D&D General How do you like your ASIs?

[Jfdlsjfd]

But lets be logically consistent with it. Abolish races as a game concept. Have a bunch of 'origin traits' (Breathweapon, Darkvision, Powerful Build, Flight Speed etc.) and let players choose a certain amount of them, and then come up with whatever narrative they want to justify them.
I am not sure I'd like it, but it would at least be a coherent approach instead of the current clunky hodge-podge.

Old, outdated way of the past: Orcs get +2 to STR ans -2 to INT because their creator god made them to defile the land, and he deemed such goal would be better achieved by creating strong, rabid warriors instead of philosphers.


Modern, much superior way of the present: people raised in the orcish lands have been culturally prompted to practice sports daily, much more than in other countries. Unfortunately, due to the cultural emphasis on unregulated kickboxing as taugh in Phys. Ed. classes, many students, especially those less gifted for these activities, die around high school age. The remainder survives to enter one of the famous adventuring curriculums taught into the Orcish instituions of higher learning, but alas! they often suffer from repeated hits on the head leading to loss of memory and a slightly limited memorization ability.

Take two cultural traits if you garduated from one the orclands unis:

This is Sparta: due to the integrated military and sportive training you got, have a cultural +1 bonus to hit and damage in melee, and increase your carrying ability by 30 pounds.

Hit on the nogging: repeated damage to the head is beyond ability of healing magic to repair short of a wish or reincarnate spell. You get a -1 to the DC of your spells and magic attack as your tend to fail to remember the intricacies of arcane spellcasting.

Do you want fries with that?: in orclands, saying you're an History or Arcane major will generally be met with snide comment about a future carreer in a fast food joint. Have a -1 penalty to INT based skills as teaching of these skills suffer from an influx of subpar students dragging down the class.

To be fair, no ASIs (or a floating +1) and cultural traits could work as a compromise.

 

[billd91]

Again (and again and again and again) you make the narrative choice at the cost of the mechanical choice. That's the problem, because it's simply not necessary, except to preserve tradition at all costs.

It isn't necessarily about preserving tradition at all cost. How about leaning into the narrative as Tasha's describes? Shouldn't taking the narrative choice sometimes come at a mechanical cost? Or is this about gaining the advantages of a particular narrative without accompanying disadvantages (relatively speaking since lack of a bonus isn't actually a penalty)?

 

[Maxperson]

That's how I've played it for decades.

Same. I've had much longer than 10 minutes go by without a roll in some sessions.

 

[Maxperson]

Its a 5% chance to hit, and then a +1 on the damage, right? Now at level 1, that +1 damage is meaningful sure, but that's what it is. +1

Further, 25% more damage at the low number involved = not really much. It's like when they say that eating X food is a 50% increase in your chances to get cancer. Okay, so instead of 1 in a million it's now 1 in 500k. Not a big deal.

That is of course why I just don't care if a PC has a 14 or a 20. It's not going to break the game.

 

[Bill Zebub]

It isn't necessarily about preserving tradition at all cost. How about leaning into the narrative as Tasha's describes? Shouldn't taking the narrative choice sometimes come at a mechanical cost?

Should it? I don't see why. Especially if the result (as we can see from D&DB data) is that most people don't take the narrative choice.

Maybe the world would be a better place if they did. But they don't.

Or is this about gaining the advantages of a particular narrative without accompanying disadvantages (relatively speaking since lack of a bonus isn't actually a penalty)?

It's really hard to both argue that the bonus does matter (when it supports our argument) and it doesn't matter (when it supports the other person's argument) at the same time, huh?

 

[Vince_Snetterton]

That's how I've played it for decades.

That has never been the intent of the game, until now.

 

[Maxperson]

That has never been the intent of the game, until now.

It was the intent in 1e. 1e didn't have you make rolls for roleplaying and we often went longer than 10 minutes before needing to roll for something. Same with 2e and 3e. No edition ever had a rule that you should roll frequently.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

That has never been the intent of the game, until now.

To put it simply: you're wrong. Perhaps tone down the one-true-wayism a notch?

 

[Bill Zebub]

Its a 5% chance to hit, and then a +1 on the damage, right? Now at level 1, that +1 damage is meaningful sure, but that's what it is. +1

Think of it as a decreased chance to miss. To take an extreme example, if you need a natural 20 to hit, then with +1 to hit you double your chances of hitting, plus doing extra damage when you do hit, so you increase damage by more than 100%.

At more typical ACs it comes out to around 20-25%.

 

[Scott Christian]

1) In my opinion, those racial abilities have distinctive racial connotations. +2 Dex is a specific mechanical benefit of Elves, but it's not uniquely flavorful (to me). Not only do several races get an identical benefit, but all races have a Dexterity score, and all of them can get a 16 Dex by 4th level if they so choose. So, no, a 16 Dexterity just doesn't evoke Elvishness (again, to me; YMMV)

This is interesting, and I thank you for clarifying your view on this. It is much clearer to me now.

2) But more importantly...and less subjectively...the mechanical value of +2 in your primary stat puts too heavy of a finger on the scale in terms of race:class synergy. If you're weighing Halfling Luck vs. Relentless Endurance you can rationalize as better whichever you really prefer. And, yeah, you might just have to decide whether you really want a Halfling, or if you really want Relentless Endurance. Either way, both are quite useful for rogues. But if you're making a Rogue and weighing +2 Dex vs. +2 Strength there's not really any question.

Now, if we noticed over time that we were seeing an improbable number of half-orc rogues (after the initial surge caused by the novelty of it) we might need to reassess how powerful Relentless Endurance is.

So I think it comes down to a kind of cost/benefit analysis: how much flavor are you getting (in terms of abilities that are reserved for certain races), at what kind of cost (measured as the incentive to choose particular race:class combinations). And in my analysis (and apparently WotC's) fixed ASIs provide less flavor than abilities, but create a high incentive to choose specific race:class combinations.

Again, thank you for being so clear in your explanations. I definitely understand where you are coming from on this. I still feel that it's factoring into some people's un-fun. But, knowing where you value these things is a huge help. Thank you.