D&D 5E Human racial abilty modifiers

[Jester David]

One of the frustrating things about the playtest is how the immediately moved past "race" and have made almost no changes to them. They stopped even collecting survey feedback.

 

[Kobold Stew]

I've noticed that too -- even with the four races they have, there isn't a sense of balance. I get that it makes sense only to turn one knob at a time if you want to see where things are going wrong, but the differences between races is significant, and the advantages of some seem limiting or not fully thought through.

Hoping for some tweaking soon (which could begin with removing or reducing human bonuses, racial weapons, and perception skills for elves) along with halfelves and halforcs.

 

[Nikosandros]

One of the frustrating things about the playtest is how the immediately moved past "race" and have made almost no changes to them. They stopped even collecting survey feedback.

Yes, that was the gist of my second question. There hasn't been any more discussion about the races and this makes me worried that they are happy with the current iteration.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

The poll just hit 50 votes, and while this is an informal poll with a small sample size of self selecting participants, the results are striking (copied for posterity).

                                   Votes  Percent
I like them strongly.              0      0%
I like them.                       8      16%
I'm ambivalent. / I don't care.    6      12%
I dislike them.                    15     30%
I dislike them strongly.           21     42%

The results are overwhelmingly negative, with nobody strongly liking the current human ability score modifiers.

Regardless of my personal views (which this supports), this is something WotC should be aware of.

 

[Nikosandros]

I had noticed that and I also share the majority opinion. I wonder if this small sample is representative of those who compiled the surveys about the races.

 

[Klaus]

One of the frustrating things about the playtest is how the immediately moved past "race" and have made almost no changes to them. They stopped even collecting survey feedback.

You're not limited to providing feedback through the surveys. You can also provide feedback through the D&D Next group at Wizards.com : http://community.wizards.com/dndnext

 

[Jester David]

You're not limited to providing feedback through the surveys. You can also provide feedback through the D&D Next group at Wizards.com : http://community.wizards.com/dndnext

Given there's a tonne of people on this forum and the WotC one unhappy with humans, and they haven't said anything about races since GenCon I'm not convinced they are reading the forums. Or, more likely they have staff looking for important posts and forwarding the "must read" ones to the designers. But if they're not told to forward feedback on races none will be read.

 

[Mirtek]

Given there's a tonne of people on this forum and the WotC one unhappy with humans, and they haven't said anything about races since GenCon I'm not convinced they are reading the forums.

Or there are just as many people happy with humans but who don't bother starting a bunch of "I love DDN humans" threads like the people with their "I hate DDN humans" threads but are giving their positive feedback through the questionnaires and other channels.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

Or there are just as many people happy with humans but who don't bother starting a bunch of "I love DDN humans" threads like the people with their "I hate DDN humans" threads but are giving their positive feedback through the questionnaires and other channels.

It's certainly possible. But my experience so far is that ENWorld represents a diverse cross-section of opinions in regards to D&D. If there were a majority positive opinion about a mechanic, I would expect to find it reflected here of all places.

 

[Orius]

Humans shouldn't have "modifiers". They're (we're?) the starting point for the whole system. They should have average ability scores, and the meaning of said scores should be defined by what an average human can do.

This. Humans are the baseline by which everything else is measured.