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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GreenTengu" data-source="post: 6938991" data-attributes="member: 6777454">I've never seen anyone play a Gnome as anything but a Wizard in 5E. Furthermore, as Wizarding and technology are the main things Gnomes do, an Intelligence bonus is actually suitable to them. Even with an addendum saying that Hobgoblins CAN be Wizards (and even then it is limited to the Abjurer school apparently), Intelligence currently does nothing in the game that would add to their primary build and WotC has been openly hostile to the very idea of bringing something like the Warlord into the game so that Intelligence could of any way be of any use to a non-magical character. And that position is generally a terrible way to play the game anyway. You hide information away from your players that anyone born into that world who had lived their whole life in that world traveling to its locations and hearing its stories and interacting with its people would automatically know. And so the protagonist of your story don't know the first thing about their supposed homeland, instead walking in with the presumptions of our world and maybe that 1-page hand out and ten minutes of you explaining what races live in the world or something of the like. And so they fumble blind and naturally fall into the trap you had laid out to punish them for acting the "wrong" way or making the "wrong" presumptions according to your own personal headcanon that you didn't fill them in on but any denizen of the world would have known. And it is entirely on them to have to ask you every single turn before taking any action and making a test so they don't fall into your "clever" trap."oh, you decided to kill a deer in order to get food? Well, naturally EVERYONE knows that hunting here is illegal unless you are a noble and so now those 15th level guards riding up are going to arrest or kill you. Its your fault for not having made your intelligence rolls before taking any action."Actively withholding vital information about the world the characters live in so you can play "gotcha" moments on them in order to try to justify skills that rarely have any sort of actual use in general play is a major stretch on your part. It is you going the extra mile in order to try to make something that has little use have some use. Generally DMs don't have time to prepare a massive story for every single thing in the game, History, Arcana and Religion are all "ask the DM for more information" skills. In a whole lot of cases, you are going to run into the case where the DM is either going to find themselves having to shrug and sigh and admit that they really hadn't written up anything more about the deity than that one paragraph vaguely describing them or having to try to make up something on the spot, or worse-- they are using an established setting and now either have to look up in the right book or maybe crack open a wikipedia page."What's the history of this Inn?" "Who were the last 5 champions of the arena?" "What is the name of the chief tax collector of the area and what time does he come around?" "When is the next holiday in which the followers of this god participate?" Particularly with good rolls these are all things that a character should be able to know, but very likely not things the DM can't really answer-- either because they haven't read every single piece of information written on the setting or they had never thought up that stuff for their own setting. Either way, it likely has little to nothing to do with what the adventure was about and so this was left blank.That is then the downside of hiding vital information about the setting from your players. Oh, sure-- maybe you have spend thousands of hours detailing every single last aspect of your campaign world down to naming every resident of every town with vast backstories and family trees reaching back 500 years. But it is ridiculous to expect everyone DMing to put that much detail into your world.So when you hide information about the world and require people to ask the question and pass checks to get it... you also intrinsically require them to ask the RIGHT questions and NEVER to ask the WRONG questions or inevitably find themselves walking face-first into a proverbial brick wall. Because you ask the wrong question, you get nothing... ask too many questions and you are going to aggravate everyone... this is going to end up resulting in it being highly discouraged for you to ever ask questions.Now, granted-- in games based on but different from D&D, I have seen this handled in a way where "the DM hasn't decided it, so the person who asked the question gets to make up the answer themselves". In which case it might be rewarding to ask questions. But that isn't the way it works in D&D.Not unless something is specifically pointed out as a mystery to tackle with big flashing lights all over it. And, sure, that happens on occasion-- but History, Arcana, Religion and Nature combined come up in this way far less often than most other skills do. And, naturally, it is a situation where if just one person passes, then the whole group effectively passes as the Wizard can then just pass on the information. For no other character in the group, the difference between a 6 intelligence and a 12 intelligence if you are anything but a Wizard does not make a difference. Particularly if you did not train in the right lore skill that is applicable here.Oh, and let's not forget... if you are a Bard of a particular level? All those skills get nullified. Anyone else who bothered to train in it has wasted their training.Oh, sure. You could force a situation where you could see the party split and separate and thus try to make it so that one person can't just pass all those checks on the others' behalf. But you know what-- once you admit that it is even possible for the party to separate and a PC to be acting by themselves and having to pull their own weight? Yeah-- that's where you just admitted that the Hobgoblin stats are absolute utter crap. Because if it is even possible for a PC to be caught alone, then if you are playing them as any class that gets all Martial Weapons, or at least all Finesse Martial weapons if it is a Dex class, then the ONLY advantage you had at all goes straight down the toilet and you would be better off, at least no worse off, if you were literally any other race.And, finally, I maintain-- no DM is going to let an entire adventure come to a complete screeching halt simply because a PC failed a lore skill check that left them without the important piece of information to know what to do next. There are many other skill checks which, if failed, and the result is a sufficient loss of hit points, the game will come to a screeching halt and all will consider it fair to do so... but never a failed lore check. Everyone would feel cheated if that were the case. So if the PC didn't get the piece of information, then the DM is going to give it to the players in some manner anyway. And most of the time without any real cost. They kind of have to.Yes, there are rare, RARE, situations in which it will be clear you should use Investigation. RARE situations. As in it isn't going to come up even once every adventure, as opposed to Medicine or Stealth or Persuasion, which if those are you thing you will have nearly constant opportunity to use it with very clear goals you are trying to achieve by using them. And Perception is called for more than any other skill in the game. Pretty much every single time combat is going to begin in order to avoid spending an entire round taking damage and not being able to respond. Those are way higher stakes than anything any of the Intelligence skills are ever going to be deciding.But the majority of Investigation checks that are expected to be taken are generally written without any real hint that they should be taken. The situations in which they are expected to be made in order to possibly achieve success are often pretty identical to the situations in which making them cannot possibly result in something fruitful. That whole "stab in the dark" as to when you are or are not wasting everyone's time pretty much exist solely with Investigation. Everything else involves either the DM calling for it when it should be used or the PCs actively trying to achieve a tangible result from a tangible element of the world that can be interacted with. Investigation is the skill where you have to ask the DM if there are any interesting elements of the world to be interacted with that they just yet mentioned. And 90% of the time the answer to that is going to be "no! STOP ASKING!!"There is a damn good reason why when this Investigation (i.e. Search) skill gets translated into electronic game versions of D&D, it gets turned into a passive skill like perception. If you pass within a certain distance of a trap or secret door or otherwise hidden object of interest, it lights up and becomes not hidden-- as opposed to requiring someone to have to spam the skill every 5 steps in case they are missing something and to avoid having neglected to spam it in those few times there is actually going to be a reward for having done so.The fact that in tabletop one expects the player to continuously pester the DM, i.e. "spam" the skill, particularly when this is a real life person who could really lose their temper by having their game dragged down by an overly cautious PC and there are 4 other people at the table who can't play so long as one person insists on investigating everything constantly while conversely a computer just isn't going to mind... it is just generally bad game design, recognized as such and so people in general have stopped playing the game in that way. The way investigation works in the game is the way it is played at most tables-- which is that it is never used and even when it seems like it should be used, Perception is usually called for instead. At most tables your example of searching the Merchants room? At most tables that would be a Perception check in which you can substitute Investigation in if you are the odd person who actually took that skill.It is not unfair of me to "assume" the race is bad. I see the numbers, I can directly compare it to the numbers of other available races. The fact that everyone's first thought for this race is "be a wizard!!" and no one at all is even attempting to suggest you could build a workable Fighter tells you something is damn screwed up. I even issued the challenge-- show me how one functionally builds a character with this that wouldn't be flat out better if it were a Mountain Dwarf or High Elf. Those are the most comparable two and both make both better Wizards and better Fighters than this does. And this almost certainly indicates that they win out on everything in between.The save face ability is good, but it is good under very limited circumstances.In fact, while it LOOKS like a unique ability, it is extremely comparable to Bardic Inspiration. Effectively it is like getting a Bardic Inspiration cast on yourself every short rest. Now the Bardic Inspiration at first level grants you d6 on a roll you know you failed. This increases to a D8, a D10 and finally a D12 at higher levels. So at higher levels it is actually much worse than just getting a Bardic Inspiration cast on yourself.Now, granted, in a way it is better-- instead of rolling a die to see if you get enough points to succeed, you get to know exactly how many points you are getting. Which is... good..? Well... maybe.You see, if you missed the roll by only 1 point then you do know that your Bardic Inspiration is going to succeed regardless. Also, if we are talking about attack rolls or primary attribute skill checks? Well, if you had chosen any race that would have given you the +2 to the stat you are actually using (i.e. High Elf and Mountain Dwarf giving you the +2 Dexterity and +2 Strength respectively) means you already would have had that +1 on this roll and every other attack roll or primary attribute skill check. You try to do a Hobgoblin Rogue and you are a -1 on every single Stealth and Acrobatics check you are making as well as every attack roll and every damage roll compared to the identical High Elf in addition to being 1 AC lower, and you might well be making one every single turn. The idea that the 1 hit point per level you are getting remotely makes up for that is just flat out laughable.And, in case you forget, the High Elf does get the the best 1-handed martial weapon and the best martial ranged weapon in the game as part of its package, so the idea that the Hobgoblin gets anything special from those 2 martial weapons can be thrown right out the window and buried in the ground.Anyway, so in most cases... this means that unless you have at least 2 allies watching you, then at best this is garnering you the absolute minimum a Bardic inspiration roll would have enabled you to make. This means you are required to keep your party size at 3 at all times in order for this ability that you are giving up a Cantrip and the Perception skill and resistance to Charm and immunity to Sleep and cutting your rest time in half for in order to even be capable of being a bonus in any way, shape or form.Now, maybe you are going to be lucky enough to be able to have 5 other people or more at all times when desperate skill rolls. So in that situation at lower levels, yes this ability does become better than Bardic Inspiration. Bardic Inspiraton COULD give you a bigger bonus, but it is unreliable an the average bonus is lower. Of course, at higher levels? Well, the average Bardic Inspiration is going to be better than this ability and so while it is unreliable, it is going to be better than this ability 50% of the time.But you aren't always going to have 5 allies surrounding you at all times and it is crap game design to insist that a RACE be required to be surrounded by allies at all times in order to even have an ability at all. As you eluded to-- parties DO split and do so for perfectly legit reasons. Sometimes the circumstances force them to split, other times they need to accomplish multiple things in a short amount of time. In these cases, the ONLY ability Hobgoblins get utterly vanishes into the nether and they are left demonstrable worse than all other races at all things period.It is not an assumption that this is crap, it is absolute mathematically demonstrable fact. This "Save Face" ability is only half-decent only at lower levels and only if you manage to make sure that no matter what you do, in any situation you might ever be called upon to make a roll you are absolutely surrounded by allies. Constantly. That means no scouting, that means no personal side stories or projects, that means no spending the night crafting things by yourself... NONE of it! Anything your PC might ever do on their own, the only ability the race gets you is taken away and you are left with a race that is fully deficient from the package you would have gotten from any other race.Oh, and in the case where you are doing something that you aren't trained in because you had to take Perception as one of your skills and couldn't take this skill instead?... Guess what? The identical High Elf character gets the maximum possible bonus the Save Face ability gives you on all of those rolls, no matter how many they do between each short rest.In order to fix it, not only does that +1 need switched over from a attribute that is absolute garbage to one that can actually contribute to any class they are supposed to actually be, but they also need to trade one of those Martial Weapon proficiency, which are outright nullified by 90% of the classes in the game, to a bonus skill which is a benefit to a character regardless of the class. I might even suggest throwing in a tool proficiency if that doesn't seem too greedy.And not just because Intelligence is a crap skill-- but because even if this book introduces a wizarding school for them, wizard is still pretty friggin' low on the list of the classes they have ever expected to be and the classes above that all used Dexterity, Wisdom or Charisma. If they were made Con/Dex or Con/Wis or Con/Cha, it wouldn't negatively affect this whole wizard concept anyway because getting a Con boost and a martial weapon of their choice is still going to be enough reason to play a Wizard without the unnecessary +1 Int. It is just going to open up a lot more classes as possibilities because nothing else uses Intelligence.And the funny thing is... switching over the +1 bonus and then trading a weapon proficiency for a skill one? Well, that would be par for the course for a subrace.... but NOPE!! goblinoids are not allowed to have subraces. Those are only for Elves, Dwarves and Halflings! All hobgoblins have to be identical clones of each other with only a single very specific culture despite being spread clear across the entire world. (And since such a subrace would be infinitely more playable and the current one would only ever be used by Wizards... well... that alone would discourage it.)And if accommodating this would mean making Save Face "worse" so that it was all the more clearly getting a single use of Bardic Inspiration on yourself once per a short rest... hey, so long as it also increased appropriately at the appropriate levels just like the High Elf Cantrip does, it would just make it all the more appropriate for a PC ability.And if you think this new category of "Monster race" which get abilities that are designed wildly out-of-whack with the design philosophies of the other races and, in the case of Goblin and Bugbear, get abilities that PC races just aren't even supposed to get, was created as anything other than a clear and easy short-hand to ban them from play... you are insanely naive. In fact, you are also clearly misinformed about which races got stuck into this category. Lizardfolk and Kenku were not put into it, they are safe from any such ban.</blockquote>

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