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Is Tasha's Broken?
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<blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 8608401" data-attributes="member: 87792"><p>Racial traits are simply more interesting and more relevant than roleplaying than +1s - which is what ability scores really are. WotC made the right call here.</p><p></p><p>Where WotC made the <em>wrong</em> call was in setting the benchmark of your primary stat at level 1 at 16 - as is shown by every single pregen having a 16 in their primary stat at level 1. They then made it physically impossible to reach that 16 when using the standard array with any race that didn't have a bonus in their primary or secondary stat. And not being able to reach the benchmarks just feels bad. This means that thanks to what is in this particular spot the poor design of the 5e PHB playing anything other than a cookie cutter race/class combination just felt bad.</p><p></p><p>This meant that in PHB 5e <em>most</em> races can not meet the benchmark in <em>the majority of classes</em>. This was exceptionally bad for table diversity. There was a really awkward patch for this by creating a plethora of subraces for 5e - but this grew messy. And for a (non human/helf) race that doesn't have subraces you can't meet the benchmark in four out of six stats.</p><p></p><p>Both 4e and Pathfinder 2e had solutions to this. In 4e the benchmark was supposed to be 16 but in practice was 18 in your primary stat. It was <em>possible</em> to reach a 20 through min-maxing and a synergistic race/class combo but any race/class combo could reach 18 and thus hit the benchmarks. In Pathfinder 2e the races each provide a floating ability boost so all races can make the benchmark in <em>most</em> classes (they of course have an ability flaw - but that means that there's <em>one</em> stat where they can't meet the benchmark not <em>four out of six</em>). </p><p></p><p>Had either the 4e or the Pathfinder 2e approach happened when 5e was published it is very unlikely that the Tasha's ability scores would have happened. But the 5e ability score implementation was flawed out of the box and Tasha's chose the simplest and clearest way of improving the game they could and this has definitely had a strong positive effect on character diversity which is entirely a good thing IMO. Did Tasha's make the <em>right</em> choice? There was no right choice to be made - but they made a simple choice that did an effective job of improving the game for the players because the PHB made a poor choice. As <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/is-tashas-broken.687620/post-8607869" target="_blank">I said earlier</a> "Tasha's was written by a team that had been playing 5e for years and understood its shortcomings and set out to both fix and expand the game" - and the way 5e handled racial ability scores for player characters was one of its shortcomings.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Neonchameleon, post: 8608401, member: 87792"] Racial traits are simply more interesting and more relevant than roleplaying than +1s - which is what ability scores really are. WotC made the right call here. Where WotC made the [I]wrong[/I] call was in setting the benchmark of your primary stat at level 1 at 16 - as is shown by every single pregen having a 16 in their primary stat at level 1. They then made it physically impossible to reach that 16 when using the standard array with any race that didn't have a bonus in their primary or secondary stat. And not being able to reach the benchmarks just feels bad. This means that thanks to what is in this particular spot the poor design of the 5e PHB playing anything other than a cookie cutter race/class combination just felt bad. This meant that in PHB 5e [I]most[/I] races can not meet the benchmark in [I]the majority of classes[/I]. This was exceptionally bad for table diversity. There was a really awkward patch for this by creating a plethora of subraces for 5e - but this grew messy. And for a (non human/helf) race that doesn't have subraces you can't meet the benchmark in four out of six stats. Both 4e and Pathfinder 2e had solutions to this. In 4e the benchmark was supposed to be 16 but in practice was 18 in your primary stat. It was [I]possible[/I] to reach a 20 through min-maxing and a synergistic race/class combo but any race/class combo could reach 18 and thus hit the benchmarks. In Pathfinder 2e the races each provide a floating ability boost so all races can make the benchmark in [I]most[/I] classes (they of course have an ability flaw - but that means that there's [I]one[/I] stat where they can't meet the benchmark not [I]four out of six[/I]). Had either the 4e or the Pathfinder 2e approach happened when 5e was published it is very unlikely that the Tasha's ability scores would have happened. But the 5e ability score implementation was flawed out of the box and Tasha's chose the simplest and clearest way of improving the game they could and this has definitely had a strong positive effect on character diversity which is entirely a good thing IMO. Did Tasha's make the [I]right[/I] choice? There was no right choice to be made - but they made a simple choice that did an effective job of improving the game for the players because the PHB made a poor choice. As [URL='https://www.enworld.org/threads/is-tashas-broken.687620/post-8607869']I said earlier[/URL] "Tasha's was written by a team that had been playing 5e for years and understood its shortcomings and set out to both fix and expand the game" - and the way 5e handled racial ability scores for player characters was one of its shortcomings. [/QUOTE]
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