D&D 5E Is Tasha's Broken?

[Maxperson]

A lot of people say, "It just means you hit 5% more often!"

The thing is...it's doesn't mean that. The numbers vary by AC, but if you have a 50% chance to hit, 5% more means you hit 10% more often. And then you add the +1 to your damage, and then you multiply the hit rate increase by the damage increase.

Not 5% more often. 5% more likely to hit. That's a flat number.

As has been shown many times, for a 1st level fighter, a 16 Str results in 20-30% more damage than a 15 Str. The increase is greater at higher ACs, which are often the hardest and most important fights.

And as has been shown just as often, that 20-30% is trivial. When your average damage is 6.5, 1-2 more points of damage just isn't meaningful. It's like when you hear, "Drinking this drink increases your chances of a heart attack by 400%!!!" and people freak out because they don't realize that even with the increase, it's still only a 1 in 10000 chance or something.

 

[d24454_modern]

Basically, it’s a psychological thing. The idea that it could be higher causes players to scapegoat their bad rolls onto it.

 

[Neonchameleon]

That's not exactly what I said, or if it is, I spoke poorly. To be clear, I don't think having your prime stat be 2 higher is important. I don't think everyone needs to start with an 18 or even a 16 in their prime stat; I have pcs that I play that started with 14 and 15 in their prime stats.

That +2 is important in defining one of the things that makes a race different from humans.

I forgot to reply to this bit. The +1/+2 is the most bland and generic way possible to mechanically differentiate races and is something that literally isn't seen in actual play for NPCs because they simply don't make enough rolls before either the party moves on or the party kills them. It matters for PCs because the individual PC makes so many rolls.

If I want to make one race appear stronger than another other than through description I don't read out a list of bland, tedious statistics. I don't slow the game down doing the math out loud. And I don't get the players to reverse engineer my dice modifiers. Instead 5e gives me excellent tools for different sorts of strength.

• The goliath literally has twice the lifting carrying capacity of other races and your average goliath can carry about as much as the strongest human or dwarf ever.
• The minotaur can use a bonus action to push people up to one size larger than them around through brute force. Minotaurs are forceful
• The half-orc can literally hit harder than anyone else because they get the Savage Attack that gives them an extra dice on a critical. Half-orcs have explosive strength. (And this is a weak-ass ability because it only comes up one roll in 20 - but a +1 on a d20 roll is only relevant one roll in 20 under normal circumstances anyway and doesn't even directly call attention to itself then).

The +2 on the other hand doesn't do very much to make a race different from humans as humans already have a +1. Which means that for about half of all stat spreads there is literally no difference between the +2 Str race and human capabilities unless you are actually counting the individual pounds of weight someone is lifting because they have exactly the same bonus.

So no. The +2 is pretty much a waste of time in actual play for indicating anything that makes a race different from humans. Meanwhile not only are the goliath and minotaur strong - but they are strong in different ways. One's much more a slow endurance type of being able to move things, and one's much faster and more forceful pushing people around.

Right now, one of 5e's trends is to make all the races generic in a bunch of ways (same lifespan, size choice, stat bumps, etc).

And another of 5e's trends is to make all the races extremely different by giving them actual differences in their abilities - like an average goliath breaking human lifting records. The trend 5e has is to ignore things that only exist in the background in favour of actual meaningful differences in play.

5e does a much better job of making races that are mechanically alien than a focus on bland and tedious +2/+1/0/0/0/0 against a baseline of +1/+1/+1/+1/+1/+1 ever could. And dropping the bland and the tedious counting that don't actually take you outside the human range means that you have more free time, energy, and headspace to make your races actually different rather than just humans with prosthetic foreheads and a couple of +1s thrown in.

As a DM, I am just the opposite. I lean into the alienness of nonhumans as best I can. I have heard all the arguments about other races just being humans in silly hats or with forehead bumps, but I think that's a lazy attitude- I think it's worth the effort to try to make each race actually not human. ASIs have always been a mechanism for that in my game.

So, important; but not important in the way it is important to a player whose big concern is getting that +2 to the right stat.

Whereas for me, because I like things to be alien dropping the focus on math and redirecting it to a focus on what actually makes things different has been a boon in terms of actually being able to get past the busywork and math that doesn't actually do anything meaningful differentiate the race from humans (an average member of this race is 9% stronger but 9% less agile than an average human! W00t! This absolutely tells me something truly groundbreaking about their culture, physiology, and psychology that in no way resembles a prosthetic forehead alien!) to be able to focus on the alienness of nonhumans.

So it is an improvement to me as a DM because the game is making me waste my time on things that don't actually make a difference that much less.

 

[teitan]

No, it's not broken. Usually these debates amount to "I don't like this" without much experience. WHen 5e originally came out I remember some exclaiming that Dragonborn were OP and after a while they turned out to be a ho-hum race. The variant race rules are an optional rule, they aren't a core rule and the implementation of them later in Ravenloft and other sources is much smoother and less OP. There isn't a lot of bloat to 5e, there are two expansion books with classes, feats and spells, and 2 with races (MOTM doesn't count since it's all reprints, or it counts as those two) and nothing in them is really OP in the same way that the old Bladesinger in 2e was OP or some of the Prestige Classes were in 3.x or the feat chains in 3.x could get. If you bring in 3PP it can get a little sketchy but the system is more in line with 1e-2e era styles of play where part of the balance is game design and the other part is the DM running the game.

 

[Horwath]

As beaten to death, Twilight is only real guilty party.
it's not that broken but it puts all other cleric domains to shame.
Same as echo knight to fighter, but since it's a base of fighter, no one cares.

So my little "normalization" of twilight cleric:

Eyes of night:
you gain darkvision of 60ft or your existing darkvision extends by 60ft

As a bonus action, you can share this darkvision with a number of creatures equal to your proficiency bonus that you can see and ithey are in range of your darkvision.
Shared vision lasts for 1 minute, or until you use this ability again

Twilight sanctuary:
Temp HPs are your wisdom modifier+you proficiency bonus.
Activating is bonus action and instead of at the end of the turn, you must use bonus action to activate it's effect.

Steps of night:
Flight is dispelled when you enter area of bright light.
You fall down safely for 60ft per round until normal duration would expire.

 

[Minigiant]

You can have an effective strength-based Rogue in any class. Strength based Rogues are great in play, they just can't multiclass.

STR based Rogue are weaker as you have lower AC, fewer skill to match with STR Bonuses, and fewer ways to capitalize on STR in combat due to fewer proficiency.

It all goes back to Tasha's being

1. an obligation of new material for a book
2. a promise to not creat tons of splat
3. the designers not being inspired to create everything in the quota.
4. the designers either not knowing or purposely avoiding second tier popular class archetypes.

For example, Tasha gives cleric Order, Peace, and Twilight.domains. Now Order is a reprint but Order isn't too bad. But I would have never picked Twilight and Peace. Twilight is a mash up of 2 popular cleric types Moon and Protection. And I don't know how Peace got ahead of Hunt, Sky, Sea, and Earth. "But Minigiant. We already have Tempest". No, buddy. Zeus and Poseidon are not the same thing. Order, Moon, Protection, and Sky. 4 subclasses! Too many I guess.

Tasha's isn't broken. It just feels to me like forced out obligation to provide material and allow people to play different race/class combos at the baseline.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Hmm. I thought that they were either live or Memorex.

Most classes give pleasure wherever they go; Bards give the same pleasure whenever they go.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This. If @the Jester thinks that the +2 or even +1 isn't important then what complaint does he have. Clearly it isn't important to him and therefore he's fine with it being movable.

Meanwhile a 20-30% shift in DPR (thanks @Bill Zebub ) and hence combat effectiveness for a fighter is important to me. Yes, if I'm playing someone who calls themselves a professional fighter then being good at fighting is part of that character concept. And if I'm 25% behind the benchmark then for all I can call myself a fighter I'm not very good at it.

My problem is changing the fluff from having that bonus being attached to something that made sense to me to having it attached to nothing. You can attach it to something else. Culture works for me. Level Up does background, which is also fine. Completely untethered ASIs lose all meaning to me. If you're going to do that, just get rid of them altogether; the game doesn't need them to function anyway.

 

[Willie the Duck]

I haven't played super early editions in a really long time. Am I correct that there weren't ASIs at all in those editions?

I think you mean racial stat modifiers, as your context was AD&D. Regardless, the basic-classic line lasted from 1974 to the second black box edition in 1994. If you start counting AD&D from when the first book came out in '77 and it going the reprint of 2nd edition in '95, it actually has a longer lifespan*. Anyways, yes, the basic-classic line did not have racial attribute modifiers. Smaller races (dwarves and haflings) either couldn't or had big penalties for wielding big weapons, and that was it. Rather similar to what 5e is with floating (or better yet no) starting ASIs.
*Although, yeah, they officially discontinued basic-classic, while AD&D could be said to be 'current' right up until 3e.

Let's be clear, though, I'm not saying I love this implementation, it just doesn't bother me. A purpose-driven and not-after-the-fact-duct-tape-fix redesign of how both races and attributes work would be preferable (my vote goes for de-emphasizing attributes in general. Minigiant is right that the designers painted themselves into a corner).

That +2 is important in defining one of the things that makes a race different from humans.

Yep. That's just plain a spot where we aren't going to agree. Especially in a game where attributes change, PCs aren't representatives of their entire race, and where there are multiple methods of generating those scores, I just can't see it as a major way one distinguishes A from B.

In regards to 1e...

Many would say Unearthed Arcana introduce a LOT of power creep in it.

Some refuse to use it to this day (Personally, I love it).

Unearthed Arcana is a good parallel to Tasha's and Xanathar's combined. It has some power creep, some lackluster dross (that someone somewhere loved and became part of later editions), and some outright rules changes.

• There was the Cavalier, which was the Paladin, but better (and btw, here's some alternate attribute generating methods making sure you can be one if you want).
• It also had the Thief-Acrobat. What was their major ability? Well, when they fall, they only take 1d6 damage per 10' fallen. 'But Willie,' you say, 'isn't that what everyone else takes?' Well, my hypothetical audience, that was what everyone else takes when they fall, but if you use these alternate rules, they now take 1d6 per 10' fallen per 10' fallen (so 1d6 for the first 10', 2d6 for the next 10', etc...), isn't that a fun ability?!
• And it had cantrips. Each of which was a separate function (so, like 'Open' to open a door at a distance), required you to memorize it ahead of time, and took up half a 1st level spell slot (so, win an encounter with Sleep or get the ability to open a door at a distance and light a candle with your mind). Good thing they got that out of their system and we'll never see cantrips agai...okay I can't even finish that with a straight face.
• And then they had some rules revisions/refinements/stealth reboots. 1E demihuman level limits looked a little more restrictive what with AD&D framing the game as being 1-20-ish compared to oD&D's ~1-10 (despite them both theoretically being open-ended), so they upped those. Someone decided looks would be a good additional attibute and so Comeliness was added. The aforementioned change to falling damage for non-thief-acrobats.

It really was another great example of half hits, half misses, not unlike the 5e splats.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Fine. You haven't found it important. Not everyone is you. To me it's like having a stone in your shoe. That is not important in the grand scheme of things - it's just annoying every time it comes up. Which is every single to hit and damage roll for me.

The difference isn't crippling. It's just (a) significant and (b) obnoxious. It's possible to play with a character that doesn't reach the benchmarks. It's also possible to hike for miles with a pebble in your shoe. And then there are those mosquito alarms that not everyone can hear but are truly obnoxious to those that can. And colourblind people don't find some combinations of patterns obnoxious.

Are you literally saying that "because I @the Jester do not find this thing obnoxious it is not and can not be obnoxious for a large group of people"?

And I'll stand by my position that WotC objectively set a benchmark of 16 in the primary stat at level 1 as shown by all the pregens. And therefore if you do not have a 16 in your primary stat you do not have a high score in your main stat. You have one that does not meet the benchmark.

I further am going to say that if you are playing fixed array or point buy (which are the standard methods I've seen used) it is physically impossible to get a 16 without a +1 from your race.

Therefore if +16 is the benchmark and you use the standard methods it is literally physically impossible to get a stat high enough to meet the level 1 benchmark with fixed ASIs in the four stats your racial ASIs don't help.

Now it's possible that you run a divergent table that either (a) uses dice to generate your ability scores, (b) uses something even rarer, or (c) has a benchmark below the one the WotC pregens all suggest. But if any of these are true it is because you and your group use a pretty unusual stat generation method or you and your group have pretty unusual benchmarks for a high score in your main stat.

My table rolls stats, and always has, for my entire gaming career as a player or a DM. It is the main method of generation in the book, after all. Your insistence that that's unusual is the standard dueling anecdotes situation.

We also almost never use pregens at all, so your benchmark argument based on them is very strange to me (although I'm not denying your experience).