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.

 

[DND_Reborn]

in most games we advance by milestone of the story.

I (and when others DM in my groups) give a lot of XP as story awards for accomplishing goals, good role-playing, etc. I would say maybe half (or less) of XP comes from actual combat and/or killing of the opponents.

 

[Oofta]

That's according to the lore of one 5e setting, which also allows orcs to be good, and has for years. Gnolls, again, only apply to that one setting.

It matters to every other setting that has different lore than that one setting. Volo lives in the Forgotten Realms, so he's only going to report on things specific to that setting in his book.

So it's campaign setting dependent? It's okay if in my personal campaign they are effectively always evil and in someone else's campaign there is no true good or evil just moral relativity? In yet another campaign the orcs are the good guys and humans are the evil ones? With other campaigns having different nuances and flavors?

Works for me.

Not true, actually. About Orcs’ nature, he wrote that,

They would be Morgoth's greatest Sins, abuses of his highest privilege, and would be creatures begotten of Sin, and naturally bad. (I nearly wrote 'irredeemably bad'; but that would be going too far. Because by accepting or tolerating their making — necessary to their actual existence — even Orcs would become part of the World, which is God's and ultimately good.)

There are a lot of problematic elements to Tolkien’s orcs, but this is actually one case where he at least recognized that making them incapable of good was iffy.

Orcs in D&D are not Tolkien orcs. For that matter the orcs in my campaign world are not the orcs in your campaign world.

 

[MNblockhead]

I wonder if these "issues" will be the reason 6e becomes a thing sooner than later.

Not sure they need a new edition. They could keep most of 5e the same and just release a revised version....well, I guess that is still a "new edition." So, yeah, I can see 6e keeping most of 5e's mechanics but incorporating the new race/class/alignment stuff into the core rules. Maybe fiddle a bit with initiative, bonus actions, and make cover and line of sight for spells more clear. I really don't want or need a completely new rule set, but tweaking the existing rules to make them more flexible and clear wouldn't be bad. Would also be nice to have a book that consolidates rules and options now spread across multiple books.

 

[Oofta]

They're still humanoid (the first two at least), right? They still have agency and can be any alignment. Vampires are different, as they need to drink blood. They're undead, and undead are normally evil (there are exceptions, like the Undying Court of Eberron).

The definition of humanoid in D&D is basically: "They have language and culture, few if any innate magical abilities (though most humanoids can learn spellcasting), and a bipedal form."

So bipeds that can talk. Doesn't automatically mean they have agency or can be any alignment.

 

[Scott Christian]

They are already well on their way to it.

Alignment serves almost no purpose in 5E. When I was making one of my character sheets, I forgot it entirely (didn't omit it by choice--I literally forgot about it!).

Race is pretty much thrown out the window at this point IMO.

Class also seems to be going down the drain with all the feats that allow PCs to steal features from other classes.

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

While alignment doesn't serve much of a purpose, I can say their ideals, flaws, etc. section does for players that use them. Getting in that mindset, remembering them and basing action off them can really steer a character in directions the player would normally never go.

 

[Oofta]

Hmm. OK. I hadn’t realized that. Maybe it’s just a sign that they are getting rid of alignment descriptors all together. Demons will still be evil but it’ll be based on their fluff text, not on “alignment”.

Which, IMHO, would be a mistake. I agree with having alignment be just one descriptor, the alignment entry is the default and not universal across all campaigns. It's what we have now, even if it could be emphasized a bit more.

But a core conceit of D&D is that you one main style of play is good guys fighting evil. It will continue to be that no matter what happens in my campaigns, but I think the game loses something if we get rid of it altogether.

 

[Scott Christian]

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

Here it is again. Are you proposing fantasy game world behavior shows the player's true colors? Or are you saying their PC is a bigot? I am confused, because if you are implying that the real world person is a bigot, then I guess any actor who has played an evil person is evil. Anyone who played The Barber of Seville is a womanizer and murderer. This makes no sense.

 

[Scott Christian]

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

Thank you for the clarification. I did not see it prior to posting my last comment. Thanks.

 

[Scott Christian]

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.

Horde of the Dragon Queen and The Rise of Tiamat might offer a slightly different view.

There have always been good and bad dragons. They are at odds with one another, most of the time for moral reasons. Not resources. That makes, no matter how alignment is defined, one side good and one side bad to the commoner folk and adventurer alike; it all depends on how they view it. And Tiamat, if raised, might have something to say about morality as well.

 

[ccs]

You can condemn a person's actions while still respecting the good things they did.

I dont think that's allowed in today's society.