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

[doctorbadwolf]

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?

I can’t speak for them, but for me, replace “absolutely necessary” (which seems like a hyperbolic take on what anyone has said ITT), with “very important, and one of the main contributors to the feel of the races”, and yes.

Without it, IMO you have to add new features, which adds a great deal of complexity to the gamer overall, especially during character creation.

 

[Charlaquin]

I can’t speak for them, but for me, replace “absolutely necessary” (which seems like a hyperbolic take on what anyone has said ITT), with “very important, and one of the main contributors to the feel of the races”, and yes.

Without it, IMO you have to add new features, which adds a great deal of complexity to the gamer overall, especially during character creation.

I’d be in favor of that change, as it would make races far more interesting at what I think would be a reasonable complexity cost.

 

[FrogReaver]

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).

Yep. I think the other racial abilities are more unbalanced without the ASIs included. So instead of mostly high elf wizards you’d see mostly dwarves wizards.

To some extent the racial bonuses are there to enforce tropes but not to such a degree that you can’t play something else.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

No, it is not that at all. I merely recognise as a real advantage that should not be ignored when assessing the balance. If you try to honestly compare how the races are balanced against each other, you simply cannot ignore half of their capabilities and fixate on one aspect.

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.

This is just about your prefrences and has really nothing to do with assessing balance. You may prefer extra casting power some will prefer utility and I guess some could prefer the tabaxi mobility. These are not somehow fundamentally different things, they all are things that affect character's capabilities. By removing some of them (ability bonuses) from the equation, you just change the balance calculus and not removing it.

And that you feel it is more interesting to choose based on features alone is, well, that is just your preference and others feel differently.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Only if you value defense over mobility. I’d actually prefer the Tabaxi wizard in most cases. Pair that speed doubling with haste? So juicy!

And that’s the thing, when the advantages you get from race aren’t so directly tied to your efficiency at fulfilling your class’s role, what advantage you choose over the others says a lot more about what you value. Even (perhaps especially) for a character optimizer.

I don't necessarily think mountain dwarf is the best wizard, but I think that a major racial ability they get is only really useful for low or no armor casters. Hence the Furnace Legion and their Scorching Ray assault!

 

[Guest 6801328]

Without it, IMO you have to add new features, which adds a great deal of complexity to the gamer overall, especially during character creation.

Funny, I do agree that features are more complex, but not during character creation:

Game Design: It's definitely harder to design good features than to just slap some ASIs here and there.

Character Creation: Simpler, in my opinion. Assigning six numbers to six slots is easier than assigning numbers while keeping in mind that two of them are going to change. Especially with Point Buy. Non-ASI features you just write on your character sheet.

Gameplay: Features are definitely more complex. An ASI just gets absorbed into other numbers on your character sheet, such as skill and attack modifiers and spell DCs, which you mostly only think about when you level up and something changes. But you have to remember which Features you have, if you've used them (if they are N/rest types), and know their particulars.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

And I do that for a halfling, presto: strong halfling. Ergo: orcs are not stronger than halflings. In the lore they tend to be. Mechanics and lore have been disassociated.

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?

It is one important aspect of representing a strong race yes. It is literally the minimum amount of representing it mechanically that the system's granularity allows, so I basically already consider it a compromise position vis-à-vis balance.

 

[FrogReaver]

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.

I think you would have to do a full racial feature rewrite to make this work. The racial features are pretty far out of balance when the ASI’s are removed IMO.

 

[FrogReaver]

With all races getting +2/+1

Vhuman gets a feat
Wood elf gets +5 movement speed
Mountain dwarf gets medium armor
Hill dwarf gets hp
Gnome gets magic resistance
Halfling gets reroll 1’s
Dragonborn gets breath
Tabaxi gets speed burst
Half orc gets relentless endurance
Tiefling gets fire res.

*darkvision where appropriate
**other notable features where appropriate

Some of these ability packages are much more useful than others. Some are much more useful for certain classes than others. I think there’s a bigger racial disparity between these features and the packages without ASI’s included.

 

[Guest 6801328]

And I do that for a halfling, presto: strong halfling. Ergo: orcs are not stronger than halflings. In the lore they tend to be. Mechanics and lore have been disassociated.

So don't make a strong halfling?

And play with people who share your aesthetics and won't make strong halflings?

Or is it just the possibility of a strong halfling lurking in the rules that would cause the disassociation for you?

It is one important aspect of representing a strong race yes. It is literally the minimum amount of representing it mechanically that the system's granularity allows, so I basically already consider it a compromise position vis-à-vis balance.

+1 pound to maximum carrying capacity.

That's more granular.

EDIT: It occurs to me that one part of the disconnect is what we see the ability scores representing. For me they are abstract things that really, mechanically, mostly only tell us what bonuses to apply to broad categories of activities. (There are some exceptions, like the way the raw strength score determines carrying capacity and jumping distance.)

This debate has arisen extensively with Intelligence. Some posters insist that a low score means more than just a penalty to Int-related activities. It means your character is unintelligent. Thus the debate from a couple years ago about the "5-Int Genius". (A thread from which I got myself ejected, I believe for being mean to Max.)

I ascribe to the school of thought that ability scores define only how to apply the mechanics in the game. Thus, two characters of the same Strength score might not actually have the strength. All the score says is that when attempting a prescribed range of actions, a certain modifier is applied to the dice roll.

So, for example, I might (possibly) play a character with Strength 8 as a muscle-bound ox, who always seems to have a handy excuse when failing an attack roll or Strength ability check. Of course, when the dice tells him he succeeds, that's because of all the time spent in the gym. (Quote: "Do you even adventure?")