D&D General What it means for a race to end up in the PHB, its has huge significance

[Yaarel]

That might be YOUR main feeling. But, again, that has nothing to do with D&D. After all, 3e elves still had Low Light Vision. It's not like they couldn't see in the dark.

Lowlight vision requires a light source, and is mostly pointless gamewise. It is easy to omit.

Darkvision is magical, for specific monster concepts.

 

[Mephista]

"true roleplayers"

As a side note.... Whatever happened to people saying "flavor is free?" Used to be everywhere. I don't see it anymore.

 

[Mephista]

Wait, what? In the revision, you simply pick one parent or the other for mechanics. You are basically saying that either elves or humans are the worst mechanical choice. How does that make sense?

No, I'm saying that if the half-elf was brought forwards into 5.5e for some reason, it's mechanics would need to be reimagined and updated because the 2014 ones aren't good enough to carry it anymore. The ASIs were doing a lot of lifting.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

Pretty much every complaint against the half elf also applies to the 2014 5e humans. Almost all their lore is cultural, while mechanically they're just ASI + language or feat.

Half orc even gets features in 5e which aren't got by either parent, which is savage attacks.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

As a side note.... Whatever happened to people saying "flavor is free?" Used to be everywhere. I don't see it anymore.

Flavour is certainly free.

But when you're baking a cake, pure flavouring can't replace the flour and eggs.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Pretty much every complaint against the half elf also applies to the 2014 5e humans. Almost all their lore is cultural, while mechanically they're just ASI + language or feat.

That's always been the human's thing in DnD: they're the baseline, so they either don't get anything or what they get isn't really race-based (extra feat usually means they lean into their class identity more.) Nothing wrong with that, but:

If you take away the half-elf's special stat mods, they're mechanically effectively the same as humans. If that's true, why have two stat blocks to do the same thing? Why not just have a human with some background of being connected to elves? Or generally forced-cosmopolitan because they're not fully accepted in either parent's culture? (Or in Eberron, they're a whole other culture) You could even invert it and have elves who swap out a cantrip for extra skills and/or a feat.

I'm not saying that it is true, I'm just trying to understand the argument. The counterpoint, as I understand it, is that by removing half-elves you remove some very treasured representation of mixed-race people in the world's most popular fantasy game. That's deeply, personally upsetting to some folks, and that's a totally valid response.

Half orc even gets features in 5e which aren't got by either parent, which is savage attacks.

Yeah that was a weird choice.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

That's always been the human's thing in DnD: they're the baseline, so they either don't get anything or what they get isn't really race-based (extra feat usually means they lean into their class identity more.) Nothing wrong with that, but:

Interestingly they've dropped this design in 5.5e if the UA is anything to go by. The human now gets more in depth species features than before. Still leaning onto the varied and versatile approach with the ability to pick a feat and a skill, but they also get the resourceful species feature.

Once you factor in background in the 5.5e UA, humans are starting with 3 additional skills and two feats.

 

[Hussar]

Lowlight vision requires a light source, and is mostly pointless gamewise. It is easy to omit.

Darkvision is magical, for specific monster concepts.

Again, you are free to interpret things however you like.

But, if you're going to make arguments like this, you really need to back them up with actual mechanics. Darkvision is not magical. Full stop. Low Light needs some sort of light source, true - it won't work in total darkness. But, it's perfectly functional outside at night.

But, hey, again, I've managed to step into an argument that is so tied up in your own specific interpretations of D&D, that this conversation is mostly just both of us talking past each other.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Wait, what? In the revision, you simply pick one parent or the other for mechanics. You are basically saying that either elves or humans are the worst mechanical choice. How does that make sense?

i think the point of their remark is that the proposed either/or nature of the mechanics for halfelves completely fails to capture that this is a group of people who's identity is pretty much formed from their biology stringing them up halfway between their two parent species while also being neither, when half the halfelves are mechanically human and the other half elven you fail to meet that core premise entirely.

also halfelves (and halforcs too i believe) were something multiethnic(is that the right term?) people would see themselves in and could project themselves onto, so removing the middle ground mechanics carries huge unfortunate implications of saying to them 'you are one thing or another, you cannot be both, pick one, forsake the other'

 

[CreamCloud0]

the human serving as the 'baseline' jack of all trades who could turn to be good at any of them was a much more notable feature when all the other species came with their own pros AND CONS, you could be nearly as good a mage as the elf was without the constitution penalty, or fight mostly as good as the dwarf without tanking your charisma, now all the penalties have been removed being 'the baseline' doesn't mean what it used to.