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

[Warpiglet-7]

So... if that book changes nothing as you seem to imply, why print it in the first place?

That the thing, right? If you are concerned about the changes, you are told they are not a big deal.

conversely and in the same breath, they MUST take place! Long time coming! Essential even.

oh well. I think people that don’t appreciate the conundrum were looking for a way to optimize And that is simply more their priority. This is the way. So with different priorities it’s less they don’t get it and more that their needs are satisfied.

it clearly DOES change something. If it did not, folks would not be defending it so hard.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

For me it's pretty simple, I started playing the game in 2E and still enjoy much of the tropes and idiosyncrasies from the game back then.

What Tasha's does with races takes part of the game in a direction I don't care for.

Frankly, being able to be a dwarf wizard is one heck of a concession in and of itself! The +2 Str for mountain dwarf was a game balance decision, something I could handle because a +1 seemed reasonable - but now it can be plonked on Int? Far out, way too much man!

Geez, you concede LG only paladin, then dwarf wizard, then no level drain, then toothless alignment. The line just keeps getting moved until the game becomes unrecognizable.

Yep, I'll be starting another gaming group soon, and I can just imagine someone pulling this book on me. Better nip this in the bud and clearly ban it in the session 0 doc, save everyone hassle.

 

[Cadence]

The line just keeps getting moved until the game becomes unrecognizable.

I'm still having trouble with the healing, short rest recharge, encumberence, and how much damage some of the spells do in 5e

I think my solution already is that 5e isn't my choice of game even without these newest optional rules. So I am great running it for my son and his friends (and getting him all of the books), and I'll be fine playing it if someone has a hook -- but if there's a vote or if I need to run it, I think I like PF better (and I've had a game of 1e a bit back, wouldn't mind revisiting playing in 2e). Of course even in my edited version of PF, I'll probably be good with the PCs moving the ASIs around (even if I keep them for the majority of the species at large).

That all the materials for the old editions are available cheaply online kind of makes this a golden age for picking what does it for you.

And I trust, if 6e or whatever moves too far from the "heart of d&d" (whatever that is, in the view of enough people), that someone will do like Paizo did with PF in response to 4e.

 

[wicked cool]

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.

true but how much influence did they have on early d&d? I didn't even think of antiheroes until much later however Elric the anti hero and human rogues . Good reads

David Eddings Belgarion series -1982. wizards and sorcerers. I think late 80's we got druids and sorcerers as class's (cant recall when)

I think/believe if tieflings had been introduced in the 80's the church/government would have confiscated books. As a kid I didn't realize they had been removed (we still had the books on our bookshelves) and our campaigns didn't visit the nine hells that much

mid/late 90's D&D was mostly dead in my area and replaced by MTG. lead miniatures were phased out and you would find copies of miniatures in jewelry store displays for $$$

im rambling a little but those 90's authors had no influence at all

 

[UngeheuerLich]

You can still play a dwarven wizard with a 14 Intelligence. You just don't have to.

That statement in itself is very dismissive of the reality. If you can do what you want and if you are concerned about optimization, you just won´t do it. Although it is not unbalanced in any way, the game just became a little less interesting, because building around limitations is a challenge in my view.
Is it the most interesting thing to build around not getting a +2 bonus to a stat? Not necessarily. Especially in point buy. But if you do point buy, you are either interested in balance or optimization anyway, and the rule does not hurt, as it opens up more races.
I think groups who think limitations are interesting and play "unoptimized combinations" anyway, you just can leave the rules option alone or implement it differently or in a weakened form. We now just have to endpoints of a scale, what the designers consider balanced.

 

[Cadence]

true but how much influence did they have on early d&d? I didn't even think of antiheroes until much later however Elric the anti hero and human rogues . Good reads

That post of mine was addressing someone who was saying how big an influence Tolkien was on fantasy literature in the 70s.

For D&D, we have Appendix N to answer that, right? General - A shorter Appendix N Mouser and Elric certainly did for aspects of the game (in addition to Howard and Tolkien and some others).

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I'm still having trouble with the healing, short rest recharge, encumberence, and how much damage some of the spells do in 5e

I think my solution already is that 5e isn't my choice of game even without these newest optional rules. So I am great running it for my son and his friends (and getting him all of the books), and I'll be fine playing it if someone has a hook -- but if there's a vote or if I need to run it, I think I like PF better (and I've had a game of 1e a bit back, wouldn't mind revisiting playing in 2e). Of course even in my edited version of PF, I'll probably be good with the PCs moving the ASIs around (even if I keep them for the majority of the species at large).

That all the materials for the old editions are available cheaply online kind of makes this a golden age for picking what does it for you.

And I trust, if 6e or whatever moves too far from the "heart of d&d" (whatever that is, in the view of enough people), that someone will do like Paizo did with PF in response to 4e.

You see the trend in online roleplaying games too. Final fantasy XIV mainly did away with real differences between the folks that final fantasy XI used to have. In my opinion it loses some flavour. I don´t think however that removing stat bonus from species is unsalvageable in 5.5 or 6e. Look at 4e races. You have so strong racial encounter powers, that made them distinct from each other and useful for every class and flavourful.
You also have to remember that back in 1e or 2e, having a little +1/-1 here or there not necessarily made a difference at all, as all stats had a wide range that gave no bonus at all. -1 Con did not mean that you had 1 life less per level e.g.

 

[TwoSix]

So... if that book changes nothing as you seem to imply, why print it in the first place?

I would presume because a lot of people want it.

It's kind of silly to argue about "is the book warranted", the book is coming out in wide release in 29 days! People need to decide how they want to deal with a post-Tasha's world, not try to arbitrate if it "should" come out. Decide if you want to use it or not, and then deal with the fallout of your decision. What else can you do?

 

[Alzrius]

That post of mine was addressing someone who was saying how big an influence Tolkien was on fantasy literature in the 70s.

For D&D, we have Appendix N to answer that, right? General - A shorter Appendix N Mouser and Elric certainly did for aspects of the game (in addition to Howard and Tolkien and some others).

I sometimes wonder if the list of now-(mostly-)unknown fantasy authors who influenced D&D goes beyond even what's in Appendix N. Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy stories (the ones written prior to 1974) don't appear there, even though those stories not only draw an explicit line between arcane and divine spellcasting, they say that one of the differences is that the latter can heal and the former can't!

 

[Cadence]

I sometimes wonder if the list of now-(mostly-)unknown fantasy authors who influenced D&D goes beyond even what's in Appendix N. Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy stories (the ones written prior to 1974) don't appear there, even though those stories not only draw an explicit line between arcane and divine spellcasting, they say that one of the differences is that the latter can heal and the former can't!

Thanks for another thing to go look up!

Ed Greenwood mentioned that one recently in some posts about what influenced the realms:

The 1e DMG Appendix N is an incredible resource for seeing what books inspired Gygax when making D&D. What would an Appendix N for Ed Greenwood's Forgotten Realms look like?

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