D&D 5E What To Do With Racial ASIs?

[Chaosmancer]

Really?????? That is so far from my own experience that this baffles me to no end. I guess it depends a lot on who and whom you're initiating and their initial knowledge about the fantasy genre.

The questions you've had about classes are usually easy to answer. Because you didn't build it with strength in mind (for the ranger) or any other character build for that matter. For the cleric's religon skill, the game is clearly outside the expected. Putting religion as an intel base skill is not a bad idea per see. But clerics, druids, paladins and monks should be able to use wisdom on the skill instead (or have a something like free expertise on it).

Yes, really. I've never had people asking me "wait, aren't dwarves supposed to be tough" or "hey, aren't elves supposed to be graceful" It has never once come up.

And those same explanations you had for the religion and ranger's strength? Those can apply to the race situation too. "Wait, why isn't my dwarf super tough? Oh, wait, I dumped Con. Right." It is as simple as that.

This is incredibly weird to me. Like, too weird to even try to analyze, really.

He knows that insight is a real life thing that can be applied to people you’ve just met, right? Like...it’s possible to figure out the mood, emotional state, and sometimes hints of the motivations of someone you’ve just met. This is objectively a thing that pesople do IRL. You can specialize in it and do it for a living, in a variety of contexts. i can’t fathom what perspective would think it’s impossible to do an every day thing that most people do nearly every time they meet a new person.

As for the nature check... huh!?

You can’t combine learning about the creatures in the world with immediate visual clues and behaviors of a creature to figure out why it is and what it can do!? Again this is possible in real life! Does he only ever use super weird extremely rare creatures of wholly alien anatomy and construction?

He doesn't care about that. Yu can't tell if someone is lying if you just met them, you don't know them well enough, so you can't use Insight.

Maybe if you've interacted with them for like, a few weeks or a month, but he often does throw-away NPCs who we never see again. So, no one really bothers to take Insight.

And no, he doesn't use monsters like that. Now, he also usually uses monsters that we know, or are obvious. The Wyvern has wings and a scorpion tail, I wonder what it can do But, he pulls from a lot of 3PP resources too, and we generally find out what they can do as they do it to us, no clues or ways to learn about their abilities ahead of time.

Which is why I will reiterate. Saying "skills matter too, talk about those" is getting into territory that is heavily DM dependent. If I'm running the game, having a higher INT to make that nature check might matter. If he is running it, it doesn't matter. But in both games, having a higher bonus to your attack rolls matter.

If you roll a 20 sided die (say a four hour game with two combats and exploration and social) you will probably roll that die 20 times. So the odds of you rolling a 1 will come up - once a game. I can think of no other racial trait that has spreads across all three pillars that also occurs as frequently.

... Which is why, as a wizard who is likely not rolling 20 sided dice, you probably won't need Lucky.

If the average fighter or rogue is rolling that die 20 times, the wizard focusing on saves is likely rolling it 8 times. Which is why Lucky is less useful for them.

While I agree with the rest of this, it is very difficult to quantify how this plays out in a game. And in the end, the game is not balanced anyway. So why does an extra % at the cost of some initiative and AC really matter. By the time you are level 8, it doesn't imho. But, I think you are correct in your assumptions about the "better" build.

And that bolded part is the point. It is incredibly hard to quantify racial traits and their usefulness. They rely on a lot of factors, and are different pressures.

But a +2 to your main attack stat or save stat is good. Always. And easy to quantify.

So, the idea that people who are feeling that pressure will suddenly switch to doing the same thing with abilities that are so hard to quantify, mystifies me.

Now I actually get the category 3 intellectually. I'd like to think that I have pretty good eye for noticing 'optimal' and it might be tempting to go for it. And in certain sense it might make sense to change rules to lessen the conflict. I often introduce small balance path house rules to fix small discrepancies. But when we are talking about jettisoning half of the rules of races making them samey and bland to solve a thing that basically is a player issue, I can't support that.

Again, I want to challenge you on this "samey and bland" point. If you are correct and a +2 to your racial ASI is so important and so interesting, then a +1 Longsword would be more interesting than (checks DnD Beyond) the Blood Spear, a weapon that drains the life from your foes and grants you 2d6 temp hp when you drop a foe to 0 hp.

Now, let's be honest here. Which is going to be more flavorful interesting and even more noticeable at the table. +1 to hit and damage, or drain the life from your foes as you slay them, to empower yourself?

ASI's don't make you interesting or flavorful. They make you more powerful, but that is it.

You can at least understand others feel differently. Why insist on a change that’s going to detract from the game for them?

If you understand how others feel differently, why are you insisting on keeping a system that is detracting from the game for them?

perhaps A variant character creation rule. Your racially granted ASI’s can go into any ability scores? I can get behind an officially supported variant rule for this.

That is literally what asking for the floating ASI's means. That's what we want.

I thought it was fairly obvious this is going to be a variant rule, they can't go back and revise the PHB at this stage (okay, they could, but a variant rule is way easier to do)

 

[FrogReaver]

The average halfling and the average Goliath might be, but PCs aren’t average.

Just to note. You are making a different argument here that isn’t addressing the counter argument at all.

You made the point that races should be the same at all jobs - do you agree with that? If so why are you talking about PCs now? If not let’s drop the other argument and focus solely on PCs only.

 

[TwoSix]

If the most interesting thing about a racial option is the numerical adjustment to ability scores, the developers need to send it back to the drawing board. Dwarves are more than just wads of hit points, elves are more than just "quick," etc.

I'd go even farther than what @Charlaquin said: I'd be fine with scrapping the ability score adjustments altogether, and replacing them with proficiencies, expertise, advantage on certain checks, unique abilities, etc. Then, elves aren't quick because they have +2 to Dex; the are quick because they have Advantage on initiative, are automatically proficient with longbows, and move an extra 5 feet per round. Dwarves wouldn't be hardy because of a +2 to Con; they are hardy because they get an extra hit point per level, have Advantage on Constitution saves, and heal maximum whenever they spend Hit Dice. Or whatever, get creative and be as generous/stingy as you need. I'm not a game designer.

The goal is to make each race fundamentally different in ways that matter. Players would choose to play an elf because of the abilities that only elves get. If you're relying on ability score adjustments to accomplish that task, you are setting yourself up for disappointment because all races can boost all stats to the same cap. On a long enough timeline, that unique distinction fades to nothing.

If you want to add flat numerical bonuses, there are better ways to do that than "they're all just born this way."

I'd be on board with this. Giving halflings bonuses to hit with light weapons and bonuses to AC while wearing light or no armor will channel them into Dex focused concepts without requiring any Dex bonuses. They can still be good barbarians, but they'll play differently, which IMO is the most important thing.

 

[Charlaquin]

Fair enough. I'm sorry if I misrepresented your opinion.

No problem, and I am sorry if I unintentionally came across as judgmental.

 

[Charlaquin]

Just to note. You are making a different argument here that isn’t addressing the counter argument at all.

You made the point that races should be the same at all jobs - do you agree with that? If so why are you talking about PCs now? If not let’s drop the other argument and focus solely on PCs only.

I thought it was a given that we were talking about PCs, because that’s who race ASIs are for.

 

[FrogReaver]

I thought it was a given that we were talking about PCs, because that’s who race ASIs are for.

Not when your last post was about goliaths and halflings and your post before that was about biological essentialism. Those are general non-pc principles.

 

[Charlaquin]

Not when your last post was about goliaths and halflings and your post before that was about biological essentialism. Those are general non-pc principles.

What smacks of biological essentialism to me is PC races being defined primarily by what PC classes they are suited to. This entire conversation, from my end, has been framed around PCs.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

He doesn't care about that. Yu can't tell if someone is lying if you just met them, you don't know them well enough, so you can't use Insight.

Yes, you can. I catch people lying at least once a week and am proven right, usually involving fraudulent attempts at returning items, or even just trying to lie about soemthing because they think if they don’t I will give them trouble over something I have no reason to care about.

I’m sorry but you and your DM are just wrong about this, and coming at the Insight skill from a very strange and uncommon point of view. I don’t think we or the game design need to account for very strange outliers. Most players are allowed to make Insight checks.

 

[FrogReaver]

So there are two takes to Player Characters.

1. The PC is exceptional and normal racial rules don’t apply.

2. The PC exists as a member of race X and that races proclivities and strengths help inform the PC’s abilities.

Neither way is right or wrong necessarily. But it has nothing to do with biological essentialism or races being as good or as smart as others. The question is one of what the PC represents. This is why I think a variant rule would work well here.

 

[FrogReaver]

What smacks of biological essentialism to me is PC races being defined primarily by what PC classes they are suited to. This entire conversation, from my end, has been framed around PCs.

This makes no sense to me.