1) No we won't. When everyone is good at everything, you can not play against type as their is no expectations.
2) By "bound" I mean that when there is an unusual class/race combination, I will play the foes/npcs with the expectations that the character is something else. Ex, a dwarf in armor is a fighter or cleric, not a wizard. So the foes will not jump to the conclusion that the dwarf is a wizard. It will take some times. Time that a good player will put to good use.
3) Many of the games that made those change are now lost to history and vanished from memories. A few are still there but they were/are far less successful than D&D. Classic tropes are still appreciated by a lot of people, whether you like it or not. Tradition is not a bad thing and the races have met the expectations of players of all walks of life for 50 years now. Change for the sake of change is rarely a good thing. If ever...
1) Yes we can, because expectations exist in more than just mechanical numbers. High Elves have a strong Tradition of magic. Playing a Barbarian is against type. They may be mechanically good at it now, but it is still against the norm.
Unless you are trying to say that the only type of difference that matters is raw mechanical numbers.
2) Right, I was never bound by that. All Dwarves wear armor according to the PHB, so seeing a Dwarf in armor tells you nothing about their class except that they aren't a Monk. And, this is such a hyper specific thing, that some characters took advantage of the fact that their wizard didn't look like a wizard, that it really is not an issue I'm concerned about.
3) And tradition for the sake of tradition is equally bad. These racial ability score changes have reinvigorated my interest in various races, and made me think more deeply about how certain classes would be handled by that culture. That is a good thing. Not doing it just because people think we shouldn't doesn't make sense to me, especially since it all seems to come from either A) This isn't how we have always done it or B) My special character won't feel as special if they aren't handicapped by the rules, and I need to choose to handicap them.
And I don't find either position very compelling.
You kinda proved my point without saying it.
With Tasha, no more going against the current or the optimal choices. Everything is optimal. Always.
M_Natas ended his post with "Now I don't need to always play variant human" and you want to take it as a bad thing, because there is now no optimal race?
This is such a strange position to take.
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I don't care if my PC has a 16 in their primary ability score and never have. Other people do and that's fine, it's their PC. But there are times that I want to play a PC with a perceived deficit such as a dwarven wizard or half-orc monk. Sometimes I like to play against type. You don't and that's fine. It's not your PC.
Before Tasha's, it's always been possible to play any class with with a 16 in their primary ability. After Tasha's there will be more options, but there will be no options to play against type. So people that care about that 16 "win" while those that want to play against type "lose".* It also takes away one more choice that requires an ever-so-slight compromise in theoretical optimization.
Ultimately I think the end result will be a lot more elf barbarians and a tiny increase in dwarven wizards. For a short period of time they may even feel like your playing against type. In the long run it will just be par for the course as race becomes ever less important and it's only lore and cultural differences that most people ignore that distinguishes between them.
*Win and lose are in parenthesis because although I see this as an issue, it's not the end of the world and it's fate accompli in any case. I just want to preempt claims that I'm saying it's the end of D&D as we know it.
You don't care if they have a 16.... but sometimes you want to play with a perceived deficit (ie, less than 16)
Before Tasha's it was always possible to play a class with a 16 (As long as you played one of the optimal races, limiting your selection sharply) and it was possible to play against type (ie able to play a race that was non-optimal and would start with less than 16, and be at a deficit. )
Now after Tasha's it will still be possible to play a class with a 16 (In fact, any race can get you there greatly expanding your options of play) but you can no longer play against Type (because... you can't be at a perceived deficit by having less than a 16? But you can, it is just a choice now, not an enforced difference.)
So... people who care about the 16 only... don't care. It is people who care about having more racial options to match with more classes who win.
And the people who don't care about a 16... but do care about having a 14... I guess they lose because they now have to actually make a choice instead of saying "the rules made me do it"
I mean, there is no choice being taken away here. You want a Dwarf wizard with a 14 INT and their bonuses in Con and Str? You can make that choice. We are literally adding choices, not taking them away. But the problem seems to be that you don't want a choice. You don't want to choose to have less than a 16, you want to be forced to have less than a 16... and man, that is your own problem.
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Now-- if those useless armor/weapon proficiencies could be traded for something that isn't nullified the moment you choose any class but caster, it would mean something. (Of course, Elf and Dwarf get more of everything regardless)
Part of the Tasha's rules allow for exactly that. It is weapons for other weapons or Tools ATM, but it certainly changes things up.
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An optional rule should add something. Not make so deep a change as to change lore, expectations, race history and consequently character creation and playstyles. This book is doing exactly this.
The more I read this, the more it sounds like the sky is falling.
The lore of the races will never be the same
We can no longer have expectations
Their History is erased
Everything is different!
And yet... not really.
No lore has been touched, no history has been touched, and in fact, this change actually helps make some things fit. Players might play the Dwarven Public Speaker, or the Elven Barbarian from the deep forests (wild elves anyone? They were a thing). These are characters that should exist in the world.
Dwarves would likely have wizards, without a good lore reason not to, because magic is simply too useful and too necessary for defense. Elves would have clerics.
There is nothing in the lore or expectations to tell me that a Tiefling Druid or Ranger should be any stranger than a human one. In fact, the "animals are kinder than people" trope would lean into them existing.
And, since these are an optional rule for players, not a mandate for all races... if you want to keep the world the same, it is.
There is nothing lost. There are no choices being taken away. This is all being added, with the option for keeping things exactly the same being in there as well.