D&D 5E List of All 33 Races in Mordenkainen's Monsters of the Multiverse

guachi · Jan 12, 2022

Micah Sweet said:
I think WotC plans to ignore culture altogether, leaving it to players to "do whatever they want". Anything else is either more work than they want to put in, or might run afoul of their detractors and lead to them losing some of those new, young players they crave.

Yup. WotC eliminated culture from character creation and replaced it with... nothing. I honestly don't think the designers have the skill or ability to do something interesting with it. Level Up stripped it out of race and made it an additional part of character creation. It works well and is a vastly better system.

Maxperson · Jan 12, 2022

Vaalingrade said:
Prove it!

Prove a negative, or you lose the internet.

Okay. That was a good one.

DarkCrisis · Jan 12, 2022

5E seems so over complicated now due to all it's patches etc. They desperately need a new edition.

Scribe · Jan 12, 2022

DarkCrisis said:
5E seems so over complicated now due to all it's patches etc. They desperately need a new edition.

Both overly convoluted, yet simplified into generalization. Its uh...something.

Micah Sweet · Jan 12, 2022

Scribe said:
Both overly convoluted, yet simplified into generalization. Its uh...something.

Weird how they managed to make it annoying for people who want a simpler game AND people who want more complexity. Quite a feat.

Parmandur · Jan 12, 2022

DarkCrisis said:
5E seems so over complicated now due to all it's patches etc. They desperately need a new edition.

It really is pretty simple, and a handfulof books of options isn't at all unwieldy.

Kobold Avenger · Jan 12, 2022

guachi said:
Yup. WotC eliminated culture from character creation and replaced it with... nothing. I honestly don't think the designers have the skill or ability to do something interesting with it. Level Up stripped it out of race and made it an additional part of character creation. It works well and is a vastly better system.

They could expand on backgrounds and give it some more mechanical weight.

Kannik · Jan 12, 2022

To me, the assertion that WotC is homogenizing all races and they will soon be indistinguishable doesn’t hold water. Dragonborn breathe fire. Dwarves resist poison. Gnomes cast illusions and talk to animals. Aarakocra fly. Aasimar transform. Harengon jump. High elves come with magic, resist charm, and don’t sleep. These are all quite varied and far more interesting and flavorful than attribute bonuses. (Not to mention that adventurers are so out of the ordinary that they often would break any typical mold anyway.) And as for skill, tool, or weapon proficiencies and the like, what a character would be exposed to should be heavily dependent on their upbringing and the culture of their area, the latter of which would be quite varied for all races just as it is here on earth. Then there’s the aspect of if the character grew up in a large and diverse city, or not in their race’s ‘traditional’ society. It feels far more proper that these aspects would be tied to race and nothing else.

If anything, without the designers leaning on ability score or proficiency crutches this has the potential to be even more exciting and used as an impetus to develop more unique and meaningful features, like dragon breath, added as racial options. Whether they’ll lean into something selectable like backgrounds for culture/upbringing and associated proficiencies (which would still include the more traditional elven, dwarven, etc societies) is to be seen, though of course that would be neat and could even, like backgrounds, nicely include additional adjunct features and capabilities.

Either way, dragon breath and their ilk are all far more impactful, meaningful, and distinguishing than a +2 to STR or gaining proficiency with a stick.

Henadic Theologian · Jan 12, 2022

Kannik said:
To me, the assertion that WotC is homogenizing all races and they will soon be indistinguishable doesn’t hold water. Dragonborn breathe fire. Dwarves resist poison. Gnomes cast illusions and talk to animals. Aarakocra fly. Aasimar transform. Harengon jump. High elves come with magic, resist charm, and don’t sleep. These are all quite varied and far more interesting and flavorful than attribute bonuses. (Not to mention that adventurers are so out of the ordinary that they often would break any typical mold anyway.) And as for skill, tool, or weapon proficiencies and the like, what a character would be exposed to should be heavily dependent on their upbringing and the culture of their area, the latter of which would be quite varied for all races just as it is here on earth. Then there’s the aspect of if the character grew up in a large and diverse city, or not in their race’s ‘traditional’ society. It feels far more proper that these aspects would be tied to race and nothing else.

If anything, without the designers leaning on ability score or proficiency crutches this has the potential to be even more exciting and used as an impetus to develop more unique and meaningful features, like dragon breath, added as racial options. Whether they’ll lean into something selectable like backgrounds for culture/upbringing and associated proficiencies (which would still include the more traditional elven, dwarven, etc societies) is to be seen, though of course that would be neat and could even, like backgrounds, nicely include additional adjunct features and capabilities.

Either way, dragon breath and their ilk are all far more impactful, meaningful, and distinguishing than a +2 to STR or gaining proficiency with a stick.

Cue someone complaining about power creep!