I found out a few days ago the with the new optional rules you can trade in Armor and Weapon proficiencies for tools...
At 4th level with the Skilled Feat and a background that gives you 2 additional tools you can have 16 tool proficiencies, and the getting double prof at 6th
If you still wanted more you could take some of the new feats also for a few extra
I just thought people should at least know about this... I know its not the same as Skill proficiencies, but us Artificers are a creative bunch I'm sure you folks can do something with this (musicians with Bard comes to mind)
Artificers gain the ability, at tenth level, to create Green or lower magical items for half the cost in a quarter of the time. If one uses the Xanathar's Guide rules for item crafting (which are absolutely terrible, but they're better than anything else we've got, so...), then an artificer wanting to make magical equipment needs not only gold, time, and "a magical ingredient, material, or object appropriate to the crafting', but also the tool proficiencies required to create the item. Xanathar's Guide states that 'proficiency in the Arcana skill' can substitute for a tool proficiency, but many DMs will cite that you need Arcana and the tool proficiency to craft a magic item as opposed to just an item. This means every tool proficiency you can get is solid gold for many artificers.
Mountain Dwarf offers an unprecedented number of 'bonus' tool proficiencies if one trades their native armor and weapon training for them. Enough so that many DMs may well step on it. Six bonus tools is a gorram lot, and while it makes sense in most world's lore for dwarves to be the artisan maniacs, it's also kinda clearly unintended/outlier behavior. On the other hand, an artificer that doesn't plan on crafting magical (or mundane) items and who mostly just wants tools for flavor is not really hurting anything. Any tool proficiency past the first is irrelevant to their needs - artificers only need their base tinker/thieves' tool proficiencies to use their spells, everything else is just a new variety of fluff.
Mostly? This just kinda makes it plain that species-based object proficiencies need to go away in any prospective 6e of the future. Let training in objects, whether they be armor, weapon, tool, or Other, be part of background upbringing or part of a different leg of character creation, and make species selection into strictly a "choose your biological make-up" option. Because elves and dwarves gaining four to six additional tools over any other species really does suck for artificers that would like to be something other than a dorf or a pointy-eared leaf lover.
Mostly? This just kinda makes it plain that species-based object proficiencies need to go away in any prospective 6e of the future. Let training in objects, whether they be armor, weapon, tool, or Other, be part of background upbringing or part of a different leg of character creation, and make species selection into strictly a "choose your biological make-up" option. Because elves and dwarves gaining four to six additional tools over any other species really does suck for artificers that would like to be something other than a dorf or a pointy-eared leaf lover.
I’m sorry, but I have two points to make:
This is one of the reasons I object to the lineage system.
No, it doesn’t. Elves and Dwarves being extra good at something doesn’t make it any worse for anyone else, it just makes it better for them. That’s a logical fallacy known as Relative Privation. https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Relative-Privation If you always compare everything to the apex, you will always be disappointed with everything. The bestestes possible is not standard. Average is standard, the bestestest possible is exceptional. That means that by definition, it is an exception, or what is scientifically known as an “outlier.” Outliers are those dots way the heck off the charts that skew the data. Scientists typically dismiss those when examining datasets, specifically to avoid biasing themselves like you have about this.
Relative Privation does not apply when one is able to control all the variables of one's position. When one is given a choice of many options touted as equivalent, yet one or two options provide significant additional resources to one's final position that no other options come close to matching? Those 'outlier' options become the de facto standard, because one would have to be foolish to voluntarily discard those resources for what amounts to purely aesthetic reasons.
I understand that you despise the notion of "exceptionalism". That said, I refer you to the Player's Handbook, which states numerous times that "player characters are exceptional. They're the legendary figures myths are told of, they break all the rules." While a player can absolutely choose not to bleeding-edge optimize and still do fine (in large part because the base game mathand design assumptions are all based on the idea that the people playing the game are total imbeciles who have no idea how to play), that doesn't mean that the dwarven artificer who starts the game with eleven tool proficiencies does not make all the other artificers who start the game with five at the most look quite lazy by comparison.
Now, again: artificers don't necessarily need more then the three tool proficiencies their base class gives them. Every artificer starts with thieves', tinker's, and Wildcard, and they gain a fourth when they hit their subclass. Anything they get from their background, and from any other source, is generally gravy unless the DM has specific crafting requirements in place. Nevertheless, being able to acquire six additional tool proficiencies is hugely advantageous for games in which those specific crafting requirements are in place, especially when those resources are basically free. If one bans the lineage system at their table (which I do not recommend doing, at least not completely, but this is a very contentious subject and any DM has the final say at their table), then this all becomes moot.
But if the Lineage system is permitted, then both dwarves and elves gain a huge edge over other species with their wide array of bonus proficiencies, which should not be the case if one desires all the PCs in their party to be of roughly equivalent level/power/impact/Gudness/whatever-your-metric-is, simply because of a vestigial holdover from earlier editions. Thus why, in any prospective 6e's of the future, they should not have Dwarf/Elf Weapon/Armor Training baked into their species statblock, but instead have Dwarf/Elf Weapon/Armor training baked into an expanded background option for those dwarves/elves that actually grew up in clanholds/groves.
'Species' is for biological traits. 'Background' is the appropriate place for cultural ones. The Lineage system is part of Wizards making the realization that this is true and trying to back-hack it into 5e, but it comes with some elf and dwarf-shaped glitches. Oh well.
Personally as a DM I would only let a player "trade-in" proficiencies that actually resulted in them losing something. For an artificer any simple weapon proficiency or light/medium armor would get you nothing because you lost nothing - if on the final character sheet its impossible to tell you gave them up then I give you nothing for them.
I know it does not specify that in Tasha's but saying that your dwarf gave up their ability to wear armor to have more skill proficiencies while the character wears that exact armor is gamey as all hell and I don't have to let you have an optional rule at all if I think you are just trying to game it. Everything in Tasha's is optional and purely in the gift of the DM. I'm all for inventive and creative characters but there comes a point where it just looks like a rationalisation for an exploit, that it the point where I just decide not to extend the optional rule to that particular case.
I'd be completely cool with giving up Battleaxe and Warhammer for tool proficiency swaps because you actually lose the ability to roll with proficiency on those things.
The mountain dwarf is an excellent example. It gives 'outlier'-level +4 overall to one's stats, in Constitution and Strength. Any class that desires those two attributes pretty much already has the armor and weapon proficiencies the mountain dwarf gains from its cultural traits. There is no class in the game that is 'good' for mountain dwarf. If you play a wizard, sorcerer, bard or other character that benefits from the armor and weapon proficiencies, the unhelpful stat allocations do you no good. If you play a fighter, barbarian, paladin, or any other classic/traditional/"Iconic" dwarven class to benefit from the high stat numbers, the armor and weapon proficiencies are an absolute waste of time.
For a lot of players, that's really frustrating, especially when one looks at species like the half-elf, who gets to allocate those same +4 points but also gains two free skills and a ton of other cool, always-helpful stuff one's class never overrides, or species like the tiefling that gain the ability to cast a few minor spells regardless of their class. 'Losing' part of your species' stat block just kinda feels rotten, especially when you know the species was tuned on the assumption that those proficiencies were super useful. Being able to trade in proficiencies you already have for things you might actually like to use is a cool option.
I can understand not wanting Gamer Lojik nonsense in your game, and the tipping point is going to be different for every table, but the entire reason TC allows players to swap those proficiencies is because Wizards designed their system poorly and offers most of those players no redress for the species abilities they're losing when they double up on proficiencies.
The Mountain Dwarf gets an enormous package deal of benefits, +4 to abilities, 5 proficiencies plus two armor proficiencies plus resilience, darkvision and still an extra language. Any mountain dwarf player who is frustrated because they can't seem to get absolute maximum value from every single one of those needs to have a little bit of a calm down. Most races get like half of that.
I'll stick by my position. Its an optional rule that I would not apply in cases where I think it is being gamed - and claiming to give up an armor proficiency you still have on the sheet is gamey as anything.
Mountain Dwarf is pretty overpowered now. It's going to be one of the few power gamer racial choices par excellence.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Relative Privation does not apply when one is able to control all the variables of one's position. When one is given a choice of many options touted as equivalent, yet one or two options provide significant additional resources to one's final position that no other options come close to matching? Those 'outlier' options become the de facto standard, because one would have to be foolish to voluntarily discard those resources for what amounts to purely aesthetic reasons.
Yet again, it may not be be purely aesthetic. There are plenty of other things that other people might value more than a bajillian tool proficiencies. There are any number of regular forum users who regularly claim that tool proficiencies other than Thieves’ tools are purely dead weight on their pages. And as you go on to say yourself, Artificers don’t need more than the four tools they’re given. Assuming that this is the only bestest way to play an artificer and playing one any other way is not “foolish” as you claim. You, Yurei, you personally see these as such blindingly obvious bestest possible choices with not even any distant contenders. Others may very well disagree for a vast variety of reasons. For some, that Aarakocra flight wins all arguments. For others, it’s Gnome Cunning or Yuan-ti Magic Resistance FTW ATW. And I could make a strong case for Orcish Agression on a Battle Smith or a Guardian Armorer.
I understand that you despise the notion of "exceptionalism".
False Premise argument.
That is simply not true whatsoever. I have no problem with exceptionalism. I have a problem with players only ever accepting exceptionalism as the only acceptable option. I’m sorry princess, is there a pea under the mattress?
I refer you to the Player's Handbook, which states numerous times that "player characters are exceptional. They're the legendary figures myths are told of, they break all the rules."
Yes, all of them. Even the ones that you claim are:
“almost completely nonfunctional pile[s] of mucus that'[re] only just barely able to get their own clothes on in the morning; village idiot[s] who somehow manage to bumble**** [their] way to level 3 before getting eaten by a harpy and replaced by the next village idiot[s] in line; bumble**** moron[s] who ha[ve] no business leaving [their] village[s].”
Do you know why even the worst of the worst Adventurers are still considered: “exceptional,” “legendary,” and “mythic?” Its not because the other 99% of the planar population compare them all to “The best of the best of the best, sir!” It’s because they are all the best of the best compared to that 99%.
...a player can absolutely choose not to bleeding-edge optimize and still do fine (in large part because the base game mathand design assumptions are all based on the idea that the people playing the game are total imbeciles who have no idea how to play), that doesn't mean that the dwarven artificer who starts the game with eleven tool proficiencies does not make all the other artificers who start the game with five at the most look quite lazy by comparison.
False Premise Argument.
No, they don’t assume that. They assume the average player is building a character they think is cool because it seems like fun. And they assume that for the average player, they’ll think something is fun based things like aesthetics, and not only because it makes the most sense mathematically.
And you’re right about one thing, Relative Privation does not mean other artificers don’t look lazy by comparison with the two most numerically optical choices. What it means is that you shouldn’t compare everything against the to most numerically optimal choices in the first place.
Before, the argument was that your supercool unique special snowflake dwarf wizard wasn't as good as my cookie cutter elf wizard. A point which I would contest, but that's what people cried about.
Now with he new system, your supercool unique special snowflake dwarf wizard is BETTER than my cookie cutter elf wizard because you get free medium armor, more stats, better resistances and more tools than my cookie cutter elf wizard. Why is this OK?
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
I absolutely, categorically, and utterly reject the false, fallacious, obnoxious, actively harmful idea that "the Commoner is the basic unit of the game and any stat you have that's better than a Commoner's is awesome!" That idea is bad, it should feel bad, it's toxic to the game, and I don't care how often Mearls of Crawford or the rest parrot it because it is a filthy game-distorting lie and it needs to die forever. Mearls, Crawford, Perkins, and everybody else is wrong when they say that, they know they're wrong, and I don't know why Wizards continues to trumpet that blatant falsehood. I can pretty conclusively demonstrate this fact with some pretty basic game math, but nobody's here to read game math so I'll skip it. Just assume I can and move on.
Nevertheless, if one accepts that "being better than a Commoner" is not a valid comparison, what is? How does one judge the efficacy of one's efforts? The usual answer is by measuring up to their fellow players, either within their party at a specific table or by measuring up to the Internet playerbase as a whole in places like DDB. Those places are full of players who know the game back to front and can massage a maximum of mechanical impact from any given general concept.
You accused me, over PM, of being unable to see the difference between "the bestestestetstetstetstetstestetst ever" and "abject stupidity." I say there is no stark, black-and-white difference. There is a sliding scale of competence. At the top of that scale are things like the +2CN, +2IQ mountain dwarf with six swing proficiencies and all the dwarven coolgai stuff. At the bottom of that scale is shit like a locathah alchemist with 8 Intelligence in a desert campaign who fights with a greataxe he's not proficient with. In between those two points is a wide range of potential builds/concepts. Knowing where one falls on that scale, and where on that scale the campaign in general is expecting its players to fall, is important for avoiding intra-party strife.
Comparing builds to the most mechanically optimal options is not dismissing the less optimized options. It's acknowledging their deficiencies compared to the Breed Standard and making a conscious, informed decision as to whether you're fine with that loss of competence, or whether the campaign would do better without that extra juice.
Have you never wanted to play a character, realized that there was a mathematically better choice, and said to yourself, “eh, **** it, I’ma do it anyway” and taken the aesthetic choices instead? Never? Not once?
Have you never wanted to play a character, realized that there was a mathematically better choice, and said to yourself, “eh, **** it, I’ma do it anyway” and taken the aesthetic choices instead? Never? Not once?
I know I have. I play the races I want to play(elves, half elves, tieflings), regardless of the stats. The only time the stats make the final decision is when it's one of the more borderline races that I could either take or leave, such as Fire Genasi. Starting with a 14 stat was never a deal breaker, but honestly most things I wanted to play I could do with a half-elf anyways.
EDIT: Here's a sorlock that I played for a while, one of my favorite characters. While the stats and MC look min-maxed at first glance, if you take a look at my spell selection and equipment you'll see there's a lot of room for more mechanical improvement. For example, he wears a chain shirt instead of...whatever medium armor he can afford. No shield. The spells thematic picks rather than "good picks". Like infestation is just crap, but fluffing the vermin to spiders was the right fit for the character.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
I've only shown off my Mammon tiefling artificer archaeologist in this subforum about six hundred times. At this point even people who don't know what tabletop RPGS are and why we're all so obsessed with them are sick of me talking about Star. The only things Star's species gives her that are of any real use to artificers are a single point of Intelligence and Mage Hand as an innate-casting cantrip. Even with the high-octane chargen rules used for that campaign and the lack of Tasha's Cauldron Lineage customization, there were any number of more mechanically sound choices I could've made. Gnomes (eugh), high elves, hobgoblins, aarakocra - hell, in Tursk even yuan-ti were on the table. I picked the tiffle anyways.
Note for those checking Star's sheet: the DM is deliberately running a very high-powered campaign, Star is way ahead of where any typical 8th-level character should be. The DM's specific words to us when we were making characters: "Y'all are gonna be superheroes, because then I don't have to worry about holding back or treating you with kid gloves."
It's the same thing Lyxen keeps accusing me of, actually - not being able to see the story behind the rules or the character behind the numbers. This is patently untrue. I simply believe that one should know what they're doing when they decide to play a character that clashes with itself, rather than finding themselves unpleasantly surprised later when they discover they're behind the curve and the rest of their partymates are significantly more effective in play than they are. Why make an uneducated decision when you could make an educated one, instead?
you really believe that a +1 makes someone significantly behind their partymates? The halfling barbarian in my current party would very much disagree that she's behind the rest of us.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
It's more competent than this one that I plan to play. for full disclosure, he will MC into Chain pact warlock, so...it's better than first glance would indicate.
Yes though, I think your character looks competent. I had planned out a drow bladesinger once, that was no better than your Goliath.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Passing judgment on a goliath wizard in a thread in the artificer subforum speaking about the tool mastery of the mountain dwarf feels out of scope. Even under the assumption that the build was an artificer instead, it seems somewhat irrelevant. But no - that goliath wizard is not unplayable. It is behind the curve, but not so far so that the player could not contribute.
But as I asked you the first time you told me to Rate That Wizard, where does the cutoff lie? Does a wizard with a 14 starting Intelligence still count as "perfectly fine"? What about 13? 11? Sub-10? Where's that breakpoint you're looking for between "Good" and "abject stupidity"? At what point does a single player's desire to actively sabotage his character because he finds the story of a complete ****-up trying to be a hero more interesting than a heroic character doing their job start taking away from the rest of the table's enjoyment of being able to overcome challenges set before them without subpar sitcom hijinks?
@crzyhawk: Depends on the class. Artificers, more than any other character, cannot afford to fall behind the curve because every single freaking thing they do is driven by their Intelligence. Not only does it set their spell attack modifier and save DC, but an artificer's Intelligence modifier is a huge percentage of the number of spells they can prepare, it determines the effectiveness of their Flash of Genius, it determines how many Magical Tinkerings they can do, and for half of them it also impacts their weapon attack modifier. An artificer with only 15 Intelligence instead of 16 gets one fewer spell, one fewer Tinkering, one fewer Flash of Genius, those Flashes are less useful, and they're not as able to hit with spells or weapons. Barbarians, comparatively, are driven by so many different stats that a drop in one place accounted for in another - a'la a poor Strength offset by a higher Dexterity, the way halflings work - is less hindersome than an artificer with low Intelligence. Still not great, but at least that barbarian gets something from its dexterity.
The goliath wizard (or artificer) gains absolutely nothing from the goliath's strength bonus and Stone's Endurance is more hype than help after one gets out of Tier 1 play. Mountainborn is lovely, and if the DM has the balls to enforce variant encumbrance then Powerful Build is excellent. If not, then Powerful Build is worthless. Any bonus skill proficiency is always great to have. Overall, the species is not terrible, but it's definitely not built to shine as an Intelligence-focused class. If the player understands that and wants to do it anyways, awesome. More power to her. If the player does not understand how absolutely critical each point of Int modifier is for an artificer and how important it can be for her to stay on or ahead of the curve, then why is the DM encouraging them to make an underinformed choice that DM knows the player has a strong possibility of regretting later?
I really do not think that one point, is game breaking.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
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I found out a few days ago the with the new optional rules you can trade in Armor and Weapon proficiencies for tools...
At 4th level with the Skilled Feat and a background that gives you 2 additional tools you can have 16 tool proficiencies, and the getting double prof at 6th
If you still wanted more you could take some of the new feats also for a few extra
I just thought people should at least know about this... I know its not the same as Skill proficiencies, but us Artificers are a creative bunch I'm sure you folks can do something with this (musicians with Bard comes to mind)
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Artificers gain the ability, at tenth level, to create Green or lower magical items for half the cost in a quarter of the time. If one uses the Xanathar's Guide rules for item crafting (which are absolutely terrible, but they're better than anything else we've got, so...), then an artificer wanting to make magical equipment needs not only gold, time, and "a magical ingredient, material, or object appropriate to the crafting', but also the tool proficiencies required to create the item. Xanathar's Guide states that 'proficiency in the Arcana skill' can substitute for a tool proficiency, but many DMs will cite that you need Arcana and the tool proficiency to craft a magic item as opposed to just an item. This means every tool proficiency you can get is solid gold for many artificers.
Mountain Dwarf offers an unprecedented number of 'bonus' tool proficiencies if one trades their native armor and weapon training for them. Enough so that many DMs may well step on it. Six bonus tools is a gorram lot, and while it makes sense in most world's lore for dwarves to be the artisan maniacs, it's also kinda clearly unintended/outlier behavior. On the other hand, an artificer that doesn't plan on crafting magical (or mundane) items and who mostly just wants tools for flavor is not really hurting anything. Any tool proficiency past the first is irrelevant to their needs - artificers only need their base tinker/thieves' tool proficiencies to use their spells, everything else is just a new variety of fluff.
Mostly? This just kinda makes it plain that species-based object proficiencies need to go away in any prospective 6e of the future. Let training in objects, whether they be armor, weapon, tool, or Other, be part of background upbringing or part of a different leg of character creation, and make species selection into strictly a "choose your biological make-up" option. Because elves and dwarves gaining four to six additional tools over any other species really does suck for artificers that would like to be something other than a dorf or a pointy-eared leaf lover.
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I’m sorry, but I have two points to make:
If you always compare everything to the apex, you will always be disappointed with everything. The bestestes possible is not standard. Average is standard, the bestestest possible is exceptional. That means that by definition, it is an exception, or what is scientifically known as an “outlier.” Outliers are those dots way the heck off the charts that skew the data. Scientists typically dismiss those when examining datasets, specifically to avoid biasing themselves like you have about this.
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All right, if we're bringing this out of PMs...
Relative Privation does not apply when one is able to control all the variables of one's position. When one is given a choice of many options touted as equivalent, yet one or two options provide significant additional resources to one's final position that no other options come close to matching? Those 'outlier' options become the de facto standard, because one would have to be foolish to voluntarily discard those resources for what amounts to purely aesthetic reasons.
I understand that you despise the notion of "exceptionalism". That said, I refer you to the Player's Handbook, which states numerous times that "player characters are exceptional. They're the legendary figures myths are told of, they break all the rules." While a player can absolutely choose not to bleeding-edge optimize and still do fine (in large part because the base game mathand design assumptions are all based on the idea that the people playing the game are total imbeciles who have no idea how to play), that doesn't mean that the dwarven artificer who starts the game with eleven tool proficiencies does not make all the other artificers who start the game with five at the most look quite lazy by comparison.
Now, again: artificers don't necessarily need more then the three tool proficiencies their base class gives them. Every artificer starts with thieves', tinker's, and Wildcard, and they gain a fourth when they hit their subclass. Anything they get from their background, and from any other source, is generally gravy unless the DM has specific crafting requirements in place. Nevertheless, being able to acquire six additional tool proficiencies is hugely advantageous for games in which those specific crafting requirements are in place, especially when those resources are basically free. If one bans the lineage system at their table (which I do not recommend doing, at least not completely, but this is a very contentious subject and any DM has the final say at their table), then this all becomes moot.
But if the Lineage system is permitted, then both dwarves and elves gain a huge edge over other species with their wide array of bonus proficiencies, which should not be the case if one desires all the PCs in their party to be of roughly equivalent level/power/impact/Gudness/whatever-your-metric-is, simply because of a vestigial holdover from earlier editions. Thus why, in any prospective 6e's of the future, they should not have Dwarf/Elf Weapon/Armor Training baked into their species statblock, but instead have Dwarf/Elf Weapon/Armor training baked into an expanded background option for those dwarves/elves that actually grew up in clanholds/groves.
'Species' is for biological traits. 'Background' is the appropriate place for cultural ones. The Lineage system is part of Wizards making the realization that this is true and trying to back-hack it into 5e, but it comes with some elf and dwarf-shaped glitches. Oh well.
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Personally as a DM I would only let a player "trade-in" proficiencies that actually resulted in them losing something. For an artificer any simple weapon proficiency or light/medium armor would get you nothing because you lost nothing - if on the final character sheet its impossible to tell you gave them up then I give you nothing for them.
I know it does not specify that in Tasha's but saying that your dwarf gave up their ability to wear armor to have more skill proficiencies while the character wears that exact armor is gamey as all hell and I don't have to let you have an optional rule at all if I think you are just trying to game it. Everything in Tasha's is optional and purely in the gift of the DM. I'm all for inventive and creative characters but there comes a point where it just looks like a rationalisation for an exploit, that it the point where I just decide not to extend the optional rule to that particular case.
I'd be completely cool with giving up Battleaxe and Warhammer for tool proficiency swaps because you actually lose the ability to roll with proficiency on those things.
That's actually something of the point, OTTI.
The mountain dwarf is an excellent example. It gives 'outlier'-level +4 overall to one's stats, in Constitution and Strength. Any class that desires those two attributes pretty much already has the armor and weapon proficiencies the mountain dwarf gains from its cultural traits. There is no class in the game that is 'good' for mountain dwarf. If you play a wizard, sorcerer, bard or other character that benefits from the armor and weapon proficiencies, the unhelpful stat allocations do you no good. If you play a fighter, barbarian, paladin, or any other classic/traditional/"Iconic" dwarven class to benefit from the high stat numbers, the armor and weapon proficiencies are an absolute waste of time.
For a lot of players, that's really frustrating, especially when one looks at species like the half-elf, who gets to allocate those same +4 points but also gains two free skills and a ton of other cool, always-helpful stuff one's class never overrides, or species like the tiefling that gain the ability to cast a few minor spells regardless of their class. 'Losing' part of your species' stat block just kinda feels rotten, especially when you know the species was tuned on the assumption that those proficiencies were super useful. Being able to trade in proficiencies you already have for things you might actually like to use is a cool option.
I can understand not wanting Gamer Lojik nonsense in your game, and the tipping point is going to be different for every table, but the entire reason TC allows players to swap those proficiencies is because Wizards designed their system poorly and offers most of those players no redress for the species abilities they're losing when they double up on proficiencies.
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The Mountain Dwarf gets an enormous package deal of benefits, +4 to abilities, 5 proficiencies plus two armor proficiencies plus resilience, darkvision and still an extra language. Any mountain dwarf player who is frustrated because they can't seem to get absolute maximum value from every single one of those needs to have a little bit of a calm down. Most races get like half of that.
I'll stick by my position. Its an optional rule that I would not apply in cases where I think it is being gamed - and claiming to give up an armor proficiency you still have on the sheet is gamey as anything.
Mountain Dwarf is pretty overpowered now. It's going to be one of the few power gamer racial choices par excellence.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Yet again, it may not be be purely aesthetic. There are plenty of other things that other people might value more than a bajillian tool proficiencies. There are any number of regular forum users who regularly claim that tool proficiencies other than Thieves’ tools are purely dead weight on their pages. And as you go on to say yourself, Artificers don’t need more than the four tools they’re given. Assuming that this is the only bestest way to play an artificer and playing one any other way is not “foolish” as you claim. You, Yurei, you personally see these as such blindingly obvious bestest possible choices with not even any distant contenders. Others may very well disagree for a vast variety of reasons. For some, that Aarakocra flight wins all arguments. For others, it’s Gnome Cunning or Yuan-ti Magic Resistance FTW ATW. And I could make a strong case for Orcish Agression on a Battle Smith or a Guardian Armorer.
False Premise argument.
That is simply not true whatsoever. I have no problem with exceptionalism. I have a problem with players only ever accepting exceptionalism as the only acceptable option. I’m sorry princess, is there a pea under the mattress?
Yes, all of them. Even the ones that you claim are:
“almost completely nonfunctional pile[s] of mucus that'[re] only just barely able to get their own clothes on in the morning; village idiot[s] who somehow manage to bumble**** [their] way to level 3 before getting eaten by a harpy and replaced by the next village idiot[s] in line; bumble**** moron[s] who ha[ve] no business leaving [their] village[s].”
Do you know why even the worst of the worst Adventurers are still considered: “exceptional,” “legendary,” and “mythic?” Its not because the other 99% of the planar population compare them all to “The best of the best of the best, sir!” It’s because they are all the best of the best compared to that 99%.
False Premise Argument.
No, they don’t assume that. They assume the average player is building a character they think is cool because it seems like fun. And they assume that for the average player, they’ll think something is fun based things like aesthetics, and not only because it makes the most sense mathematically.
And you’re right about one thing, Relative Privation does not mean other artificers don’t look lazy by comparison with the two most numerically optical choices. What it means is that you shouldn’t compare everything against the to most numerically optimal choices in the first place.
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Before, the argument was that your supercool unique special snowflake dwarf wizard wasn't as good as my cookie cutter elf wizard. A point which I would contest, but that's what people cried about.
Now with he new system, your supercool unique special snowflake dwarf wizard is BETTER than my cookie cutter elf wizard because you get free medium armor, more stats, better resistances and more tools than my cookie cutter elf wizard. Why is this OK?
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
What does one compare one's efforts to, then?
I absolutely, categorically, and utterly reject the false, fallacious, obnoxious, actively harmful idea that "the Commoner is the basic unit of the game and any stat you have that's better than a Commoner's is awesome!" That idea is bad, it should feel bad, it's toxic to the game, and I don't care how often Mearls of Crawford or the rest parrot it because it is a filthy game-distorting lie and it needs to die forever. Mearls, Crawford, Perkins, and everybody else is wrong when they say that, they know they're wrong, and I don't know why Wizards continues to trumpet that blatant falsehood. I can pretty conclusively demonstrate this fact with some pretty basic game math, but nobody's here to read game math so I'll skip it. Just assume I can and move on.
Nevertheless, if one accepts that "being better than a Commoner" is not a valid comparison, what is? How does one judge the efficacy of one's efforts? The usual answer is by measuring up to their fellow players, either within their party at a specific table or by measuring up to the Internet playerbase as a whole in places like DDB. Those places are full of players who know the game back to front and can massage a maximum of mechanical impact from any given general concept.
You accused me, over PM, of being unable to see the difference between "the bestestestetstetstetstetstestetst ever" and "abject stupidity." I say there is no stark, black-and-white difference. There is a sliding scale of competence. At the top of that scale are things like the +2CN, +2IQ mountain dwarf with six swing proficiencies and all the dwarven coolgai stuff. At the bottom of that scale is shit like a locathah alchemist with 8 Intelligence in a desert campaign who fights with a greataxe he's not proficient with. In between those two points is a wide range of potential builds/concepts. Knowing where one falls on that scale, and where on that scale the campaign in general is expecting its players to fall, is important for avoiding intra-party strife.
Comparing builds to the most mechanically optimal options is not dismissing the less optimized options. It's acknowledging their deficiencies compared to the Breed Standard and making a conscious, informed decision as to whether you're fine with that loss of competence, or whether the campaign would do better without that extra juice.
Please do not contact or message me.
Serious, no bullshit question:
Have you never wanted to play a character, realized that there was a mathematically better choice, and said to yourself, “eh, **** it, I’ma do it anyway” and taken the aesthetic choices instead? Never? Not once?
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*in my best Michael Dorn voice* To the only thing worth, the enemy.
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I know I have. I play the races I want to play(elves, half elves, tieflings), regardless of the stats. The only time the stats make the final decision is when it's one of the more borderline races that I could either take or leave, such as Fire Genasi. Starting with a 14 stat was never a deal breaker, but honestly most things I wanted to play I could do with a half-elf anyways.
EDIT: Here's a sorlock that I played for a while, one of my favorite characters. While the stats and MC look min-maxed at first glance, if you take a look at my spell selection and equipment you'll see there's a lot of room for more mechanical improvement. For example, he wears a chain shirt instead of...whatever medium armor he can afford. No shield. The spells thematic picks rather than "good picks". Like infestation is just crap, but fluffing the vermin to spiders was the right fit for the character.
https://ddb.ac/characters/2295949/5lfAsU
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
I've only shown off my Mammon tiefling artificer archaeologist in this subforum about six hundred times. At this point even people who don't know what tabletop RPGS are and why we're all so obsessed with them are sick of me talking about Star. The only things Star's species gives her that are of any real use to artificers are a single point of Intelligence and Mage Hand as an innate-casting cantrip. Even with the high-octane chargen rules used for that campaign and the lack of Tasha's Cauldron Lineage customization, there were any number of more mechanically sound choices I could've made. Gnomes (eugh), high elves, hobgoblins, aarakocra - hell, in Tursk even yuan-ti were on the table. I picked the tiffle anyways.
Note for those checking Star's sheet: the DM is deliberately running a very high-powered campaign, Star is way ahead of where any typical 8th-level character should be. The DM's specific words to us when we were making characters: "Y'all are gonna be superheroes, because then I don't have to worry about holding back or treating you with kid gloves."
It's the same thing Lyxen keeps accusing me of, actually - not being able to see the story behind the rules or the character behind the numbers. This is patently untrue. I simply believe that one should know what they're doing when they decide to play a character that clashes with itself, rather than finding themselves unpleasantly surprised later when they discover they're behind the curve and the rest of their partymates are significantly more effective in play than they are. Why make an uneducated decision when you could make an educated one, instead?
Please do not contact or message me.
you really believe that a +1 makes someone significantly behind their partymates? The halfling barbarian in my current party would very much disagree that she's behind the rest of us.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
You never did answer my question. Would you consider this a competent, effective character?
https://www.dndbeyond.com/profile/IamSposta/characters/39537642
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It's more competent than this one that I plan to play. for full disclosure, he will MC into Chain pact warlock, so...it's better than first glance would indicate.
https://ddb.ac/characters/33829669/QDaqOL
Yes though, I think your character looks competent. I had planned out a drow bladesinger once, that was no better than your Goliath.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Passing judgment on a goliath wizard in a thread in the artificer subforum speaking about the tool mastery of the mountain dwarf feels out of scope. Even under the assumption that the build was an artificer instead, it seems somewhat irrelevant. But no - that goliath wizard is not unplayable. It is behind the curve, but not so far so that the player could not contribute.
But as I asked you the first time you told me to Rate That Wizard, where does the cutoff lie? Does a wizard with a 14 starting Intelligence still count as "perfectly fine"? What about 13? 11? Sub-10? Where's that breakpoint you're looking for between "Good" and "abject stupidity"? At what point does a single player's desire to actively sabotage his character because he finds the story of a complete ****-up trying to be a hero more interesting than a heroic character doing their job start taking away from the rest of the table's enjoyment of being able to overcome challenges set before them without subpar sitcom hijinks?
@crzyhawk: Depends on the class. Artificers, more than any other character, cannot afford to fall behind the curve because every single freaking thing they do is driven by their Intelligence. Not only does it set their spell attack modifier and save DC, but an artificer's Intelligence modifier is a huge percentage of the number of spells they can prepare, it determines the effectiveness of their Flash of Genius, it determines how many Magical Tinkerings they can do, and for half of them it also impacts their weapon attack modifier. An artificer with only 15 Intelligence instead of 16 gets one fewer spell, one fewer Tinkering, one fewer Flash of Genius, those Flashes are less useful, and they're not as able to hit with spells or weapons. Barbarians, comparatively, are driven by so many different stats that a drop in one place accounted for in another - a'la a poor Strength offset by a higher Dexterity, the way halflings work - is less hindersome than an artificer with low Intelligence. Still not great, but at least that barbarian gets something from its dexterity.
The goliath wizard (or artificer) gains absolutely nothing from the goliath's strength bonus and Stone's Endurance is more hype than help after one gets out of Tier 1 play. Mountainborn is lovely, and if the DM has the balls to enforce variant encumbrance then Powerful Build is excellent. If not, then Powerful Build is worthless. Any bonus skill proficiency is always great to have. Overall, the species is not terrible, but it's definitely not built to shine as an Intelligence-focused class. If the player understands that and wants to do it anyways, awesome. More power to her. If the player does not understand how absolutely critical each point of Int modifier is for an artificer and how important it can be for her to stay on or ahead of the curve, then why is the DM encouraging them to make an underinformed choice that DM knows the player has a strong possibility of regretting later?
Please do not contact or message me.
I really do not think that one point, is game breaking.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha