D&D 5E Unearthed Arcana: Gothic Lineages & New Race/Culture Distinction

The latest Unearthed Arcana contains the Dhampir, Reborn, and Hexblood races. The Dhampir is a half-vampire; the Hexblood is a character which has made a pact with a hag; and the Reborn is somebody brought back to life.

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Perhaps the bigger news is this declaration on how race is to be handled in future D&D books as it joins other games by stating that:

"...the race options in this article and in future D&D books lack the Ability Score Increase trait, the Language trait, the Alignment trait, and any other trait that is purely cultural. Racial traits henceforth reflect only the physical or magical realities of being a player character who’s a member of a particular lineage. Such traits include things like darkvision, a breath weapon (as in the dragonborn), or innate magical ability (as in the forest gnome). Such traits don’t include cultural characteristics, like language or training with a weapon or a tool, and the traits also don’t include an alignment suggestion, since alignment is a choice for each individual, not a characteristic shared by a lineage."

 

[JiffyPopTart]

If you live in the US, that is...saddening. Neo-Nazis have been using 14, 88, and 1488, as signals of Nazi affiliation for several decades, now. Very commonly.

I live in the US...but the Venn Diagram of "Things I learn doing what I do everyday" and "Neo-nazi culture" doesn't really have an overlap. Other than their portrayal in movies...I guess.

And, just to make sure I'm not going to get the stink eye at some point in the future I'm going to make the public statement now that I have a 42 in my name because I like Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and 42 has been my favorite number since I read it 30ish years ago.

Now I will hunker down and wait for the red text of silence....

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I live in the US...but the Venn Diagram of "Things I learn doing what I do everyday" and "Neo-nazi culture" doesn't really have an overlap. Other than their portrayal in movies...I guess.

Sounds nice. Many of us don’t have the luxury of pretending the Nazis don’t exist or don’t matter.

Google “the Nazi bar rule” for a good explanation of why folks find it useful to know how Nazis signal to eachother their affiliation.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Sounds nice. Many of us don’t have the luxury of pretending the Nazis don’t exist or don’t matter.

Google “the Nazi bar rule” for a good explanation of why folks find it useful to know how Nazis signal to eachother their affiliation.

Thank you for the personal jab and virtue signal. I won't fight you for the higher pedestal on the Good Guy scale, it's all yours.

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

One of the projects I'm working on is a TSR-era clone to be presented in a more inclusive way, both mechanically and aesthetically (long story for a different discussion). The overwhelming feedback I've gotten from that is to not have racial ability modifiers (not just because B/X didn't have them either, but that helped) or at the very least to make them less impactful and to instead implement ability modifiers based on culture and class.

WoTC has moved towards that direction now. PF already has IIRC.

So look. That's the way rpg game design is going. There are always trends in the community, and this is a pretty big one and I think it's here to stay. There are too many reasons to not have them (racial connotations, lack of customization, etc) and not enough to keep them (but halflings shouldn't be a strong as a goliath in a fantasy game where the same PC can go toe to toe wrestling a storm giant at a certain level).

We can either accept it and move on, or still be bitter about it to no constructive purpose at all. None of these discussions will change how the ttrpg design community is going away from racial modifiers.

I'm reminded of the Bob Dylan song, The Times, They Are A Change'n.

Understood, but this is not necessarily good. You assume that this changes in the wind are good. I say that the optimum would be if the changes focus on distortion and not to push to twist reality. Remember "war is peace", "slavery is freedom"...? I feel myself as somebody who wants logic and reality prevail. When an idea of society overcome reality you easily end up in building something very nasty and the history has given many examples of this. Obviously you can consider this a little bit exagerated in the context of a game, but ideology penetrate in society as slowly as a poison in the vein, using language as vector and twisting the words then it penetrates, day by day, in all human activity. My 9 years old son, reading a RPG manual where STR is defined as a Cultural attribute, absorb this concept and could make wrong assumption based on that fact that could bring him in error in another occasion in his life totally uncorrelated with games.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

* Do you think a revival of 3.5 "the ghost walk" mini-setting would mix good with gothic horror?

* I guess usually people from cities and big capitals are more inteliggent than the classic farmers, because their jobs are linked with mental operations and not with muscles. These are social circustances, not linked with genetic. Peasants' children with the right education also may be smarter.

* I am think about the magic token of the hexblood and how to do it more interesting but without being overpowered. It is sounds as to be more useful with a sidekick or animal companion, or a remote-controll construct. Why not racial feat for hexblood to "upgrade" those magic tokens? For example a catrip of illusory magic to send written messages as light runes.

* Racial traits based in "cultural legacies" should be modular, easily exchangle with other, and racial traits based in "inborn heritage" could be interchangeable because that PC is from a special bloodline (for example a halfling with an elf ancestor, an orc with an ogre granmother or a gnome with a piece of dwarf blood).

* If you want to create a story about intolerance and coexistence, with mutants, "flatscans/muggles" or mutant-hunter sentinel robots, my advice is reporting hate and fear is not enough, we need mercy, respect for human dignity and mutual trust, and this last one can't be asked, but everybody has to make an effort. Without the respect for the human dignity who fights againt authority later may become a new tyrant, sometimes worse than the previous one.

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

I've never heard anything like this before. I've been using this username for a while; no one ever said anything remotely like that to me. 8 has been my favorite number since I was 8 years old (it was a good year), so whenever I have to type a number I type 8 or 88. And when I signed up for the forums, Hurin was taken, so I typed 88.

But now that I've been made aware that this number is used by white supremacists, let me be clear, so we can all move on: I reject white supremacy and all forms of racism. I never intended to perpetuate such a harmful and misguided ideology. My apologies if I gave the impression that I was signaling white nationalists.

Exactly what I fear. Witch-hunting a go-go. Scientifc concept twisted, ideology in games, words that change meaning. This will end up in being as horrible as racism, if we do not rebalance with some logic and sobriety. It's been 25 years that I consider racism in USA society a very deprecable thing, but when I've seen that "inclusivity" issue start to affect language I was very concerned because language is reality. You can change the words you use but the limit is not to change their meaning.

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

It's literally one of the most common Nazi symbols...

You are being redirected...

www.adl.org

Guys, where do Hurin88 come from? 88 is a common nazi symbol in USA. You are not the whole world. In Europe (and we know something of Nazism) the 88 as nazi symbol is recognized by the 0,0001 % of people. Just to inform you.

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

Well, RIP this thread...

And RIPed by a supposed good side one. Significant.

 

[Argyle King]

If you live in the US, that is...saddening. Neo-Nazis have been using 14, 88, and 1488, as signals of Nazi affiliation for several decades, now. Very commonly.

I don't associate with Nazis, and I don't live somewhere that the community would accept their behavior.

I'm inclined to see that as a good thing, not "sad."

 

[Aldarc]

I'm a bit late to the party, and I apologize for the post from a long ways back. Every time that I think that I am caught up, this thread seems to jump 20+ pages.

Perhaps my greatest problem with the end of assigned ASI's is that it breaks the connection between the description of the race and its actual mechanical benefits.

Here for example are some of the things that the PHB says about Dwarves:

--It says that they are 'hardy'. But they're really no more 'hardy' than any other race now, at least in terms of their stats.
--Dwarves are 'solid and enduring like the mountains'. No, not any more than any other race.
--Hill Dwarves are known for their 'deep intuition'. Yeah, not really any more.

Elves
--Elves have 'otherworldly grace'. Again, not really.
--Wood Elves have 'keen senses and intuition'. Nope.
--High Elves have 'keen minds'. Not any keener than an Orc.

And you could go on and on like this. There's no connection anymore between the description/lore and the stats.

If this is D&D, then stats are much better in Rolemaster now. There, Race is nature, and culture is nurture. Race therefore affects stats and who gets Darkvision or Flying. Culture affects learned behavior like skills/proficiencies. That makes more sense to me. Just my opinion of course.

Ability score modifiers are IMHO the LEAST INTERESTING and LEAST MEANINGFUL way to express differences between ancestries. What is mechanically interesting to me with dwarves, for example, is not that they get +2 Con, but, rather, that they get advantage on poison saves, resistance to poison damage, and that hill dwarves get a bonus 1 HP per level. That expresses their hardy nature in a way more intrinsically than ASIs. I think that I would like to see more of stuff like this rather than a +2 Stat.

I appreciate, for example, how Pathfinder 2 separates out the biological from the cultural a bit more clearly too, including the possibility of having ancestries of different bioforms growing up and learning another ancestry's cultural training.

But note that if you give the races special abilities that emphasize the same thing...e.g. an elven ability "otherworldly grace" with a mechanic that emphasizes that aspect...then even the elves with low dexterity will be examples of the trope.

This is one thing, IMHO, that 4e did well. It gave every race an ability that keyed in on their trope: eladrin fey step, dwarven resilience and stand your ground, elven accuracy and wild step, etc.