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

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I mean the game is pretty damn easy.

This is definitely dependent on the DM. There are some games where combat is so tough that any advantage could be necessary for survival (my games, for example).

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.

This is just the natural outcome of having a system where having higher ability scores can have a big difference in your effectiveness. Of course Wizards will always want to have as high Intelligence as they can get, their most important abilities (spells) rely on Intelligence. If the Barbarian has the choice between increasing their Strength or their Intelligence, they’re always going to choose Strength because Intelligence does absolutely nothing for their main abilities, and their party’s Artificer or Wizard can make up for their weaknesses. Same applies to every other class. People will naturally try to make their characters as good as possible. This isn’t a bad thing. In my experience, it causes for better party composition and teamwork. If you want your player’s ability scores to differ more, use some rolling method that causes more diverse arrays of ability scores.

And feats (especially half-feats) can make how your ability scores improve more interesting.

 

[Corinnguard]

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.

What about the completely static starting ASI we had before Tasha's Cauldron of Everything debuted? A pre-Tasha's Dragonborn, regardless of what class the player wanted to play as, was stuck with a +2 STR and a +1 CHA. This meant that they were good at being a Fighter, a Barbarian or any of the other STR-Based classes. They were also good at being one of the CHA-based classes too. But what about the classes that didn't rely on STR or CHA? Why couldn't any Dragonborn be good with one them? The problem with a static starting ASIs is that they kind of type-casted a race by creating a trope of that race. Another problem regarding static starting ASIs is that one pre-Tasha race had floating starting ASIs at the beginning of 5e. The variant human.
Giving all of the post-Tasha races floating starting ASIs added a degree of versatility and customization to those races. It also added a degree of individuality. Very RL.

One D&D and Level Up have now moved the starting ASIs away from species to Background. It makes some sense to me, in RL we do receive training in order to enter a particular background. If you want to be an actor, you focus on learning some CHA-based skills. If you want to be a professional athlete, you focus on learning some STR-based or DEX-based skills (or both). They aren't automatically granted to you because you are a member of a particular race. They're now a part of the job.
PF2 otoh is something of an exception. There all your ability scores start out at 10 and you get static ASIs by being a member of a particular ancestry, having a particular background and by being a member of a particular class. You also get four floating ASIs to use as you like at 1st level.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

What about the completely static starting ASI we had before Tasha's Cauldron of Everything debuted? A pre-Tasha's Dragonborn, regardless of what class the player wanted to play as, was stuck with a +2 STR and a +1 CHA. This meant that they were good at being a Fighter, a Barbarian or any of the other STR-Based classes. They were also good at being one of the CHA-based classes too. But what about the classes that didn't rely on STR or CHA? Why couldn't any Dragonborn be good with one them? The problem with a static starting ASIs is that they kind of type-casted a race by creating a trope of that race. Another problem regarding static starting ASIs is that one pre-Tasha race had floating starting ASIs at the beginning of 5e. The variant human.
Giving all of the post-Tasha races floating starting ASIs added a degree of versatility and customization to those races. It also added a degree of individuality. Very RL.

Yes, that is the feature or the bug of the fixed ASIs, depending on your POV. My point merely was that if we don't have the ASIs to be tied to something, and they're completely freely assignable, then it is inelegant to have them at all. It is awkward to effectively have two point buys that use different math on top of each other. At that point just increase the budget and caps of the point buy and get rid of the ASIs. Rollers can get one extra roll to balance it with this, though it really doesn't matter as the point of rolling is to create imbalance.

One D&D and Level Up have now moved the starting ASIs away from species to Background. It makes some sense to me, in RL we do receive training in order to enter a particular background. If you want to be an actor, you focus on learning some CHA-based skills. If you want to be a professional athlete, you focus on learning some STR-based or DEX-based skills (or both). They aren't automatically granted to you because you are a member of a particular race. They're now a part of the job.
PF2 otoh is something of an exception. There all your ability scores start out at 10 and you get static ASIs by being a member of a particular ancestry, having a particular background and by being a member of a particular class. You also get four floating ASIs to use as you like at 1st level.

Well, now minmaxers are locked to specific background instead of specific species. I don't see that as an improvement. And ultimately if we tie it to something, species makes more sense to me. PF2 method just seems like convoluted illusion to create the impression that these things matter, but actually there is enough freedom that everyone ends up with the same cookie cutter stat arrangements anyway.

 

[Minigiant]

This all misses the point that having subspecies that are just +1 to a Ability score is outdated design.

WOTC, TSR, Paizo, and many other companies are just old fashioned at race design.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

This all misses the point that having subspecies that are just +1 to a Ability score is outdated design.

WOTC, TSR, Paizo, and many other companies are just old fashioned at race design.

That I agree with. And you can make species more modular, without removing the predefined aspects altogether.

For example elves could have +2 dex, then floating +1, bunch of basic elf traits, then a choice of cantrips and other traits to express your culture.
This is basically how I built the species for my setting, although there are point buy caps instead of ASIs.

 

[Hussar]

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?

But classes don’t actually do that.

A given class has multiple options to make that character distinct from even other characters of the same class. An archer based dex battle master plays and looks nothing like a great axe battle master.

But people want all halflings to be identical, right down to limiting their class options.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

But classes don’t actually do that.

A given class has multiple options to make that character distinct from even other characters of the same class. An archer based dex battle master plays and looks nothing like a great axe battle master.

But people want all halflings to be identical, right down to limiting their class options.

I don't want them to be identical, I just want them to feel like halflings. And I sorta feel that these three feet tall people not being physically as strong as people twice as tall and eight times the weight is part of that. Being more agile and nimble that the "big folks" is part of that. I want halfling to actually feel different in play than an orc and so forth.

 

[Corinnguard]

I don't want them to be identical, I just want them to feel like halflings. And I sorta feel that these three feet tall people not being physically as strong as people twice as tall and eight times the weight is part of that. Being more agile and nimble that the "big folks" is part of that. I want halfling to actually feel different in play than an orc and so forth.

In the first season episode The Last Outpost from Star Trek: The Next Generation, Commander Riker made the mistake of underestimating his Ferengi opponent by assuming that Strength equated with size. He believed that his opponent couldn't break free from his grasp simply because he was half of Riker's size. We all know what happened next.

Sometimes big surprises come in small packages.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

In the first season episode The Last Outpost from Star Trek: The Next Generation, Commander Riker made the mistake of underestimating his Ferengi opponent by assuming that Strength equated with size. He believed that his opponent couldn't break free from his grasp simply because he was half of Riker's size. We all know what happened next.

Sometimes big surprises come in small packages.

Right. Though in the later episodes the Ferengi seem to be wimps.

In any case, yes, you can have concept of a small species that is physically super strong. I just feel that is drastically a different concept that a small species that is not so, who has to be cautions of "big people" who have to use their agility and wits to compete. And I think classically the halflings are more like the latter than the former.

And yeah, it is fiction, so we can make up fictional excuses for everything. But it starts to become silly if every small species is surprisingly strong so that they just happen to be as strong as humans, and every big species is surprisingly weak so that they're no stronger than humans but also surprisingly agile so that they're as nimble as humans. I want to have fiction where different things are actually allowed to be different more than cosmetically and I want the rules that can represent that.

 

[Horwath]

and everyone hates you"

That was like the best part of RPing a Drow or an (half)Orc