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."

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Ultimately I don't even get the whole balance angle. Like why it even matters? This is not a completive game. Why it matters if a goliath fighter would do 15% more damage than a halfling one? I have played and run all sorts of RPGs where there were far greater power discrepancies between characters than any D&D race choices are capable of producing. Exalted games where some people played Dragon-Blooded and some played Solars (Solars are the most powerful exalts, DB are the weakest,) I have played in Ars Magica games where some people played mages with reality editing powers and others played non-magical companions. As long as every character gets to contribute in some way and the spotlight is roughly evenly shared it is all good. Agonising over some minute power differences in a non-competitive roleplaying game where the purpose is to immerse in the world instead of 'winning' seems utterly bonkers to me.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Yeah, I'm happily engaging on the one stat that best makes their case. And, in my mind, it still falls apart.

Again, not that Minotaurs aren't stronger than halflings. Rather than it's good game design to minimize obvious "best" character creation choices, and that if the result of doing that is a slight statistical increase in halflings that are stronger than minotaurs, that's an oddity that a game with magic spells and dragons and interplanar travel can accommodate.

Yeah I definitely feel like stuff like Powerful Build is a better way to try and model the kind of differences people are concerned about rather than fiddling with actual STR values. Particularly as with actual values, the +1 STR mod really doesn't make a lot of difference on any given roll, only where a lot of rolls take place. Whereas Powerful Build makes a gigantic difference where it comes into play (as do the size-based weight-capacity mods 5E has built in).

Again 2E and earlier, when you had stat minimums AND maximums for races, those did a better job than stat modifiers in terms of exemplifying difference, but that approach is long-dead.

 

[BookTenTiger]

Agonising over some minute power differences in a non-competitive roleplaying game where the purpose is to immerse in the world instead of 'winning' seems utterly bonkers to me.

What else are D&D forums for???

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Ultimately I don't even get the whole balance angle. Like why it even matters? This is not a completive game. Why it matters if a goliath fighter would do 15% more damage than a halfling one? I have played and run all sorts of RPGs where there were far greater power discrepancies between characters than any D&D race choices are capable of producing. Exalted games where some people played Dragon-Blooded and some played Solars (Solars are the most powerful exalts, DB are the weakest,) I have played in Ars Magica games where some people played mages with reality editing powers and others played non-magical companions. As long as every character gets to contribute in some way and the spotlight is roughly evenly shared it is all good. Agonising over some minute power differences in a non-competitive roleplaying game where the purpose is to immerse in the world instead of 'winning' seems utterly bonkers to me.

It's fine that you "don't get it", but you have to accept that because you don't get it, you don't get it.

It's like, I don't get the appeal of certain musicians. But I accept that I don't get it, and I don't around saying they should play some "real music" instead or whatever. Sometimes when you don't understand something you don't understand it.

And this is one of those times.

It's not a complex argument, and it's been discussed at length in this thread, but you are proving that yes, you genuinely do not understand it, and you're misrepresenting what's going on as a result, and so on. So maybe move aside?

Additionally, to be clear, it's possible to both love something asymmetrical like Ars Magica, and yet think that this sort of balance issue matters in D&D. Ars Magica is a fundamentally incredibly distant from your typical D&D game. It's kind of funny to think they might even be put in the same broad genre, because they're so different.

(Tot aside, but as for Exalted, well, I wouldn't hold that up as a great example of how well asymmetrical games work. Especially not with Solars and DBs in the same party. Mechanically, Exalted is a hideous mess in every edition, and how well Charms work is all over the place. People have noted many times that DBs are supposed to be drastically weaker than Solars in lore, to the point where one Solar should be able to easily best at least 2-3 DBs, if not many more than that. But in no edition of Exalted is that true if you use the PC rules for Solars and DBs. If you use the NPC stat-blocks for DBs it is true, but... PC DBs can also see off multiple NPC DBs... sooooo that's showing the issue. PC Solars and DBs are much closer in performance than they are in lore, and in fact, depending on edition, in some cases the DBs actually have better Charms, and ones they may be able to use more often and more effectively, than Solars. As I said, Exalted is a huge mess.)

 

[Umbran]

So, in short, no. It’s not just resistance to political correctness. I have vanishingly little respect or patience for anti-PC mentalities.

Mod Note:
Then, you're just going to love this...

You know we have a no-real-world-politics rule. You just tromped right through it. Please take the issues or real-world Nazis elsewhere. Thanks.

 

[TrickyDUK2]

Honest question, dont we only have to be concerned about new races going forward?

The stats for the existing "103" are already listed.

Yes, but if a new race appears without racial ASIs, my players would then:

a) ask me if I have a default assumption; and/or
b) question whether this rule now applies to all existing races.

And I would be like, I don't have a default assumption, and no, the rule does not apply to existing races (and I don't allow Tasha's as an option).

And then I could imagine my players saying that the game is now unbalanced unless I ban the new race.

And so, I would then suggest that if they want that level of customisation in the character creation rules, let's play Pathfinder! (slight sarcasm)

Another part of my problem with this is that this change feels quite fundamental to the game (admitting that +1/+2 isn't mechanically overwhelming); something that I would expect to see with an edition change, not during the life cycle, unless it was clearly marked as optional. But the article says this will now be the default (and so 'core rules'?) approach. So from now on, we have 2 standards.

 

[TwoSix]

I elaborated on my response, but the short version is: in this thread I have seen lots of pro-ASI people assuming the anti-ASI people are arguing against biological essentialism. But the anti-ASI people are, as far as I've seen, basically saying, "Sure, Minotaurs tend to be stronger than Halflings. But modeling that by limiting player character options isn't useful." It's entirely a game design argument, and not at all about moral philosophy.

Yep. My personal philosophies don’t match the position I hold here, I want decoupled ASIs purely for game design reasons.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Particularly as with actual values, the +1 STR mod really doesn't make a lot of difference on any given roll, only where a lot of rolls take place. Whereas Powerful Build makes a gigantic difference where it comes into play (as do the size-based weight-capacity mods 5E has built in).

Totally agree. I've made this point in other threads on this topic. The ASI has a statistical impact, but at the table you don't really notice it on a roll-by-roll basis. The character is more effective, but it doesn't feel distinctive. When the 5th level Dwarf drops to 4 HP, technically it's the racial bonus to Con that kept him up, but does anybody notice that, or think, "Good thing he's a Dwarf!" (Maybe at your table; not at mine.)

But when the half-orc player drops to 0, and the player announces, "I'm still up! Relentless Endurance!" it feels tough.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Upthread somebody mentioned that they replaced the six attributes with new names. The one I remember is replacing "Strength" with "Valour". I think that's genius. Certainly a halfling could be as valorous as a minotaur.

Yeah, that would solve any issue I might have with it, coupled with those "unique racial abilities" we all want. But of course, they would never do that because the stat names are an essential part of product identity. And maintaining that has to be WorC's highest priority, as a business. If it weren't, I'm confident they would have announced a revised PH by now.

 

[TrickyDUK2]

Sure. But that's always going to happen, unless they always add and never take away. Right?



Is it that you are worried other "defaults" will also start to vanish? Which ones? Because it's hard (for me) to see how racial ASIs are the difference between easy world-building and hard world-building. Especially given that it has no effect on NPC stat blocks.

I don't want world build at all, I just want to open the book and play (I only use published adventures), and I want players at my table to be able to do the same.