Faolyn
(she/her)
Personally, here's one of those cases where I'd've liked either sub-races or the ability to pick your size from Tiny to Medium. So you could have both Tiny pixies and Medium sylphs, if you wanted.
D&D 5E Witchlight publishes the new official format for player character races.
Yaarel
He Mage
The harengon can choose whether to be Medium or Small. This choice of size seems appropriate for the fairy too.
Levistus's_Leviathan
5e Freelancer
We haven't been getting many races that have subraces lately. Wasn't the last official one the Shifter from Eberron? I do wish that the Fairy race had subraces, so you could get different spells for the different subraces (the subraces could even be called "Sylph", "Pixie/Sprite", and similar names).
Scribe
Legend
Is it a straight jacket or not? You and I have discussed this many times, I have NO reason to fight with you over it.
I believe that we already understand each other and I don't feel like doing this again today as I was finally able to get my 2nd Covid shot on Monday, and I feel like trash.
Suffice it to say, I'm more than happy for options to exist, I simply wish Wizards understood everyone (or certainly more) could be satisfied at the same time.
I'm not going to continue in this thread.
Faolyn
(she/her)
The difference between those two bits you quoted? One is about individuals (the part where you can play a CE dwarf) and the other is about the entire race as a whole. Which is why the racial alignment is a straightjacket: now I, as a DM, have to effectively rewrite everything and provide player material if I wanted to have dwarfs have a different racial alignment (or any alignment). As a player, I have to come up with a decent reason why my dwarf, alone out of how many, is CE.
Without racial alignments, it makes sense. Maybe my CE dwarf had an abusive upbringing or started hanging out with the wrong crowd. Maybe the entire area where my dwarf grew up was filled with terrible people, even if none of them harmed me. You know, normal things that happen to make people CE (without delving into supernatural stuff or being raised by monsters, at least).
But a society where nearly everyone is LG? That CE dwarf is unlikely to have had an abusive upbringing, and if he had, it's likely that someone else would have noticed and stepped in before it got that bad (since LG people are going to step in to protect children). And in a typically LG society, what would the wrong crowd or terrible people even be? Sure, I can imagine a NG or CG, or even an LN dwarf naturally occuring in such a society, but anything else? It makes very little sense. So you're left with "bad seeds" which... is kinda weak. Nobody likes a bad guy who was just born evil.
(And I (and others) would still like to know what you have actually lost by removing racial alignments.)
Faolyn
(she/her)
Honestly, they probably never should have had subraces to begin with. Either make all elves just elves (my preference), or make wood elves, high elves, etc., separate races.
Or do what they did with humans and make them cultures, ideally in a provided, small, points of light regional setting.
NaturalZero
Hero
In theory, I like the idea of large PC races options. The thing i generally don't like is when the mechanics of a race just make it hands-down superior to all other race options for common set-ups.
4e had a great design philosophy for races. Back then, the idea was that racial powers should be generally useful for pretty much any character concept instead of being useless to some/many classes. Dwarves can heal themselves and that's as useful on a wizard as it is on a fighter. Half-orc's rage gets them bonus damage, but it also applies to wizard spells. Elven accuracy works with fireball and a ranger's arrow. This design culture was so ingrained that when they came out with a race that granted a melee power, the minotaur, there were huge threads arguing about the developers dropping the ball and how to fix it. This is a great goal, IMO.
Now, if we add a large race, the OA issue seems balanced by the fact that you'll receive more OAs without the ability to make more yourself. I'm playing my second rune knight ATM, and the first one I played was a duergar that could become huge for one combat per day. Being large/huge was useful but not overwhelming, in itself. For me though, baked in bonus damage on melee weapons on a race fits perfectly narratively but feels real bad from a mechanical perspective. If I want to build a sword-an-board paladin, do i pick a race that deals 1d8 for his whole career with a longsword or the guy that just gets 1d10 forever? Do i pick the race that just deals straight damage or the one that gets +1d6 for free without expending resources? It makes sense thematically, but it feels like it creates a "must pick" vibe from a character building perspective.
I love Iron Kingdoms and supported their new 5e kickstarter. The PDF version of all of the books has been sent to supporters and, oof, the balance issues are glaring. One of the races, in case you folks aren't familiar with the setting, is the ogrun and they're essentially half-ogres. They get the ability to wield two-handed weapons in one hand and +1 to AC. From a mechanical perspective, why would you not choose ogrun if you're going to do 2-weapon fighting or sword-and-board?
4e had a great design philosophy for races. Back then, the idea was that racial powers should be generally useful for pretty much any character concept instead of being useless to some/many classes. Dwarves can heal themselves and that's as useful on a wizard as it is on a fighter. Half-orc's rage gets them bonus damage, but it also applies to wizard spells. Elven accuracy works with fireball and a ranger's arrow. This design culture was so ingrained that when they came out with a race that granted a melee power, the minotaur, there were huge threads arguing about the developers dropping the ball and how to fix it. This is a great goal, IMO.
Now, if we add a large race, the OA issue seems balanced by the fact that you'll receive more OAs without the ability to make more yourself. I'm playing my second rune knight ATM, and the first one I played was a duergar that could become huge for one combat per day. Being large/huge was useful but not overwhelming, in itself. For me though, baked in bonus damage on melee weapons on a race fits perfectly narratively but feels real bad from a mechanical perspective. If I want to build a sword-an-board paladin, do i pick a race that deals 1d8 for his whole career with a longsword or the guy that just gets 1d10 forever? Do i pick the race that just deals straight damage or the one that gets +1d6 for free without expending resources? It makes sense thematically, but it feels like it creates a "must pick" vibe from a character building perspective.
I love Iron Kingdoms and supported their new 5e kickstarter. The PDF version of all of the books has been sent to supporters and, oof, the balance issues are glaring. One of the races, in case you folks aren't familiar with the setting, is the ogrun and they're essentially half-ogres. They get the ability to wield two-handed weapons in one hand and +1 to AC. From a mechanical perspective, why would you not choose ogrun if you're going to do 2-weapon fighting or sword-and-board?
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