D&D 5E WotC On Tasha, Race, Alignment: A Several-Year Plan

WotC spoke to the site Dicebreaker about D&D race and alignment, and their plans for the future.

• On of the motivations of the changes [character customization] in Tasha's Cauldron was to decouple race from class.
• The 'tightrope' between honouring legacy and freedom of character choice has not been effectively walked.
• Alignment is turning into a roleplaying tool, and will not be used to describe entire cultures.
• This work will take several years to fully implement.

 

[pukunui]

Do what you gotta do WOTC. I'm not sure about demons from the 666th level of the Infinite Abyss not being "evil" or those who would traffic with them by summoning them into temporary slavery to fight for their amusement.... Ah, I'll stop. I have some strange feeling this thread is going to rehash prior threads' commentaries.

I think it's worth pointing out that Jeremy is only talking about humanoids. He's not talking about removing built-in alignments for other kinds of creatures, like fiends.

 

[tetrasodium]

I can't help but think this is like tanar'ri in 2nd edition: a change to placate people who don't play the game or know anything about it.
D&D won't work without evil humanoids to fight. Moreover, popular culture depends on it. Look at Stormtroopers. Look at any of the faceless Marvel villain grunts. Evil creatures in evil hats have to exist in our media. You can't be a hero against shades of gray.

Profit driven corporations/nobles/industries, remnants of biological warfare (magebred war beasts), weakening ancient seals on big bads of the past, bandits & raiders feeling like they have no other choice due to the state of the local economy, invaders from somewhere else that could be extraplanar starfish aliens like the daelkyr or a colonial power/force with colonial power motives if none of the above, Someone trying to fulfil/manipulate a prophecy to achieve a desired end, unethical arcanists performing research & experimentation with loose ethics... so on & so forth to name a few. There are many ways of making evil faceless baddies without needing to say "this entire race is a cartoon Vilnian", the other ways are not really any more difficult & allow much further depth for the gm/players to explore

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I am Probably about done with this kind of silly sh*t. I bought tashas but that may be the end of it. No problem though...among the books we have, there are thousands of combinations for PCs.

when dwarves having dark vision or cats being good at stealth is equated to “real life hurts,” I just cannot buy into or go along with that.

this is getting silly. In phb, it was “inborn traits” but now humans can have dark vision.

remember when dwarves could resist poison? We really need to get away from that because that hurts others? Omg.

 

[DemoMonkey]

"I think it's worth pointing out that Jeremy is only talking about humanoids. He's not talking about removing built-in alignments for other kinds of creatures, like fiends."

Well then the solution is obvious! Just define creatures like Drow and Goblins as something other than humanoids. Perhaps define them as a subset of humanoids. Surely someone can think of a good term for that.

I see no pitfalls there.

 

[Charlaquin]

"I think it's worth pointing out that Jeremy is only talking about humanoids. He's not talking about removing built-in alignments for other kinds of creatures, like fiends."

Well then the solution is obvious! Just define creatures like Drow and Goblins as something other than humanoids. Perhaps define them as a subset of humanoids. Surely someone can think of a good term for that.

I see no pitfalls there.

We are in way too deep with those groups for that to work.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Well then the solution is obvious! Just define creatures like Drow and Goblins as something other than humanoids. Perhaps define them as a subset of humanoids. Surely someone can think of a good term for that.

How about Elves and Goblinoids?

 

[Mistwell]

You do understand that 'Stormtrooper' is not a race?

Unsure if this tangent is worth going down, but...clones mang! They're literally all the same! At least, from movies 1 to 3.

 

[Charlaquin]

Unsure if this tangent is worth going down, but...clones mang! They're literally all the same! At least, from movies 1 to 3.

The republic used clone troopers, but the empire did not.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Unsure if this tangent is worth going down, but...clones mang! They're literally all the same! At least, from movies 1 to 3.

Well that is damaging too. Genetics = traits is racist and bad.

 

[Charlaquin]

Well that is damaging too. Genetics = traits is racist and bad.

Clone isn’t a race. It’s just more of the same dude.