Level Up (A5E) Where to put ability bonuses during character creation

[Derren]

Like I said, I'm using Folk in my game (or peuple, in french, which would so mean ''people'', but I find people to be a little too generic).

You have the Elf-folk
The Dwarf-folk
The Kin (haflings) folk
The Human-folk

I also added a mechanic replacing languages by Folklore X proficiency, which includes knowledge of spoken and written language, but also culture, ethiqette, folk-specific legends and recent history of a specific folk. History checks are more for general history of the world, Folklore are more for the inner working of X society.

The problem I have with folk or kin is that those words are already used to differentiate humans from each other based on different criteria like location or family statues. By using this word for races instead you are removing the actual meaning from it.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

The problem I have with folk or kin is that those words are already used to differentiate humans from each other based on different criteria like location or family statues. By using this word for races instead you are removing the actual meaning from it.

Maybe in English? All I can say is in French it does work, at least for us.

I dont think using a word to mean one thing, and then using it for another thing is a big problem in D&D, see: Level and attack

Sometime in D&D, words dont even mean what they mean! ''I'm making an unarmed weapon attack!''

 

[Guest 6801328]

I dont think using a word to mean one thing, and then using it for another thing is a big problem in D&D

Agreed, but there's also a long, glorious tradition in RPG debates to fall back on semantics when one doesn't have a coherent argument.

 

[Undrave]

The problem I have with folk or kin is that those words are already used to differentiate humans from each other based on different criteria like location or family statues. By using this word for races instead you are removing the actual meaning from it.

Well fairies are often referred to as the 'Fair Folk' (usually as a way to please them, because they're not that fair...) so why not?

And do you have a suggestion to replace 'race'?

 

[Derren]

Well fairies are often referred to as the 'Fair Folk' (usually as a way to please them, because they're not that fair...) so why not?

And do you have a suggestion to replace 'race'?

Species, although I find race completely acceptable as elves, dwarves and so on are close to what race is supposed to mean.

 

[Giauz]

Because naming things is a hard problem, and we're not nearly at a point yet where the mechanics have been defined enough that the right name is a concern.

'Race' is simple and clear, and implies a direct mapping which can include things like half-elves and half-orcs. It does, however, have a lot of people try to find ways to make it equivalent to race relations in the real world, despite it not being the same thing.

'Ancestry' implies a 'pure' mapping because it stretches into the past (see: Draconic Ancestry for Dragonborn). Thus there would be no half-elf or half-orc ancestries, but only human or elf or orc. That in turn means you would need to be able to define multiple ancestral types for a given character, which means you need mechanics for combining human and elf ancestries to get the equivalent of the half-elf. Pathfinder uses a human base and then adds a racial feat to get there, which means it's not mechanically compatible with the 5E approach. That may not be what the game designers want to allow for.

'Species' sounds like you have a bunch of bodies pinned up to a board in a scientist's lab somewhere. Frankly, it doesn't fit the aesthetic of pseudo-medieval D&D settings.

'Breed' sounds like you're talking about your pet dog.

Lineage might work, though it's somewhat close to Ancestry in implications.

Kindred is maybe. Folk is probably too 'casual' a term. Descent, Origin, Forebears, Heredity, and so forth. Each suggests things slightly different about what the mechanic is intended to convey, and how it's intended to work.


Basically, while I like Ancestry as a term, using it just because Pathfinder adopted it seems liable to introduce confusion for those who would use the term in both systems, since they would not work the same way, mechanically. Any other choice at the moment is putting the cart before the horse, because, as I said, naming things is a hard problem, and is not an urgent issue for the board that's just brainstorming for mechanics changes.

This sounds good:
Clade- a group of organisms believed to have evolved from a common ancestor according to a method of classification of animals and plants according to the proportion of measurable characteristics that they have in common.

 

[jmucchiello]

How many PCs exist in any one game world? On average fewer than 10?

3-6, I think. Out of a population of some billion?

No, not out of billions. We don't ever see the billion, we only see several thousand at best. I mean really the GM probably never fully describes more than a couple hundred over the course of a full campaign. 3-6 out of 200 is around 2%

 

[jmucchiello]

Who said that the race shouldn't be relevant to your abilities? I (and others) are only saying that it shouldn't be accomplished through ASIs. Races still have lots of other abilities, and could have even more.

But this is exactly what I was asking. Why is "Elves grant darkvision" goodrightfun. But "Half-Orcs grant +2 to Strength" is badwrongfun.

 

[jmucchiello]

If there other ways to get bonuses to Dex, then there is no problem (as long as you do not conflate fantasy species with races). It is the only way you can get Dex at that level, then it pigeonholes species to classes that match their bonuses and vice versa.

So? I haven't been convinced that the lack of Half-Orc bards is important.

Which is why some of us are pushing hard to stop using the word "race" for fantasy species. It is not a panacea (orcs are pretty much unavoidably coded as people of colour at this point, so giving them an Int penalty would be a bad look even if you call orcs a species, for example), but it is an important step.

No one said anything about giving penalties. Or at least I didn't. I've been saying it should be "Choose whether your Elf get +2 to Dex or +2 to Int".

 

[Morrus]

So? I haven't been convinced that the lack of Half-Orc bards is important.

Well, not to somebody who doesn’t want to play a half orc bard, no, I guess it’s not. But just because you don’t want to play one, does that mean nobody else should be allowed to?