People aren't really going to complain about a penalty being removed. Rather we would complain about bonus's being removed. Nerfs are bothersome, buffs and wonderful.
Even so, I'm sure someone somewhere did in fact complain about the penalty being removed. It means now something is being gotten for nothing; no trade off. I think you'll find many of the pre-2k and shorty after 2K crowd miss things like wizrd specialties comming at the cost of prohibited schools, and favored clases and favored weapons, and such. Just becaus epeople no longer like the term 'race' to mean creatue type doesn't mean creature types should all be the same. The point of the fantasy is to be different. Plus you can be sure conservatives players feel that Bonus's and Penaltys represent good moral values whereas penalty-free bonus's represent bad ones as it potentially gives impressionable young minds the ( faulse as we percieve it) idea that 'something can be had for nothing' rather than "there is no such thing as a free lunch" and "everything comes with a price."
This isn't happening though.
They're moving toward flexible stat bonuses, yes. But the ASIs are the most boring, gamey number crunching rather than flavorful lore/RP part of racial bonuses. Races are not becoming interchangable because the wood elf bard can get a cha bonus. Tieflings aren't getting Trance. Halflings aren't getting relentless endurance. IMO the other racial features are far more interesting and flavorful than what numbers go into what stats.
I'm not really sure where this issue over 'something can be had for nothing' is coming from. Sometimes games are updated for game balance reasons. If something gets buffed that doesn't mean you have to nerf it somewhere else just for the sake of not 'getting something for nothing.' It's all about updating the game to be better, not about handouts in the first place so I really don't see where the issue is here. Every player race gets ASI bonuses and other features for nothing. The orc race, as is not, gets +2 str and +1 con it looks like, so it's not like they're getting crazy bonuses compared to other races. That's pretty standard.
Presume that the stat cap of 20 is kept for the sake of this discussion. The point behind racial abblity score bonus's and penalties, particularly in point-buy or standard-array vs rolled ability score options, is to set things up such that a race built around Str for example, such as an Orc, will never have to spend as many points (read icly to mean focus as much "effort") to achieve a 20 in that score, more easily affiliating that race with STR based classes such as Barbarian and an affinity for Heavy-Weapons over light ones - Meanwhile a race like Halfling or Gnome (don't remember if this was really or not, just for the sake of argument), can NEVER have a STR of 20, and even with 20 points will only ever have a+4 to STR rather than a +5; reducing the races affiliation with STR based classes such as the Barbarian and granting more of an affinity for Light-Weapons than for larger kinds.
Again, the high-fantasy element of D&D not-withstanding, many of us prefer this aspect of gritty realism in our campaign settings: that an equally statted out hobbit can never actually beat an Orc in a straight up Strength check (presuming a take-10 or take-20 to exclude the random factor). The idea that an optimized Orc will always be stronger than an optimized Halfling of the same class and build; is to our mind better and more interesting and more flavorful; rather than vice versa; particularly regarding strategy. The reverse is true re: Dexterity based classes and small creatures vs. bigger ones - finesse based combat having it's own advantages.
The only reason non-woke folk think that woke-folk don't like this kind of differentiation is because we think that they feel the game would influence "impressionable young minds" into believing that there really is, in actual life, an advantage to being big and strong vs being short and lithe; and they don't want players who may be short to feel like they have a disadvantage in life, or players who may be tall to feel like they have more power in real life than short people.
Notwithstanding that this kind of thinking in game terms undervalues the benefits of litheness/nibbleness in relation to strength; but in terms of "Hey, don't just do things to be PC"; Making changes that let halflings and orcs both use greatswords with a +5 bonus, and for the same costs; all in spite of good sense; just to avoid the false impression that there is actually something better about being tall than being short - is silly, as far as we are concerned.
Just tell people, "Oy, no there isn't. Short people and tall peope are equally as awesome, even though their optimal abilities lie in different areas of achievment.
I disagree with the premise. The point of racial modifiers is not to make it easier for some races to hit the cap, that is a side effect, not the point.
Racial modifiers exist as a vestige of previous editions. In 1 and 2 e, there were, indeed, racial minimums and maximums. A dwarf back then could not, ever have a high dex, for example. There were also gender-based caps on str. In those editions, by the way, it was next to impossible to change your ability scores from the ones you rolled. So hitting a “cap” was not a consideration.
in 3e, they did away with racial and gender maximums. Gender differences were completely tossed, and racial modifiers took the place of caps, with most races getting a + somewhere and a - somewhere else, usually the - would go in whatever score had a below 18 maximum in 2e. They also got rid of race requirements for classes. (Only humans can be paladins, dwarves can not be thieves, etc.) 3e also introduced stat increases.
At the time, people made the exact same arguments: but women are physically weaker than men, if we let them be the same, it will ruin immersion. And: But now it will eventually be possible for a halfling to be as strong as a half-orc. And any race can be a paladin. It will ruin the game and make all the races the same. (Actually maybe 3e is where they removed half-orcs for a while. I know they did that for a bit because it basically implied sexual assault in the backstory of the half orc. Either way, you get the point.)
Anyway, those arguments were wrong then, and they are wrong now. People can still tell the difference between men and women, even though woman characters can bench press as much as men. Going forward, people will still be able to tell the difference between dwarves and elves. Giving people more options in how to make their characters is a good thing.
Again, the high-fantasy element of D&D not-withstanding, many of us prefer this aspect of gritty realism in our campaign settings: that an equally statted out hobbit can never actually beat an Orc in a straight up Strength check (presuming a take-10 or take-20 to exclude the random factor).
Also, you can't really have "realism" in a fantasy game, you can't just "notwithstanding" that away. Maybe what you're going for is "verisimilitude?" I mean if you're going to accept that dragons can fly despite not being aerodynamically feasible, why couldn't you accept that halfling muscles just work differently than orc ones and can produce the same amount of strength?
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
but I don't like having to try and figure out people/npc's and how they should think and feel and what there goals are, etc. I'd rather just be provided with that stuff.
Yeah, but it's not like you have all the creatures of a similar Alignment act the same right? You don't play a beholder like you play a kobold, do you? That means there's stuff you take into account besides their alignment when you roleplay them. Now we can debate as go the degree of importance that alignment and the other stuff has, but at the bare minimum you should acknowledge that Alignment, by itself, doesn't even accomplish this task of handing you what you need to know to roleplay the character.
Just what's written. I'm not good at inventing stuff on the fly, or like you know, being creative. I tend to use published modules and have the npc's act as the module descibes them to me. I don't really know how two different lawful evil characters should behave unless I know the other details from the source material, like who their gods are and what their history is like.
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Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
I disagree with the premise. The point of racial modifiers is not to make it easier for some races to hit the cap, that is a side effect, not the point.
Racial modifiers exist as a vestige of previous editions. In 1 and 2 e, there were, indeed, racial minimums and maximums. A dwarf back then could not, ever have a high dex, for example. There were also gender-based caps on str. In those editions, by the way, it was next to impossible to change your ability scores from the ones you rolled. So hitting a “cap” was not a consideration.
in 3e, they did away with racial and gender maximums. Gender differences were completely tossed, and racial modifiers took the place of caps, with most races getting a + somewhere and a - somewhere else, usually the - would go in whatever score had a below 18 maximum in 2e. They also got rid of race requirements for classes. (Only humans can be paladins, dwarves can not be thieves, etc.) 3e also introduced stat increases.
At the time, people made the exact same arguments: but women are physically weaker than men, if we let them be the same, it will ruin immersion. And: But now it will eventually be possible for a halfling to be as strong as a half-orc. And any race can be a paladin. It will ruin the game and make all the races the same. (Actually maybe 3e is where they removed half-orcs for a while. I know they did that for a bit because it basically implied sexual assault in the backstory of the half orc. Either way, you get the point.)
Anyway, those arguments were wrong then, and they are wrong now. People can still tell the difference between men and women, even though woman characters can bench press as much as men. Going forward, people will still be able to tell the difference between dwarves and elves. Giving people more options in how to make their characters is a good thing.
This was an interesting read, being a newcomer to 5E it's always interesting to get a peak into the game's history like this.
As a random aside, it'd be possible for a halfling to be stronger than an orc anyway if you do rolled stats and the halfling just gets better rolls than the orc. It's already something that can feasibly happen.
People aren't really going to complain about a penalty being removed. Rather we would complain about bonus's being removed. Nerfs are bothersome, buffs and wonderful.
Even so, I'm sure someone somewhere did in fact complain about the penalty being removed. It means now something is being gotten for nothing; no trade off. I think you'll find many of the pre-2k and shorty after 2K crowd miss things like wizrd specialties comming at the cost of prohibited schools, and favored clases and favored weapons, and such. Just becaus epeople no longer like the term 'race' to mean creatue type doesn't mean creature types should all be the same. The point of the fantasy is to be different. Plus you can be sure conservatives players feel that Bonus's and Penaltys represent good moral values whereas penalty-free bonus's represent bad ones as it potentially gives impressionable young minds the ( faulse as we percieve it) idea that 'something can be had for nothing' rather than "there is no such thing as a free lunch" and "everything comes with a price."
[Posting tip: I think you're speaking to specific posts, but hitting the "reply" button in threads as involved as these makes it confusing to follow, use the quote button to give the threads readers context, otherwise the points seem sorta one sided or engaging air.]
If you go back over a year ago when the negative ability score mods assigned to some races were removed, you'll see a noisy number for folks did in fact complain that "something was taken away" from (their, though they didn't include that qualifier) D&D when monstrous races didn't have negative ability modifiers to reflect essentialisms of those races. The complaints that began last week follow a similar rhetorical template.
This discussion has happened before.
To be clear, I'm the person Hubbard was replying to. I know because I got a notification. I believe the specific post in question is #77, because none of the other ones really makes any sense in this context, and if you read that post (which is harder to do if I'm not quoted!), you'll see that I chose my words pretty carefully on this topic. However, I'm an all-powerful forum demigod, so I'll just quote myself and we can get back on track:
Back in 2020 the intelligence penalty on orcs from Volo's was removed, and nobody came out complaining about the very nature of D&D Beyond at that time (to my recollection, anyway).
My point was not to say *nobody complained about this change,* it was that *nobody complained about D&D Beyond having the legal right and legal responsibility to irreversibly alter its digital content, in response to this change.* See the distinction?
People aren't really going to complain about a penalty being removed. Rather we would complain about bonus's being removed. Nerfs are bothersome, buffs and wonderful.
Even so, I'm sure someone somewhere did in fact complain about the penalty being removed. It means now something is being gotten for nothing; no trade off. I think you'll find many of the pre-2k and shorty after 2K crowd miss things like wizrd specialties comming at the cost of prohibited schools, and favored clases and favored weapons, and such. Just becaus epeople no longer like the term 'race' to mean creatue type doesn't mean creature types should all be the same. The point of the fantasy is to be different. Plus you can be sure conservatives players feel that Bonus's and Penaltys represent good moral values whereas penalty-free bonus's represent bad ones as it potentially gives impressionable young minds the ( faulse as we percieve it) idea that 'something can be had for nothing' rather than "there is no such thing as a free lunch" and "everything comes with a price."
[Posting tip: I think you're speaking to specific posts, but hitting the "reply" button in threads as involved as these makes it confusing to follow, use the quote button to give the threads readers context, otherwise the points seem sorta one sided or engaging air.]
If you go back over a year ago when the negative ability score mods assigned to some races were removed, you'll see a noisy number for folks did in fact complain that "something was taken away" from (their, though they didn't include that qualifier) D&D when monstrous races didn't have negative ability modifiers to reflect essentialisms of those races. The complaints that began last week follow a similar rhetorical template.
This discussion has happened before.
To be clear, I'm the person Hubbard was replying to. I know because I got a notification. I believe the specific post in question is #77, because none of the other ones really makes any sense in this context, and if you read that post (which is harder to do if I'm not quoted!), you'll see that I chose my words pretty carefully on this topic. However, I'm an all-powerful forum demigod, so I'll just quote myself and we can get back on track:
Back in 2020 the intelligence penalty on orcs from Volo's was removed, and nobody came out complaining about the very nature of D&D Beyond at that time (to my recollection, anyway).
My point was not to say *nobody complained about this change,* it was that *nobody complained about D&D Beyond having the legal right and legal responsibility to irreversibly alter its digital content, in response to this change.* See the distinction?
I'm well aware of the distinction and your memory is wrong. In this General forum, as well as User Feedback, probably Story and Lore and even Bugs there were posters petitioning to retain Volo's negative modifiers, arguments about versioning came up, and "how dare D&D Beyond steal mechanics I've paid for" litanies requiring Mods and Stormknight (I believe) and OboeLauren(I think) to articulate on several occasions requirement of DDB to present WotC's most current rules. It was the summer of 2020, the forums was flooded with folks trying to use D&D as a means to fight broader culture wars, but discussions of DDB's practice and policy to keep its products reflective of the most recent errata did in fact take place regardless of your memory. I'm pretty sure folks in this very discussion besides me are aware of them, many are frankly recycling their summer of 2020 positions.
I anticipated this discussion when the errata came out, and it seems to have played out exactly as I had expected because like I said, it happened before.
By the by, good of you to let us know Shep Hub was addressing your post, but they addressed many posts without any attribution and I think mine and another poster Ophidmancer were pointing out common guidance given by other community members when participating (as a late arrival) to a fairly involved thread. The thread's public and most participants adopt quoting for public ease of understanding the discourse.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I don't know if I buy that Dow in settings external to the forgotten realms have different origins from those within. It seems the Great Wheel these days is linking together multiple prime material planes for adventures to be part of worlds spanning organizations. This implies that even if Lolth herself is staying in one area of the multivers'es cosmology, Drow might have made their way from Toril via extraplanar travel to other worlds like Kryn etc. to settle there. Those Drow societies do not necessarily have to be Native to the worlds they currently inhabit but rather decended from travelers whose origin is on Toril. This isn't to say that once seperated from Lolth's influence, they wouln't have been able to turn out alright; but I do prefer common origins rather than separate origins for species, even when they exist on multiple worlds.
[SNIP]
forces precise lore or role. playing characterirzation.
What role-playing was being forced on players prior to the errata?
Was it forced on them by WotC or DMs/other players?
I'm not sure whether you're asking the question honestly or trying to snark doubt on my assertions. Regardless I'll provide the basis of my documentation, which is also the basis that predicates the entirety of this thread.
So this thread is predicated on some recent editorial decisions to revise and excise some text from Volo's. There were some passages that included some mean spirited humor on slavery as practice by Fire Giants, a section detailing cannibalism rites among Yuan Ti, and a note addressing frankly eugenics considerations in the production of Half Orcs. While grim subjects can have places in some or many D&D games, it seems WotC made this move because they didn't feel the need to draw a map in an official text for games to "go there." Folks can disagree on this call, but I think in terms of reaching the broadest market possible, it's an adjustment in taste and likely a smart move as D&D seems to invest in both younger players and let's call it "family friendly" gaming.
As for where you're actually or posing confused, there were a number of short paragraphs under headings like "Roleplaying a Beholder" or "Roleplaying a MIndflayer". These paragraphs were found between a much more extensive lore exegesis on the monster and a set of tables to help a DM figure out the monsters personality on the fly. They've been removed. The author of the notes introducing the errata, Jeremy Crawford, justifies the removal as follows,
3) Creature Personalities: We also removed a couple paragraphs suggesting that all mind flayers or all beholders (for instance) share a single, stock personality. We’ve long advised DMs that one way to make adventures and campaigns more memorable is to populate them with unique and interesting characters. These paragraphs stood in conflict with that advice. We didn’t alter the essential natures of these creatures or how they fit into our settings at all. (Mind flayers still devour the brains of humanoids, and yes, that means they tend to be evil.)
Either Crawford or Ray Winninger (sorta Crawford's boss) went further in the fallout to the errata explaining it was surprising to them that many players and DMs seemed think the role playing guidance "locked in" what was "essential" to play a Beholder, etc. (Even though WotC poster boy Beholder, Xanathar goes a bit against the grain, and the lore prior to the guidance can be interpreted to derive lots of possible performaces of these monster roles). They felt the text imposed an unnecessary control on the game, so removed it in hopes that the remaining text would inspire/liberate imagination. In other words, some paragraphs "script" some monsters that really should invite more fertile interaction between imagination and lore, and WotC thought it was better to be done with that.
i must say it's sort of weird to be (re)introducing some of the basic concepts in this thread on the tenth page. Given that, I think this thread has reached that point where things are now just being repeated (like threads from over a year ago some posters seem to fail to remember), so I'll be stepping off this flat circle of time and let you all keep up your annular rhetorical exercise.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
People aren't really going to complain about a penalty being removed. Rather we would complain about bonus's being removed. Nerfs are bothersome, buffs and wonderful.
Even so, I'm sure someone somewhere did in fact complain about the penalty being removed. It means now something is being gotten for nothing; no trade off. I think you'll find many of the pre-2k and shorty after 2K crowd miss things like wizrd specialties comming at the cost of prohibited schools, and favored clases and favored weapons, and such. Just becaus epeople no longer like the term 'race' to mean creatue type doesn't mean creature types should all be the same. The point of the fantasy is to be different. Plus you can be sure conservatives players feel that Bonus's and Penaltys represent good moral values whereas penalty-free bonus's represent bad ones as it potentially gives impressionable young minds the ( faulse as we percieve it) idea that 'something can be had for nothing' rather than "there is no such thing as a free lunch" and "everything comes with a price."
[Posting tip: I think you're speaking to specific posts, but hitting the "reply" button in threads as involved as these makes it confusing to follow, use the quote button to give the threads readers context, otherwise the points seem sorta one sided or engaging air.]
If you go back over a year ago when the negative ability score mods assigned to some races were removed, you'll see a noisy number for folks did in fact complain that "something was taken away" from (their, though they didn't include that qualifier) D&D when monstrous races didn't have negative ability modifiers to reflect essentialisms of those races. The complaints that began last week follow a similar rhetorical template.
This discussion has happened before.
To be clear, I'm the person Hubbard was replying to. I know because I got a notification. I believe the specific post in question is #77, because none of the other ones really makes any sense in this context, and if you read that post (which is harder to do if I'm not quoted!), you'll see that I chose my words pretty carefully on this topic. However, I'm an all-powerful forum demigod, so I'll just quote myself and we can get back on track:
Back in 2020 the intelligence penalty on orcs from Volo's was removed, and nobody came out complaining about the very nature of D&D Beyond at that time (to my recollection, anyway).
My point was not to say *nobody complained about this change,* it was that *nobody complained about D&D Beyond having the legal right and legal responsibility to irreversibly alter its digital content, in response to this change.* See the distinction?
I'm well aware of the distinction and your memory is wrong. In this General forum, as well as User Feedback, probably Story and Lore and even Bugs there were posters petitioning to retain Volo's negative modifiers, arguments about versioning came up, and "how dare D&D Beyond steal mechanics I've paid for" litanies requiring Mods and Stormknight (I believe) and OboeLauren(I think) to articulate on several occasions requirement of DDB to present WotC's most current rules. It was the summer of 2020, the forums was flooded with folks trying to use D&D as a means to fight broader culture wars, but discussions of DDB's practice and policy to keep its products reflective of the most recent errata did in fact take place regardless of your memory. I'm pretty sure folks in this very discussion besides me are aware of them, many are frankly recycling their summer of 2020 positions.
I anticipated this discussion when the errata came out, and it seems to have played out exactly as I had expected because like I said, it happened before.
By the by, good of you to let us know Shep Hub was addressing your post, but they addressed many posts without any attribution and I think mine and another poster Ophidmancer were pointing out common guidance given by other community members when participating (as a late arrival) to a fairly involved thread. The thread's public and most participants adopt quoting for public ease of understanding the discourse.
I appreciate the corrections. I certainly don't remember that, but I haven't always been as active on here as I am now. Probably just didn't see it.
I believe now that the lack of quotation was down to inexperience rather than malice. I figured I'd err on the side of sass, maybe leave a stronger impression or something. Probably the wrong call. I've had my morning coffee now, lol. Apologies to Hubbard.
I feel like we should always open up these discourses with links to the other times the exact same discourses have happened. When I get back to my PC I'll hunt those down. Seems like it would save everybody a lot of headaches.
Again, the high-fantasy element of D&D not-withstanding, many of us prefer this aspect of gritty realism in our campaign settings: that an equally statted out hobbit can never actually beat an Orc in a straight up Strength check (presuming a take-10 or take-20 to exclude the random factor).
Also, you can't really have "realism" in a fantasy game, you can't just "notwithstanding" that away. Maybe what you're going for is "verisimilitude?" I mean if you're going to accept that dragons can fly despite not being aerodynamically feasible, why couldn't you accept that halfling muscles just work differently than orc ones and can produce the same amount of strength?
First off, presuming a take-10 or take-20 to take out the random factor is silly. If a halfling rolls high on a Str check to push open a blocked door, it'll open; if a half-orc rolls low on a check to open that same door, it'll stay shut. That's how this game works. That's meaningful. Some kind of "controlled environment lab conditions" thing where we basically just straight-up compare modifiers is not. It doesn't mean anything in the game. It's just numbers on a page.
Second, the essentialism issue is a bit more complex. I'm all for taking out the moralistic absolutes: I don't see the point to them to begin with, and they routinely got overruled by both TSR and WotC writers in canonical lore anyway. The stat modifiers though? By all means, toss out the penalties. They're no fun anyway. But the bonuses? I don't think there's any real difference between getting a racial +2 to Str, getting an AC bonus because your entire body is encased in a massive shield, having claws to attack with, being able to see in the dark, having lady Luck on your side more often than not or any of a slew of other racial qualities that make up the difference between elves and humans and lizardfolk and all the others. If stat modifiers are essentialism, then so are all these other advantages. The article linked already touches on the real issue: whereas racism and essentialism in real life pertain to culturally and ethnically defined groups that are all part of the human race, the mechanical differences between the D&D races mostly don't do that - and the ones that do, the ones that tell us how a drow is different from a wood elf and a hill dwarf is different from a mountain dwarf, those people by and large don't even mention or think about when this argument pops up. Essentialism in real life doesn't translate exactly to D&D, not when we're talking about the differences between what in real life would be various species.
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From a game perspective, the static racial modifiers do a poor job of differentiating the races when compared to racial abilities. The stats of an Orc and the stats of a Halfling are both capped at 20, but the Halfling will never have the durability of the Half Orc with Relentless Endurance and the Half Orc will never have the Lucky trait of the Halfling. To me, those are better ways to make the races different than just a number.
5E doesn't have taking 10's or 20's, right? I'm pretty sure it doesn't.
Not officially. A great many tables back-hack them in, and frankly proper action adjudication implicitly assumes similar, anyways - you're only supposed to roll if an action can succeed or fail, and if there's no time or ability to simply retry until you succeed. I.e. roll only if the action happening properly on the first try matters, rather than "roll a dice until you get a number high enough for me to let you win."
From a game perspective, the static racial modifiers do a poor job of differentiating the races when compared to racial abilities.
Not disagreeing, just pointing out that if we do want to differentiate between the races - regardless of the means we choose to employ - the essentialism argument against stat modifiers rings a bit hollow.
The stat modifiers though? By all means, toss out the penalties. They're no fun anyway. But the bonuses? I don't think there's any real difference between getting a racial +2 to Str, getting an AC bonus because your entire body is encased in a massive shield, having claws to attack with, being able to see in the dark, having lady Luck on your side more often than not or any of a slew of other racial qualities that make up the difference between elves and humans and lizardfolk and all the others. If stat modifiers are essentialism, then so are all these other advantages.
I think there's a pretty big difference between "this race can see in the dark and that one can't" and "this race is inherently smarter (stronger/wiser etc.) than that one"
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The stat modifiers though? By all means, toss out the penalties. They're no fun anyway. But the bonuses? I don't think there's any real difference between getting a racial +2 to Str, getting an AC bonus because your entire body is encased in a massive shield, having claws to attack with, being able to see in the dark, having lady Luck on your side more often than not or any of a slew of other racial qualities that make up the difference between elves and humans and lizardfolk and all the others. If stat modifiers are essentialism, then so are all these other advantages.
I think there's a pretty big difference between "this race can see in the dark and that one can't" and "this race is inherently smarter (stronger/wiser etc.) than that one"
I'd love to hear what that difference is.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
The stat modifiers though? By all means, toss out the penalties. They're no fun anyway. But the bonuses? I don't think there's any real difference between getting a racial +2 to Str, getting an AC bonus because your entire body is encased in a massive shield, having claws to attack with, being able to see in the dark, having lady Luck on your side more often than not or any of a slew of other racial qualities that make up the difference between elves and humans and lizardfolk and all the others. If stat modifiers are essentialism, then so are all these other advantages.
I think there's a pretty big difference between "this race can see in the dark and that one can't" and "this race is inherently smarter (stronger/wiser etc.) than that one"
I'd love to hear what that difference is.
Because being smarter/stronger/wiser makes you better as a person than members of other races/ species. Being able to see in the dark doesn’t.
From a game perspective, the static racial modifiers do a poor job of differentiating the races when compared to racial abilities.
Not disagreeing, just pointing out that if we do want to differentiate between the races - regardless of the means we choose to employ - the essentialism argument against stat modifiers rings a bit hollow.
5E doesn't have taking 10's or 20's, right? I'm pretty sure it doesn't.
You're correct.
Simply pointing out, Pang - as I'm reasonably sure I pointed out a year, year and a half ago when all this fracas and hullaballoo was fresh - that there's a difference between "[X] species has a trait that is helpful to individuals of [Y] adventuring profession/class" and "[X] species is directly, uncontestably better at everything an individual of [Y] adventuring profession/class is meant to do." Arguments can be made - and have been made, ad nauseum - that a simple +2 stat bonus, a swing of one single modifier point, is not so great a boon as to render individuals of other species automatically incompetent at said job. I am not, today, disputing that in this specific post.
I am saying that an elf's +2 to Dexterity makes it inarguably a better rogue than ANY other species that does not have a Dexterity boost. Period. Or a better ranger. Or a better anything-else-that-wants-dex.
The numbers directly, incontrovertibly, and unconquerably decide what jobs you can and cannot do. If a given number is too low, you can not do the jobs associated with that number. Yes, technically you are still able to make the character and assign it the class, but the character will be outright crippled by its insufficient number. There is no such thing as a "good" sub-10 Intelligence wizard, for example. There's ways to make a sub-10 INT wizard less bad (ironically, ways which tend to require very intelligent, high-knowledge play by the player who's playing a dumb-as-bricks wizard),but there's no possible feasible way to make it good. Yes, a player can dump all their ASIs into "catching up" and by level 19 they can still be at 20...but how many games go to 19? How many even bother going to 12? The vast majority of characters get two ASIs, and they're more-or-less required to burn one of them simply to get to where their fellows started at level 0.
Is it a dealbreaker? For many people, no. I can and have played the 15-DX tiffle rogue, and that rogue even had a sub-10 Con score to boot. But here's the thing - I would know (and DID know), from the outset, that said character was strictly inferior to an elven rogue. That lost modifier point is the one that means the elf just barely scrapes through a really tough check or manages to just barely land that one absolutely clutch attack, where my tiffle would whiff and cost the party dearly. Nothing the tiefling species offers is as important to rogues as that single extra point of Dex is - and rogues are less married to their core stat than many other classes are. Tieflings are just flat-out better sorcerers, bards, and warlocks than elves are, and elves are just flat-out better rogues, rangers, and monks.
That much is inarguable, and that bothers some people.
The stat modifiers though? By all means, toss out the penalties. They're no fun anyway. But the bonuses? I don't think there's any real difference between getting a racial +2 to Str, getting an AC bonus because your entire body is encased in a massive shield, having claws to attack with, being able to see in the dark, having lady Luck on your side more often than not or any of a slew of other racial qualities that make up the difference between elves and humans and lizardfolk and all the others. If stat modifiers are essentialism, then so are all these other advantages.
I think there's a pretty big difference between "this race can see in the dark and that one can't" and "this race is inherently smarter (stronger/wiser etc.) than that one"
I'd love to hear what that difference is.
Because being smarter/stronger/wiser makes you better as a person than members of other races/ species. Being able to see in the dark doesn’t.
Being stronger makes you better, but being able to see in the dark doesn't? How does that work?
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The stat modifiers though? By all means, toss out the penalties. They're no fun anyway. But the bonuses? I don't think there's any real difference between getting a racial +2 to Str, getting an AC bonus because your entire body is encased in a massive shield, having claws to attack with, being able to see in the dark, having lady Luck on your side more often than not or any of a slew of other racial qualities that make up the difference between elves and humans and lizardfolk and all the others. If stat modifiers are essentialism, then so are all these other advantages.
I think there's a pretty big difference between "this race can see in the dark and that one can't" and "this race is inherently smarter (stronger/wiser etc.) than that one"
I'd love to hear what that difference is.
Well, from a game-play perspective, it limits character creation choices. Not having darkvision doesn't steer anybody away from being one class or another. An AC boost is helpful to everybody. Having a +2 STR absolutely steers people towards STR-based classes. If I want to play a goliath wizard or a kobold paladin, the character shouldn't be nerfed right out the gate. It's not as bad as it was when there were hard-wired penalties, but it's still a factor
From a real-world perspective, we've got a long way to go before any suggestion that one group of people is inherently smarter/stronger/wiser than another, even in a fantasy setting, is going to come without associations and connotations that don't belong in the game
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I don't think there's any real difference between getting a racial +2 to Str, getting an AC bonus because your entire body is encased in a massive shield, having claws to attack with, being able to see in the dark, having lady Luck on your side more often than not or any of a slew of other racial qualities that make up the difference between elves and humans and lizardfolk and all the others. If stat modifiers are essentialism, then so are all these other advantages.
I can see your point and ultimately I don't think I can make a logical argument as to the hard differences, but what I can do is posit that they feel different to me. I think it's because differences predicated on gross physiological differences like wings or on inherent magical affinities like partially being made of elemental fire seem so much more fantastical than numerical stat bonuses. Being told that I can't fly because I wasn't born with wings doesn't feel like racism, but being told that I'm just not quite as smart as a high elf because I was born a half orc does, even if they are both somewhat essentialist. Does that make sense?
Essentialism in real life doesn't translate exactly to D&D, not when we're talking about the differences between what in real life would be various species.
Yeah, but it's close enough to feel like it, which is what the article is saying:
the problem with D&D Orc racial classification is not that orcs were necessarily designed to resemble black and/or poc cultures, but that the ideology of "this group of sentient beings is unable to overcome the inherent animal nature of their bloodline" is the same as irl racism
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
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I disagree with the premise. The point of racial modifiers is not to make it easier for some races to hit the cap, that is a side effect, not the point.
Racial modifiers exist as a vestige of previous editions. In 1 and 2 e, there were, indeed, racial minimums and maximums. A dwarf back then could not, ever have a high dex, for example. There were also gender-based caps on str. In those editions, by the way, it was next to impossible to change your ability scores from the ones you rolled. So hitting a “cap” was not a consideration.
in 3e, they did away with racial and gender maximums. Gender differences were completely tossed, and racial modifiers took the place of caps, with most races getting a + somewhere and a - somewhere else, usually the - would go in whatever score had a below 18 maximum in 2e. They also got rid of race requirements for classes. (Only humans can be paladins, dwarves can not be thieves, etc.) 3e also introduced stat increases.
At the time, people made the exact same arguments: but women are physically weaker than men, if we let them be the same, it will ruin immersion. And: But now it will eventually be possible for a halfling to be as strong as a half-orc. And any race can be a paladin. It will ruin the game and make all the races the same. (Actually maybe 3e is where they removed half-orcs for a while. I know they did that for a bit because it basically implied sexual assault in the backstory of the half orc. Either way, you get the point.)
Anyway, those arguments were wrong then, and they are wrong now. People can still tell the difference between men and women, even though woman characters can bench press as much as men. Going forward, people will still be able to tell the difference between dwarves and elves. Giving people more options in how to make their characters is a good thing.
Sigh ... this is the essentialism argument and it's a discussion that we've had many time on this forum. I don't really want to dive back into that rabbit hole, but basically what you're advocating is something called "essentialism" and it's unnecessary and toxic in gaming: https://chaoticneutralchronicles.com/2020/06/24/breaking-biological-essentialism-is-not-good/
Also, you can't really have "realism" in a fantasy game, you can't just "notwithstanding" that away. Maybe what you're going for is "verisimilitude?" I mean if you're going to accept that dragons can fly despite not being aerodynamically feasible, why couldn't you accept that halfling muscles just work differently than orc ones and can produce the same amount of strength?
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Just what's written. I'm not good at inventing stuff on the fly, or like you know, being creative. I tend to use published modules and have the npc's act as the module descibes them to me. I don't really know how two different lawful evil characters should behave unless I know the other details from the source material, like who their gods are and what their history is like.
Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
This was an interesting read, being a newcomer to 5E it's always interesting to get a peak into the game's history like this.
As a random aside, it'd be possible for a halfling to be stronger than an orc anyway if you do rolled stats and the halfling just gets better rolls than the orc. It's already something that can feasibly happen.
To be clear, I'm the person Hubbard was replying to. I know because I got a notification. I believe the specific post in question is #77, because none of the other ones really makes any sense in this context, and if you read that post (which is harder to do if I'm not quoted!), you'll see that I chose my words pretty carefully on this topic. However, I'm an all-powerful forum demigod, so I'll just quote myself and we can get back on track:
My point was not to say *nobody complained about this change,* it was that *nobody complained about D&D Beyond having the legal right and legal responsibility to irreversibly alter its digital content, in response to this change.* See the distinction?
I'm well aware of the distinction and your memory is wrong. In this General forum, as well as User Feedback, probably Story and Lore and even Bugs there were posters petitioning to retain Volo's negative modifiers, arguments about versioning came up, and "how dare D&D Beyond steal mechanics I've paid for" litanies requiring Mods and Stormknight (I believe) and OboeLauren(I think) to articulate on several occasions requirement of DDB to present WotC's most current rules. It was the summer of 2020, the forums was flooded with folks trying to use D&D as a means to fight broader culture wars, but discussions of DDB's practice and policy to keep its products reflective of the most recent errata did in fact take place regardless of your memory. I'm pretty sure folks in this very discussion besides me are aware of them, many are frankly recycling their summer of 2020 positions.
I anticipated this discussion when the errata came out, and it seems to have played out exactly as I had expected because like I said, it happened before.
By the by, good of you to let us know Shep Hub was addressing your post, but they addressed many posts without any attribution and I think mine and
another posterOphidmancer were pointing out common guidance given by other community members when participating (as a late arrival) to a fairly involved thread. The thread's public and most participants adopt quoting for public ease of understanding the discourse.Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I'm not sure whether you're asking the question honestly or trying to snark doubt on my assertions. Regardless I'll provide the basis of my documentation, which is also the basis that predicates the entirety of this thread.
So this thread is predicated on some recent editorial decisions to revise and excise some text from Volo's. There were some passages that included some mean spirited humor on slavery as practice by Fire Giants, a section detailing cannibalism rites among Yuan Ti, and a note addressing frankly eugenics considerations in the production of Half Orcs. While grim subjects can have places in some or many D&D games, it seems WotC made this move because they didn't feel the need to draw a map in an official text for games to "go there." Folks can disagree on this call, but I think in terms of reaching the broadest market possible, it's an adjustment in taste and likely a smart move as D&D seems to invest in both younger players and let's call it "family friendly" gaming.
As for where you're actually or posing confused, there were a number of short paragraphs under headings like "Roleplaying a Beholder" or "Roleplaying a MIndflayer". These paragraphs were found between a much more extensive lore exegesis on the monster and a set of tables to help a DM figure out the monsters personality on the fly. They've been removed. The author of the notes introducing the errata, Jeremy Crawford, justifies the removal as follows,
Either Crawford or Ray Winninger (sorta Crawford's boss) went further in the fallout to the errata explaining it was surprising to them that many players and DMs seemed think the role playing guidance "locked in" what was "essential" to play a Beholder, etc. (Even though WotC poster boy Beholder, Xanathar goes a bit against the grain, and the lore prior to the guidance can be interpreted to derive lots of possible performaces of these monster roles). They felt the text imposed an unnecessary control on the game, so removed it in hopes that the remaining text would inspire/liberate imagination. In other words, some paragraphs "script" some monsters that really should invite more fertile interaction between imagination and lore, and WotC thought it was better to be done with that.
i must say it's sort of weird to be (re)introducing some of the basic concepts in this thread on the tenth page. Given that, I think this thread has reached that point where things are now just being repeated (like threads from over a year ago some posters seem to fail to remember), so I'll be stepping off this flat circle of time and let you all keep up your annular rhetorical exercise.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I appreciate the corrections. I certainly don't remember that, but I haven't always been as active on here as I am now. Probably just didn't see it.
I believe now that the lack of quotation was down to inexperience rather than malice. I figured I'd err on the side of sass, maybe leave a stronger impression or something. Probably the wrong call. I've had my morning coffee now, lol. Apologies to Hubbard.
I feel like we should always open up these discourses with links to the other times the exact same discourses have happened. When I get back to my PC I'll hunt those down. Seems like it would save everybody a lot of headaches.
First off, presuming a take-10 or take-20 to take out the random factor is silly. If a halfling rolls high on a Str check to push open a blocked door, it'll open; if a half-orc rolls low on a check to open that same door, it'll stay shut. That's how this game works. That's meaningful. Some kind of "controlled environment lab conditions" thing where we basically just straight-up compare modifiers is not. It doesn't mean anything in the game. It's just numbers on a page.
Second, the essentialism issue is a bit more complex. I'm all for taking out the moralistic absolutes: I don't see the point to them to begin with, and they routinely got overruled by both TSR and WotC writers in canonical lore anyway. The stat modifiers though? By all means, toss out the penalties. They're no fun anyway. But the bonuses? I don't think there's any real difference between getting a racial +2 to Str, getting an AC bonus because your entire body is encased in a massive shield, having claws to attack with, being able to see in the dark, having lady Luck on your side more often than not or any of a slew of other racial qualities that make up the difference between elves and humans and lizardfolk and all the others. If stat modifiers are essentialism, then so are all these other advantages. The article linked already touches on the real issue: whereas racism and essentialism in real life pertain to culturally and ethnically defined groups that are all part of the human race, the mechanical differences between the D&D races mostly don't do that - and the ones that do, the ones that tell us how a drow is different from a wood elf and a hill dwarf is different from a mountain dwarf, those people by and large don't even mention or think about when this argument pops up. Essentialism in real life doesn't translate exactly to D&D, not when we're talking about the differences between what in real life would be various species.
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From a game perspective, the static racial modifiers do a poor job of differentiating the races when compared to racial abilities. The stats of an Orc and the stats of a Halfling are both capped at 20, but the Halfling will never have the durability of the Half Orc with Relentless Endurance and the Half Orc will never have the Lucky trait of the Halfling. To me, those are better ways to make the races different than just a number.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
5E doesn't have taking 10's or 20's, right? I'm pretty sure it doesn't.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Not officially. A great many tables back-hack them in, and frankly proper action adjudication implicitly assumes similar, anyways - you're only supposed to roll if an action can succeed or fail, and if there's no time or ability to simply retry until you succeed. I.e. roll only if the action happening properly on the first try matters, rather than "roll a dice until you get a number high enough for me to let you win."
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Not disagreeing, just pointing out that if we do want to differentiate between the races - regardless of the means we choose to employ - the essentialism argument against stat modifiers rings a bit hollow.
You're correct.
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I think there's a pretty big difference between "this race can see in the dark and that one can't" and "this race is inherently smarter (stronger/wiser etc.) than that one"
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I'd love to hear what that difference is.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Because being smarter/stronger/wiser makes you better as a person than members of other races/ species. Being able to see in the dark doesn’t.
Simply pointing out, Pang - as I'm reasonably sure I pointed out a year, year and a half ago when all this fracas and hullaballoo was fresh - that there's a difference between "[X] species has a trait that is helpful to individuals of [Y] adventuring profession/class" and "[X] species is directly, uncontestably better at everything an individual of [Y] adventuring profession/class is meant to do." Arguments can be made - and have been made, ad nauseum - that a simple +2 stat bonus, a swing of one single modifier point, is not so great a boon as to render individuals of other species automatically incompetent at said job. I am not, today, disputing that in this specific post.
I am saying that an elf's +2 to Dexterity makes it inarguably a better rogue than ANY other species that does not have a Dexterity boost. Period. Or a better ranger. Or a better anything-else-that-wants-dex.
The numbers directly, incontrovertibly, and unconquerably decide what jobs you can and cannot do. If a given number is too low, you can not do the jobs associated with that number. Yes, technically you are still able to make the character and assign it the class, but the character will be outright crippled by its insufficient number. There is no such thing as a "good" sub-10 Intelligence wizard, for example. There's ways to make a sub-10 INT wizard less bad (ironically, ways which tend to require very intelligent, high-knowledge play by the player who's playing a dumb-as-bricks wizard), but there's no possible feasible way to make it good. Yes, a player can dump all their ASIs into "catching up" and by level 19 they can still be at 20...but how many games go to 19? How many even bother going to 12? The vast majority of characters get two ASIs, and they're more-or-less required to burn one of them simply to get to where their fellows started at level 0.
Is it a dealbreaker? For many people, no. I can and have played the 15-DX tiffle rogue, and that rogue even had a sub-10 Con score to boot. But here's the thing - I would know (and DID know), from the outset, that said character was strictly inferior to an elven rogue. That lost modifier point is the one that means the elf just barely scrapes through a really tough check or manages to just barely land that one absolutely clutch attack, where my tiffle would whiff and cost the party dearly. Nothing the tiefling species offers is as important to rogues as that single extra point of Dex is - and rogues are less married to their core stat than many other classes are. Tieflings are just flat-out better sorcerers, bards, and warlocks than elves are, and elves are just flat-out better rogues, rangers, and monks.
That much is inarguable, and that bothers some people.
Please do not contact or message me.
Being stronger makes you better, but being able to see in the dark doesn't? How does that work?
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Well, from a game-play perspective, it limits character creation choices. Not having darkvision doesn't steer anybody away from being one class or another. An AC boost is helpful to everybody. Having a +2 STR absolutely steers people towards STR-based classes. If I want to play a goliath wizard or a kobold paladin, the character shouldn't be nerfed right out the gate. It's not as bad as it was when there were hard-wired penalties, but it's still a factor
From a real-world perspective, we've got a long way to go before any suggestion that one group of people is inherently smarter/stronger/wiser than another, even in a fantasy setting, is going to come without associations and connotations that don't belong in the game
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I can see your point and ultimately I don't think I can make a logical argument as to the hard differences, but what I can do is posit that they feel different to me. I think it's because differences predicated on gross physiological differences like wings or on inherent magical affinities like partially being made of elemental fire seem so much more fantastical than numerical stat bonuses. Being told that I can't fly because I wasn't born with wings doesn't feel like racism, but being told that I'm just not quite as smart as a high elf because I was born a half orc does, even if they are both somewhat essentialist. Does that make sense?
Yeah, but it's close enough to feel like it, which is what the article is saying:
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!