D&D 5E (2024) WotC Should Make 5.5E Specific Setting

[TiQuinn]

I am referring to the unofficial Python data scrape of DnDBeyond character sheets. The scrape occurred late 2022, and internet discussions flourished 2023. Here is an early post about it.

https://dice-scroller.com/en/most-popular-dnd-classes-and-races/#about

I think the data itself is still available online. The data includes some incomplete character sheets that seem unused and some redundant sheets that seem to be for a same character. It can benefit from a cleanup. But the source (DnDBeyond) and sheer quantity (over a million character sheets) make it useful for general impressions, such as most frequent classes and least frequent classes.

In 2022, about 3.56% of these character sheets chose Aasimar for the species, and 2.75% chose Aarakocra. For D&D 5e 2024, Aasimar made the cut, but Aarakocra didnt. Every species of a frequency less than 3% never made the cut, including Shifter, Warforged, Changeling, Tabaxi, Goblin, Kobold, and so on. Only the highest frequencies made the cut for 2024 core. Except some species merged: half into full, subspecies into full, and seemingly elemental Genasi into Goliath.

You still haven’t explained how this is to be interpreted as halflings and gnomes are in free fall and to be rolled into dwarves in some future PHB when they are in the middle of the pack of species chosen and there are several others that have lower percentages and much more likely to be excluded. The 3% cutoff number seems incidental. If humans, elves and dragonborn grow in usage, do you think the next PHB would only have three species? And again, this doesn’t explain genasi, half-elves or half-orcs not being included.

The numbers, while interesting, do not reflect the editorial decisions as you propose.

 

[Yaarel]

You still haven’t explained how this is to be interpreted as halflings and gnomes are in free fall and to be rolled into dwarves in some future PHB when they are in the middle of the pack of species chosen and there are several others that have lower percentages and much more likely to be excluded.

Freefall compares to earlier editions, when core presumed the 1e species options. Today, new species have surpassed some of them. Tiefling is more popular than Dwarf. Gnome hovers near the threshold (3.1% in 2019, 3.72% in 2022). Tiefling and Dragonborn do well, and Goliath and Aasimar entered recently. Half Orc merged into Orc. And so on. There is a demographic shift.

 

[DrJawaPhD]

It's lipstick on a pig.

It absolutely is. But this piggy looks better with lipstick than without!

 

[CreamCloud0]

this popped up in my YT feed and felt tangentially related, an interesting 17 minute watch

 

[Parmandur]

A half-race would have abilities from both parents.

I see no particular reason that has to be true in terms of game mechanics.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Maybe in the future thanks some new option gnomes and halflings could become popular, for example to pilot a magitek mini-mecha or to ride a monster mount. Or some adventure in a zombie apocalypse and halflings' stealth skills are a great help because avoid those undeads always is a better strategy.

I miss half-elves and half-orcs. I like to imagine the half-elf hero like a person with a noble heart but misunderstood or unvalued by the rest.

Maybe we need more racial feats.

 

[Epic Meepo]

A half-race would have abilities from both parents.

Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics, would disagree with your assertion. Genetic traits can be recessive, in which case they don't appear in offspring whose parents don't both possess the same recessive gene. (In that regard, aasimar and tieflings both model real-world genetics fairly well, provided one assumes planetouched special traits are dominant and non-planetouched special traits are recessive.)

 

[Maxperson]

Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics, would disagree with your assertion. Genetic traits can be recessive, in which case they don't appear in offspring whose parents don't both possess the same recessive gene. (In that regard, aasimar and tieflings both model real-world genetics fairly well, provided one assumes planetouched special traits are dominant and non-planetouched special traits are recessive.)

You also have to assume that the Aasimar special traits occupy the same space as the other parent's special traits so that the dominance can happen, and you can't end up with both parents special traits.

What you are referring to would only really come into play if say the other parent had some sort of resistance and the Aasimar resistance trait were dominant. If we're talking resistance vs. fast movement, there's nothing to dominate. Abilities rarely match up 1 to 1 like that.

Which of course is why it's better to leave this level of realism out of a fantasy game so you don't end up with a PC that has twice the abilities of a non-mixed race. Just make it so that you can mix and match abilities as you like, so long as at least one special trait comes from each parent.

 

[Yaarel]

Angels arent creatures of flesh and blood. There is no "biological" "genetics" happening during reproduction, if any. Any nonbiological reproduction is magical alteration, planar influence.

The exception to the rule is if a nonbiological species magically shapechanged to materialize into a body of flesh and blood of a biological species. But then the children reproduced are the normal biological species.

In all cases, there is no "Half" species.

Even if a Material Plane mortal "descends" sotospeak from a Celestial or Fiend, this is an inheritance of planar magic - not biology.

 

[DrJawaPhD]

Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics, would disagree with your assertion. Genetic traits can be recessive, in which case they don't appear in offspring whose parents don't both possess the same recessive gene. (In that regard, aasimar and tieflings both model real-world genetics fairly well, provided one assumes planetouched special traits are dominant and non-planetouched special traits are recessive.)

You're misinterpreting the claim here. No geneticist would ever assert that offspring are born with ONLY the traits of one parent with zero genetic influence from the other parent, which is how the DnD playtest mechanics worked.

I still think the playtest mechanics were a great compromise between game mechanics not designed to support half-species and providing roleplay options to those who want them. But no one would ever claim they were "realistic"