D&D (2024) No Dwarf, Halfling, and Orc suborgins, lineages, and legacies

[EzekielRaiden]

You can't control what type of PCs folks want to make, and I'm not interested in trying, particularly if the chosen method to do so is to reduce options. Have a little faith in your fellow humans I say, and be ok with the occasional disappointment in that regard.

Depends on what you're having faith about, I'd say.

It's one thing if it's "small benefit that comes at a meaningful and obvious price in enjoyable play." It's quite another to presume that smart players won't look at a system with clear exploit potential and universally say "nah, I won't do any exploits at all, I'll accept losing a lot more when I could have cheesed the hell out of all that stuff."

Because that's the problem with dominant strategies, degenerate solutions, and perverse incentives. They reward the people who use them, and anyone who doesn't is leaving useful tools on the table as...I guess a moral victory? But lots of people will use them. It's not even like it's cheating. It's using the literal rules the game offers. It just uses them in ways that defy the intended spirit and ethos of play in order to succeed as often as possible. Which the game tells you you should want to do; succeed more and you will get more stuff, suffer fewer problems, have more kick-butt moments, and generally just do better.

Failure feels bad. Success feels good. Relying on the vast majority of players to accept a greater failure rate than they could have had, when the only consequence is not playing by the external moralizing the DM is projecting onto them? Yeah sorry I don't really anticipate that being a compelling reason for players not to do stuff.

That's why you see 5MWD stuff, even though it harms the gameplay experience, unless the DM goes out of her way to actively punish such behavior with mechanical consequences.

Would you tell a DM who wants to avoid that problem that it is "taking away player choice" to enforce strict time pressure on their players? Would you tell a DM who's finally had enough with murder hobos who repeatedly refuse to play along with a positive, heroic tone, that it's taking away player choice to start posting guardsmen and having wanted posters etc., etc.?

Because both of these are fundamentally the same as the other stuff. Using rules to shape player behavior away from undesirable actions and toward desirable ones. You're just annoyed about the method.

 

[Minigiant]

i think you can go both ways with species abilities, it doesn't have to just be one of the other, 'these are the things that any elf can potentially develop' abilities that you can take on level up alongsideside a selection of mutually exclusive 'these are specialised traits only certain groups of elves have developed' subspecies traits,

so maybe any lizardfolk can learn how to use their camoflage, climb speed or tongue lash, but this group who lived in the swamp for ~300 odd years now secrete poison from their skin and that group who have been intermingling with the dragonborn have developed a breath weapon, and there's also the ones who went to the coast who have improved the lizardfolk 'hold breath' ability into full on water breathing.

Cultural biological trait and Noncultural Biological trait.

Quite frankly, I always felt that the original subrace of D&D were just excuses to play a race and get the racial adjustments of a nonfavored class. That's why there were 15+ types of elf but none of the elves did anything cool. People wanted to be an elf but have the stats for a barbarian so they made wild elf to get a STR bonus.

Races were also boring because the race had to be balanced against humans. Especially in the old humanocentric days of D&D. And since humans got nothing, everyone else had to be limited in scope or be a human with rubber ears. Now that almost everyone has accepted Humans getting a bonus feat at level 1 and that being core in 2024. This opens more room for origins and subspecies to play with.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Duergar are still a distinct subspecies of Dwarves, they just aren't going to be in a new PHB.

 

[Minigiant]

Duergar are still a distinct subspecies of Dwarves, they just aren't going to be in a new PHB.

which is dumb because drow are in the PHB.

 

[Scribe]

which is dumb because drow are in the PHB.

They need more time to sanitize the Duergar.

 

[Minigiant]

They need more time to sanitize the Duergar.

Dwizgath the Duergar Artificer incoming.
Ed Greenwood actively ignoring the WOTC letter on his kitchen table.

 

[Micah Sweet]

In that case, why are you even playing a game with discrete ancestries and classes when there are so many games that would allow to create any character you want, within the parameters of the campaign setting and premise? I mean, honestly, aren't those limitations on your imagination, too?

Limitations. Are. Good. Limitations provide the structure that makes your choices, in character creation and in gameplay, actually have meaning.

I agree that limitations are good. You seem to want more hard-coded limitations than I do, and you seem to want them for everyone who plays the game, not just you and yours, for...reasons?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Good thing you already have the perfect thing you want. But EN Publishing had the freedom to completely overhaul the system. It is a different game.

The 2024 books aren't D&D 5.5. They are 5E, so they aren't free to completely overhaul it. To be compatible, they need to stick to the three elements, Species, Background, and Class, even if they slightly redefine them.

That said, I like a lot of the stuff we've seen in the playtest docs.

Level Up is compatible with WotC 5e too, pretty much. WotC could have chosen to go with (IMO) a far better origin system than they did, and as long as you could make a character that worked like the ones from 2014, it would be compatible. And that's not the kind of compatibility they meant anyway, though it took them a while to admit that clearly.

I short, I disagree with your claim that they had to stick with the far inferior (IMO) WotC system.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Depends on what you're having faith about, I'd say.

It's one thing if it's "small benefit that comes at a meaningful and obvious price in enjoyable play." It's quite another to presume that smart players won't look at a system with clear exploit potential and universally say "nah, I won't do any exploits at all, I'll accept losing a lot more when I could have cheesed the hell out of all that stuff."

Because that's the problem with dominant strategies, degenerate solutions, and perverse incentives. They reward the people who use them, and anyone who doesn't is leaving useful tools on the table as...I guess a moral victory? But lots of people will use them. It's not even like it's cheating. It's using the literal rules the game offers. It just uses them in ways that defy the intended spirit and ethos of play in order to succeed as often as possible. Which the game tells you you should want to do; succeed more and you will get more stuff, suffer fewer problems, have more kick-butt moments, and generally just do better.

Failure feels bad. Success feels good. Relying on the vast majority of players to accept a greater failure rate than they could have had, when the only consequence is not playing by the external moralizing the DM is projecting onto them? Yeah sorry I don't really anticipate that being a compelling reason for players not to do stuff.

That's why you see 5MWD stuff, even though it harms the gameplay experience, unless the DM goes out of her way to actively punish such behavior with mechanical consequences.

Would you tell a DM who wants to avoid that problem that it is "taking away player choice" to enforce strict time pressure on their players? Would you tell a DM who's finally had enough with murder hobos who repeatedly refuse to play along with a positive, heroic tone, that it's taking away player choice to start posting guardsmen and having wanted posters etc., etc.?

Because both of these are fundamentally the same as the other stuff. Using rules to shape player behavior away from undesirable actions and toward desirable ones. You're just annoyed about the method.

Doing things in the world that enforce the reality of that world (and happen to also enforce the sort of behavior you prefer) is a far better method than forcing the rules to do it, IMO. The way you're describing is, to my mind, a form of tyranny of fun. You want your game to be exploited less? Maybe have a discussion with your players.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Cultural biological trait and Noncultural Biological trait.

Quite frankly, I always felt that the original subrace of D&D were just excuses to play a race and get the racial adjustments of a nonfavored class. That's why there were 15+ types of elf but none of the elves did anything cool. People wanted to be an elf but have the stats for a barbarian so they made wild elf to get a STR bonus.

Races were also boring because the race had to be balanced against humans. Especially in the old humanocentric days of D&D. And since humans got nothing, everyone else had to be limited in scope or be a human with rubber ears. Now that almost everyone has accepted Humans getting a bonus feat at level 1 and that being core in 2024. This opens more room for origins and subspecies to play with.

Define "doing something cool".