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.

 

[Iry]

That’s really more on the NPCs behavior though. If they always fight until they reach 0 hp, yeah, they’re gonna get killed. But if you have them surrender, retreat, etc. when it’s clear they can’t win, it might be a different story.

Side note: Things get really interesting when enemies lie on the ground crying and bleeding when they reach 0, instead of just dying. Probably one of the biggest mindgames I've ever seen at a table.

 

[tetrasodium]

So no evil dragons either? I just love to see where all this leads...so not rhetorical....genuinely curious where people draw the line.

really what a kick it would be to know all the changes that would be required for D&D to be OK and not too problematic.

like go line for line in the books to see what has to be changed and crossed out. Then when done we could really have a good sense if the game is worth it anymore instead of arguing about these incremental pushes

Dragons are straight up blue & orange morality. The difference in lifespan & power is so vast that humanoids are like ants to them. Think of Dragons like The Vorlons. They have a concept of good and evilto them, but the good & evil boundaries of a human society can't even begin to fit them... That or like in much of FR they are basically very powerful bintelligent carnivorous to omnivorous beasts.

 

[Charlaquin]

"There are certainly people who would dismiss it as “Ahh, they’re just gnolls, f**k’em.” Those people are called bigots."

That's ... a pretty strong conflation of fantasy game behavior and real world beliefs. I don't think it's as one-to-one as you seem to be implying.

I'm 99% certain that @Charlaquin meant that the people in their fantasy world would be fantasy bigots.

Acererak is correct.

 

[DemoMonkey]

We're all playing a murder simulator.

Perhaps we're playing a murder simulator where, through mental gymnastics we convince ourselves the things we murder deserve it or we don't have a choice. And we all have our own interesting little in-game personal ways of making it ok - "I killed it because it was dangerous, I killed it because it hurt me, I killed it because it was intolerant, I killed it because it was different, I killed it because the gods made me, I killed it to protect something I love" - but we are all pretending we're doing the same thing. Even if there is only 1 combat a session or 1 every ten sessions or 1 in the entire campaign:

We're all killing imaginary things for fun.

So please if we want to argue if something is good or bad for the game, that's one thing. But let's not snipe at each other because anyone believes that they hold, or that there even exists, a moral high ground when it comes to playing D&D.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Side note: Things get really interesting when enemies lie on the ground crying and bleeding when they reach 0, instead of just dying. Probably one of the biggest mindgames I've ever seen at a table.

I've had a lot of opponents fall down and fake unconsciousness or death LOL. Always a nice surprise for the PCs!

 

[Charlaquin]

"Levels are next-- I'm telling you levels are next!"

Eventually we will only be left with what is truly essential. Welcome to the new char-op paradigm! Left handed, or right handed: which is the one true character choice!

Ambidextrous, obv.

 

[DemoMonkey]

"I've had a lot of opponents fall down and fake unconsciousness or death LOL. Always a nice surprise for the PCs!"

Because of how the recovery system worked in Champions that happened ALL the time. To the point that the heroes basically had to put an enemy down, and then hit them again as hard as they could to make sure they stayed unconscious.

It was very not-genre supportive.

 

[DND_Reborn]

We're all killing imaginary things for fun.

Ah, reminds me how much I used to love certain video games...

 

[Charlaquin]

I was wondering when Gygax was going to be cancelled. What are the odds his name is excised from the next edition of D&D?

He’s been cancelled for a long time, dude.

 

[Haffrung]

Well... what else do you call labelling people before you have proof of actual wrongdoing?

"We didn't see them do anything wrong, but we assumed they were bad and killed them," does not sound like a good way to treat sentient beings, does it?

Are we still talking about a fantasy game or about the real world? Because to most of us, those are two entirely differently things.

It would be unthinkable of me to hack a person dead with an axe. But my PCs must have slain hundreds of bandits, outlaws, mercenaries, cultists, etc. in D&D.