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

[Maxperson]

I agree.

Stripping dragonborn of their breath weapon so they would be identical to humans is not 5.5e

It's not 5e, either. Or 4e that I've heard. Or 3e. Or 3.5e. No edition of D&D has done that to them.

 

[Maxperson]

Wut!? Not even PC species are well balanced. They certainly ain’t balanced for NPCs. I’m pretty sure AoE breath weapons that do more than enough damage to kill several enemy troops at once even if they are save beat a unit of dwarves with an extra hp apiece and the ability to sense tremors.

An army of high elves with firebolt and other offensive cantrip would probably destroy them.

 

[Minigiant]

Wut!? Not even PC species are well balanced. They certainly ain’t balanced for NPCs. I’m pretty sure AoE breath weapons that do more than enough damage to kill several enemy troops at once even if they are save beat a unit of dwarves with an extra hp apiece and the ability to sense tremors.

I believe if you use CR calculations using the guidance in the 2014 DMG giving the basic warrior Dragonborn breath weapon pushes its CR up from 1/4 to over 1. This does not happen for other species abilities.

See.

This is my point

A 1HD dragonborn commoner's breath weapon would be 1d6 adjusted to its CR. Maybe even 1d4.

See if WOTC did the 5.5e setting, we'd all know mass Dragonborn would not be that much more scary that any other species.

Except Gnomes. Gnome suck for nonPCs

 

[CreamCloud0]

besides simplifying the overhead of running the game, i honestly question why you'd want NPCs to not have the same list of traits that their PC counterparts have?

 

[Minigiant]

besides simplifying the overhead of running the game, i honestly question why you'd want NPCs to not have the same list of traits that their PC counterparts have?

Maintaining Gygaxian humanocentrism or a futile attempt of a low magic frequency base.

5.5e is higher magic frequency than most editions.

 

[Yaarel]

is there really not a middle ground for species having their own distinctions between 'superficial aesthetic differences' and 'alien unknowable experience'?

In the mind of a scientist (animal behavioralist)? Maybe.

For the average gamer trying out a Scottish accent? No, not really.

 

[Yaarel]

Species Template for Humanoid Statblocks

SPECIES	TYPICAL FEATURES
Aasimar *	Resist radiant-necrotic, Heal pro d4, Light, Fly 30
Dragonborn *	Resist type, 15' cone Dex: 1d10 type
Dwarf *	Resist poison, Hit points +3, Tremorsense 60
Elf *	Cantrip, Detect Magic, Misty Step, Resist charm, Immune sleep.
Gnome *	Save adv: Wis, Int, Cha Minor Illusion, Speak with Animals
Goliath	Frost: hit +1d6 cold, slow. Fire: hit +1d10 fire
. . .

 

[Epic Meepo]

No rule replaced that rule. A statblock is not a rule. Things in the stat block are rules and no rule replaces the one from 5e. There is no new version of the rule that races get their abilities

The 5e rule from PHB Page 177 is...

"The peoples of the D&D multiverse hail from different worlds and include many kinds of sapient life forms. A player character's species is the set of game traits that an adventurer gains from being one of those life forms."

You explicitly get your traits from the general racial traits, not as something different from them only for PCs. . There is no rule anywhere in 5.5e that says that races are different for PCs than NPCs, so there's no reason to think that they are.

I suppose if you want a 5.5e setting that changes Dragonborn to remove breath weapons, it can be made, but that change would not be specific for a 5.5e setting. And the thread is about things that are specific for 5.5e, not changes to it like removing Dragonborn breath weapons.

That bold-faced rule you quoted has nothing to do with NPCs. It says PCs get a set of traits from their species. NPCs aren't PCs. If I learned to play D&D using the 2024 core rulebooks, I would have no reason to believe NPCs get species traits which don't appear in their 2024 stat blocks.

However, I see that the OP agrees with your assessment. I'm not sure why. I thought this thread was started to discuss what a campaign setting would look like if it followed the rules as presented in the 2024 core rulebooks, without reference to assumptions carried over from prior editions.

I guess I don't really understand what's going on in this thread. You're welcome to have the last word, if you want. I'll read your response, if any, to see if I can better understand, but I don't have anything to else to say. I seem to have a completely different understanding of what constitutes a "5.5E specific" rule.

 

[CreamCloud0]

That bold-faced rule you quoted has nothing to do with NPCs. It says PCs get a set of traits from their species. NPCs aren't PCs.

No, NPCs aren’t PCs, by their definition they can’t be, but i see no logical reason why that means they wouldn’t have the same traits that every single PC member of their species does, I don’t see PCs as some special ‘species plus’ variant of their people, the party elf might be stronger, tougher, smarter than the average elf, but their resistance to sleep and charm is not different from other elves, nor is their perception proficiency or their magical cantrip.

 

[Maxperson]

That bold-faced rule you quoted has nothing to do with NPCs. It says PCs get a set of traits from their species. NPCs aren't PCs. If I learned to play D&D using the 2024 core rulebooks, I would have no reason to believe NPCs get species traits which don't appear in their 2024 stat blocks.

It says PCs get the same traits as the rest of the race, not that they get different traits. NPCs and PCs are both part of the same race, so they all get the same traits. While NPCs and PCs don't follow the same set-up for creation, they still follow the same rules for racial abilities. An elven bandit is going to have the same ability to see in the dark and have advantage on saves vs. charm as PCs.