D&D 5E Is Tasha's Broken?

[J-H]

Some of the flavor/subclasses are good and fill long-missing holes like Astral Self monk (soulknife) and Psychic rogue ("soulknife"). Others are bad to broken.

My houserules ban some of the subclasses, I don't use Custom Lineage, and I am not a fan of a lot of the items. It needed a couple of additional months of playtesting and editing, and didn't get it.

Definitely a drop in quality.

 

[the Jester]

This isn't even true in the post you quote.

Floating ASIs incentivize non-traditional builds (as with the halforc wizard) and reduce biological essentialism. Both of those are good outcomes, from my point of view.

Re: Half-orc wizards- again, the only reason that +2 makes a difference is for optimization purposes. If the draw of a half-orc wizard is to play against type, the fact that the +2 is elsewhere shouldn't bother a player.

As far as biological essentialism goes, that gets tossed around a bunch and people seem to use the term in different ways, some of which are a bit of a soft accusation of racism; but I do believe that by having set-by-race ASIs you help reinforce the ways that race is different from the baseline, which is human (at least in my game).

I also think you close a lot of design space by having floating ASIs. What about races with more or fewer starting bonuses and even penalties? In my game, for instance, one potential player race is the kercpa, a squirrel-person that's Tiny; and its starting stat adjustments are Dex +4, Cha +1, and Str -6. Another is the dakon, a smart gorilla; it gets Str +4, Dex +2, Con +2, Int +2, and Wis +4; then a bit more for a subrace!

Both of these are examples of races who only come into play in special circumstances, and their stat adjustments make it clear that they are physically weaker than humans in one case and generally stronger, tougher, and smarter than humans in the other.

Can they be used to optimize? Sure -- but optimization happens regardless, and floating ASIs have not opened floodgates of hyperoptimized builds. At best they allow players who want different race/class combinations to not be obviously behind traditional builds.

None of those not-obvious builds are hiding. You don't choose a class-race combo, you choose a class and a race. You can choose such that you get the racial bonuses best suited to your class, but there's nothing forcing anyone to, and moving those bonuses just to be better suited to the class you choose is exactly what optimizing is.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

How can you not think healing is anemic in 5e?! In combat healing is pitiful. Compare Cure Wounds for d8+ability and Inflict Wounds for 3d10.

What keeps healing from being bad is the heal-from-0 rule, but that has nothing at all to do with the amount of healing an Action will bring is much less than spending the same action and resources on harming.

Again, compared to what? I agree that the rules in 5e prioritize dealing damage to healing during combat, but that's because:

1. Of the generous death save rules, there isn't a real need to get people healed during combat; and

2. Characters can "pop back up," and there isn't a strong need for full healing; and

3. Characters have a ton of hit points to begin with, and easily recharge between combats; and

4. The healing outside of combat is so generous, it doesn't matter if you're fully healed in combat; and

5. It generally makes a lot more sense to do damage than to heal, people will almost always prioritize doing damage than healing ... even if it's equal.*

*This is a math thing- in other words, if you take out X critter, then you avoid all damage from that critter. It's part of the "focus fire" strategy.

In-combat healing is a problem in search of a solution, because when the solutions are provided people don't take them. There isn't a massive demand for healing magic items - it's not like the staff of healing is the single coolest item in the game.

If this was a real issue, then the optional healing surge rules (again, DMG 266-67) would be much more popular. But they aren't. That said-


If you think in-combat healing is an issue in your game, then you should use the surge healing rules. Heck, use the optional optional rule to do it as a bonus action.

 

[Jer]

Its a matter of philosophy and worldbuilding, not game balance. Admittedly not the point of this thread, but it is my primary problem with Tasha's.

Keep in mind that cultural ASIs have the same problem as Racial ASIs when it gets right down to it. Painting an entire culture with a stereotype brush is ... probably something Wizards wants to avoid.

IMO adding the +2 bonus based on the class you choose and the +1 bonus based on the Background you choose would be a better way to go about it, but nobody asks me these things.

 

[Blue]

To me, social pressure is just not a good enough reason to change the rules.

Wow. "Social pressure" - in other words the wants of the people who engage in the game - is the best and possibly only reason to change the rules.

Give me any reason to change rules where players & DMs will never care that the rule has been changed or not.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

Which is why cultural or background ASIs are a better answer than Tasha's, "Whatever you want. We don't care anymore".

Don't necessarily disagree, but it would require the creation of a robust "culture" system (that none of the existing 5e setting books were built to support) and/or a significant overhaul of the background system (that none of the existing backgrounds were built to support) - something that would be best accomplished during a big ruleset update like we're getting in 2024.

Tasha's may not be the ideal way of going about it, but it's the one that's quickest and easiest to implement.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Keep in mind that cultural ASIs have the same problem as Racial ASIs when it gets right down to it. Painting an entire culture with a stereotype brush is ... probably something Wizards wants to avoid.

IMO adding the +2 bonus based on the class you choose and the +1 bonus based on the Background you choose would be a better way to go about it, but nobody asks me these things.

This assumes that the essentialism argument holds a huge amount of water, which I really don't.

If that is an issue for you, use the bonuses to background like Level Up does (an excellent compromise), or just remove ASIs altogether. The math certainly doesn't require them to function.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Don't necessarily disagree, but it would require the creation of a robust "culture" system (that none of the existing 5e setting books were built to support) and/or a significant overhaul of the background system (that none of the existing backgrounds were built to support) - something that would be best accomplished during a big ruleset update like we're getting in 2024.

Tasha's may not be the ideal way of going about it, but it's the one that's quickest and easiest to implement.

Quick and easy is not a compelling argument for me, no matter how much WotC seemed obsessed with it.

Level Up already has a robust culture and background system, so that's what I use.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Wow. "Social pressure" - in other words the wants of the people who engage in the game - is the best and possibly only reason to change the rules.

Give me any reason to change rules where players & DMs will never care that the rule has been changed or not.

If no one cares that a rule is changed, why change it?

Also, majority rules is a bad way to make rules changes anyway. You just create an irritated minority (especially hard to deal with if the DM is the one that's irritated).

 

[Blue]

The argument you are making remains grounded in optimization, which I am just not really sympathetic to. I'm more a "setting first" guy, so when there doesn't appear to be any argument that justifies floating ASIs that isn't "players can get that extra +2 where they want it", that isn't "this is why it works in the world", well... it may not be for me.

"Setting first" is meaningless. Meaningless.

A PC is not an average member of a race. They in no way define that race for the world.

If it did, then 1 in 11 of every single race that gets a +2 could have a 20 in an ability score. Because that's the chance of rolling an 18 on 4d6 drop the lowest, plus your +2.

The flip side is that you are saying that while 1 in 11 have a 20 in some races, not 1 in 1,000, not 1 in 1,000,000, not one in the entire race could have a 20 if their ability modifier isn't +2.

Because YES, you can play the outlier. If you don't believe me, think about how so many people over the editions have wanted to play "the good drow" or other that plays against type.

And I'm not talking about 20 to optimize. I'm using it as a useful tool to show you "easily and commonly achievable" and "utterly impossible" illogically stand right next to each other in your world view.

So again, PC ability scores are NOT the monster manual ability scores, have nothing to do with the average for a setting. And players can and do play outliers from their race.