But to put it into perspective for you, if people didn’t like the old system they didn’t need to play D&D in the first place. It’s the same argument. What makes one “Gatekeeping” and the other not? The answer: the popularity of the sentiment.
It is a very short sighted view. D&D is a product. If it doesn't change to be relevant to a new generation of consumers, it will no longer make a profit and no longer be made. WotC can't depend on you to buy books from them for the next 50 years so that they can stay in business.
And chasing a younger demographic means alienating half the people that kept D&D popular enough for them to pick it up in ‘97 and keep publishing it for the last 25 years, who cares. Right?
Anyone wanna give a sparknotes version of the leak? I'm at work and can't watch the video but I'm dying to know what the drama's gonna be about for the next few weeks lol
-All of the 33 species in Monsters of the Multiverse use Tasha's-style floating ASIs. We're gonna get to have that argument again. Yaaaaaay. -The handful of species previewed - duergar, kobolds, Smurfnibblers, and genasi - were heavily rebuilt. Not minor changes. -Things that were previously subspecies in older books - duergar, Smurfnibblers - now have their own independent stat block, though Smurfnibblers have the line "you count as a gnome for effects that require you to be a gnome". I have strong suspicions on why this is, but yeah. -Negative aspects of species appear to've been nixed. Shortstacks have no movement speed penalty (both Smurfnibbler and duergar had 30-foot movement speeds), and Sunlight Sensitivity appears to've been cut from every MMM species that had it (kobolds, duergar). -Genasi can no longer manipulate their elements; all genasi species had their "Control Element" cantrip removed and replaced with an attack cantrip. I disapprove sharply and I blame the playerbase for being idiots about noncombat spells. -Any species with innate spellcasting got the new language from recent books allowing spellcasters to use spell slots to cast the spells, if they have them. That appears to be the standard going forward. All species with innate casting can also choose which of the three mental stats is their casting stat, so DDB is going to actually have to figure out how to do variable casting stats without bullshitting a whole-ass different feat/species for each casting stat. About god damn time, really.
Think that's most of the major points. Rei reactions, in order, because it's fun.
1.) Y'all knew this was coming. You knew. In hindsight we should've expected it in MMM, instead of expecting them to hold off until 2024. Frankly I'm very much expecting species-based stat points to go away entirely in 2024 and for the Tasha's floating ASIs to simply be baked into the stat selection phase of chargen. Make Standard Array 17/16/14/12/10/8, add a few extra points to Point Buy, and be done with it. No more species-based stats at all, species is just qualitative or at least partially qualitative traits.
2.) Weird, but also kinna expected I guess. Some of the older species, genasi especially, didn't hold up well and weren't commonly played without homebrew, and if you're going to make a huge component of a major new book "Rebuilding Species", suppose you'd have to rebuild them. People will have individual opinions on specific rebuilds, but this is what happens when the game is gearing up towards what amounts to its first major content pass since it was released in 2024.
3.) They did this specifically and solely because they can't back-hack Tasha's adjustments into PHB species until 2024, and so any sort of rebuild of a post-release subspecies for a PHB species is gonna need to become its own pseudospecies in order to be viable to sell. No arcane weirdness or Secret Corporate Bullshit here - durgs, Smurfnibblers, Elfier Elves, Elfier Dark Elves, and all the rest get their own species statblock because that was the only way they could get reasonably reprinted in M3.
4.) I'm actually not a fan of removing all drawbacks from every species ever, but I also know players have been chafing their asses off at Sunlight Sensitivity since the option to play a sunlight-sensitive species was introduced. The average player cannot stand dealing with it and will go to great lengths to bullshit it. I, personally, find certain species-reliant drawbacks to aid storytelling, but if your whole playerbase keeps searching for ways to squirm out of something it's a sign that something isn't working. The Small footspeed thing is eh; it feels a little weird but I suppose I'll get used to it.
5.) Fuggoff, people. The elemental control cantrips are fine and useful. It's not my fault none of you have any goddamn imagination and can't find ways to make manipulating fire, water, or earth cool. Yes, Gust is bad, but that's because Wizards ****ed up and made Gust shorter range and gave it a verbal component it had no ******* business having, both for no good god damned reason, not because being able to manipulate air is bad. besides. Acid Splash on water genasi? No. Acid is not water. Stahppit. Gonna have to 'brew that back to rights myself when the book hits.
6.) Pretty sure it's reasonably safe to say at this point that if you have a spell, you can use spell slots to cast it. This language is becoming ubiquitous and I fully expect it to be backhacked into everything else once 2024 happens and we get 5e Redux. Start doing it with everything that gives you spells and get used to it now, folks.
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I love the idea of floating ASI, and have been using it since Tasha's came out. It opens up a multitude of new character creation options like my goblin paladin. What's not to like?
You could always make a Goblin Paladin. The only thing stopping you before always you.
Yes and no, because I would never have even contemplated it. In my games the goblins, orcs, drow, bugbears etc were all 'bad', they made up the majority of enemies fought at low level. I would never have considered them as playable for anything other than a badguy campaign. Tasha's initially was for me a powergamers wet dream until I really sat down and thought about it and my own steriotypical concepts built up from having played since the 1980's.
But to put it into perspective for you, if people didn’t like the old system they didn’t need to play D&D in the first place. It’s the same argument. What makes one “Gatekeeping” and the other not? The answer: the popularity of the sentiment.
It is a very short sighted view. D&D is a product. If it doesn't change to be relevant to a new generation of consumers, it will no longer make a profit and no longer be made. WotC can't depend on you to buy books from them for the next 50 years so that they can stay in business.
And chasing a younger demographic means alienating half the people that kept D&D popular enough for them to pick it up in ‘97 and keep publishing it for the last 25 years, who cares. Right?
Yes, that is how business works. This isn't anything new. When the game switched from 1st to 2nd, it lost some people and gained some people. Same happened during the switch from 2nd to 3rd and so on. If those that don't like the changes are a large enough group, WotC will either change direction or some other company will step in and make a game like Paizo did with Pathfinder. I know it hurts, and I am sorry, but that is just the nature of business.
I love the idea of floating ASI, and have been using it since Tasha's came out. It opens up a multitude of new character creation options like my goblin paladin. What's not to like?
You could always make a Goblin Paladin. The only thing stopping you before always you.
Yes and no, because I would never have even contemplated it. In my games the goblins, orcs, drow, bugbears etc were all 'bad', they made up the majority of enemies fought at low level. I would never have considered them as playable for anything other than a badguy campaign. Tasha's initially was for me a powergamers wet dream until I really sat down and thought about it and my own steriotypical concepts built up from having played since the 1980's.
Again, that was all you. I started in the ‘90s with 2e and one of the first homebrews I did was make Kobolds, Goblins, Orcs, Hobgoblins, Half-Orcs, and Gnolls all playable races (along with Half-Dwarves, Half-Goblins, and Half-Hobgoblins). And I added Bugbears and Half-Ogres (and half-gnomes) with 3e. One of the best parts of playing a Good Goblin was getting to play against type. But without a “type,” there’s nothing to play against now.
A Goblin Paladin used to be a cool, special character. Now it’s just as vanilla as everything else.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
But to put it into perspective for you, if people didn’t like the old system they didn’t need to play D&D in the first place. It’s the same argument. What makes one “Gatekeeping” and the other not? The answer: the popularity of the sentiment.
It is a very short sighted view. D&D is a product. If it doesn't change to be relevant to a new generation of consumers, it will no longer make a profit and no longer be made. WotC can't depend on you to buy books from them for the next 50 years so that they can stay in business.
And chasing a younger demographic means alienating half the people that kept D&D popular enough for them to pick it up in ‘97 and keep publishing it for the last 25 years, who cares. Right?
Yes, that is how business works. This isn't anything new. When the game switched from 1st to 2nd, it lost some people and gained some people. Same happened during the switch from 2nd to 3rd and so on. If those that don't like the changes are a large enough group, WotC will either change direction or some other company will step in and make a game like Paizo did with Pathfinder. I know it hurts, and I am sorry, but that is just the nature of business.
Are you secretly Jeremy Crawford? If not then you got nothing to apologize for. If so, you got lots to apologize for.
That may all be true, but I also don’t have to like it.
But to put it into perspective for you, if people didn’t like the old system they didn’t need to play D&D in the first place. It’s the same argument. What makes one “Gatekeeping” and the other not? The answer: the popularity of the sentiment.
It is a very short sighted view. D&D is a product. If it doesn't change to be relevant to a new generation of consumers, it will no longer make a profit and no longer be made. WotC can't depend on you to buy books from them for the next 50 years so that they can stay in business.
And chasing a younger demographic means alienating half the people that kept D&D popular enough for them to pick it up in ‘97 and keep publishing it for the last 25 years, who cares. Right?
Yes, that is how business works. This isn't anything new. When the game switched from 1st to 2nd, it lost some people and gained some people. Same happened during the switch from 2nd to 3rd and so on. If those that don't like the changes are a large enough group, WotC will either change direction or some other company will step in and make a game like Paizo did with Pathfinder. I know it hurts, and I am sorry, but that is just the nature of business.
Are you secretly Jeremy Crawford? If not then you got nothing to apologize for. If so, you got lots to apologize for.
That may all be true, but I also don’t have to like it.
I apologize only out of empathy and because I like you. I also agree that you don't have to like it.
Ye know what might've made Tasha's-style floating ASI rules for species unnecessary?
If every one of the six stats was intrinsically valuable to every single class.
But noooooooooooooooooooooooo, The Six Sacred Scores must exist in unchanged form throughout all editions of D&D, which means that any given class can tank between two to four scores down to 3 and be mostly unaffected. Better basic game design could've meant that whichever three points you got from your species were valuable and cool, but instead we get a system where "off" species/class combinations are strictly disadvantageous because most spellcasters get NOTHING from Strength, most martials get NOTHING from literally any mental stat, and the mere existence of Constitution acts as a drain/tax on your numbers because Constitution-in-general does nothing for you save determine whether you can hold your liquor or not and whether a goblin takes one stab or one and a half stabs to kill you.
The Six Sacred Scores, as they stand, are bad game design. But Wizards' hands are tied, because the Six Sacred Scores are part and parcel to D&D and people would staunchly reject any attempt to make the system less bad. So we get a situation where any given character has to "waste" points on numbers that do it absolutely zero good, that always feels bad, and if your species wastes even more points it can sour you on a concept you'd otherwise love to play. People can gripe and yarp and snarf about how "a 15 is perfectly fine" all they want, but that misses the point.
Waste. Feels. Bad. And The Six Sacred Scores are inherently, intrinsically, and unconquerably super wasteful. So here we are.
The reason people don't like the floating ASI option in the first place is because it removes something that made races more distinct. In previous editions each race (aside from human and half-elf) not only had racial ability bonuses but also penalties to other abilities. So half-orc wizards or dwarven sorcerers would be at a disadvantage. Elves had a bonus to dexterity and a penalty to constitution to emphasize that they are agile and graceful at the cost of not being as physically tough as most other races. They already ditched the penalties, and now that flavor of some races being better at some things than others is being officially removed so that, on average, a dwarves are just as agile as elves and halflings are just as strong as goliaths. And gnomes are just as fast as creatures that have legs that are literally longer than they are tall. The argument is that unique flavor is being removed in favor of "options" that mean you can make a halfling that runs like an Olympic sprinter and can beat most goliaths in an arm wrestling match if somebody wants a character that can statistically lift roughly ten times their own body weight at level one (assuming it's not determined that encumbrance is another unnecessary option that should just be removed entirely). Add to that numerous races like genasi getting the "option" of what size they are and you begin to wonder how long (*cough*5.5*cough*) until we see something that explicitly says gnomes can range from two and a half to six and a half feet tall, just the same as goliaths.
And the difference between "errata" and "update" is nonexistent. Errata a subset of update by definition, one that changes previously official rules.
Yes, "the published rules are just guidelines and can be changed by the DM as they see fit." That has always been the case. What irritates me, and I suspect many others, is that it feels like WotC is moving away from "here are rules and lore that you can tweak as needed" to "Here are some vague concepts attached to words and you can make up your own rules for them. We aren't going to even suggest any specific and unique characteristics because we're giving you all sorts of options! That's content, folks, not just us being lazy writers!" Because if you ascribe to the "I don't need somebody else to tell me how to run my game" school of thought, then I ask why are you buying the books from them in the first place? Is it really hard to come up with a name for a fantasy race that you're just going to come up with rules and stats for on your own anyways that it's worth forty or fifty bucks to you? At the rate they're going they might as well just announce that the next revision/edition/whatever will just be a bunch of fantasy art books, and replace everybody responsible for creating lore with a single unpaid intern who goes through previous editions compiling names of races, items, spells, etc into a one big list as an appendix to mix and match with the pretty pictures.
All of the arguments you are making have been made before. Many, many times before. WotC has sales numbers that appear to show that the majority of the player base disagrees with you and those that don't want things to change. Your only option is, If you don't like it, don't buy it. You have the original PHB, Volo's and Mordy's to use. If you don't I recommend buying them, you will likely see used copies going up for sale before long.
So I just feel the need to point out that correlation is not causation, sales could be up for any number of reasons, they could be up because as you seem to think ASI's are less strict. Or the more likely reason is because never before has D&D been as popular, easy to get into, and accessible than it is now.
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If I can't say something nice, I try to not say anything at all. So if I suddenly stop participating in a topic that's probably why.
The point of the various stats being of different values to different classes, and the point of the various races having different assigned ASIs was to showcase that the various strengths and weaknesses that we are all born with and have to accept IRL don’t mean anyone is inferior to anyone else. We can either lean into our strengths or use them to counterbalance our shortcomings in other ways. An Orc Wiz with +2 Str and +0 Int was still just as good a Wiz as that High Elf, just a different kindle of Wiz. And it may take a little longer and a little more work to become just as skilled at casting as the Elf, but with dedication the Orc can get there in the end.
But now, it no longer reflects reality, no longer showcases the values of both perseverance and diversity; and no longer demonstrates the possibility of overcoming challenges. All the substance, the meaning is gone.
Ye know what might've made Tasha's-style floating ASI rules for species unnecessary?
If every one of the six stats was intrinsically valuable to every single class.
But noooooooooooooooooooooooo, The Six Sacred Scores must exist in unchanged form throughout all editions of D&D, which means that any given class can tank between two to four scores down to 3 and be mostly unaffected. Better basic game design could've meant that whichever three points you got from your species were valuable and cool, but instead we get a system where "off" species/class combinations are strictly disadvantageous because most spellcasters get NOTHING from Strength, most martials get NOTHING from literally any mental stat, and the mere existence of Constitution acts as a drain/tax on your numbers because Constitution-in-general does nothing for you save determine whether you can hold your liquor or not and whether a goblin takes one stab or one and a half stabs to kill you.
The Six Sacred Scores, as they stand, are bad game design. But Wizards' hands are tied, because the Six Sacred Scores are part and parcel to D&D and people would staunchly reject any attempt to make the system less bad. So we get a situation where any given character has to "waste" points on numbers that do it absolutely zero good, that always feels bad, and if your species wastes even more points it can sour you on a concept you'd otherwise love to play. People can gripe and yarp and snarf about how "a 15 is perfectly fine" all they want, but that misses the point.
Waste. Feels. Bad. And The Six Sacred Scores are inherently, intrinsically, and unconquerably super wasteful. So here we are.
I'm fine with the 6 scores, but they do feel like they've been awfully balanced this edition. Strength is awful next to dex unless you're a barbarian. Int is a dump stat unless you're wizard or artificer. Dex is a god stat to almost everyone, and charisma has just resulted in the multiclass trio of terror. Constitution is basically just a tax and in the current state could easily be removed. Wisdom is just another tax for saving throws.
The reason people don't like the floating ASI option in the first place is because it removes something that made races more distinct. In previous editions each race (aside from human and half-elf) not only had racial ability bonuses but also penalties to other abilities. So half-orc wizards or dwarven sorcerers would be at a disadvantage. Elves had a bonus to dexterity and a penalty to constitution to emphasize that they are agile and graceful at the cost of not being as physically tough as most other races. They already ditched the penalties, and now that flavor of some races being better at some things than others is being officially removed so that, on average, a dwarves are just as agile as elves and halflings are just as strong as goliaths. And gnomes are just as fast as creatures that have legs that are literally longer than they are tall. The argument is that unique flavor is being removed in favor of "options" that mean you can make a halfling that runs like an Olympic sprinter and can beat most goliaths in an arm wrestling match if somebody wants a character that can statistically lift roughly ten times their own body weight at level one (assuming it's not determined that encumbrance is another unnecessary option that should just be removed entirely). Add to that numerous races like genasi getting the "option" of what size they are and you begin to wonder how long (*cough*5.5*cough*) until we see something that explicitly says gnomes can range from two and a half to six and a half feet tall, just the same as goliaths.
And the difference between "errata" and "update" is nonexistent. Errata a subset of update by definition, one that changes previously official rules.
Yes, "the published rules are just guidelines and can be changed by the DM as they see fit." That has always been the case. What irritates me, and I suspect many others, is that it feels like WotC is moving away from "here are rules and lore that you can tweak as needed" to "Here are some vague concepts attached to words and you can make up your own rules for them. We aren't going to even suggest any specific and unique characteristics because we're giving you all sorts of options! That's content, folks, not just us being lazy writers!" Because if you ascribe to the "I don't need somebody else to tell me how to run my game" school of thought, then I ask why are you buying the books from them in the first place? Is it really hard to come up with a name for a fantasy race that you're just going to come up with rules and stats for on your own anyways that it's worth forty or fifty bucks to you? At the rate they're going they might as well just announce that the next revision/edition/whatever will just be a bunch of fantasy art books, and replace everybody responsible for creating lore with a single unpaid intern who goes through previous editions compiling names of races, items, spells, etc into a one big list as an appendix to mix and match with the pretty pictures.
All of the arguments you are making have been made before. Many, many times before. WotC has sales numbers that appear to show that the majority of the player base disagrees with you and those that don't want things to change. Your only option is, If you don't like it, don't buy it. You have the original PHB, Volo's and Mordy's to use. If you don't I recommend buying them, you will likely see used copies going up for sale before long.
So I just feel the need to point out that correlation is not causation, sales could be up for any number of reasons, they could be up because as you seem to think ASI's are less strict. Or the more likely reason is because never before has D&D been as popular, easy to get into, and accessible than it is now.
True, it could be for any number of reasons, but the people that have the best and most comprehensive knowledge are WotC, who are doubling down on floating ASI's.
Edit: I also never said sales were up due to ASI's, just that they have not caused an obvious decrease.
I do find it interesting that, if I'm understanding things correctly, options like Duergar and Svirfneblin are considered to be their own races rather than subraces in this book. Kinda puts the Astral Elf in the Travelers of the Multiverse UA into perspective.
I do find it interesting that, if I'm understanding things correctly, options like Duergar and Svirfneblin are considered to be their own races rather than subraces in this book. Kinda puts the Astral Elf in the Travelers of the Multiverse UA into perspective.
My suspicion is that the concept of “subraces” is also being railed against somewhere as “intrinsically racist” (or they anticipate it will be) and are going to do away with that notion entirely.
I do find it interesting that, if I'm understanding things correctly, options like Duergar and Svirfneblin are considered to be their own races rather than subraces in this book. Kinda puts the Astral Elf in the Travelers of the Multiverse UA into perspective.
My suspicion is that the concept of “subraces” is also being railed against somewhere as “intrinsically racist” (or they anticipate it will be) and are going to do away with that notion entirely.
Maybe. I don't know exactly why they are doing it, but the new Dragonborn were done the same way.
The point of the various stats being of different values to different classes, and the point of the various races having different assigned ASIs was to showcase that the various strengths and weaknesses that we are all born with and have to accept IRL...
At the very least _I_ don't accept them IRL.
...An Orc Wiz with +2 Str and +0 Int was still just as good a Wiz as that High Elf, just a different kindle of Wiz.
Nah, it's pretty definitively not "just as good." The numbers don't lie. Call that an artifact of the game design if you'd like, or even an artifact of how dump stats work (as discussed), but it's real.
That'd be good. Can't check the vid for another hour, but I'll take your word for it. :)
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They already do. They mean the “quick build” sections for each class.
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And chasing a younger demographic means alienating half the people that kept D&D popular enough for them to pick it up in ‘97 and keep publishing it for the last 25 years, who cares. Right?
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-All of the 33 species in Monsters of the Multiverse use Tasha's-style floating ASIs. We're gonna get to have that argument again. Yaaaaaay.
-The handful of species previewed - duergar, kobolds, Smurfnibblers, and genasi - were heavily rebuilt. Not minor changes.
-Things that were previously subspecies in older books - duergar, Smurfnibblers - now have their own independent stat block, though Smurfnibblers have the line "you count as a gnome for effects that require you to be a gnome". I have strong suspicions on why this is, but yeah.
-Negative aspects of species appear to've been nixed. Shortstacks have no movement speed penalty (both Smurfnibbler and duergar had 30-foot movement speeds), and Sunlight Sensitivity appears to've been cut from every MMM species that had it (kobolds, duergar).
-Genasi can no longer manipulate their elements; all genasi species had their "Control Element" cantrip removed and replaced with an attack cantrip. I disapprove sharply and I blame the playerbase for being idiots about noncombat spells.
-Any species with innate spellcasting got the new language from recent books allowing spellcasters to use spell slots to cast the spells, if they have them. That appears to be the standard going forward. All species with innate casting can also choose which of the three mental stats is their casting stat, so DDB is going to actually have to figure out how to do variable casting stats without bullshitting a whole-ass different feat/species for each casting stat. About god damn time, really.
Think that's most of the major points. Rei reactions, in order, because it's fun.
1.) Y'all knew this was coming. You knew. In hindsight we should've expected it in MMM, instead of expecting them to hold off until 2024. Frankly I'm very much expecting species-based stat points to go away entirely in 2024 and for the Tasha's floating ASIs to simply be baked into the stat selection phase of chargen. Make Standard Array 17/16/14/12/10/8, add a few extra points to Point Buy, and be done with it. No more species-based stats at all, species is just qualitative or at least partially qualitative traits.
2.) Weird, but also kinna expected I guess. Some of the older species, genasi especially, didn't hold up well and weren't commonly played without homebrew, and if you're going to make a huge component of a major new book "Rebuilding Species", suppose you'd have to rebuild them. People will have individual opinions on specific rebuilds, but this is what happens when the game is gearing up towards what amounts to its first major content pass since it was released in 2024.
3.) They did this specifically and solely because they can't back-hack Tasha's adjustments into PHB species until 2024, and so any sort of rebuild of a post-release subspecies for a PHB species is gonna need to become its own pseudospecies in order to be viable to sell. No arcane weirdness or Secret Corporate Bullshit here - durgs, Smurfnibblers, Elfier Elves, Elfier Dark Elves, and all the rest get their own species statblock because that was the only way they could get reasonably reprinted in M3.
4.) I'm actually not a fan of removing all drawbacks from every species ever, but I also know players have been chafing their asses off at Sunlight Sensitivity since the option to play a sunlight-sensitive species was introduced. The average player cannot stand dealing with it and will go to great lengths to bullshit it. I, personally, find certain species-reliant drawbacks to aid storytelling, but if your whole playerbase keeps searching for ways to squirm out of something it's a sign that something isn't working. The Small footspeed thing is eh; it feels a little weird but I suppose I'll get used to it.
5.) Fuggoff, people. The elemental control cantrips are fine and useful. It's not my fault none of you have any goddamn imagination and can't find ways to make manipulating fire, water, or earth cool. Yes, Gust is bad, but that's because Wizards ****ed up and made Gust shorter range and gave it a verbal component it had no ******* business having, both for no good god damned reason, not because being able to manipulate air is bad. besides. Acid Splash on water genasi? No. Acid is not water. Stahppit. Gonna have to 'brew that back to rights myself when the book hits.
6.) Pretty sure it's reasonably safe to say at this point that if you have a spell, you can use spell slots to cast it. This language is becoming ubiquitous and I fully expect it to be backhacked into everything else once 2024 happens and we get 5e Redux. Start doing it with everything that gives you spells and get used to it now, folks.
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Yes and no, because I would never have even contemplated it. In my games the goblins, orcs, drow, bugbears etc were all 'bad', they made up the majority of enemies fought at low level. I would never have considered them as playable for anything other than a badguy campaign. Tasha's initially was for me a powergamers wet dream until I really sat down and thought about it and my own steriotypical concepts built up from having played since the 1980's.
Yes, that is how business works. This isn't anything new. When the game switched from 1st to 2nd, it lost some people and gained some people. Same happened during the switch from 2nd to 3rd and so on. If those that don't like the changes are a large enough group, WotC will either change direction or some other company will step in and make a game like Paizo did with Pathfinder. I know it hurts, and I am sorry, but that is just the nature of business.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Again, that was all you. I started in the ‘90s with 2e and one of the first homebrews I did was make Kobolds, Goblins, Orcs, Hobgoblins, Half-Orcs, and Gnolls all playable races (along with Half-Dwarves, Half-Goblins, and Half-Hobgoblins). And I added Bugbears and Half-Ogres (and half-gnomes) with 3e. One of the best parts of playing a Good Goblin was getting to play against type. But without a “type,” there’s nothing to play against now.
A Goblin Paladin used to be a cool, special character. Now it’s just as vanilla as everything else.
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When did it say that?
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
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I apologize only out of empathy and because I like you. I also agree that you don't have to like it.
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Ye know what might've made Tasha's-style floating ASI rules for species unnecessary?
If every one of the six stats was intrinsically valuable to every single class.
But noooooooooooooooooooooooo, The Six Sacred Scores must exist in unchanged form throughout all editions of D&D, which means that any given class can tank between two to four scores down to 3 and be mostly unaffected. Better basic game design could've meant that whichever three points you got from your species were valuable and cool, but instead we get a system where "off" species/class combinations are strictly disadvantageous because most spellcasters get NOTHING from Strength, most martials get NOTHING from literally any mental stat, and the mere existence of Constitution acts as a drain/tax on your numbers because Constitution-in-general does nothing for you save determine whether you can hold your liquor or not and whether a goblin takes one stab or one and a half stabs to kill you.
The Six Sacred Scores, as they stand, are bad game design. But Wizards' hands are tied, because the Six Sacred Scores are part and parcel to D&D and people would staunchly reject any attempt to make the system less bad. So we get a situation where any given character has to "waste" points on numbers that do it absolutely zero good, that always feels bad, and if your species wastes even more points it can sour you on a concept you'd otherwise love to play. People can gripe and yarp and snarf about how "a 15 is perfectly fine" all they want, but that misses the point.
Waste. Feels. Bad. And The Six Sacred Scores are inherently, intrinsically, and unconquerably super wasteful. So here we are.
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So I just feel the need to point out that correlation is not causation, sales could be up for any number of reasons, they could be up because as you seem to think ASI's are less strict. Or the more likely reason is because never before has D&D been as popular, easy to get into, and accessible than it is now.
If I can't say something nice, I try to not say anything at all. So if I suddenly stop participating in a topic that's probably why.
The point of the various stats being of different values to different classes, and the point of the various races having different assigned ASIs was to showcase that the various strengths and weaknesses that we are all born with and have to accept IRL don’t mean anyone is inferior to anyone else. We can either lean into our strengths or use them to counterbalance our shortcomings in other ways. An Orc Wiz with +2 Str and +0 Int was still just as good a Wiz as that High Elf, just a different kindle of Wiz. And it may take a little longer and a little more work to become just as skilled at casting as the Elf, but with dedication the Orc can get there in the end.
But now, it no longer reflects reality, no longer showcases the values of both perseverance and diversity; and no longer demonstrates the possibility of overcoming challenges. All the substance, the meaning is gone.
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I'm fine with the 6 scores, but they do feel like they've been awfully balanced this edition. Strength is awful next to dex unless you're a barbarian. Int is a dump stat unless you're wizard or artificer. Dex is a god stat to almost everyone, and charisma has just resulted in the multiclass trio of terror. Constitution is basically just a tax and in the current state could easily be removed. Wisdom is just another tax for saving throws.
True, it could be for any number of reasons, but the people that have the best and most comprehensive knowledge are WotC, who are doubling down on floating ASI's.
Edit: I also never said sales were up due to ASI's, just that they have not caused an obvious decrease.
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I do find it interesting that, if I'm understanding things correctly, options like Duergar and Svirfneblin are considered to be their own races rather than subraces in this book. Kinda puts the Astral Elf in the Travelers of the Multiverse UA into perspective.
My suspicion is that the concept of “subraces” is also being railed against somewhere as “intrinsically racist” (or they anticipate it will be) and are going to do away with that notion entirely.
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Maybe. I don't know exactly why they are doing it, but the new Dragonborn were done the same way.
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At the very least _I_ don't accept them IRL.
Nah, it's pretty definitively not "just as good." The numbers don't lie. Call that an artifact of the game design if you'd like, or even an artifact of how dump stats work (as discussed), but it's real.