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

[mellored]

Dwarves have the sufficient idea malleability to build nations that have different cultures,.

Humans can also live anywhere.

I don't see having 2 different flags as enough to have 2 different subraces.

Especially since you don't need to different ability scores, the difference between hill dwarf and mountain dwarf are just too tiny. Both are just toughness.

Halflings actually have more differences. Not a lot, but sneaky and tough are 2 different things.

 

[DammitVictor]

I definitely don't want Orcs being banned from being Wizards or the choice of having an Orc as a Wizard be at an extreme disadvantage. Which is why I'm fine with the de-emphasis on ability bonuses.

In most settings, I don't think Orc Wizards make sense. Witches, Sorcerers, maybe some flavors of Magi? Totes. But where I am going to agree with you is that any class an Orc is allowed to advance in, an Orc should be able to be good at. To the fullest capacity of mere mortal game designers, any character concept that is allowable under the rules should be fun and competitive to play.

Political arguments aside, racial ASIs are bad for the game; for all of the thematically appropriate combinations that they lock out, most of the shenanigans that turned me against the 3.5 environment were based on "convenient" racial bonuses.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Humans can also live anywhere.

I don't see having 2 different flags as enough to have 2 different subraces.

Especially since you don't need to different ability scores, the difference between hill dwarf and mountain dwarf are just too tiny. Both are just toughness.

Halflings actually have more differences. Not a lot, but sneaky and tough are 2 different things.

the point is dwarves are being wasted and halflings are not

 

[Mind of tempest]

In most settings, I don't think Orc Wizards make sense. Witches, Sorcerers, maybe some flavors of Magi? Totes. But where I am going to agree with you is that any class an Orc is allowed to advance in, an Orc should be able to be good at. To the fullest capacity of mere mortal game designers, any character concept that is allowable under the rules should be fun and competitive to play.

Political arguments aside, racial ASIs are bad for the game; for all of the thematically appropriate combinations that they lock out, most of the shenanigans that turned me against the 3.5 environment were based on "convenient" racial bonuses.

wait so what is it you want then? the floating stats would do fine for the orc to do well in?

 

[Mind of tempest]

I don't care how many elf classes we get. Not sure why there's so much resistance. What exactly are you expecting WotC to give you instead?

add more base character budget ideally, I know it will not happen but when has life been anything but disappointment?

 

[DammitVictor]

Humans in AD&D had no restrictions placed on them with regards to what class they could be. Why were they the exception?

Because all of the classes available to other races were designed as human classes. Nobody wanted to design classes that weren't available to humans... and when they did, they placed them in the "kit" design space.

Battlerager and Bladesinger could very well have been dwarf- and elf-exclusive classes instead of kits. They're certainly more different from Fighter than Ranger and Paladin were.

 

[DammitVictor]

wait so what is it you want then? the floating stats would do fine for the orc to do well in?

I don't really care. I don't understand why we need "floating stats" to replace racial stats, since the racial stats served a specific purpose that we are intentionally removing. But no adjustments and floating adjustments are both better than the AD&D or 3e/4e/5e racial adjustments.

There weren't any racial ability adjustments in Original or Classic D&D.

 

[Mecheon]

I don't care how many elf classes we get. Not sure why there's so much resistance. What exactly are you expecting WotC to give you instead?

Distinct classes that stand by themselves and are unique

I want Warlords, not Elven Cleric and Dwarven Cleric (they are just reprints of the regular Cleric but have different names)

That's the issue when having the race specific things becuase it just encourages you to do the racial specific options that leads to class bloat even quicker than 3E did, unlike 5E which at least goes "Here's a Forge cleric. It'll work for a dwarf, but if you have another forge themed idea (like say, a fire genasi) you can just use this as well" rather than having a distinct Dwarf Cleric and Genasi Cleric of the Forge that grabs that stuff, because the Genasi Cleric doesn't have them so you need a whole new class option to accomidate

 

[Remathilis]

I don't care how many elf classes we get. Not sure why there's so much resistance. What exactly are you expecting WotC to give you instead?

You seem to live in a world of infinite page-count.

Lets start with the basics: Four races and Four classes BECMI style. Humans get Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, Thief. Dwarf gets three or four (depending on if you're going to allow dwarf magic users), elves get four, haflings get three or four like dwarves. Conversatively, we've designed 14 classes just to cover the basics; 16 if we are allowing dwarf and halfling casters.

Now, each time you add a new class (barbarian, paladin, druid, bard, etc) you're going to have to add an appropriate racial variant as well. Likewise, every new race will have to create a new collection of classes. To replicate the races (9) and classes (12) in the 5e PHB, you are looking at 108 separate classes. Now, we can shave that down by not giving every race a class variant, but you're still looking at well over 50 classes at the most stringent. And that, of course, doesn't even consider things like elf-like multiclass "classes" and ignores all variants like subclasses. That number is going to balloon quickly.

How quickly? Well, here are all the official classes in BECMI: List of BECMI/RC Classes That is the edition with races-as-class. That's a lot.

And for what? To say a dwarf cleric is different from a human cleric? To slyly not allow a gnome cleric by never designing a gnome priest class? To print new classes constantly or wait patiently just because you want to play an elf bard?

Just let any race be any class and save the ink.

 

[Hussar]

I’ve never quite understood this argument.

With floating asi’s and heritages you absolutely can create traditional races. There’s nothing stopping you from making a dwarf fighter. It’s 100% supported.

But now you are no longer being told by someone else that you must play a dwarf fighter. If you want to play a dwarf monk, no problem.

Why do people seem to want the books to give them a sense of authority to force other players to play a specific way?

Isn’t it better that we all get to play what we want?