D&D 5E Races that make a better class than yours.

[Ilbranteloth]

It is possible to make poor race/class/concept choices when creating a character. It matters more to some players than it does to others.

I like the idea of the main racial abilities being generally useful and having the sub-class being more suited to certain classes. That's pretty much the case for almost every race in the PHB.

The half-orc could benefit from having sub-races. Keep the con bonus, low light vision, and menacing in the main race and move the str bonus, savage attack, and relentless to a warrior sub-race. Then there could be a 'mystic' sub-race for the rare orc that is attuned to magic. Give that +chr or +wis and some other ability suited to a more primal spell caster.

I'm all for different races having different ways to fit into each class, but I don't think there should be bad/best choices for race/class combinations. A forest gnome can use his inteligence/dex bonus to make a good fighter, but he would not be a good choice as a str fighter. All of his other racial abilities are still useful to the player, so the player won't feel sub-standard if he compares himself to other fighters.

An interesting idea, although like the SCAG half-elf, you'd probably need to start with the orc base race. Of course, they don't have subraces for the orc, and for me, I was just referring to an orc that happened to be born with (roll) a high Wisdom, Intelligence, or Charisma.

Having said that, I would have no problem with allowing a player to use different ability bonuses due to their race, including half-orcs if I allowed half-orc PCs. And if I recall, someplace in the DMG they mention that as acceptable. In the case of a half-orc, the easy explanation is that their human (or whatever) half provided that stat.

 

[James Gasik]

Really though, it's ok to not have good stat modifiers. I've played a Tabaxi Wizard, and it turned out the climbing and occasional burst of speed were golden, even if I had lower Intelligence. My issue with the Half-Orc isn't that I'd have a useless Strength bonus as a Wizard, it's more that I could be in the same situation as a Mountain Dwarf but at least have access to better armor. As a Half-Orc, I get this situational bonus on melee attacks that I probably shouldn't be making as a Wizard in the first place.

And the fact that every Half-Orc ever has this ability to "crit gud" in melee is just silly.

Now as far as not allowing certain race/class combinations in your game...well that's fine for you, but by default, Dwarves can be Sorcerers and High Elves can be Clerics, and while they're not as good, they can at least leverage their other racial advantages to make the best of a bad situation- and that, to me, is good design.

A melee-only ability steering the entire race away from concepts like, say, archers, is not good design (to me). The game should support players wanting to create interesting characters, not force arbitrary lore on them.

If the DM wants to do that, that's fine, but the game should support DM's who don't want to do that too.

 

[FrostyFire]

As I said in my OP I'm sure that each class can have this problem and when we first made our characters we just had the base races and materials but overtime people are collected alot more which opened alot more options. Another guy even overheard me say about and Aarakocra monk and had ideas but he joined another group so lets not even go there. The DM did say it was a bit cheeky for someone to make make a Taxabi monk since I been one since the start but also if he wants to play that then he is welcome. I do like my character and its been good to be Unique with monks defenses, abilitys, like the kind of spiderman style slippery hit and runner, stunlocking and being able to outrun the paladins horse.

Its normal to feel a little gutted when someone comes along out of no where and steals your thunder. They are going to do your job and be better at it after all. Maybe after play testing it a while its not as bad as it seems on paper but I don't know. Also more competition for the treasure now I guess and monks don't or can't use alot. I will go along with it anyway and see what happens.

 

[Dualazi]

But balance is a far more complex function of the game. What are you attempting to balance? Their design was to balance the game in a way that any mix of races and classes, in a party of 4, could succeed in an adventure of properly balanced encounters - including both combat and non-combat encounters. This is without the use of magic items, or even requiring any specific race or class to be within the party. It could be no cleric, no rogue, or no spell casters. Regardless, the game has to work.

So the balance that makes a game bad for you might not be the same as that for others.

Not really, no. In fact, that supports my assertion for the need for balance and Wizard’s attempts to meet that goal. While there are a few outliers, almost every class was designed to contribute in both arenas to some respect. All of those positives are a result of striving towards balance, and going the opposite way I think we can agree would be detrimental to the game. Balance is desirable regardless of complexity.

Anytime that you get into optimizing, then by definition you are putting your character build out-of-balance. Otherwise there would be no choices at all, there would only be the single, optimized archetype of that character.

Not true at all. Optimized just means you’re specialized towards a specific task. You can have an optimized melee cleric and an optimized blaster cleric, each with their strengths and drawbacks. Again, this goes back to the importance of balance. In a game like 3e, there are clear winners and losers in that comparison, in 5e it harder to explicitly declare a victor. Good balancing means there are more options, not less.

And nearly every option that I've seen people complain about being underpowered, are inevitably something that one of my players has chosen to play specifically, and has had no complaints about it (and also didn't know that others felt it was "suboptimal").

Not to be rude, but inexperienced or willfully obtuse players isn’t a defense. I’ve had characters play very unoptimized or underpowered characters and enjoy it, usually right up until an actual optimized player blows them out of the water in a similar field. Once again though, and I’m sure people are tired of hearing it, this is a defense of the idea of balance, that 5e gets it “close enough” that players don’t feel obligated to min-max out of necessity.

One problem that 2e and 3e ran into with "balance" and "suboptimal" abilities is that they put a lot of non-combat stuff into rules. They were codifying fluff and other things that help define characters. The problem was, for some, that choosing one of those things that further defined your character meant you opted not to beef up your combat facility. No problem if that's not the focus of your game. Even as far back as 1e, you could select a non-weapon proficiency of, say, carpenter, instead of spending those slots on something more readily useful while adventuring. For those of use

Yeah that didn’t help for sure, around 5e I started wishing they would just make 2 tracks of feats, one explicitly for combat and one of non-combat, which sort of came true with backgrounds and the like.

A good example of how 5e (and 4e before it) sidestepped that issue with spells is to make many of them ritual spells. While that's great for the stat optimizers, it's had an impact on those that had other considerations. Some examples are alarm, Tenser's floating disk and "Leomund's tiny hut." In a campaign where wandering monsters are a possibility, resting is sometimes questionable, or treasure doesn't come in gems and easily carried bags of gold, and encumbrance is a thing, then it kind of broke a number of things.

I think that was the lesser of two evils given how prior editions were bigger on the use of scrolls and wands to fortify spell lists.

I prefer for the spell casters to make hard decisions about whether to use their magic for utility purposes or combat. Ironically, the move to add damage-causing cantrips would have been enough to give spell casters more combat utility without needing to add rituals too.

Definitely agreed. The versatility of spellcasters in D&D has been one of the biggest enemies of effective balance in its cumulative history I think, but fans rioted when 4e tried to change that so I really just have to make peace with it not going anywhere.

Personally, I've never had issues with character imbalances. They've never been remotely severe enough to cause an issue with characters of the same level, and we frequently have characters of different levels too (as much as seven levels or more between them), and that also is not a factor. I'll readily admit that players that prefer to optimize their characters don't tend to play in my campaigns for long (at least not with that approach) because that really only works if I'm designing around combat-optimized players. I don't, and while I don't actively try to inhibit them, the types of encounters and tactics the monsters use frequently have that effect. Most of them, however, have stuck around, and just moved away from the optimization approach.

Eh anecdotes are just that unfortunately, because for my part I’ve experienced min-maxers damaging the game with out-of-combat optimization as well as the more common combat version. Running a non-standard game certainly helps reduce the likelihood of it occurring, but I maintain that the underlying system still needs a decent level of balance still.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

Not to be rude, but inexperienced or willfully obtuse players isn’t a defense. I’ve had characters play very unoptimized or underpowered characters and enjoy it, usually right up until an actual optimized player blows them out of the water in a similar field. Once again though, and I’m sure people are tired of hearing it, this is a defense of the idea of balance, that 5e gets it “close enough” that players don’t feel obligated to min-max out of necessity.

Or skilled players that have a different play style, perhaps?

Explain to me how an "actual optimized player" blows them out of the water? How your optimized character prevents me from playing the character of my choice, and doing so well. How does your optimized character limit anything that I can do?

Because that's difficult to do when the purpose of the game for them is to role-play a character, with the strengths and weaknesses, as a "real" person in a "real" world. That's not necessarily the purpose for everyone, but it is a valid and popular play style. Just as much as a group that prefers min/maxing.

The game isn't designed like MtG or a board game, or other types of games where it's a competition against the other players, and you're looking for the combination(s) that give you the advantage, and that there is one "best" combination for a given class. It can certainly support that style of play, but it's not the default design or the default method of play.

3e/3.5e and 4e were certainly better suited to that approach than other editions, and 4e seemed, in part, designed around that specific concept of balance.

More choices does not equal more balanced. More choices is more difficult to balance, because there are more things to try to balance. It can be balanced, but simply adding a choice doesn't guarantee it.

So the problem I think we're running into is one of definition, and the fact that we're jumping back and forth between two different kinds of balance/optimization.

There's the balance/optimization within a race or class, and then there is that of the game itself. Within a given race, they are generally optimized toward a particular class. In which case you might consider that unbalanced. But within the game, it's balanced against the other potential race/class combinations.

The half-orc (like all of the races) are unbalanced within themselves. Perhaps the half-orc moreso (I don't personally think so, but that's partially dependent on what somebody is looking for, so others obviously disagree). That is, the half-orc is optimized for being a Strength-based barbarian or fighter, which means it is unoptimized in being a bard, wizard, or rogue, for example. This is what I mean when saying optimized equals unbalanced. Unbalanced does not equal unplayable.

However, within the context of the game, the half-orc is balanced in regards to other races. It's strengths and weaknesses are different from the other races, but all of them can be used interchangeably within the context of the game. You can play a half-orc of any class, or even an entire party of half-orcs of mixed classes (optimized or not) and successfully play any of the published APs. Statistically, they won't be any more or less likely to complete the AP without dying, although the players might use different tactics to succeed.

In the past, many published adventures required certain classes (I don't recall any that were race-dependent), or magic items that provided the functionality of missing classes. In 1e the biggest requirement was some form of magical healing. You could go without it, if you were using the original mega-dungeon concept of Gary's home campaign where you'd go as far as you think you could, and still return without dying to rest for a week or two to regain all of your hit points. It was much, much harder to do that (if not impossible in some adventures) to go without magical healing and play a dungeon from start to finish without returning home to heal.

Of course, the cleric was the easiest way to guarantee you would have access to magical healing. At which point the expedition and return approach was no longer required. The published adventures, with some exceptions such as B2 Keep on the Borderlands assumed that you had some way of healing, so you would not have to return home, although they generally always contained potions of healing, etc. In theory you could rest for a week within a dungeon, but it would be very difficult.

The design of 5e is quite different. It is designed to be played with any mix of races or classes, and balanced (perhaps the term optimized would also apply) for a party of 4 of the same or similar levels. It doesn't presume the use of magical healing, magic items, or even spellcasting. Although more classes than ever (and even some races) have spellcasting.

The races (and classes, as always) are designed to fill different niches. Those niches are both mechanical and story/setting based. Half-orcs fill a particular niche. But if you want to swap out some abilities (such as giving them a bonus to Intelligence), it will not break the game. The game is balanced in a way that you can swap things around if you'd like, although there will undoubtedly be some things that might break the game.

Give a half-orc +2 to Charisma instead of strength and they'll make a great sorcerer or even bard. Or a +2 to Intelligence, and make a wizard that also has an edge on melee combat. Personally I don't think changing the ability bonus is necessary - because all of the classes will work just fine without changing it. But if it's that much of a big deal, then change it.

I understand the arguments that a 15 Dexterity is "better" than a 15 Strength. Mathematically, due to the specific benefits you gain from Dexterity, it gives you some advantages. But it doesn't guarantee a "better" character. A group that prioritizes role-playing above optimization has no issue with that. First, because it's not a game of comparing your ability against the guy next to you. Second, because the focus is on overcoming the challenges in the course of adventuring. You will have your strengths and weaknesses, and you're goal is to find ways to do that. Just like the wizard tends to hang back and out of melee combat because they know they aren't good at it, a Strength-based fighter might make different decisions than a Dexterity-based fighter. A half-orc sorcerer might do things a little differently than a human sorcerer. It has nothing to do with inexperience nor being willfully obtuse.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[James Gasik]

Really though, race abilities might trump stat adjustments, since everyone gets ASI's and without magic, everyone is limited to 20 in a stat. YMMV, but consider two Rogues.

One is from a "traditional" race and started with a 16-17 Dex. The other took a level of Fighter, is a Hill Dwarf, and only have 14-15 Dex. But thanks to Archery fighting style and better armor, and wielding a heavy crossbow, the Dwarf could have better to hit, the same damage, and better AC- and probably has more hit points.

A case could be made that neither is really better than the other, and that's ok- and either player could get 20 Dex if they felt they needed it...and the Dex race guy could get +2 to something else, or a feat. This is an example of the system at it's best, when you can make different choices but you don't have to feel like you're being punished for doing things differently.

I recently saw someone play an Orc Cleric, using aggressiveness as a way to get to wounded allies more quickly (and another player I saw used a Goblin Cleric as a way to circumvent the same problem). Are they as good as a Wisdom-race Cleric? Not as casters, but for what they wanted to be, highly mobile Clerics, they're at least as good, and might be better.

 

[Ancalagon]

Personally I don't think the issue is with this race or that race. I think the issue is that two of most classes in a party is too many. I feel it's rude for someone else to bring a monk into the game when you're already playing one.

I concur. The new Monk could have been "better" in a number of ways ("better" build, there are more ways to achieve than than by picking a different race). Is it a different sub-class at least?

There is a chance that the two of you could work together and do great things, but based on your reaction... probably not. So why is someone else making a monk when there is already one in the party again?

I recommend you start a new thread

 

[schnee]

Or skilled players that have a different play style, perhaps?

Explain to me how an "actual optimized player" blows them out of the water? How your optimized character prevents me from playing the character of my choice, and doing so well. How does your optimized character limit anything that I can do?

Because that's difficult to do when the purpose of the game for them is to role-play a character, with the strengths and weaknesses, as a "real" person in a "real" world. That's not necessarily the purpose for everyone, but it is a valid and popular play style. Just as much as a group that prefers min/maxing.

If the second character is so good the other one doesn't get a chance to do anything, then an entire part of the game - being an effective contributor to the party - is taken away.

I've seen it happen.

All your theoretical positivism sounds good in forum posts but people come to D&D to play a crunchy RPG. It's based on dice rolls, and probability curves, and a balance of successes and failures to create tension and fun. When your character's successes are taken away, a big dimension of the game as it was designed is nullified.

Now, if we were talking a story game, like FATE or Polaris, then sure! The mechanics of the game give equal narrative and event-changing power to Dudley DoEverythingRight and Sadface McScrewup, so you have free reign to explore characters of that type and the game supports it. But D&D isn't like that. The right player can hog the table via rules mastery, and min/maxing can make one character feature - say, 'doing HP damage' - so high that it takes over unless the DM metagames to counter it.

--

After thinking about it, I'm coming around to the problem being the other player built a monk without talking to the OP first. AND, the DM let it happen without making sure it was cool. That's a table etiquette thing of basic decency.

People don't play D&D to 'HTFU' and deal with interpersonal BS gracefully, they play to escape that stuff for a while and have some fun. The only drama instigated at a table should be between the characters, after both players have a good enough relationship to have fun with it.

It's a small thing, but personal relationships are build or broken on a collection of small things.

OP, I hope you can have a chat with the other player. It's probably unintentional, so my guess is it'll go well.

 

[Eltab]

The wood elf can marathon that 35' speed - all day long (until somebody remembers Encumbrance or Exhaustion rules).

The tabaxi is a cheetah: super-fast but short-term sprint and then he must stop dead in his tracks to recover. AFB: does he need a Rest to recover the sprint ability?

As noted above, talk to the other player and the DM - separately and together - to explain your concerns. If the other player is in to teamwork, he will figure out how to complement your abilities, not just copy them. And the group as a whole might not be better off if it has two speedsters plus a bunch of slowpokes dragging behind; this causes 'splitting up the party'.