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

[Helldritch]

But, now we are shifting. To have a wise Goliath, you need to put your high scores into that, Goliaths are "naturally" unwise though.

Not naturally unwise. Just not wiser than the norm. There is a big difference in not having a bonus and having a penalty.

And, you missed my point entirely with the physical and mental being put against each other. Let us take Dwarves for a second.

Hill Dwarves, like you said, have a +2 Con and a +1 Wisdom. But they do not have a +2 Strength like Mountain Dwarves. Why? Hill Dwarves have the same strength as Halflings and Elves, but they are built mostly the same as Mountain Dwarves (two inches and 15 lbs is the difference), they have much the same culture of mining, forging, and weapon skills. Yet, Hill Dwarves are as weak as Halflings, Elves and Gnomes, while Mountain Dwarves are as strong as Goliaths, Orcs, and other large massive creatures.

And why don't Mountain dwarves also get a +1 to wisdom, they have the same culture as Hill Dwarves, so why not?

Because the only thing they share is their race. They have different point of view and evolution path. Mountain dwarves are more haugty and warlike than the hill dwarves. Thus their respective stats bonuses.

Because you can't have a race with +2 Strength, +2 Con and +1 Wisdom. You can't have them give bonuses to both the physical stats and the mental ones. Getting one stat pushes out another. Get two physical stats, and you usually get no mental stats. Two Mental stats? You won't get a physical stat.

It would be quite a race don't you think? This is how the system had been since the beginning. I see no need to change that.

Sure, some races and sublcasses get 1 of each, but since your mind and your body are separate, it seems odd that they affect each other in this manner.

Unless, again, this is all about Archetypes and not about the genetics of the race.

A bit of both?

So what makes a Rock Gnome healthier than a Dragonborn, but equally healthy to a Goliath?

A gnome is also a magical race. Magic can explain as much if not more than genetics.

 

[Azzy]

What are they recorded as by default before 3rd level? Or were these numbers only after the choices are made?

You'd have to ask @BadEye — I'm only linking to their post.

 

[Scott Christian]

If this is what they mean, then I reject it as a problem. In fact, it seems to me to be the main benefit. We will see more combinations. Increasing the likelihood of characters that you rarely see at the table is a good thing.

Unless you can tell me how getting more diverse characters in more diverse roles is a negative for the game?

100% agree with you. It will increase the likelihood of more combinations. And diversity in roles has the ability to alter lore. That is one of the worrisome contributions. I get it, lore changes as do race/class combinations. But because it does, does not prevent people from worrying where those changes will lead.

I'm not the one who started calling it gimping their character. I believe that was @Oofta in one of his responses to me. Might have been @Helldritch though. I just kept using their terminology.

But maybe they meant it was only gimping them to make the choice to move the scores.

Ok. My bad. Sorry.

See, I wasn't arguing that the patterns would go away, because I didn't see this as a argument solely about how likely a race/class combo was to show up.

I saw this as a discussion on whether or not a character could still be unique.

A dwarf wizard is currently being seen as unique. I guess this is solely because dwarves make poor wizards. You can tell me it is, how did you phrase it, "choosing to have that character focus on something other than their class's primary calling" but if your Dwarf has the choice to move their stats to wizard stats, and instead chooses to keep their traditional dwarf stats, Oofta and others have told me that is gimping their character.

Instead, they want no choice. No ability to alter the dwarf at all, so their dwarf wizard is required to have the poorer stat array... and that makes them unique. Having the stats doesn't make them unique. Being a dwarf wizard doesn't make them unique. Being unique is solely a function (in the arguments being presented) of not having a choose in those stat numbers.

And that makes no sense to me. It makes no sense to me that they want to argue for their being fewer dwarf wizards so they can keep feeling unique. It makes no sense to me that they can only feel unique by having the choice withheld from them.

Will there be more dwarf wizards in the future? Yes. I guess that is bad though, because people who play dwarf wizards won't feel special anymore for not caring about the stat arrays that they don't care about. Or, like Oofta, they can no longer make a statement and point by playing their character.

I feel what you are saying. It makes sense to me. But I also feel Oofta's side is legit as well.

Man, I hate being lawful neutral.

 

[Scott Christian]

Unless you think wotc and DDB are lying about the stats, there isn’t any reason to demand more in depth analysis before being able to talk about what the stats can tell us.
There is no reason to think that a bunch of ridiculous nonsense is happening to make base human champion fighter reliably the most common choice. The simplest explanation is that people like those options, more players want simple characters than any other individual specific desired character type, and the Champion is the basic iconic fighter.

The other most popular subclasses also don’t support your claim that most players go for the most optimal combinations, not the popularity of the Ranger, etc. The most popular stuff is the stuff that is iconic.

No need to jump through hoops or anything to explain it, when there is a simple explanation right there.

There is always a why... It is the difficult question to answer. And also the hardest to collect data for.

What if the reason champion was the most common class was because it was first on the drop down menu? Would that matter? I guess, in your eyes, no. Because to you it is "ridiculous nonsense."

Fair enough. You see what you see. I see the same, but need to know the why before understanding or using it as evidence.

 

[Maxperson]

But, now we are shifting. To have a wise Goliath, you need to put your high scores into that, Goliaths are "naturally" unwise though.

No. That's not at all true. To be unwise would require them to have a wisdom penalty.

And, you missed my point entirely with the physical and mental being put against each other. Let us take Dwarves for a second.

Hill Dwarves, like you said, have a +2 Con and a +1 Wisdom. But they do not have a +2 Strength like Mountain Dwarves. Why? Hill Dwarves have the same strength as Halflings and Elves, but they are built mostly the same as Mountain Dwarves (two inches and 15 lbs is the difference), they have much the same culture of mining, forging, and weapon skills. Yet, Hill Dwarves are as weak as Halflings, Elves and Gnomes, while Mountain Dwarves are as strong as Goliaths, Orcs, and other large massive creatures.

They are not built like Mountain Dwarves. Mountain Dwarves are much stronger. Mountain Dwarf muscles are probably denser or something.

And why don't Mountain dwarves also get a +1 to wisdom, they have the same culture as Hill Dwarves, so why not?

They don't have the same culture. They are not Hill Dwarves. They are Mountain Dwarves.

 

[Don Durito]

In some ways, what would bother me most is the idea of a Goliath with an 8 Strength. That seems somewhat silly. Of course a Goliath with a 10 Strength is not really that much better, so it's a small difference. (Especially as I don't buy the perception I sometimes see around here that the difference between 10 and 8 is some huge gulf that is somehow bigger than the gaps between all the other numbers.)

For setting purposes I would prefer someting like Goliaths have a minimum Strength of 15. Of course in a Point Buy system that would just reinforce that they have to be Strength based Classes. I don't want that. I'm happy for them to be Wizards, I just want them to be big strong wizards.

All of which I think highlights the real problem - point buy is actually a really bad way of generating D&D characters. It only looks good in alternative to random rolling.

 

[Azzy]

In some ways, what would bother me most is the idea of a Goliath with an 8 Strength. That seems somewhat silly. Of course a Goliath with a 10 Strength is not really that much better, so it's a small difference.

But why, though? It's not like there aren't any substantially physically limited or disabled humans in the real world, so why shouldn't there be the same for other races?

 

[Don Durito]

But why, though? It's not like there aren't any substantially physically limited or disabled humans in the real world, so why shouldn't there be the same for other races?

If you wanted to play a disabled Goliath and explain the Strength 8 as a disability then I wouldn't have an issue.

But I'm not sure exactly what disability would make you physically weak but not affect your movement or dexterity.

Similarly, if your Goliath had Strength 8 because they were a child then I might allow that if a child Goliath fit the game I was running.

But then I've alway been able do these things.

 

[Shardstone]

Crazy how much people care about what happens at other people's tables, and how having +1 bonus to your attacks/dmg or your spell saves to so many people is a gamebreaker.

If +1 to your damage and what not is enough to unbalance the game, then the game was never well balanced in the first place.

 

[Don Durito]

Crazy how much people care about what happens at other people's tables, and how having +1 bonus to your attacks/dmg or your spell saves to so many people is a gamebreaker.

If +1 to your damage and what not is enough to unbalance the game, then the game was never well balanced in the first place.

I don't know that anyone cares what's happening at other people's tables and conversation would be of higher quality if people would discuss honestly without throwing around righteous indignation.

People do however care about what the rules are, which is the subject of discussion.