D&D 5E Wow! No more subraces. The Players Handbook races reformat to the new race format going forward.

[FitzTheRuke]

I'm actually looking forward to see them updated in the new format. Hopefully Genasi get a buff, too (I would love it if they became a Lineage so that you could have a Dwarf Earth Genasi or an Aarakocra Air Genasi, but that might be a bit too far for this book).

I think the best thing that we can hope for with this update is that, while converting the current races to the new format, they are forced to take a look at each race, both for balance, and to make sure that they have abilities that reflect the core of the race or subrace without the stat-bump being the main thing to set it apart from another.

I'm interested to see what changes wind up happening. I mean, if the new Dragonborn are anything to go by...

 

[Scribe]

I don't think there's a mutually agreed upon definition of "balance", and until there is, this assertion doesn't mean much.

Absolutely, a near meaningless term when looking at the games potential complexity.

 

[Aldarc]

Tasha's-style ASIs went from optional to the law of the land incredibly quickly by publishing standards. There is every reason to believe it was done in response to public opinion quickly coming down on "you didn't go far enough". Doing what they did makes no sense otherwise, and all their other changes fall right 8n line with that philosophy as well. As I've said in another thread, WotC has removed themselves from responsibility on nearly every front in favor of a liability-averse, "do you what you want" stance. In my mind, this means they are no longer any more important to D&D than any other publisher, except in the strictest legal sense.

“That’s when I decided it was no molehill; no, it was indeed a mountain.”

 

[Scribe]

Maxperson is specifically talking about making all individuals (i.e., the PCs) have the same racial ASIs. Goliaths, on the whole, are stronger than many other races--because the DM can and likely will say that every NPC goliath has a high Strength. But "on the whole" doesn't mean "includes every PC whether they like it or not."

Take 10000 randomized Standard Arrays.
Apply Goliath ASI to 5000.
Apply Halfling ASI to 5000.

Average the Str of both data sets.

Which is stronger?

Goliath, and that is what racial ASI provides, a mechanical way to reflect the averages of different species.

 

[Micah Sweet]

“That’s when I decided it was no molehill; no, it was indeed a mountain.”

Cute. But that's what happened, and they're not going back any time soon.

 

[Maxperson]

Absolutely, a near meaningless term when looking at the games potential complexity.

At the same time, though, we can look at the various editions and see which ones were more unbalanced. If balance is a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being perfect balance and 10 being pretty much chaos, 3e was probably a 7 on the scale, 1e and 2e were probably 6's, and 5e is around a 4. I think they should have gone with around a 5. 5e is too balanced in my opinion, even though it's still a lot of fun.

 

[Minigiant]

If halflings average 10, goliaths will average 12. That's not high strength. It's just higher on average than a race without the bonus.

And I never said otherwise. A PC could roll as low as 3 on a stat, giving him a 5 strength as a goliath. They will get the bonus to strength due to being a part of the race, but they don't have to be average. They can be above or below average.

WOTC knows that fans would scream "broken!" and "forced archetypes!" If they gave Orcs and Goliaths +8 STR and Half long and Elves +6 DEX.

 

[Aldarc]

Cute.

Thanks.

 

[Micah Sweet]

WOTC knows that fans would scream "broken!" and "forced archetypes!" If they gave Orcs and Goliaths +8 STR and Half long and Elves +6 DEX.

Of course, regular ASIs had enough people screaming, "forced archetypes!" that WotC changed the game to cater to them.

 

[Minigiant]

Of course, regular ASIs had enough people screaming, "forced archetypes!" that WotC changed the game to cater to them.

I've pondered that the bonus of regular Racial ASI and the base array is so low that it nudges players and designers to over emphasize the level bonus they got.

I think if the base PC array included a 16 before racials, people would not stress race ASI so much.