D&D 5E Jeremy Crawford Discusses Details on Custom Origins

[Cadence]

EDIT: Looking back through the AD&D 1E DMG, I'm not seeing where it says that rangers can use crystal balls. Can anyone find a citation on that?

I'll get to most of this thread later, since I'm at work. This one is easy, though. You are looking in the wrong place. It's in the Ranger class in the PHB.

PHB pg. 24: At 10th level (Ranger Lord), rangers are able to employ all non-written magic items which pertain to clairaudience, clairvoyance, ESP, and telepathy.

 

[Azzy]

PC's absolutely aren't beholden to the average - that's why their base stats aren't simply the commoner average of 10/11 but instead the result of either chance (various random methods of stat generation) or deliberate selection (point buy or other means of stat selection).

There's a much easier way to achieve this doesn't involve fighting against the system—ditching static ASI. This also benefits, like I said, settings with non-standard races without having to create yet another unnecessary variant. ASI are about as necessary or defining as class linitations and level limits.

 

[Alzrius]

PHB pg. 24: At 10th level (Ranger Lord), rangers are able to employ all non-written magic items which pertain to clairaudience, clairvoyance, ESP, and telepathy.

Ah, that explains why I couldn't find it while skimming the text. Thanks!

 

[wicked cool]

as someone who has lived through the 70's D&D doesn't exist without Tolkien and most of todays fantasy literature doesn't exist. In the 70's /early 80's most publishers wanted copycat writers of Tolkiens work. Most fantasy fiction was centered around elves, dwarves and races that resembled hobbits (Book 1 of Shannara etc) and not Conan. Basically the only quality fantasy movies we got were the animated LOTR/hobbit movies until LOTR movies.

Elements of other ideas such as conan made it into D&D but not in first edition and new elements were introduced into Advanced dungeons and dragons. AD&D gives us drow/etc but they are enemies and not PC friendly. first edition had elves, humans, dwarves and halflings and they basically were copycats of Gandolf/Frodo/gimli etc. Wasn't really until second edition that you were introduced to other races and you were still discouraged from having races branch off to certain class's (made no sense to have gnome barbarians). 3.5/4th edition almost 30 years later we come to the point where Tolkien has less of an influence but even today is still there (Halfling rogue, elven archer, dwarf with an axe). 5th edition giving you more than 1 option to uses as your best stat for certain class's. 2020 we now have a upcoming book removing race penalties

LOTR was a giant influence on gaming back then and I would bet that most DM's were readers of these books and used elements of them in their homebrews

 

[Alzrius]

Some folks on these boards have also run games without any humans and thought they worked just fine as D&D too. Same for clerics or wizards or gods or alignment. It feels like there's a big core bundle of D&Disms and taking out some to give unique flavor works fine for a campaign that feels like a flavor of D&D. Taking them out of the core axes off all of those campaigns though and leaves the whole much smaller.

But they'll still be recognizably D&D in a way that wouldn't be true if, for example, classes and levels were scrapped in favor of a point-buy character generation/advancement system (there's a reason why no one seems to mind that we haven't seen another Skills & Powers-type book). You can have D&D without Tolkienisms and it's still the same game in virtually every regard.

 

[TwoSix]

What you forget is that in making this drastic hange in an official rule book, it will change how my table will have to play in AL context. The PHB+1 will soon become PHB+2 and quite a few players will balk at a notion that I might not allow "x" because it is in Tasha... Even personal games will be affected one way or an other as arguments will spring up when a new, or an old player will want to play an odd class/race combination with no drawback because Tasha allows it. I can see young DMs having to argue with said player just like I did when a player wanted to play a ninja in my campaign ecause it was an "official" class with OA. Same in 2nd edition with the complete book of "x" with kits, or 3.xed with the class books. Or 4ed with PHB2+. A DM do have the right not to play with some books when they are not core. But when they are core books as Tasha will be considered, it is hard to justify. The younger the DM (experience wise) the harder it will be.

Then you need to either be more hard-nosed with your group to get the play experience you want (difficult) or adjust your preferences to fit the changing cultural mores around fantasy tropes. (Also difficult)

Nothing is easy, but, to paraphrase Buckley, trying to stand athwart history and yell "Stop!" rarely works.

 

[Azzy]

That elven DEX bonus only gives significant meaning if you look across every single table across the globe. It is meaningless for YOUR own table. You don't need the PHB to give elves a +2 DEX for you to have your own personal table game with agile elves. You can have that regardless of what the PHB says. Because you control how you distribute the stats of your PCs and monsters. You want all elves in your campaign world to be more agile than others? Then you set a minimum of DEX, you give a bonus to point-buy for elven DEX, you allow for elves to have above 20 in DEX... whatever you want. Your table, your rules.

But you don't need the PHB to give you that. And you don't lose it just because Tasha's gets published.

All that is going to occur is that other tables out there will start to have elves who are not more dexterous on average than all the other races... on top of all the table out there who ALREADY do not have elves more dexterous because the individual table has already put in house rules that have taken that +2 DEX bonus away. And you just have to deal with that. You can't try and force all the other tables to follow your designs on this... even if you were somehow able to actually stop the production of Tasha's publication that is making it even easier to do.

All of this.

 

[Cadence]

as someone who has lived through the 70's D&D doesn't exist without Tolkien and most of todays fantasy literature doesn't exist. In the 70's /early 80's most publishers wanted copycat writers of Tolkiens work. Most fantasy fiction was centered around elves, dwarves and races that resembled hobbits (Book 1 of Shannara etc) and not Conan. Basically the only quality fantasy movies we got were the animated LOTR/hobbit movies until LOTR movies.

Lived through 92% or so of the 70s, but the first few years I wasn't reading much Anyway, Tolkien was huge, but it feels like a lot of the books in the late 60s to early 80s left out elves, dwarves, and others.

Were the later written Elric Novels using elves and dwarves? Alexander's Black Cauldron series didn't did it? The last few Fafhrd and Gray Mouser, Earthsea and Glen Cook's Dread Empire weren't. Adams' Horseclans were Sci-fi I guess, but sure had a feeling of Conanesque fantasy.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

When you "play against type"... what exactly are you looking for? Credit from all the other players at the table that you are intentionally using bad stats? It's not enough to play a dwarven wizard... you need to make sure the dwarven wizard is statistically poor so that "playing against type" is somehow more meaningful?

If you wish to play a dwarven wizard or a halfork monk... because those character concepts are interesting to you and formulate compelling roleplaying challenges... that's awesome! Go for it! But those concepts do not go hand-in-hand with having bad stats along with it. Or really more to the point... bad stats that the book forces you to have, rather than bad stats you chose for yourself voluntarily.

Because remember... in any game world you could have thousands of dwarven wizards even if the dwarf stats remained as they were. So you wouldn't be "playing against type" in that world there at all. Having the dwarf stats-as-is does nothing for the "type" you want to play against. Likewise... a game world where the fiction said there had never been a single previous dwarven wizard ever would allow you to do so and "play against type" even if the game rules from Tasha's allowed people at all other tables across the globe to not use the same stat arrays. You don't need the book to force you into certain stats to "play against type", and you certainly can't demand the rest of us follow along with your desires if you actually think you do.

Novelty. Rarity. And the rewards that come with it.

the laughter that comes with a halfling barbarian is because it’s a square peg in a round hole. When a halfling is just as good at barbarism as the half orc they will become much more common place.

dwarven wizards are interesting for that reason and half orcs perhaps as well.

so credit? Like become famous in my gaming group for an odd choice? No. For a sense of superiority? Uh, no. I guess I could talk like comic book guy from the simpsons and gloat about one thing or another but that seems really odd.

If things are not a good fit per se they become rarer and more novel, that is all. When every drow can shed sunlight sensitivity we are going to see tons of them as warlocks etc but right now, someone really has to want it for story or other reasons.

 

[Oofta]

When you "play against type"... what exactly are you looking for? Credit from all the other players at the table that you are intentionally using bad stats? It's not enough to play a dwarven wizard... you need to make sure the dwarven wizard is statistically poor so that "playing against type" is somehow more meaningful?

If you wish to play a dwarven wizard or a halfork monk... because those character concepts are interesting to you and formulate compelling roleplaying challenges... that's awesome! Go for it! But those concepts do not go hand-in-hand with having bad stats along with it. Or really more to the point... bad stats that the book forces you to have, rather than bad stats you chose for yourself voluntarily.

Because remember... in any game world you could have thousands of dwarven wizards even if the dwarf stats remained as they were. So you wouldn't be "playing against type" in that world there at all. Having the dwarf stats-as-is does nothing for the "type" you want to play against. Likewise... a game world where the fiction said there had never been a single previous dwarven wizard ever would allow you to do so and "play against type" even if the game rules from Tasha's allowed people at all other tables across the globe to not use the same stat arrays. You don't need the book to force you into certain stats to "play against type", and you certainly can't demand the rest of us follow along with your desires if you actually think you do.

I just have fun playing unusual characters. I guess the reason that dwarven wizard arcane craftsman was fun was because practically all the other adventurers encountered were fighters or clerics. So it had fun RP possibilities and part of it was probably just reactions from other players.

As Syndrome said in The Incredibles, if everybody is special then no one is.