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

[FrogReaver]

And it's totally valid if some people believe that it's ok or even good for the game to be designed that way. (I disagree, but it's an entirely subjective point.)

What I find totally bizarre is that so many people seem to think:
a) The synergy, or lack thereof, between racial attribute bonuses and classes aren't enough that anybody should be dissuaded from picking the combination that appeals to them
b) And yet those bonuses are so important that their absence, or even floating bonuses, would feel "like playing a human with a mask".

Maybe the answer is to make attributes a complex number (that is, with both real and imaginary components). So your strength might be 16,3i. The imaginary component comes from your race, and isn't actually used for any mechanics, so it can be really big to differentiate pretty-strong Dwarves (2i) from crazy-strong Goliaths (6i). But it's RIGHT THERE ON YOUR CHARACTER sheet, so you can feel like you're mighty. Or superhumanly quick. Or brilliant. Or whatever.

Both sides are using that double speak though. When it suits their argument the stat difference doesn’t matter much. When it suits their argument it matters a great deal. Pretty much every person here is doing that.

 

[jmartkdr2]

And it's totally valid if some people believe that it's ok or even good for the game to be designed that way. (I disagree, but it's an entirely subjective point.)

What I find totally bizarre is that so many people seem to think:
a) The synergy, or lack thereof, between racial attribute bonuses and classes aren't enough that anybody should be dissuaded from picking the combination that appeals to them
b) And yet those bonuses are so important that their absence, or even floating bonuses, would feel "like playing a human with a mask".

Maybe the answer is to make attributes a complex number (that is, with both real and imaginary components). So your strength might be 16,3i. The imaginary component comes from your race, and isn't actually used for any mechanics, so it can be really big to differentiate pretty-strong Dwarves (2i) from crazy-strong Goliaths (6i). But it's RIGHT THERE ON YOUR CHARACTER sheet, so you can feel like you're mighty. Or superhumanly quick. Or brilliant. Or whatever.

I also think there's a confusion about whether we're talking about removing racial ability score mods or racial features in general.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I also think there's a confusion about whether we're talking about removing racial ability score mods or racial features in general.

Oh. Maybe. I thought we had straightened that out.

What I'm arguing for (and I think @Charlaquin agrees) is to aim for features that minimize synergy with specific classes.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

What I find totally bizarre is that so many people seem to think:
a) The synergy, or lack thereof, between racial attribute bonuses and classes aren't enough that anybody should be dissuaded from picking the combination that appeals to them
b) And yet those bonuses are so important that their absence, or even floating bonuses, would feel "like playing a human with a mask".

Because it is not about being better or worse overall, it is about being different. A dwarf wizard is not quite as good caster than the gnome wizard, but is more resilient. And sure, that might not be perfectly fair tradeoff, I get that. But to me that is fine, that difference is not so big in overall power is not so big.

Or you can think it this way. Even if we agreed that features contributed as much to the differentiation of the races than the bonuses, by removing the bonuses you'd reduce the differentiation by half! And for those of us who want the races to feel different, that's not good!

Maybe the answer is to make attributes a complex number (that is, with both real and imaginary components). So your strength might be 16,3i. The imaginary component comes from your race, and isn't actually used for any mechanics, so it can be really big to differentiate pretty-strong Dwarves (2i) from crazy-strong Goliaths (6i). But it's RIGHT THERE ON YOUR CHARACTER sheet, so you can feel like you're mighty. Or superhumanly quick. Or brilliant. Or whatever.

This is effectively what you want to actually do by disassociating the game mechanics from the lore.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I'm pretty sure I already answered this exact example once. You added them some options that were unrelated to their race, so we can ignore those for differentiation (each could have chosen the same options and these didn't make a big difference anyway,) so what is left is couple of inconsequential ribbons.

I intentionally left out the ribbons, but maybe we are using "ribbon" differently. Here's how WotC defined it:

On the R&D team, any ability meant to convey flavor rather than a mechanical advantage is referred to as a ribbon—a thing that’s mostly for show.

An inconsequential ribbon is going to be even less than that.

So maybe (maybe?) Trance counts as a ribbon, although it can be pretty useful.

But the others? Hardly devoid of mechanical advantage.

 

[Helldritch]

I strongly feel that removing racial ASI would simply reduce the number of race that players will play. Why play anything else than human if all ASI are floating or related to background or culture? Of all the power races give, the bonus feat at first level is the strongest. The trade off is the loss of a +2 for a +1, Darkvision and one or two other knicknacks that can be useful but not life saving. If even humans get their +2/+1 floating in the air ready to be spent as they wish, why do something else than a human?

Racial ASI allow the following
Strong character concepts from a min/max view:
Choosing fighter for a dwarf is always better than for a tiefling or gnome. The bonuses are there to encourage dwarves to make cleric, fighter, paladin? Not that the dwarf can't be a good thief or wizard. It simply means that more effort will be required of the character to perform on the level that an other race, favored by the system, will be able to.

Allows the building of underdog character concept without gimping the character forever:
The example of the dwarf can also be taken. A dwarven thief will have a harder time than a halfing one but it can lead to a strong melee type rogue with a good, very good armor class or a lot of HP in the case of a hill dwarf. A high wisdom and resistance to poison helps rogues a lot. Just as a dragonborn thief, even if out of the norm, can perfom as good as a halfing when level 12 is reached. It leads to surprising character builds that, if the DM is honnest enough, will surprise even the NPC. What? That half orcs thrown a fireball at the guards? (incredulous look from the guard's captain).

It fits with players expectation of fantasy genre, especially new ones.
New players (young ones and even older ones) have expectations. They want their dwarves to be grumpy and rough. They want their halfing to be merry fellows with hearts of golds (and their pockets filled with gold too!). Is it that bad to allow the expectations to be the norm? New players might get repulsed when they see their first dwarven bard, but if the dwarven bard keeps being rare they will accept it better. Not that some players will never accept, just that shaking ones expectation is not for every players. Old players might find it tiresome that they can't rely on stereotype when assessing an NPC. Players like that their expectations are respected. They like to be shaken up once in a while, but when the underdog is no longer an underdog and becomes the norm, the sense of wonder quickly goes down the drain and a sentiment of Blasé appears.

Ho.. another dwarven bard/warlock or whatever... (yawn) When the unexpected is well, unexpected, a sense of wonder is brought up and a lot of questions appear in their mind wheter they want it or not.

I know that some old players and DM would like floating bonuses to explore more character concept without being gimped at the start. This is entirely normal. What I would recommend is to do it in their games for a while and tell us if the variety of races really got better or if it has been reduced in favor of fewer races. I expect that the humans, and half elves will become prominent (and maybe dwarves too. Floating bonuses and armor proficiency? Count me in. All my wizards would be mountain dwarves. +2 to con, +2 to intel, resistance to poins and armor proficiency, the deal of the century! Even hill dwarves would be great with the additional hp every level).

 

[Guest 6801328]

Or you can think it this way. Even if we agreed that features contributed as much to the differentiation of the races than the bonuses, by removing the bonuses you'd reduce the differentiation by half! And for those of us who want the races to feel different, that's not good!

To be clear, I'm in favor of more features to replace the ability bonuses.

This is effectively what you want to actually do by disassociating the game mechanics from the lore.

How am I disassociating anything? You can still play a strong Orc: just put your maximum score in Strength (plus your floating bonus, if that happens) then put a bunch of ASIs into it. Presto: strong Orc.

Unless you are saying that a starting Strength score at least one point higher than other races (except maybe other "strong" races) can have is absolutely necessary to make a character that feels like an Orc. Is that it?

 

[Charlaquin]

This is really weird way to look at things. Do you know which sort of wizards cast most spells? The ones which are alive! The resilience is not irrelevant part of practical wizarding.

That you feel that way speaks to what you value. I imagine you tend to place a high priority on Constitution and AC for most characters you make, unless you have a compelling reason to do otherwise. That’s valid and cool. I think for most players, having more spells, better spell attack bonus, and higher save DC would significantly out-value the armor proficiency and Con boost. Obviously your experiences will vary, but in mine the value of an ASI to your class’s primary ability is so much more valuable to players as to make the other racial features inconsequential ribbons” as you put it yourself. With out them, the other racial features would be of much greater relative value, and since they don’t directly impact your chance of success at the majority of your rolls, your expected damage output, or your spell selection, the value propositions between them would be much more subjective (and therefore interesting IMO) instead of simple, boring statistical analysis.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I strongly feel that removing racial ASI would simply reduce the number of race that players will play. Why play anything else than human if all ASI are floating or related to background or culture? Of all the power races give, the bonus feat at first level is the strongest. The trade off is the loss of a +2 for a +1, Darkvision and one or two other knicknacks that can be useful but not life saving. If even humans get their +2/+1 floating in the air ready to be spent as they wish, why do something else than a human?

I would assume the floating +2/+1 would be a non-human thing. Or at least it wouldn't apply to vHumans.

The way things currently stand, humans already totally dominate the data (from D&DBeyond). Clearly the non-floating +2/+1 isn't doing much to drive business the non-human way.

Racial ASI allow the following
Strong character concepts from a min/max view:

Again, whether or not that's a good thing is a valid viewpoint, but entirely subjective and not consensus.

Allows the building of underdog character concept without gimping the character forever:

With other options (no racial ASIs, or floating ASIs) you can certainly assign your stats however you want, so those concepts are still doable.

It fits with players expectation of fantasy genre, especially new ones.

New players (young ones and even older ones) have expectations...

Data, please.

 

[Charlaquin]

Oh. Maybe. I thought we had straightened that out.

What I'm arguing for (and I think @Charlaquin agrees) is to aim for features that minimize synergy with specific classes.

My goal is the removal of racial ASIs. I find other racial features far more interesting. Ideally, I would want all race features to be valuable to characters of any class, and not to particularly favor some classes over others, though I think some degree of race/class favoritism is unavoidable. But keep it to a minimum if possible.