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

[doctorbadwolf]

Also, just wanna make clear that I have no issue with floating ASIs, but I also don’t buy the argument that the stat differences don’t count/matter/help define the people of the world anyway because both characters will reach 20 at some point.

Most PCs won’t get a third ASI. Most PCs start with either a 14-15, or a 16. In most groups, that means the Goliath will always be stronger than the elf. Which is enough baked in difference for me. It creates the player facing perception that the world in general works that way, too. Ie, that most of the time, a Goliath is just going to be stronger than an elf. That is good, IMO, and it’s hard to replicate with more complex and/or subtle mechanics.

 

[Scott Christian]

3) Why do you want the difference between them to be that they are worse at their job? "My elf fighter is special, because he is less effective as a fighter, unlike that human fighter who is effective at his job" What a wonderful fantasy to explore for six months to a year. I'm sure that person will have blast.

Or alternatively, they could be effective (like, by being a dex fighter which elves are good at) and play up the differences between elven culture, thought and general roleplaying.

All your points are taken and respected. But this one...

First, you again frame it as though the person isn't going to have fun because they are not as good of a fighter as the other characters. You say: "I'm sure they will have a blast." Sarcasm aside, they might have more fun because their character - and here is the part that keeps getting missed - is good at something unexpected and good at fighting; not great at fighting and okay at a bunch of other things. See the scale there? Good and good vs great and okay.

I can hear the next phrase coming: But I can make great and good if I do this and combine it with that... And that is the other point getting missed - that player can and does because they are a min/maxer. If you feel obligated to build the great and good or great and okay instead of the good and good because your level of enjoyment in a role playing game will be lessened - then you are a min/maxer. (Or at least that is how the argument is being framed.)

 

[Guest 6801328]

I'm sorry if that was vague. I can't stand it when people write all cryptically, and here I am doing it. My apologies.

I feel like your thesis of floating ASI's would actually make all the characters of a same class feel more like one another. This would cause the initial half-orc wizard to not feel special, because they are just like elf wizard or the halfling wizard. So while you might get more elf fighters, what you really get is more elf fighters because they are the same as a human or half-orc fighter.

My analogy is trying to say, sometimes the road less travelled is less travelled for a reason - because it's all crooked and longer. But, it doesn't make it any less fun or special to travel down, it just takes longer to get there.

Dang it! I did it again! Urgh!

Classes that are not as good are fun for many to play because they excel at things that are unexpected, while only being good at the thing they are supposed to be great at. That is a lot of fun for many of the players I know. Changing the ASI takes away that rarity and makes it the same percent as everything else.

Sorry if it is long winded. But that is what I mean. Thanks for listening.

Elves and Halflings both get +2 Dex. Do an elf rogue and a halfling rogue feel the same to you?

If so...well, that seems odd to me. But ok.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Also, just wanna make clear that I have no issue with floating ASIs, but I also don’t buy the argument that the stat differences don’t count/matter/help define the people of the world anyway because both characters will reach 20 at some point.

Most PCs won’t get a third ASI. Most PCs start with either a 14-15, or a 16. In most groups, that means the Goliath will always be stronger than the elf. Which is enough baked in difference for me. It creates the player facing perception that the world in general works that way, too. Ie, that most of the time, a Goliath is just going to be stronger than an elf. That is good, IMO, and it’s hard to replicate with more complex and/or subtle mechanics.

This argument is fine on its own. My only comment is that it emphasizes what is likely as opposed to what is possible. Others have critiqued the floating ASI not because it means they will have to play with a super-strong gnome or halfling, but because the rules make it possible, and thus (for them) the mechanics are dissociative. If that's true, then one has to look at what the rules allow, which is that all characters can reach 20 in any ability score, not the probability of that happening.

So your argument is mutually exclusive with that particular critique of floating ASIs. (Not that I recall you making both arguments. I'm just sayin'.)

 

[Chaosmancer]

All your points are taken and respected. But this one...

First, you again frame it as though the person isn't going to have fun because they are not as good of a fighter as the other characters. You say: "I'm sure they will have a blast." Sarcasm aside, they might have more fun because their character - and here is the part that keeps getting missed - is good at something unexpected and good at fighting; not great at fighting and okay at a bunch of other things. See the scale there? Good and good vs great and okay.

I can hear the next phrase coming: But I can make great and good if I do this and combine it with that... And that is the other point getting missed - that player can and does because they are a min/maxer. If you feel obligated to build the great and good or great and okay instead of the good and good because your level of enjoyment in a role playing game will be lessened - then you are a min/maxer. (Or at least that is how the argument is being framed.)

It seems to be all or nothing with you, which confuses me greatly. Either I don't care about roleplaying because I am a min-maxer, or I don't care about my ASI's because I am playing a roleplaying game.


What you miss is the spectrum. I'm going to shift from fighter to barbarian, because Dex fighters are a thing and a lot of people might say they are better than Strength Fighters.

Let us say I want to play an Elf Barbarian. Why? Not because I want to min-max, but because I find the story potentials of an elven barbarian interesting. I can imagine some very interesting roles and thoughts from someone who has lived 200 years in the same forest, cut off from civilization.

However, that doesn't mean I want to be a bad Barbarian. In fact, being strong and dual-wielding troll-bone handaxes is part of my backstory, it sounds awesome. I can build some great stuff with this. Except, nothing in elf mechanically is what I want for a Barbarian. the lack of Strength and Con make me deal even less damage, miss more, have lower HP. Heck, if I was building this with the Standard array, I'd be looking at 15, 15, 14, 14, 10, 8 which isn't terrible, I mean, I can work with it. But my very first ASI at level 4 is going to be getting those to 16's, meaning I can't take feats which I love to take, because they are more interesting.

But, I could do a nearly identical concept with a Dwarf. Getting 17, 16, 12, 13, 10, 8. Same AC, better damage, better hp, better in every way as doing what a Barbarian does. So, now I am forced to answer a question. Do I care more about being an Elf, or more about being a Barbarian?

And I hate having to ask that question. I shouldn't have to ask it. But I know the system. I know how hard it is to keep playing with a 16 after 5th level. Every single time I've done it, I've been left longing to reach 8th level so I can get that flipping 18, so I can tilt into the more comfortable patch of bonuses. I'm literally expeirencing this right now with my rogue. I want to take feats, but I've got a 16 dex, and it is leading me to miss far more than I should, leading to me feeling worthless in combat. And I even could have gotten an 18 at 4th, but again, I love feats. I seriously do, they are far more interesting than these boring numbers, but every time I ignore those numbers, I spend the majority of combats twiddling my thumbs and missing.



So sure, call me a min-maxer, say I'm a roll-player who doesn't know what DnD is really about, but I'm sick and tired of making that decision. I'm sick and tired of thinking "wouldn't it be cool if- no, won't have the right stats" I want to role-play, and not have the game punish me for it. People are so worried about "humans with funny masks" that they are forgetting that DnD is Carnivale, and you should be changing masks with abandon.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

This argument is fine on its own. My only comment is that it emphasizes what is likely as opposed to what is possible. Others have critiqued the floating ASI not because it means they will have to play with a super-strong gnome or halfling, but because the rules make it possible, and thus (for them) the mechanics are dissociative. If that's true, then one has to look at what the rules allow, which is that all characters can reach 20 in any ability score, not the probability of that happening.

So your argument is mutually exclusive with that particular critique of floating ASIs. (Not that I recall you making both arguments. I'm just sayin'.)

Yeah I’m fine with floating ASIs, I just think they’re boring. And would rather put them in each class or something. Or do like 13th Age, so Goliaths are always a little stronger but so too a Barbarian of any race.

But I still disagree with the bolded text. I don’t think one has to do any such thing, nor do I think the technical possibility outweighs the most common outcome. Ie, it’s more important that most games don’t get past 11, and what is both possible and plausible before then, than it is what is possible at level 20. Level 20 doesn’t ever matter, unless you’re playing to level 20.

So, IMO, the fact that a halfling can hit strength 20 would only matter if, using point buy, they BOTH could do it within the levels that are normally played, and doing so wouldn’t require very rare actions, like putting your main stat above 16 at level 1.

I also don’t think it’s true that we see so many halfling Rogues and half-Orc fighters and barbarians because of the racial ASIs. I think we see them for the same reason those races are designed with “being good at those classes” in mind. They are archetypal.

 

[Charlaquin]

It seems to be all or nothing with you, which confuses me greatly. Either I don't care about roleplaying because I am a min-maxer, or I don't care about my ASI's because I am playing a roleplaying game.


What you miss is the spectrum. I'm going to shift from fighter to barbarian, because Dex fighters are a thing and a lot of people might say they are better than Strength Fighters.

Let us say I want to play an Elf Barbarian. Why? Not because I want to min-max, but because I find the story potentials of an elven barbarian interesting. I can imagine some very interesting roles and thoughts from someone who has lived 200 years in the same forest, cut off from civilization.

However, that doesn't mean I want to be a bad Barbarian. In fact, being strong and dual-wielding troll-bone handaxes is part of my backstory, it sounds awesome. I can build some great stuff with this. Except, nothing in elf mechanically is what I want for a Barbarian. the lack of Strength and Con make me deal even less damage, miss more, have lower HP. Heck, if I was building this with the Standard array, I'd be looking at 15, 15, 14, 14, 10, 8 which isn't terrible, I mean, I can work with it. But my very first ASI at level 4 is going to be getting those to 16's, meaning I can't take feats which I love to take, because they are more interesting.

But, I could do a nearly identical concept with a Dwarf. Getting 17, 16, 12, 13, 10, 8. Same AC, better damage, better hp, better in every way as doing what a Barbarian does. So, now I am forced to answer a question. Do I care more about being an Elf, or more about being a Barbarian?

And I hate having to ask that question. I shouldn't have to ask it. But I know the system. I know how hard it is to keep playing with a 16 after 5th level. Every single time I've done it, I've been left longing to reach 8th level so I can get that flipping 18, so I can tilt into the more comfortable patch of bonuses. I'm literally expeirencing this right now with my rogue. I want to take feats, but I've got a 16 dex, and it is leading me to miss far more than I should, leading to me feeling worthless in combat. And I even could have gotten an 18 at 4th, but again, I love feats. I seriously do, they are far more interesting than these boring numbers, but every time I ignore those numbers, I spend the majority of combats twiddling my thumbs and missing.



So sure, call me a min-maxer, say I'm a roll-player who doesn't know what DnD is really about, but I'm sick and tired of making that decision. I'm sick and tired of thinking "wouldn't it be cool if- no, won't have the right stats" I want to role-play, and not have the game punish me for it. People are so worried about "humans with funny masks" that they are forgetting that DnD is Carnivale, and you should be changing masks with abandon.

I agree, this is something that the “don’t play with min-maxers” argument brushes over. There are many, many, many players who aren’t just min-maxers, who still find it difficult to be satisfied playing a character with below par accuracy and damage; players who would happily take a Feat over an ability score increase because expanding their characters’ capabilities is more interesting to them than getting a flavorless statistical boost. Players who genuinely want to play unexpected race-class combinations because they think it paints a cool narrative picture... But who don’t want to be punished for making those more interesting, concept-driven character decisions with a suboptimal contribution to the party’s overall damage output. Players who want to play something weird without dragging the rest of the party down for it. Players who would gladly take “role-play over roll-play” () but feel that the game discourages them from doing so. These, not the min-maxing boogeymen, are the players who want to decouple ability scores from race selection. The ones who don’t want to have to choose between playing against type and playing an effective character. The ones who envision a game where players can either play to expected tropes or against them and be balanced either way, If such a game is “just humans with rubber masks,” well, maybe humans with rubber masks is good for the game then.

 

[Guest 6801328]

But I still disagree with the bolded text. I don’t think one has to do any such thing, nor do I think the technical possibility outweighs the most common outcome. Ie, it’s more important that most games don’t get past 11, and what is both possible and plausible before then, than it is what is possible at level 20. Level 20 doesn’t ever matter, unless you’re playing to level 20.

I don’t buy this line of argument that rules at 12+ aren’t relevant because “most” games don’t go that high. If something is wrong with the rules, then something is wrong with the rules. What, people who play at higher levels don’t matter?

Furthermore, if we want to say that only statistically “normal” games matter, then you don’t have to worry about immersion-breaking 17 strength halflings and gnomes, because most games don’t have halfling or gnome fighters and barbarians, as we know from the data.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don’t buy this line of argument that rules at 12+ aren’t relevant because “most” games don’t go that high. If something is wrong with the rules, then something is wrong with the rules. What, people who play at higher levels don’t matter?

Furthermore, if we want to say that only statistically “normal” games matter, then you don’t have to worry about immersion-breaking 17 strength halflings and gnomes, because most games don’t have halfling or gnome fighters and barbarians, as we know from the data.

Yeah, if we disregard high levels mechanically, we might as well remove them from the book and cap PCs at, say 10th. That would match most campaigns just fine, but it's not what I want. We should at least make the attempt at solid design all the way up.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I thought we were done with repeating the same talking points!

I don’t buy this line of argument that rules at 12+ aren’t relevant because “most” games don’t go that high. If something is wrong with the rules, then something is wrong with the rules. What, people who play at higher levels don’t matter?

Well, they definitely are less relevant. Which is not same than 'not relevant at all,' but it is still a meaningful difference. I mean I fully agree that one should aim for solid design throughout the game, but if bad parts do exist then certainly it matters less if they only happen in rarely played sections of the game and thus affect lesser number of players? If I was designing the game I can assure you that halflings would have strength caps, but that the situation is not perfect now is not an argument for making it worse. Furthermore, another somewhat harder to grasp distinction is that at least to me the high level D&D is somewhat different genre tan low lever one. Lower level characters are more like normal (fantasy) people and thus it matters more that they follow some reasonablish limitations than higher level characters who obviously are some bizarre mythical superheroes anyway. But I have said all this several times already.

Furthermore, if we want to say that only statistically “normal” games matter, then you don’t have to worry about immersion-breaking 17 strength halflings and gnomes, because most games don’t have halfling or gnome fighters and barbarians, as we know from the data.

But your whole point was that by removing fixed ASIs we would get more of those races in those classes and then they most definitely would have those immersion-breaking stats!