Playable Large Characters

[I'm A Banana]

I'd like to have a large size creature be playable on par with Medium and Small characters without things breaking - at least not too badly

90% of the problems with "large" creatures in 3e and 4e completely evaporate when you drop OA's.

Another 5% evaporate when you drop minis-grid combat.

A further 3% evaporate when you don't rely on combat as the only metric of character balance.

I have every confidence that Large characters will be playable in 5e. And flying characters. And Tiny characters. And centauroid characters. And a host of other characters that 4e convinced itself D&D couldn't handle.

 

[GX.Sigma]

90% of the problems with "large" creatures in 3e and 4e completely evaporate when you drop OA's.

What's the problem with large creatures in 4e? They still only threaten a one square radius. They don't get size bonuses or penalties, they're a bigger target, and they're awkward to maneuver in dungeons. The only benefit they get for being large is +1 melee attack range.

 

[Sunseeker]

I agree whole-heartedly, but we all know that the main reason people do play creatures like that is for the mechanical benefits. And they are going to cry if they don't get an advantage, or simply pick one that does.

Which is sad, I just want to play interesting creatures, be they large or small.

 

[Sunseeker]

What's the problem with large creatures in 4e? They still only threaten a one square radius. They don't get size bonuses or penalties, they're a bigger target, and they're awkward to maneuver in dungeons. The only benefit they get for being large is +1 melee attack range.

THIS. None of the problems with large creatures in 3.x were related to OAs, or grids at all.

The only problems with large creatures is that they were attached to huge stat blocks and thus huge level adjustments making them impossible to play with a low-level party.

I mean, being half-dragon in 3.x was a +3LA with something like a +6 str, +4 con, +2 dex, ect ect.. Being a Drider nets you plusses to almost every score, in addition to bite attacks, poison, spider-climb, ect..

Yeah, 10x10 made them take up a lot of space in a cramped dungeon, but this is only a problem assuming you do a lot of dungeon crawling(yes, I know it's a staple of the genre, but it's not a foregone conclusion that it will make up the majority of play.)

 

[Glade Riven]

One of the issues of 3.0/3.5/Pathfinder is how upscaling is handled as part of monster design. It's not so much an issue from a DM using it for monster design, but rather when a PC is increased in size they are affected by the same charts. It encourages players to want large creatures just for the bonus of melee stats.

3.5's half giant and 4e's Goliath worked around it a bit by having these races almost-but-not-quite into the next size category and specific racial features. All well and good, but what if someone wants to play a minotaur in 3.5? Either a bit of house-ruling or playing with level adjustments.

3.5/Pathfinder put in certain expectations due to their baseline rules on larger creatures. Enlarge Person doesn't help, although if bonuses were flat as part of the spell instead of using the Monster Modifier chart, it would work better. 5e's flattening of the math may either help or exasperate the issue - I'm hoping it helps.

 

[Steely_Dan]

I would definitely like to see a return of playable large races/monsters (and tiny etc), would love a Savage Species type option (Treant Monks rock).