its own bell curve (so Elf Dexterity might be assigned a bell curve of 6-18) and then convert results from the standard 3-18 curve to suit*. Way more flexible in design than flat +/- modifiers, but a bit more complicated at char-gen; I speak from experience as we've used a converted-bell-curve system for about 35 years now.

* - thus if you rolled a 3 it'd go up to 6, if you rolled an 8 it'd go to 10, a rolled 13 would become 14, but a rolled 18 would stay 18.

Quite!

That's an interesting system, I think most people have given up on rolling for stats*, but you could potentially do something quite fun, if a tad retro with that.

* = I mean certainly younger people have, you should see the 5E reddit when stat rolling get discussed. It's pretty clear that almost everyone under about 35 is using standard array, point buy, or something like those, there and the arguments against rolling are pretty extreme/hilarious (but widely supported to judge from the upvotes).

 

[Oofta]

Quite!

That's an interesting system, I think most people have given up on rolling for stats*, but you could potentially do something quite fun, if a tad retro with that.

* = I mean certainly younger people have, you should see the 5E reddit when stat rolling get discussed. It's pretty clear that almost everyone under about 35 is using standard array, point buy, or something like those, there and the arguments against rolling are pretty extreme/hilarious (but widely supported to judge from the upvotes).

So I'm one of those people that has never liked rolling for stats. Does that make me young at heart or just immature?

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Oofta's character was using a weapon designed to be lethal (which Captain America's shield wasn't) against a child in response to a petty crime. I'd only consider the Captain America analogy vaguely comparable if Cap was known to kill regularly with his shield.



Good and evil is one thing. Good and evil as presented in D&D is another. And in the good and evil I learned about as a kid the side that said "people are evil because of the colour of their skin" or "almost all people of a specific race are evil" were the ones wearing white sheets - and very definitely a flavour of evil. Even if we look at one of the worst societies to have existed in the 20th Century, Nazi Germany was as a society that was very definitely evil - but your average German of the time was neutral, trying to get on with their lives in the middle of a police state. The Nazis at the top and the SS were basically all evil but that doesn't mean everyone was.

And that's before you get into the utterly inane version of D&D alignment advocated for by Dragonlance (among others) which says that you must keep the balance between good and evil.

The original battle of Law vs Chaos was one based on Westerns in which you could draw a bright line. Those trying to "civilise" the wilderness were lawful. Those trying to push back against the encroaching "civilisation" were chaotic. And those trying to just live there and liked things the way it was were neutral. Or, to put things into explicit terms the army and the law coming from the 'Folks back East were lawful, the "Indians" were chaotic, and the cowboys an farmers were mostly neutral, just trying to live their best lives while being crushed from both sides, neither of which were good. I'd strongly argue that that framing bears little resemblance to the reality of the Old West - but it's one that makes thematic sense.

Meanwhile good vs evil is an entirely different thematic clash and, unlike in the Old West you can not say that "because this person was either born there or looks like that they are likely to be good and because that person was either born there or looks like that they are likely to be evil" the way in the Old West if someone looked like a Native American they were likely to be on one side and if they looked as if they were from the city they were from another. This doesn't make one good and the other evil, but does make likely which way they will be pushing.

This doesn't, of course, say that a Maw Demon isn't inimical and needs to be stopped from eating everyone. Or that the Empire isn't evil with its willingness to blow up Alderaan. But no I did not miss my childhood. My childhood taught me that good was as good did, evil was as evil did, that almost no one was purely one or the other (which is partly why codes that lack forgiveness like the Paladin's or Jedi's are toxic) and that you couldn't judge which a person was by the colour of their skin even if that skin was green. I'm kinda worried if you missed these lessons from yours.

That is an interesting take. One that I never thought of, probably because when I came across D&D alignment 40 years ago or so, I bounced hard off alignment. I took Law as Order and opposed that to Chaos and could not see them as an axis. Perfect Law, meant to me, nothing could happen and perfect Chaos meant disorder so great nothing could happen.
I believed that Law needed some Chaos and Chaos some Law, sort of like Ying and Yang.
It did not help that some of the stuff about the Paladin code, which was presented as good, also struck me as laughable as its inflexibility would lead to evil.
It seemed to me to be very half baked and not thought through. So I rejected the whole thing.
Not officially though, if players wanted to use alignment, I never stopped them. As a player or DM I generally ignored it. IF a player brought it up, which I do not recall ever happening, I explained my position. In my experience, alignment was something that players generally ignored, except for the paladin code.

 

[Sadras]

The discussion here about alignment seems to point that perhaps BECMI had it right, with just the three: Lawful, Chaotic and Neutral.