D&D 5E (Tasha's) Decoupling racial abilities--cautionary tale

[TwoSix]

Imagine a world, if you will, where any race you choose could have savage attacks, elven accuracy feat, and reckless attacks

"I see trees of green, red roses too,
I see them bloom, for me and you,
and I think to myself
What a wonderful world."

 

[jasper]

They've distanced themselves from the PO style by repeatedly saying the new system will be "straightforward" and "simple". Which nothing involving points-valuing races and their abilities could ever be suggested to be.

..

sure sure. And they promised Oceans 11 when they were talking about Waterdeep Heist.

 

[commandercrud]

A gnome has the same attribute range for STR as a goliath. It's just dumb. It doesn't really matter anymore what WOTC does.

 

[amethal]

I'm not saying TCoE will do that, but I hope they saw what happened with PO and paid attention to lessons learned.

PO had no interest in balance. Hopefully WotC does, so they have no need to learn that lesson.

I seem to remember designing a Githyanki character which gained extra points (to spend on combat abilities) due to being unable to lie. I was only a teenager at the time, but even then I knew that was not acceptable for a character that was actually going to be played (rather than a thought experiment).

 

[Marandahir]

It doesn't matter whether it's points or pools.

The point is that WotC already designs lineages and classes and subclasses by looking at like vs like features for balance. Spells, feats, ability score modifiers, and proficiencies are basic benchmarks that can be weighed against one another, while ribbons are essentially tax-free.

They're giving us some sort of build-a-bear lineage system, and that means that the features have weight, they're not just equally replaceable. You can hide the weights by pooling types of abilities together, but if you're saying "If you choose Darkvision, you don't get x bonus feature" then it's point buy, just with a friendly face on it.

 

[GlassJaw]

Cautionary tale: don't design it the bad way.

 

[Sacrosanct]

PO had no interest in balance. Hopefully WotC does, so they have no need to learn that lesson.

I seem to remember designing a Githyanki character which gained extra points (to spend on combat abilities) due to being unable to lie. I was only a teenager at the time, but even then I knew that was not acceptable for a character that was actually going to be played (rather than a thought experiment).

I had a paladin of Ilmatr who couldn't wear armor, but got d12 for hit points and spells earlier. My theme was that he always felt like he had to suffer pain in the place of others (hence the no armor), but had the ability to withstand the pain (the increased hit die and earlier cure spells)

 

[Sir Brennen]

I hope everything isn't up for grabs when designing a lineage, but more along the lines of "culture" vs "ancestry", where cultural features are swappable/blank-fillable, but ancestry isn't. Similar to a couple of supplements on the DMs Guild.

I mean, only dragonborn should have dragon breath weapons. But a High Elf might not learn any elven weapons, or skip learning a cantrip, or not even learn Elvish, in favor of some other cultural features from another lineage. But they'd always have Darkvision and Fey Ancestry, as they're physically (or magically) inherent traits.

While Attribute Increases could fall under either, I'm almost certain they're just going to open that up to adding +2, +1 where you like. Which is fine. I think it opens up a lot of interesting choices, as players will no longer have to worry about selecting a "sub-optimal" race/class combination. They can play the character they envision without feeling they've shorted themselves somehow.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I am not really fond of customizing your race. I like packages that give defined abilities so you have something to rely on. Elves are just built lighter than humans and more dextrous. You can already use every race for every class.

On the other hand, I really liked that in the playtest DnDnext there was an iteration where classes gave +1 to their main stat. So I would not mind if being an elf would only come with +1 dexterity.
I could also live with elven weappn training not being an inherent ability because it is more cultural than a biological thing.

So my hope will be that every race only gains one single defining ability and cultural things can be swapped.
A dwarf might be resistant to poison by nature while the gnome may retain magical immunity. An elf will have perception and sleep immunity by default etc. Elven weapon training and such can be swapped for something else.

 

[FrogReaver]

It doesn't matter whether it's points or pools.

The point is that WotC already designs lineages and classes and subclasses by looking at like vs like features for balance. Spells, feats, ability score modifiers, and proficiencies are basic benchmarks that can be weighed against one another, while ribbons are essentially tax-free.

They're giving us some sort of build-a-bear lineage system, and that means that the features have weight, they're not just equally replaceable. You can hide the weights by pooling types of abilities together, but if you're saying "If you choose Darkvision, you don't get x bonus feature" then it's point buy, just with a friendly face on it.

that was my first thought as well. But it’s really not as open ended as point buy. Not being able to trade multiple minor abilities for 1 major ability or vice versa helps reign in some of the min/max.