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."

 

[Krachek]

The main bug on this strength case is the impact of Athletic skill.
In most situation, grappling,shoving, the skill modifier is more important than the ability bonus. So the big strong guy is the one with expertise in athletic, the others just look normal.
Some skill have more impact on how you are perceived than your ability score.
Persuade and intimidate, perception, athletic, acrobatic, can define more your character look than actual ability score.

 

[Chaosmancer]

However, by the same logic, that 16 score that seems to be viewed as a requirement, is only a 5% (1 in 20) better chance of success.

Yeah, a 16 plus prof is a +5, which makes a DC 15 a 50/50 shot. It isn't much better. But right now it is the standard for 1st level characters. They should have a 50/50 shot at doing a DC 15 check on something they are trained to do.

The fact that that is as strong as a gorilla and lets them lift 480 lbs over their head doesn't matter, since it gives them a 50/50 shot at breaking down a well-made wooden door.

That was the point of the example. What some people are holding up as immensely strong is still weaker than the average expected abilities of a 1st level PC. Which leaves us three options as solutions:

1) Rewrite the entire system of DC's and AC to bring everything down, throwing the entire system out of whack

2) Redo every explanation for what the average is

3) Let PCs have a 16, so they at least hit the average expected for their class in these abilities.

 

[Chaosmancer]

You could always play an elven cleric (except in basic when elf was an class.)

Right.

And just like my Gnome Cleric or my one players Dragonborn Cleric, unless I'm playing a Wood Elf for the +1 Wisdom, I'm going to suck at it.

You can claim until you are blue in the face that I am wrong, that 5% doesn't make that much of a difference, but that 1 fewer spells prepared? That 1 point lower DC? They do matter. They matter A LOT. I know. If it had been a single character who had felt like they were underpowered, if it had just been me feeling that way, I might dismiss it. It could just be me. But it isn't. Another person I played with had the exact same experience.

And everyone else? They started with a 16 or higher in their prime stats. Every single person I have played with over the entire life of the game.

Feel free to tell me I'm wrong, that I'm a powergamer or a min-maxxer or whatever you want to call me. I tried it. Another person tried it. Both of us, independently, felt that it sucked. We didn't have fun with those characters.

You of course can play the game however you want, it just seems a bit weird to get hung up on one set of spat choices restricting what your character can do when the whole bloody game is build upon that very concept.

Personal Experience is powerful. Maybe you have the opposite experience? Congrats. I don't. I will never play a caster with less than a 16 starting again. It doesn't work for us. So, I'm going to use Tasha's. Because that helps me match the game math.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I don't like PC races to be too typecasted into certain type of classes, but neither the opposite side. I like PC races with their special traits, their own "special field". D&D was designed to be an asysmetric cooperative. This means all PCs have got strong and weak points. If the halfling can became too strong, then you are quitting her weak point, and all the PC races in the end may become too homogeneus, at least the gameplay.

Too perfect characters become boring and annoying "Mary Sue". Good characters should have got some flaw or touch of "little ugly duckling". Rookies players and munchkins want to be Superman since the zero minute but good players want to start from zero, being Robin, the sidekick and upgrading until to be Nightwing, Red Hood or even as good as Batman himself.

This is another argument that I just can't stand.

First of all, is Robin as good as Batman? No.

But how good is Robin? Well, he has Superhuman physical attributes. He constantly dodges gunfire, before even training with Batman he lifted a massively thick wooden construction beam, after training he once latched a motorcycle with a grappling hook and held it in place until the hook ripped out of the bike. Toughness wise? Again, pretraining he took a brick to the face swung by two-face, and was only dazed for a second. After training he was tackled off of a building, smashing into a car and rolled off of it to keep fighting. He can casually out fight trained mercenaries and other fighters who tangle with other heroes.

I think you get the idea. Robin may not be as good as Batman, but he has been shown to be faster, tougher, stronger and more skilled than just about any real world marine you may want to pick out. He is superhuman.


But now to the second point. Mary Sues.

No, having a 16 in your highest stat doesn't make you a perfect mary sue who can never fail and is as powerful as Superman. Heck, having a 20 doesn't do that. A 20 strength means that if you don't have proficiency in athletics you can hit a DC 15 50% of the time. Ever seen Superman fail half the time he tries to bust down a wooden door? How about Captain America? How about Hawkeye or Batman?

Also, let us say that you have that 20 stat by level 1, that gives you a +7 to hit with your weapons. AC 16, basic starter adventuring gear with scale and shield. You hit about 60% of the time, you still miss 40%. You aren't perfect, you aren't unbeatable. You are barely better than a coin flip.

And, you know what? You can still have room for growth. You can still have flaws. I don't understand how this always becomes a question of "but if you have a 16 in your main stat, how do you have any flaws? You need low scores to have flaws"

No, you don't. There are literally hundreds of flaws you can have that don't require you to be bad at your primary job. I'm playing a character just now who is brash and impulsive. Those are flaws. They have literally nothing to do with any ability scores. This idea that you need ability score "adversity" to have an interesting character is utter BS.

 

[Scott Christian]

You know, not every game starts at 1st level, especially if they're not using a bought adventure. It seems more and more common to start games at 3rd level. Everyone has their archetype and there's enough room in your background that if you wrote your character performing any sort of heroics or gaining any sort of unusual knowledge, it makes sense.

I don't know about more common, but that is a good point. Not all games start at first level.

 

[Chaosmancer]

The main bug on this strength case is the impact of Athletic skill.
In most situation, grappling,shoving, the skill modifier is more important than the ability bonus. So the big strong guy is the one with expertise in athletic, the others just look normal.
Some skill have more impact on how you are perceived than your ability score.
Persuade and intimidate, perception, athletic, acrobatic, can define more your character look than actual ability score.

They can, and they also can lead to really strange situations.

Who is the best grappler?

A Rogue or a Bard. Expertise makes them better than even a Raging Barbarian who has advantage.

 

[Faolyn]

And if third person's character concept is that they're an half-orc that worked their ass off in the gym and is basically made of muscles? What then? Your approach cannot mechanically represent that, as that score is already occupied by the strongest halfling/rather strong half-orc. There is no longer room for exceptionally strong half-orc. Now if you don't care about that, then that's perfectly fine, but some people do and the approach is perfectly logical.

Then that's when the table has a Session 0 discussion and player 3 says "Hey, so I really have my heart set on playing a super-strong character. Can you guys try to go for something else." And assuming that players 1 or 2 didn't call dibs, like, weeks prior, and assuming that they are all three mature people who want the game to be fun for everyone, the three of them work something out.

Or, the three players all agree to play strong characters and have a fun in-game rivalry about how swol they are.

 

[Don Durito]

They can, and they also can lead to really strange situations.

Who is the best grappler?

A Rogue or a Bard. Expertise makes them better than even a Raging Barbarian who has advantage.

Nah. The barbarian just has to get hold of expertise.

 

[Faolyn]

Nah. The barbarian just has to get hold of expertise.

Which, sadly, is basically impossible to do other than by getting the feat Skill Expert.

 

[Don Durito]

Which, sadly, is basically impossible to do other than by getting the feat Skill Expert.

Which isn't limited to humans like prodigy so is pretty much available to all? And you still get a +1 ability score so it's a very good feat.

You can't get it until 4th level unless you're a variant human, but Expertise is not all that great to begin with anyway.