D&D 5E Is Tasha's Broken?

[Oofta]

But...you can! A half-orc wizard is still against type, and in any campaign you play in you might be literally the only one in that universe. Orc and half-orc NPCs can all have really low intelligence. And you can give your half-orc wizard as low of an Int score as you like.

The fact that all around the world, at other tables, in other campaigns, there are more players choosing half-orc wizard than there used to be doesn't change anything. Those characters are literally not in your character's universe.

Not really. People will assume I used floating ASI to bump my intelligence whether I did or not. I knew a guy who played a dwarven sorcerer in 3.5 (dwarves had a charisma penalty back then) just because he wanted to play that odd duck PC. You can't do that any more.

One cost of Tasha's is making races more and more generic and, in some ways, bland. I don't think that breaks anything, I just think that having an identity beyond some nebulous "culture"* that nobody ever really seems to care about at the game table. All the races are just more and more humans with different prosthetics and usually free night vision goggles.

I'm not upset about that. I just acknowledge that change that is good for some will not be good for all.

*Assuming of course that a race can share a common culture, which is also verboten according to some.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So it's modelling racial essentialism and stating that stereotypes are actually true in the gameworld. That all halfings are jovial and dextrous by virtue of their race and you're never going to find a clumsy, surly halfling who is built like a brickhouse and can toss you across the room.

I'm sorry - I can't really accept that. I appreciate that Wizards is removing the racial essentialism from the game and letting characters stand with assumptions that their race dictates ability scores when those scores are already an abstract representation of a character and don't need to be limited that way.

Or all halflings being lucky or brave due their species. That's far more essentialistic, than a small bump in ability score that you can mostly offset via the point buy.

I mean, I'm fairly certain that Wizards has stated that this is the case. Or at least people working for them have - that the ugly connections between the real world implications of an orc getting +2 to Strength by virtue of his race was not able to be ignored anymore. Of course that's the reason - there are other good benefits that come from it, but getting rid of the racist foundation that ability score bonuses are built on top of is a good enough reason for them to do it.

Do you also think it is racist to imply that bears are stronger than foxes due their species? Also, how it becomes non-problematic if you represent that strength via a feature such as powerful build rather than the ability score.

This simply seems like rather incoherent argument to me. Either we accept that non-human species can have capabilities and tendencies that differ from humans, and it OK to represent that mechanically, or we accept that non-human species cannot exist except maybe in purely cosmetic sense. These are the logically coherent options.

D&D has a lot of really problematic content, but that's mostly in the lore and descriptions. There also are perfectly reasonable arguments against the ASI system as it existed in the PHB, but I'm afraid this angle is not among them.

 

[Rikka66]

These are the logically coherent options.

This issue is such an emotionally charged one, and you want to try to logic it? Good luck.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Not really. People will assume I used floating ASI to bump my intelligence whether I did or not.

So is this about you and your character, or what other players think about your character out-of-game?

 

[Bill Zebub]

Do you also think it is racist to imply that bears are stronger than foxes due their species? Also, how it becomes non-problematic if you represent that strength via a feature such as powerful build rather than the ability score.

Ever read the Redwall books? How boring would the story be if wildcats were realistically stronger than mice. Martin the Warrior would have died on the first page.

Same with a Redwall-based RPG. (Which exists but I haven’t played it.)

Sometimes story, and playability, trumps realism.

 

[Bill Zebub]

But I will add that I essentially agree with your argument. For me it’s not about essentialism but playability. I’m all for racial features that distinguish the races and reinforce archetypes, but minimize synergy with specific classes.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Why is making a halfling rogue with a +2 Dex fine and dandy but if I use floating ASIs to give my tiefling rogue a +2 I'm just being an optimizer?

Because a long time ago a designer decided halflings were a rogue race, teiflings weren't and we've just been justifying that choice for no reason using an outdated boogieman called 'powrgaming', 'optimizing' or 'being a player' ever since.

 

[Oofta]

So is this about you and your character, or what other players think about your character out-of-game?

Yes.

 

[Oofta]

Because a long time ago a designer decided halflings were a rogue race, teiflings weren't and we've just been justifying that choice for no reason using an outdated boogieman called 'powrgaming', 'optimizing' or 'being a player' ever since.

It's because long ago halflings were hobbits and hobbits were well known as thieves. If you want to blame someone, blame Tolkien and his fans that insisted hobbits should be in D&D.

 

[FrozenNorth]

so what is the alternative... all warlocks can't have cha based melee attacks and as such have to be more MAD then wizards?

The alternative is to make the bonuses available to all subclasses, not just new ones. If the new standard is mor spells for sorcerers, give it to all subclasses, not just the new ones. More Magic items that help weaker classes, not stronger classes. They also could have done it by including stronger sorcerer-only and ranger-only spells available to all subclasses.

I do recognize that some of the alternative class features printed in Tasha’s go in this direction, however Tasha’s also:

• still includes subclasses that are stronger than PHB subclasses;
• also provides stronger than average subclasses for classes that don’t need the boost (Twilight, Spell Scribe and Peace);
• here’s a bunch of powerful spells available to wizards (poor dears, they are sooooo underpowered).