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."

 

[TrickyDUK2]

Some of us like D&D, with its class system, distinct lore, exploratory play framework, etc. but merely don’t want combination of race and class to be restricted or penalized. There’s a lot of daylight between D&D without racial ASIs and GURPS, and I really don’t want to play GURPS.

Again, the racial ASI thing is at best tangentially related to the racial/cultural sensitivity issue. I think both are important, but I think conflating them is muddying the discussion here.

Definitely agree that the racial sensitivity issue is a separate issue - why I said that I like to keep real world and imaginary world as separate as possible.

My issue is with making mechanical changes that I feel change what I see as part of the identity of D&D. There are plenty of fantasy RPGs (and many of those feel like a derivation of D&D) that can offer me a different way to play the game. But I liked the game, with its limitations, because it made it different. Of course any DM can house rule any changes/exceptions, but you had a starting point to quickly get into the game.

As I mentioned before, these feel like D&D is losing part of its identity and is just becoming a framework. And this feels like the first step on a road that I don’t want to travel. I will naturally continue to play previous editions, and I so I am only joining this conversation because I find it intriguing more generally.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I'm admittedly one of the people who (wrongly?) assumed Forgotten Realms as being the default setting of 5th Edition.

If that's not the case, I'm a little confused as to why most of the baseline assumptions of creatures and adventures are tied to FR lore (with other settings being mentioned in sidebars and additional notes).

5e has no default setting. Homebrew is assumed unless the DM uses a setting book. The lore in the core rulebooks is for a generic fantasy setting, and Forgotten Realms is a generic fantasy setting.

 

[Charlaquin]

My issue is with making mechanical changes that I feel change what I see as part of the identity of D&D. There are plenty of fantasy RPGs (and many of those feel like a derivation of D&D) that can offer me a different way to play the game. But I liked the game, with its limitations, because it made it different. Of course any DM can house rule any changes/exceptions, but you had a starting point to quickly get into the game.

As I mentioned before, these feel like D&D is losing part of its identity and is just becoming a framework. And this feels like the first step on a road that I don’t want to travel. I will naturally continue to play previous editions, and I so I am only joining this conversation because I find it intriguing more generally.

I get that, and I can sympathize with it, but I don’t find it compelling. This is ultimately an argument from tradition - “X is part of D&D’s identity” is basically another way of saying “D&D has always done X,” and personally, I think “it’s always been this way” is the worst reason not to change something. If we never changed things that were “part of D&D’s identity,” we would still be using descending ACs. And I’m sure there are plenty of people, some of whom may even be participating in this conversation, who were very attached to descending ACs and may lament their loss, and I do feel for these people. But ultimately I think the change to ascending ACs made the game better, and so was worth breaking from what had up until that point been tradition. Now, we may disagree about whether or not removing racial ability score adjustments would make the game better, and that’s fine. I’m happy to listen to arguments from people who think it wouldn’t, and to make my own arguments for why I think it would. But if your position only comes down to liking it the way it’s always been and not wanting that to change, I’ll empathize, but it won’t convince me it isn’t ultimately better for the game to change it.

 

[NaturalZero]

This point, what I'd really like to see out of DnD character generation is 3 part:

Ability Scores
Point buy, with enough points to build what you used to be able to, after racial mods. No racial, class, or lineage bonuses here at chargen. You can be the super cliche elf that Dnd has always had OR the oddball bodybuilder elf without arbitrary math penalties.

Lineage
Cool racial abilities that, ideally, aren't things that every other character of another race can also pick up at 1st level go here. "Pick any cantrip" - sorry, you've got to go. This is where stuff like talking to small forest animals, fey step, dragon breath, dwarven tremorsense, aarocokra flying, pixie dust, underwater breathing, and the like, go. THIS is the evocative stuff that makes race unique, not little math and accounting nonsense.

Background
More robust than the current version, this is where most of your tool proficiencies, extra weapon/armor, skills, and maybe some social interaction features live. THIS is the stuff that is pure culture.

 

[tetrasodium]

I'm coming around to a 4 array system

The Typical Array: 16 14 13 13 9 8 and you must take the suggested racial +2/+1 ASI
The Standard Array: 15 14 13 12 10 8 and you get to chose your +2/+1 ASI
The Elite Array: 17 15 14 12 10 8 and you get no ASIs nor feats
The Variant Array: 15 14 12 11 9 8 and and you get to chose your +2/+1 ASI and one feat

You left out
Low Power array: 13, 12, 12, 11, 10, 9

 

[Charlaquin]

This point, what I'd really like to see out of DnD character generation is 3 part:

Ability Scores
Point buy, with enough points to build what you used to be able to, after racial mods. No racial, class, or lineage bonuses here at chargen. You can be the super cliche elf that Dnd has always had OR the oddball bodybuilder elf without arbitrary math penalties.

Lineage
Cool racial abilities that, ideally, aren't things that every other character of another race can also pick up at 1st level go here. "Pick any cantrip" - sorry, you've got to go. This is where stuff like talking to small forest animals, fey step, dragon breath, dwarven tremorsense, aarocokra flying, pixie dust, underwater breathing, and the like, go. THIS is the evocative stuff that makes race unique, not little math and accounting nonsense.

Background
More robust than the current version, this is where most of your tool proficiencies, extra weapon/armor, skills, and maybe some social interaction features live. THIS is the stuff that is pure culture.

I will say, I tried for months to brew exactly such a system for my home games. And it worked, but it was lengthy. Not wanting to have to give my players a whole other PHB to read, I finally threw up my hands and decided to just use the alternate ability score generation method I mentioned earlier, alongside the proficiency swaps table from Tasha’s. It felt like giving up, but at the end of the day, going from dozens of pages of homebrew down to about half a page was worth the tradeoff. But this is exactly how I would want them to do character creation in 6e.

 

[TrickyDUK2]

I get that, and I can sympathize with it, but I don’t find it compelling. This is ultimately an argument from tradition - “X is part of D&D’s identity” is basically another way of saying “D&D has always done X,” and personally, I think “it’s always been this way” is the worst reason not to change something. If we never changed things that were “part of D&D’s identity,” we would still be using descending ACs. And I’m sure there are plenty of people, some of whom may even be participating in this conversation, who were very attached to descending ACs and may lament their loss, and I do feel for these people. But ultimately I think the change to ascending ACs made the game better, and so was worth breaking from what had up until that point been tradition. Now, we may disagree about whether or not removing racial ability score adjustments would make the game better, and that’s fine. I’m happy to listen to arguments from people who think it wouldn’t, and to make my own arguments for why I think it would. But if your position only comes down to liking it the way it’s always been and not wanting that to change, I’ll empathize, but it won’t convince me it isn’t ultimately better for the game to change it.

Again, I agree. For me this change is not about racial sensitivity or necessarily making the game better. In this case, ‘better‘ would be more about whether a particular player feels that this change means they have more authority to create a character that is no longer restricted by fixed ASIs. But for me, this was never an issue. If a player wanted to move the ASIs around and they provided a compelling reason, I would simply allow it as DM (noting that 5e tries to give the DM more freedom to make the game theirs).

But what about the player that wants to have ASIs determined for him, whether that’s a player who just can’t choose (for whatever reason) or a DM that relies on having specific rules to help with a sense of structure within his game?

EDIT: If we are treating the racial sensitivity as a separate issue, then I do argue that removing something that some people want cannot universally make the game better.

I guess that would lead me to suggest that this should simply be an option in the DMG - don‘t like fixed ASIs, here are ways to remove them. Or, remove them in the PHB and in DMG and specific settings, say here are some suggested ASIs for races.

 

[Charlaquin]

Again, I agree. For me this change is not about racial sensitivity or necessarily making the game better. In this case, ‘better‘ would be more about whether a particular player feels that this change means they have more authority to create a character that is no longer restricted by fixed ASIs. But for me, this was never an issue. If a player wanted to move the ASIs around and they provided a compelling reason, I would simply allow it as DM (noting that 5e tries to give the DM more freedom to make the game theirs).

But what about the player that wants to have ASIs determined for him, whether that’s a player who just can’t choose (for whatever reason) or a DM that relies on having specific rules to help with a sense of structure within his game?

I guess that would lead me to suggest that this should simply be an option in the DMG - don‘t like fixed ASIs, here are ways to remove them. Or, remove them in the PHB and in DMG and specific settings, say here are some suggested ASIs for races.

A few pages back, someone suggested having monster entries in the Monster Manual for each of the PC races, which would include ability score adjustments representing the differences between typical members of the races. That could serve to give players (and DMs) who want fixed ability adjustments a set to use.

 

[Argyle King]

5e has no default setting. Homebrew is assumed unless the DM uses a setting book. The lore in the core rulebooks is for a generic fantasy setting, and Forgotten Realms is a generic fantasy setting.

Forgotten Realms may be a generic fantasy setting, but it still has elements to it which are portrayed differently than Greyhawk -which is also a D&D setting considered to be a generic setting.

Typically, I play in homebrew games. However, I think it is fair to say that the lore accompanying the rules is informed by a particular setting. For example, Dragonborn in Forgotten Realms have a history, culture, and origin that are all very different from Dragonlance's Draconians, with both also being different from the Dawn War origins of Dragonborn explained in 4th Edition's lore.

 

[JEB]

A few pages back, someone suggested having monster entries in the Monster Manual for each of the PC races, which would include ability score adjustments representing the differences between typical members of the races. That could serve to give players (and DMs) who want fixed ability adjustments a set to use.

Interesting, but why only have that information in the Monster Manual? Seems like you could put it in the PHB as a "quick build" option, like they already do for classes. (That would also be a good place to put typical proficiencies for that race... assuming those will still be around in some form under the new approach.)