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]

See, but they don't want to choose to play an unoptimized combo. If that were the case they would have no problem choosing to put their ASIs in unoptimized places. They want the game devs to box them into a single choice, that forces them to put the ASIs in an assigned place, then play it as an unoptimized combo.

You want to overcome disadvantage by playing a wizard with no INT boost? Then play a wizard, and don't boost your INT. Boost Strength and Wisdom instead. You don't want to do that and you want to have the devs that you have to put your boosts into Strength and Wisdom? Okay. They might give you those limits going forward as an option, but if they don't then just like playing a human, you are going to have to figure it out on your own.

Should this logic applied to everything in the game and if no, why not? Like for example why differnt classes get differnt spells? Why cant everyone just choose every spell, and if you want to work with the limitation of your wizard not having healing spells, just don't learn them! Working with the limitations just isn't quite the same if you intentionally gimp yourself, right?

 

[Chaosmancer]

Well, it is kind of terrible to add more races if they're not going to actually flesh out those races. On major complaint I see about 3x is the lack of depth provided for each race or monster, or even the lack of mechanical support. If they keep adding new races, then it just gets worse and worse. Xanathar's had a list of racial feats--which supported only the PH races. Mordenkainen's had a chapter of culture and history for a handful of the available races. Are they going to provide racial feats and cultural depth for all the dozens of other races they've put out so far? Doesn't see like it. I'm not against producing new PC races if they fill a niche, but I am against unnecessary bloat.

I agree with you and disagree with you at the same time.

We should get more racial feats, but at the same time only like... four of the ones we got previously were really worth taking most of the time, and one is a power gamer's dream.

I'd love to see some more in-depth lore for some of the races, but at the same time, most DnD lore for such things is pretty terrible. Elves and Gnomes got it decently good, Dwarves with one glaring exception were treated all right, but most of the rest is a mess. A mess that, frankly, I write my own versions of constantly. So, I don't really need them to write stuff for races I'm already looking to rewrite.

Also, these particular lineages (Dhampir, Hexblood, Reborn) fit tropes that are really hard to hit otherwise. They aren't full races, they are... conditions, tropes, the gap pieces. And because of how they are designed, if they expanded on the lore like they did in Mordenkainen's I'd be really upset, because that defeats the purpose of things like this.

Also, if I really, really want to play, say, an elf or a tiefling, and I have a whole background for it, but in order to be properly "optimized" or "suboptimized" I have to play a halfling, then it just kind of screws me over. I can either play a race I want but can't play it the way I want, or I can play a race I don't want to play the class the way I like. Seems pretty unfair.

Which is why I like Tasha's.

You want to play a Tielfing. Play a Tiefling, and if you want to optimized, optimize your ASIs and if you don't, don't. Getting that freedom to chose is the reason I love the rule. I can play the background and race and story I want, and not worry about whether or not I'm falling behind the group

 

[Chaosmancer]

Should this logic applied to everything in the game and if no, why not? Like for example why different classes get different spells? Why cant everyone just choose every spell, and if you want to work with the limitation of your wizard not having healing spells, just don't learn them! Working with the limitations just isn't quite the same if you intentionally gimp yourself, right?

There is a fundamental difference that you are ignoring.

If I want to play a Tiefling in my homebrew world, who follows the Lost Legion and becomes a heavily armored Fighter, then the Tiefling stats in the Player's Handbook are a terrible match. I am a subpar fighter. People can tell me all day long about how I'm not and it is all in my head, but I play with people who do paladin/Warlock multi-classing and think GWM is a mandatory feat. Strength 15 isn't going to cut it and I'll be behind the entire game. I could play a different race, but then the story and the significance of the Lost Legion is completely lost.


But, let us say I want to play a wizard who heals.

1) I could multi-class cleric
2) I could multi-class Artificer
3) I could grab magic initiate cleric
4) I could grab artificer initiate
5) I could go into the UAs and ask to play a Theurgy Tradition Wizard.

If it is just healing + arcane magic I could play a Arcana Cleric, a bard, a divine soul sorcerer a celestial warlock.

I could devote time in game to researching healing magic. Life Transference is a healing spell, it would make a great place to start.

If I don't mind it being because of items or blessings, I could get magical items that heal. Or I could ask to use the Piety system from Theros based off of Pharika for balance reasons.

Sure, a lot of this is far harder, and it won't be online from level 1 for most of it, but there exist dozens of options to figure out how to mess with something like this. Meanwhile, the Tielfing Fighter just wants to be as good as a Human Fighter, and all I need is a +1 strength to pull that off.

Unlike playing a wizard with access to healing spells, this doesn't change the balance of the game at all. Fighters having 16 strength is practically expected. And it also allows for literally uncountable other options and stories by opening every race. Things I have seen people try and do all the time. Meanwhile, Wizard who heals is not something I see people trying to do very often, and it has far more potential to mess with game balance.

 

[The Myopic Sniper]

Honestly, I think racial feats are dead for the remainder of this edition for the reasoning that they gave for limiting lineages to only biological and innately magical abilities that aren't learned or cultural.

I realize that stuff like Elven Accuracy is somewhat supposed to represent elven superhuman perception, but I don't think it is in their interest to gate things off that way anymore if they are serious about shaking the criticism of the bioessentialism of a lot of the current racial constructs in the game. And, yes, I do think they are serious about improving in this area.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

How is the result meaningfully differnt? For example if you have a static bonus to attack rolls, you hit a bit more often. If you have some resource you can spent for rerolls/bonuses you also hit a bit more often. In either case the character with bonus/resource hits more often than one without it.

You don't have to use, say, Strength to boost an attack, for one thing. You can use whatever makes sense for your character and what you're doing in the moment. Secondly, Attribute Points are also used to fuel special abilities, activate active defenses, and are of course a limited resource. Some of those abilities do require a point from a specific attribute, while others aren't specific.

So, if you want to make a Slayer with the Berserker trait, who is also very smart, and treat your Berserker state as a hyperfocus ability, or even just as separate from your intelligence, or whatever you want, you can, and the mechanics don't get in your way.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The Cypher System is pretty interesting, although I can definitely see where you come from re: Numenera. They recently put out "Godforsaken," their version of D&D. It's a much smaller pdf, though, more a guide to running D&D-style fantasy using the system.

Mind you, in Cypher, your Might, Speed, and Intellect will start at different levels depending on what Type (class) you pick--but you have some free points to distribute however you wish, and many of the Descriptors give you bonuses to your stat pools.

I've been thinking about shrinking the attribute list down to Fitness, Wits, and Will, but I haven't decided yet if I want to.

Anyway, yeah, Numenara just...it's a sci-fi setting pretending to be a fantasy setting, and to me, that hook only works about once in a given world. From then on, we all know it's all tech, but the world keeps trying to act like it's magic, and I just would rather play star wars or something at that point.

 

[Scott Christian]

Well it's a compromise with the fact that it's practically impossible to have an Intelligent Barbarian or Paladin, which in my opinion is just egregiously stupid.

You have always been consistent Don. But, this just rings of another: I want it now.

I want my barbarian to be just as smart as the wizard. There are, after all, real life examples of this; football linemen that have 4.0 GPAs or have off the charts mechanical aptitude.

Yet, the entire thing seems to just ring (to me) of I want my barbarian to be smart too. The game should let me have a smart barbarian, and a high con barbarian and a strong barbarian, etc.

I mean, for all these people that need the extra points, why not just increase the point buy by six or eight? It won't break the game, especially if your entire group does it. It actually will not change anything. Goes back to me wanting them to place different point buys in the DM's Guide's section of styles of play.

 

[Scott Christian]

I'd agree, except normally in a party someone else has got you covered, so being a generalist doesn't help, especially when it means a determent to your core role. D&D is very much designed for a group of different individuals with working together none of them on their own can cover all the bases but together as a team they do. D&D if you try and be a Jack of All trades you tend to find you are a master of none, and someone else in the party is a Master of whatever "trade" is needed at the time.

I think it is an active design choice that you don't have Fighters that are skilled or particularly intelligent, as it protects the niche for Rogues and Wizards. Similarly they don't get lots of hit points or AC.

Because of this design choice it is really hard to make the renaissance man type hero that is pretty common in fiction, fiction that often only has one or at most two main protagonists so they need to be good at everything.

This. All this. With lobster on the side.

 

[Scott Christian]

More like Numenera, then? (That's the closest analogue that comes to mind.)

I've come to pretty much the same conclusion. The best way to allow stats to represent in-game fiction but still maintain maximum flexibility in character building is to divorce stats from combat math. Have them function as prereqs for other character building choices, and/or use the classic numbers to drive a point currency for alternative effects.

Yeah. I like the idea of having the stats be the max for the skill, and each level being able to raise a stat by one. This presents a whole lot more paths as you level. Also, you can play race, culture, background, and class into the skills - allows people to play the mix and match combo game that is integral to character creation.

 

[Scott Christian]

I agree with you and disagree with you at the same time.

We should get more racial feats, but at the same time only like... four of the ones we got previously were really worth taking most of the time, and one is a power gamer's dream.

I'd love to see some more in-depth lore for some of the races, but at the same time, most DnD lore for such things is pretty terrible. Elves and Gnomes got it decently good, Dwarves with one glaring exception were treated all right, but most of the rest is a mess. A mess that, frankly, I write my own versions of constantly. So, I don't really need them to write stuff for races I'm already looking to rewrite.

I thought we went through this earlier. How many racial feats can you come up with until they start to lean heavily towards a specific class? I think we got up to four or five, then it all started to lean. There are only so many things on the character sheet to play with. That is one of the reasons removing ASIs homogenizes things.

Here is an example:
Wood elf barbarian: +2 strength but also gets to heal in four hours. For some tables that is god-like. And keen senses, darkvision and fey ancestry. Oh, and they get a cantrip and an extra language, or keen senses, run 35', and mask of the wild. I mean, it is a min/maxers dream at some tables to heal in four hours while reducing damage during rage and getting a strength bonus.

But I get it. Having all those things and only starting with a 15 strength is unfair.