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

[Minigiant]

That's a big problem too. PCs should not, IMO, be anywhere near as oh-so-special and unique as they are.

It's a consequence of D&D's stakes.
Normal people don't survive dungeons and stick to their day jobs.
After burying some many normal people, only the weirdos with crazy backgrounds and histories are representative of PCs over level 2.
Even in 1e, the PCs with high stats leveled faster.


Or do you think a level 5 Fighter with 13 STR, 12 CON, and 12 DEX is realistic?

 

[Mind of tempest]

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.

and why keep them locked, not every world would even natively have elves and dwarves. why should content be defaultly required to ask to use it as an option?
also, battle rager sucks the slayer is the better dwarven racial barbarian.

And I get it. To most people it seems more fun to choose more powerful option. And regardless, ideally all option combinations should be balanced, or at least pretty close to that.

On the flip side, it is just hella weird that evey species is equally good at everything. Halflings are just as physically strong as humans and orcs, elves are no more agile than dwarves etc.

min-maxing is a math problem if the math requires you to be rather effective to survive and do well and the quest people will optimise out of necessity sure people will do it regardless of all things but that is like stopping people from painting their walls black.

secondly, everyone ends up equally good as there is a stat cap you can't get plus 20 without magic items or other buffs meaning we are stuck.

Witches and Magi do not exist as separate player options in D&D 5e. I’m not sure they should be separate. I have no idea what would set a magi apart from a wizard, and very few ideas that would set a witch apart from a wizard. Magi are probably best represented by Divination Wizards. Witches by Warlocks or Enchantment Wizards, or even a Druid.

This is why I’m against classes restricting which races can be them. There’s a lot that can be done through slight reflavoring.

I’m also feel that “no, those people can’t be wizards, they’re too barbaric and stupid to understand the enlightened magicks of our white European Merlin/Gandalf/Odin wizards, your mages are just untrained cheaters/orientalist knock-offs” is probably best to be rid of. It tends to be used in Eurocentric ways and echoes real world biases (I.e. the colonial urge to dismiss all aboriginal priests as merely “shamans,” for example). They can just be Wizards with whatever necessary reflavoring.

given a magi is a Zoroastrian priest the major difference is clearly they are clerics.

Sure they do. Check the NPC stats of every module. The town guard has a 16 strength. The village in the middle of nowhere has a priest with a 16 wisdom. The merchant who hired you has a 17 charisma. Normal people absolutely have 14s, 15s, 16s, 17s, and 18s.

because the math depends on higher stats to work which is part of the problem.

That's a big problem too. PCs should not, IMO, be anywhere near as oh-so-special and unique as they are.

it is a math problem the game demands the exceptional rather than slightly above average at best.

It's a consequence of D&D's stakes.
Normal people don't survive dungeons and stick to their day jobs.
After burying some many normal people, only the weirdos with crazy backgrounds and histories are representative of PCs over level 2.
Even in 1e, the PCs with high stats leveled faster.


Or do you think a level 5 Fighter with 13 STR, 12 CON, and 12 DEX is realistic?

honestly, those stats should be fine the problem is they are not.
half of our problem is a math problem as if you make the math depend on lower stats then everything would start cooling off fast.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It's a consequence of D&D's stakes.
Normal people don't survive dungeons and stick to their day jobs.
After burying some many normal people, only the weirdos with crazy backgrounds and histories are representative of PCs over level 2.
Even in 1e, the PCs with high stats leveled faster.


Or do you think a level 5 Fighter with 13 STR, 12 CON, and 12 DEX is realistic?

It's also realistic. If you have a population of any significant size, you are going to have a significant fraction of that population in the tails of the normal distribution. A statistician could tell you exactly how many.

That is why people like professional athletes exist, and why the majority of the population cannot do the things professional athletes can do.

 

[Hussar]

honestly, those stats should be fine the problem is they are not.
half of our problem is a math problem as if you make the math depend on lower stats then everything would start cooling off fast.

Except that now you're moving away from D&D's roots. D&D is not rooted in the notion of normal, average people. D&D characters are heroes. They've always been heroes. They've always been above average. That's one of the core conceits of the genre. D&D has never tried to be Warhammer fantasy. You have never played a Ratcatcher in D&D.

The problem only exists because you are trying to hammer nails with a screwdriver.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I see it far more like people are not only determined to have their own tables play a certain specific way, but, now, every single other table in the hobby must play that way too because it's "hella weird" for other tables to play differently.

If you want halflings to be weaker? Go ahead and make a weak halfling. There is nothing stopping you. You absolutely can do this. But, why do you get to tell my table that halflings in my world must be weaker? If I want strong halflings, why do I have to rewrite the rules?

Broader rules are better. Full stop. Telling other tables what they can and cannot do is never good. Things would be so much better if folks would mind their own tables and stop insisting that everyone must play the one true way.

I can appreciate that point of view, I just feel that logically leads to removing classes too and having some sort of more freeform character building like GURPS. But D&D is and has always been a splat based game, where class and race are defined mechanical packages you choose. And it still is like that, except the latter has lost a lot of definition.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

honestly, those stats should be fine the problem is they are not.
half of our problem is a math problem as if you make the math depend on lower stats then everything would start cooling off fast.

I mean the game is pretty damn easy. You don't in any real sense "need" high stats. People just want them.

The system failure is that we are now in situation where value of each class' main stats might as well be directly determined by your class, instead of chosen by the player. Each wizard has the same int, each bard the same charisma etc. I didn't like 4e approach either, which was just giving up and having feats that let you use whichever stat you wanted to for attack. At that point just get rid of ability scores. To have ability scores to matter, but still allowing variety within classes would require classes to be more MAD. Then with the ability choices you could choose to focus on specific areas of the class or have more even spread to be more generalised.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

We should get rid of ASIs altogether IMO. Leave stat increases to a by level thing and get them out of character creation, or just remove them completely from player control.

I mean yeah, completely floating starting ASIs make no sense whatever. First we use point buy to assign stats, then we assign some more points using different math on top of them. It is just super inelegant.

 

[Hussar]

I can appreciate that point of view, I just feel that logically leads to removing classes too and having some sort of more freeform character building like GURPS. But D&D id and ahs always been a splat based game, where class and race are defined mechanical packages you choose. And it still is like that, except the latter has lost a lot of definition.

That's a slippery slope argument without any actual evidence since we've seen virtually no movement whatsoever towards removing classes.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

That's a slippery slope argument without any actual evidence since we've seen virtually no movement whatsoever towards removing classes.

I was not saying that is actually happening, merely that this is where your logic leads to. So applying it to the species but not to class is somewhat incoherent. If you want class to be defined and are fine with it "telling other tables what to do" then you can certainly understand wanting the species to be like that too?

 

[Minigiant]

I mean the game is pretty damn easy. You don't in any real sense "need" high stats. People just want them

The game is easy after you level up past Tier 1.

In Tier 1, crappy stats tends to equal failure due to being completely at the will of the d20.

The game is easy because monsters have bad stats whereas PC have good stats.