Why doesn't giving a +2 /+1 work for rolled stats? It has been working just fine for all of 5e.
34 points doesn't work with rolled stats.
No, but Rolling stats and adding +2/+1 or +1/+1/+1 is fine. I don't see what needs to be fixed. One stat generation method doesn't really need to impact another.
Absolutely. I'm just saying the notion of folding in the +2/+1 doesn't work when you're rolling. It's rolling, any adjustments de facto happen after the rolls are made unless the rolling method gets adjusted to account for the different average (wouldn't mind seeing that math'ed out, but it seems unlikely there's a more or less straightforward rolling method that'd correspond to the adjusted expected array). Because of that, and folding in stat adjustments into point buy not making a whole lot of difference in practice, and folding in stat adjustments in the standard array being a step in the wrong direction, the whole concept seems like a waste of time to me.
If we are so frightful of the concept that genetics and species might influence physical and mental capabilities, then why aren't we following floating ASIs to their natural conclusion: elimination of Racial ASIs completely? Why are we married to the idea that you get +2 to a stat that benefits you at all? After all, we see the argument quite frequently levelled against supporters of fixed ASI that you can just change that at your table. Well, if you want to make your numbers go big, you can do that at your table.
I'm of the persuasion that believes the game should make sense and this doesn't make sense. There is no good rationalisation for any ASI if not fixed. Starting at 15 of your chosen stat instead of 17 or 16 isn't game breaking. Your life time of studying doesn't get you a +2 INT. It gets you the 15 that you're stacking that +2 on. Floating ASI abstacts nothing and only exists to make foolish people feel better about their stats. Or accomodate powergamers.
If we are so frightful of the concept that genetics and species might influence physical and mental capabilities, then why aren't we following floating ASIs to their natural conclusion: elimination of Racial ASIs completely?
Because "characters built with this book are strictly worse than characters built with the vanilla rules" causes people to not buy the book.
To be frank, I view bonuses in stats I won't need for my class as a perk. They turn dump stats into decent or even good stats, depending on your generation method. And if I can avoid a negative modifier basically for free (using point buy or standard array), I'm calling that a big win.
Clearly, I'm not a powergamer. Big numbers don't attract me. That said, there's a kind of optimization in having a build that is reliably good at many things rather than very good at one thing and very bad at others. I have the patience to wait for ASIs and magic items to make up for not being immediately outstanding, and I rather prefer the journey of watching my characters get stronger instead of having them start out that way.
I know I'm in the minority about the mechanical changes, at least on this thread, and the ironic thing is that I actually strongly approve of doing away with "all [insert race here] are this way" from a personality and lore perspective. I don't, however, think it needs to be a mandated change. Let that be something decided at individual tables, and keep the fixed racial ASIs to make things a bit easier on DMs, I say. And sure, while introducing floating ASIs may let players optimize better (I've seen the argument that it's a more effective game design, which I can agree has merit), I feel like it also has the potential to cause some players to miss out on RP possibilities and the satisfaction of earning power in the course of gameplay. Then again, maybe I've just been exposed to a disproportionate number of toxic powergamers who are never satisfied no matter how big the numbers on their character sheet get...
If we are so frightful of the concept that genetics and species might influence physical and mental capabilities, then why aren't we following floating ASIs to their natural conclusion: elimination of Racial ASIs completely?
Umm yes, that's exactly what's happening. ASI's are now personal, not racial.
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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!
I don’t mind that some races have floating ASIs, Humans and Half-Humas, perhaps some others when appropriate.
And I don’t mind that people have the option of floating ASIs. As far as I’m concerned, everyone already had that option pending DM approval (like the option to roll stats instead of Standard Array/Point Buy).
I lament that the racial ASIs are being removed, even as an option.
I would probably just give more points (34 points, a score of 16 costs 12) but that doesn't work with rolled stats.
Simple option is not having the +1/+2 at all. Starting ASI's are rolled stats, standard array, or point buy. No need to bother with the +1/+2 at any point because starting player scores are already feeling overbuffed.
Or simply move the +1/+2 out of the race section into the scores section, but have it added after your score generation.
Or simply move the +1/+2 out of the race section into the scores section, but have it added after your score generation.
In effect, that appears to be what they are doing. They just can't formally change to that, because it would require re-writing the PHB and a couple other things, which they aren't ready to do (yet).
If we are so frightful of the concept that genetics and species might influence physical and mental capabilities, then why aren't we following floating ASIs to their natural conclusion: elimination of Racial ASIs completely?
Umm yes, that's exactly what's happening. ASI's are now personal, not racial.
Ability scores are personal, when you assigned your point buy, those are your personal ASIs. An additional +3 distributed is redundant. That +2 is supposed to differentiate between a dwarf who has nutured a 16 in Dexterity and an Elf who has nutured a 16 in dexterity. If it doesn't do that then eliminate it.
If we are so frightful of the concept that genetics and species might influence physical and mental capabilities, then why aren't we following floating ASIs to their natural conclusion: elimination of Racial ASIs completely?
Because "characters built with this book are strictly worse than characters built with the vanilla rules" causes people to not buy the book.
That's an explanation for why this is done, but not a reason for doing it this way. If we think that someone in the system cares about producing a good product and they have some influence on what they would sell-- after all this is still a tabletop RPG and not ... Fortnite Merch-- then determinations of sense and reason as pertaining to a rule system would still be important to sell to a market who cares about the system-- hypothetically. Historically, Humans didn't get any ASI, so it's not like that's a requirement of good design. Now humans have like a +7 ASI (+1 to all stats and +1 to one stat). If appeasing powergamers is the only thing motivating sales, then that's a poisoned well.
If we are so frightful of the concept that genetics and species might influence physical and mental capabilities, then why aren't we following floating ASIs to their natural conclusion: elimination of Racial ASIs completely?
Umm yes, that's exactly what's happening. ASI's are now personal, not racial.
Ability scores are personal, when you assigned your point buy, those are your personal ASIs. An additional +3 distributed is redundant. That +2 is supposed to differentiate between a dwarf who has nutured a 16 in Dexterity and an Elf who has nutured a 16 in dexterity. If it doesn't do that then eliminate it.
I think there's still a valid player choice in "do I double down on my strong stats or do I even out my weak stats" in assigning floating stat bumps to either a standard array or a rolled array. I've never used point buy so I have less experience with that. And your idea of what ASI's are "supposed" to do are now outdated compared to the ideas of the current developers, apparently.
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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!
If we are so frightful of the concept that genetics and species might influence physical and mental capabilities, then why aren't we following floating ASIs to their natural conclusion: elimination of Racial ASIs completely?
Umm yes, that's exactly what's happening. ASI's are now personal, not racial.
Ability scores are personal, when you assigned your point buy, those are your personal ASIs. An additional +3 distributed is redundant. That +2 is supposed to differentiate between a dwarf who has nutured a 16 in Dexterity and an Elf who has nutured a 16 in dexterity. If it doesn't do that then eliminate it.
I think there's still a valid player choice in "do I double down on my strong stats or do I even out my weak stats" in assigning floating stat bumps to either a standard array or a rolled array. I've never used point buy so I have less experience with that. And your idea of what ASI's are "supposed" to do are now outdated compared to the ideas of the current developers, apparently.
Reason can't become outdated. Even if someone thinks it's unfashionable, it still applies.
If racial ASIs are not fixed by your race, then why do they exist? What aspect of your race are they abstracting? If they are not abstracting an aspect of your race then why are they listed under race?
I find it curious that no one has yet to actually address these points, beyond the commericial realities of not supporting powercreep. They aren't fallicious. They aren't moving the target. They cut a critical swath to the heart of the new system, which should be fairly damning to any open minded person. How does this make sense? If it doesn't make sense, why should it be included?
If racial ASIs are not fixed by your race, then why do they exist? What aspect of your race are they abstracting? If they are not abstracting an aspect of your race then why are they listed under race?
I feel like I'm repeating myself. They're not racial ASI's anymore, they are just a part of character creation that comes right after picking race. It's got it's own little paragraph since it hardly merits another page or section.
I find it curious that no one has yet to actually address these points, beyond the commericial realities of not supporting powercreep. They aren't fallicious. They aren't moving the target. They cut a critical swath to the heart of the new system, which should be fairly damning to any open minded person. How does this make sense? If it doesn't make sense, why should it be included?
And again, the choice of whether to enhance your highest stats or to bring up your weaker stats is a meaningful one. I did bring that up before if you'll reread that post of mine that you quoted.
Reason can't become outdated. Even if someone thinks it's unfashionable, it still applies.
If racial ASIs are not fixed by your race, then why do they exist? What aspect of your race are they abstracting? If they are not abstracting an aspect of your race then why are they listed under race?
I find it curious that no one has yet to actually address these points, beyond the commericial realities of not supporting powercreep. They aren't fallicious. They aren't moving the target. They cut a critical swath to the heart of the new system, which should be fairly damning to any open minded person. How does this make sense? If it doesn't make sense, why should it be included?
First of all, reason can absolutely become outdated. Attitudes that were considered perfectly reasonable, sensible, and normal two hundred years ago are now commonly held to be deeply wrong. The 'reason' those attitudes were built on has become so outdated it's held to be actively toxic nowadays.
Secondly: "racial ASIs" are a transition thing right now. It is clear that Wizards wishes to do away with them, but they cannot without rewriting the Player's Handbook and the Dungeon Master's Guide, which they are not prepared to do until 2024. Both books assume the existence of "racial" ASIs, and so the system has been slap-patched to make these swing points occupy the same space as "racial" ASIs in order to maintain compatibility with the older books while they're being rewritten. When the adjusted system comes out in 2024 I very much doubt these points will still be associated with 'race'/species. Instead, they will likely either be folded into statgen or they will be their own separate step in the process, unrelated to species or statgen.
Your points aren't "not being addressed". The answer is well known and well understood - this isn't the system's final form. This is the stopgap make-it-work functionality we're stuck with until the system redux is fully completed in 2024. M3 applies the slap patch to a bunch of species that had fallen behind and were not attractive to players, as well as updating their mechanics to be more reflective of Wizards' newer design philosophies. There's nothing damning or nefarious about it. This is simply an intermediate stage while Wizards adjusts an active, living product towards a desired end shape.
If racial ASIs are not fixed by your race, then why do they exist? What aspect of your race are they abstracting? If they are not abstracting an aspect of your race then why are they listed under race?
Because "racial" ASIs are part of D&D's character creation system, as defined by the PHB. The new book's remit does not include "revise the PHB." One could guess that this will get cleaned up and streamlined in materials published in 2024.
I find most D&D stories to be about the exceptional. The +2/+1 change is both good and bad for that.
In one way, players can make their character the exception as traditional to D&D stories. In another way, every character is the exception making no character an exception.
I prefer to see it as the characters in the present campaign are the exceptions in that campaign, not comparing the characters with other campaigns. Then, the bad part of the change becomes immaterial. Also even when considering other campaigns, the original standard becomes the exceptional among throngs of specialized characters.
(It's also not a requirement. DMs can state that a campaign is designed for the original standards and not the TCoE alterations. I interpret that these options are there for the DMs to design their campaigns and not for the players to steamroll over the designs of the DMs' campaigns.)
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Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Reason can't become outdated. Even if someone thinks it's unfashionable, it still applies.
If racial ASIs are not fixed by your race, then why do they exist? What aspect of your race are they abstracting? If they are not abstracting an aspect of your race then why are they listed under race?
I find it curious that no one has yet to actually address these points, beyond the commericial realities of not supporting powercreep. They aren't fallicious. They aren't moving the target. They cut a critical swath to the heart of the new system, which should be fairly damning to any open minded person. How does this make sense? If it doesn't make sense, why should it be included?
First of all, reason can absolutely become outdated. Attitudes that were considered perfectly reasonable, sensible, and normal two hundred years ago are now commonly held to be deeply wrong. The 'reason' those attitudes were built on has become so outdated it's held to be actively toxic nowadays.
Secondly: "racial ASIs" are a transition thing right now. It is clear that Wizards wishes to do away with them, but they cannot without rewriting the Player's Handbook and the Dungeon Master's Guide, which they are not prepared to do until 2024. Both books assume the existence of "racial" ASIs, and so the system has been slap-patched to make these swing points occupy the same space as "racial" ASIs in order to maintain compatibility with the older books while they're being rewritten. When the adjusted system comes out in 2024 I very much doubt these points will still be associated with 'race'/species. Instead, they will likely either be folded into statgen or they will be their own separate step in the process, unrelated to species or statgen.
Your points aren't "not being addressed". The answer is well known and well understood - this isn't the system's final form. This is the stopgap make-it-work functionality we're stuck with until the system redux is fully completed in 2024. M3 applies the slap patch to a bunch of species that had fallen behind and were not attractive to players, as well as updating their mechanics to be more reflective of Wizards' newer design philosophies. There's nothing damning or nefarious about it. This is simply an intermediate stage while Wizards adjusts an active, living product towards a desired end shape.
Sensible and reasonable are not synonyms. Furthermore, reason is a mechanism, it does not ascribe value. Therefore, something thought reasonable can be proven wrong, but the reason itself is not at fault. That you sought to back up your argument with historical examples to employ reason, would underline the importance of reason. That I can provide an argument examining the internal integrity of the system and find it breeched isn't likely to be disproven by changing moral values in the same way that slavery did (although, many of those "deeply wrong" ideas were done away with because they couldn't survive the scurtiny of reason. Like Slavery. And Gender Inequality. And almost every bit of social progress.)
My points are very much unaddressed. I've been making them for months and very few people actually field an argument why they're wrong. Your argument here, if stated plainly, would seem to amount to "It's not true that racial ASIs not determined by race don't make sense because the system isn't finished and won't be for another two years." Yet, if we hold this to be true, then Wizards has been running around publishing material for over a year now half-implementing some transitional ruleset, which neither conforms to what they wish the ruleset to be (despite them explicitly saying this was their intention with this new compliation -- marketing it as a sneak peak of what is to come) nor the rules as published some time ago.
Furthermore, where exists the dichotomy that says transitional rules can't have internal rational integrity? How is that valid oppositon (It is transitional) to the argument (It lacks internal consistency). This would seem to imply that Wizards does not have full control over the IP and must negotiate the mechanics with players in order to affect the change they wish-- like one might need to do with a government policy (where many stakeholders are rivals for control) or a structural modification (where the laws of physics can limit what can and cannot be done.) Presumably, Wizards isn't limited by what they do within their products, therefore, I fail to see how being transitional, in this case, places any sort of limiter on the product.
Presumably, Wizards isn't limited by what they do within their products, therefore, I fail to see how being transitional, in this case, places any sort of limiter on the product.
This presumption is erroneous. It's WotC's policy that all sourcebooks are wholly compatible with the core rulebooks. Hence, what's in the core books limits what they can do with the sourcebooks they subsequently want to release. Unless and until they change the PHB, racial ASIs are, well, racial. They've so far chosen not to make this change, but might in 2024 with the announced (but very much unspecified) system update.
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The way I look at it is that the commoner stat block for any humanoid has 10s across the board for ability scores meaning that they're average at everything. The +2/+1 and other bonus points you get from standard array, point buy, or good rolls is what sets your characters apart from a commoner. The paradigm going forward for D&D seems to be that it's the other racial bonuses (flight, fey ancestry, etc.) that differentiate the races mechanically.
I disagree with the idea that base stats are already too high, and would like to see an increase from 27 points to at least 30 and at most 36 with 32/33 perhaps being the average. I also agree with raising the starting cap to 16 and allowing a reduction in the minimum cap to 6 for an exchange of 2-4 more points. This would change the starting array from [8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15] to [6, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16] with the 16 being an 18 after a bonus +2.
All that said, as a lot of people people probably already know by now; I believe Dwarves, only because they are dwarves, and for no other reason than that they are dwarves, which is to my mind a perfectly correct, accurate, good, and proper reason, in and of itself; should have a +2 to Constitution, a +1 Strength, a +1 to either Strength or Wisdom, and a -2 to Charisma.
If someone wants to play a Dwarf Bard, Paladin, Sorcerer or Warlock, their starting charisma will be 14 rather than 18. Part of the roleplay experience of playing a Dwarf in a CHA based class should be having to overcome this 'handicap' over the course of play, perhaps by making it a point to quest after a Tome of Leadership and Influence with which to negate/erase that racial penalty, and an Ioun Stone of Leadership to take the place of the +2 that certain other races get; the Deck of Many Things also has a couple of cards that can do the trick, and certain half-feats associated with buffing those classes can help hit that 20 too.
The DM can determine how soon to drop such treasures; or if the role-playing opportunity is not the main interest there, even decide to allow this to be part of the characters backstory to justify such a character beginning with an 18 in charisma in spite of being a Dwarf - Perhaps his bardic college has access to these things and makes them available to those in need of them as part of standard bard training to insure that all graduates indeed have an 18 in charisma.
The real problem with all of this is just how bad humans come in by comparison
A mt. Dw Bard would have a starting array of [8, 15, 16, 11, 13, 14(16 if you toss in that ioun stone as freebie)] That isn't an array to complain about. Actually, my variant human bard has the array [6, 16, 15, 11, 13, 18] and that's without a -2 yet as I don't have a second +2 either. If I compensate for Str with an ioun stone too, then, relative to me, being a dwarf only cost this player a -2 to Charisma, 1 skill proficiency, and the other half of the Actor feat, but gets them:
Darkvision, Resilience vs. poison, proficiency with axes and hammers, tool proficiency for either smithing, brewing, or masonry, stonecunning, and either an additional +1HP per level, or proficiency with light and medium armor.
and now with the changes in order:
the -2 to CHA is gone (so now they are only down 1 skill proficiency and half of a feat)
Custom lineage adds the ability to take a feat ({Actor perhaps?}[is it at the cost of any of the other abilities?] They are now down by only 1 skill proficiency [which stonecunning kind of counts as actually])
They can put at least a +2 in Charisma (perhaps as much as a +5 (are both of their +2's floating and does anything say they can't put them onto the same stat or is one of them now reduced to a +1 and it says in two attributes?)
meaning that at the very least we are both equally charming and debonaire bards; at the very least; but whereas I only get a bonus skill proficiency, the Dwarf still gets all of this:
Darkvision, Resilience vs. poison, proficiency with axes and hammers, tool proficiency for either smithing, brewing, or masonry, stonecunning, and either an additional +1HP per level, or proficiency with light and medium armor.
"Just for being a Dwarf."
This is the problem when you keep giving without taking anything away. The message is clear here: "Don't play a human - It just doesn't pay!"
If they are going to keep making changes like this; at the very least, they need to also compensate humans with some extra things too. There is no reason humans can't have a few more racial features also, with similar functions
- I wrote a bunch of how to fix humans suggestions over the past hour or so, but i think I'll post them in a new thread instead as I suppose it would count as off topic for this thread.
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Ah, I misunderstood what you were saying.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
No worries, always happy to clarify.
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If we are so frightful of the concept that genetics and species might influence physical and mental capabilities, then why aren't we following floating ASIs to their natural conclusion: elimination of Racial ASIs completely? Why are we married to the idea that you get +2 to a stat that benefits you at all? After all, we see the argument quite frequently levelled against supporters of fixed ASI that you can just change that at your table. Well, if you want to make your numbers go big, you can do that at your table.
I'm of the persuasion that believes the game should make sense and this doesn't make sense. There is no good rationalisation for any ASI if not fixed. Starting at 15 of your chosen stat instead of 17 or 16 isn't game breaking. Your life time of studying doesn't get you a +2 INT. It gets you the 15 that you're stacking that +2 on. Floating ASI abstacts nothing and only exists to make foolish people feel better about their stats. Or accomodate powergamers.
Because "characters built with this book are strictly worse than characters built with the vanilla rules" causes people to not buy the book.
To be frank, I view bonuses in stats I won't need for my class as a perk. They turn dump stats into decent or even good stats, depending on your generation method. And if I can avoid a negative modifier basically for free (using point buy or standard array), I'm calling that a big win.
Clearly, I'm not a powergamer. Big numbers don't attract me. That said, there's a kind of optimization in having a build that is reliably good at many things rather than very good at one thing and very bad at others. I have the patience to wait for ASIs and magic items to make up for not being immediately outstanding, and I rather prefer the journey of watching my characters get stronger instead of having them start out that way.
I know I'm in the minority about the mechanical changes, at least on this thread, and the ironic thing is that I actually strongly approve of doing away with "all [insert race here] are this way" from a personality and lore perspective. I don't, however, think it needs to be a mandated change. Let that be something decided at individual tables, and keep the fixed racial ASIs to make things a bit easier on DMs, I say. And sure, while introducing floating ASIs may let players optimize better (I've seen the argument that it's a more effective game design, which I can agree has merit), I feel like it also has the potential to cause some players to miss out on RP possibilities and the satisfaction of earning power in the course of gameplay. Then again, maybe I've just been exposed to a disproportionate number of toxic powergamers who are never satisfied no matter how big the numbers on their character sheet get...
Umm yes, that's exactly what's happening. ASI's are now personal, not racial.
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!
I don’t mind that some races have floating ASIs, Humans and Half-Humas, perhaps some others when appropriate.
And I don’t mind that people have the option of floating ASIs. As far as I’m concerned, everyone already had that option pending DM approval (like the option to roll stats instead of Standard Array/Point Buy).
I lament that the racial ASIs are being removed, even as an option.
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Simple option is not having the +1/+2 at all. Starting ASI's are rolled stats, standard array, or point buy. No need to bother with the +1/+2 at any point because starting player scores are already feeling overbuffed.
Or simply move the +1/+2 out of the race section into the scores section, but have it added after your score generation.
In effect, that appears to be what they are doing. They just can't formally change to that, because it would require re-writing the PHB and a couple other things, which they aren't ready to do (yet).
Ability scores are personal, when you assigned your point buy, those are your personal ASIs. An additional +3 distributed is redundant. That +2 is supposed to differentiate between a dwarf who has nutured a 16 in Dexterity and an Elf who has nutured a 16 in dexterity. If it doesn't do that then eliminate it.
That's an explanation for why this is done, but not a reason for doing it this way. If we think that someone in the system cares about producing a good product and they have some influence on what they would sell-- after all this is still a tabletop RPG and not ... Fortnite Merch-- then determinations of sense and reason as pertaining to a rule system would still be important to sell to a market who cares about the system-- hypothetically. Historically, Humans didn't get any ASI, so it's not like that's a requirement of good design. Now humans have like a +7 ASI (+1 to all stats and +1 to one stat). If appeasing powergamers is the only thing motivating sales, then that's a poisoned well.
I think there's still a valid player choice in "do I double down on my strong stats or do I even out my weak stats" in assigning floating stat bumps to either a standard array or a rolled array. I've never used point buy so I have less experience with that. And your idea of what ASI's are "supposed" to do are now outdated compared to the ideas of the current developers, apparently.
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!
Reason can't become outdated. Even if someone thinks it's unfashionable, it still applies.
If racial ASIs are not fixed by your race, then why do they exist? What aspect of your race are they abstracting? If they are not abstracting an aspect of your race then why are they listed under race?
I find it curious that no one has yet to actually address these points, beyond the commericial realities of not supporting powercreep. They aren't fallicious. They aren't moving the target. They cut a critical swath to the heart of the new system, which should be fairly damning to any open minded person. How does this make sense? If it doesn't make sense, why should it be included?
I feel like I'm repeating myself. They're not racial ASI's anymore, they are just a part of character creation that comes right after picking race. It's got it's own little paragraph since it hardly merits another page or section.
And again, the choice of whether to enhance your highest stats or to bring up your weaker stats is a meaningful one. I did bring that up before if you'll reread that post of mine that you quoted.
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!
First of all, reason can absolutely become outdated. Attitudes that were considered perfectly reasonable, sensible, and normal two hundred years ago are now commonly held to be deeply wrong. The 'reason' those attitudes were built on has become so outdated it's held to be actively toxic nowadays.
Secondly: "racial ASIs" are a transition thing right now. It is clear that Wizards wishes to do away with them, but they cannot without rewriting the Player's Handbook and the Dungeon Master's Guide, which they are not prepared to do until 2024. Both books assume the existence of "racial" ASIs, and so the system has been slap-patched to make these swing points occupy the same space as "racial" ASIs in order to maintain compatibility with the older books while they're being rewritten. When the adjusted system comes out in 2024 I very much doubt these points will still be associated with 'race'/species. Instead, they will likely either be folded into statgen or they will be their own separate step in the process, unrelated to species or statgen.
Your points aren't "not being addressed". The answer is well known and well understood - this isn't the system's final form. This is the stopgap make-it-work functionality we're stuck with until the system redux is fully completed in 2024. M3 applies the slap patch to a bunch of species that had fallen behind and were not attractive to players, as well as updating their mechanics to be more reflective of Wizards' newer design philosophies. There's nothing damning or nefarious about it. This is simply an intermediate stage while Wizards adjusts an active, living product towards a desired end shape.
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Because "racial" ASIs are part of D&D's character creation system, as defined by the PHB. The new book's remit does not include "revise the PHB." One could guess that this will get cleaned up and streamlined in materials published in 2024.
I find most D&D stories to be about the exceptional. The +2/+1 change is both good and bad for that.
In one way, players can make their character the exception as traditional to D&D stories. In another way, every character is the exception making no character an exception.
I prefer to see it as the characters in the present campaign are the exceptions in that campaign, not comparing the characters with other campaigns. Then, the bad part of the change becomes immaterial. Also even when considering other campaigns, the original standard becomes the exceptional among throngs of specialized characters.
(It's also not a requirement. DMs can state that a campaign is designed for the original standards and not the TCoE alterations. I interpret that these options are there for the DMs to design their campaigns and not for the players to steamroll over the designs of the DMs' campaigns.)
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Sensible and reasonable are not synonyms. Furthermore, reason is a mechanism, it does not ascribe value. Therefore, something thought reasonable can be proven wrong, but the reason itself is not at fault. That you sought to back up your argument with historical examples to employ reason, would underline the importance of reason. That I can provide an argument examining the internal integrity of the system and find it breeched isn't likely to be disproven by changing moral values in the same way that slavery did (although, many of those "deeply wrong" ideas were done away with because they couldn't survive the scurtiny of reason. Like Slavery. And Gender Inequality. And almost every bit of social progress.)
My points are very much unaddressed. I've been making them for months and very few people actually field an argument why they're wrong. Your argument here, if stated plainly, would seem to amount to "It's not true that racial ASIs not determined by race don't make sense because the system isn't finished and won't be for another two years." Yet, if we hold this to be true, then Wizards has been running around publishing material for over a year now half-implementing some transitional ruleset, which neither conforms to what they wish the ruleset to be (despite them explicitly saying this was their intention with this new compliation -- marketing it as a sneak peak of what is to come) nor the rules as published some time ago.
Furthermore, where exists the dichotomy that says transitional rules can't have internal rational integrity? How is that valid oppositon (It is transitional) to the argument (It lacks internal consistency). This would seem to imply that Wizards does not have full control over the IP and must negotiate the mechanics with players in order to affect the change they wish-- like one might need to do with a government policy (where many stakeholders are rivals for control) or a structural modification (where the laws of physics can limit what can and cannot be done.) Presumably, Wizards isn't limited by what they do within their products, therefore, I fail to see how being transitional, in this case, places any sort of limiter on the product.
This presumption is erroneous. It's WotC's policy that all sourcebooks are wholly compatible with the core rulebooks. Hence, what's in the core books limits what they can do with the sourcebooks they subsequently want to release. Unless and until they change the PHB, racial ASIs are, well, racial. They've so far chosen not to make this change, but might in 2024 with the announced (but very much unspecified) system update.
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The way I look at it is that the commoner stat block for any humanoid has 10s across the board for ability scores meaning that they're average at everything. The +2/+1 and other bonus points you get from standard array, point buy, or good rolls is what sets your characters apart from a commoner. The paradigm going forward for D&D seems to be that it's the other racial bonuses (flight, fey ancestry, etc.) that differentiate the races mechanically.
I disagree with the idea that base stats are already too high, and would like to see an increase from 27 points to at least 30 and at most 36 with 32/33 perhaps being the average. I also agree with raising the starting cap to 16 and allowing a reduction in the minimum cap to 6 for an exchange of 2-4 more points. This would change the starting array from [8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15] to [6, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16] with the 16 being an 18 after a bonus +2.
All that said, as a lot of people people probably already know by now; I believe Dwarves, only because they are dwarves, and for no other reason than that they are dwarves, which is to my mind a perfectly correct, accurate, good, and proper reason, in and of itself; should have a +2 to Constitution, a +1 Strength, a +1 to either Strength or Wisdom, and a -2 to Charisma.
If someone wants to play a Dwarf Bard, Paladin, Sorcerer or Warlock, their starting charisma will be 14 rather than 18. Part of the roleplay experience of playing a Dwarf in a CHA based class should be having to overcome this 'handicap' over the course of play, perhaps by making it a point to quest after a Tome of Leadership and Influence with which to negate/erase that racial penalty, and an Ioun Stone of Leadership to take the place of the +2 that certain other races get; the Deck of Many Things also has a couple of cards that can do the trick, and certain half-feats associated with buffing those classes can help hit that 20 too.
The DM can determine how soon to drop such treasures; or if the role-playing opportunity is not the main interest there, even decide to allow this to be part of the characters backstory to justify such a character beginning with an 18 in charisma in spite of being a Dwarf - Perhaps his bardic college has access to these things and makes them available to those in need of them as part of standard bard training to insure that all graduates indeed have an 18 in charisma.
The real problem with all of this is just how bad humans come in by comparison
A mt. Dw Bard would have a starting array of [8, 15, 16, 11, 13, 14(16 if you toss in that ioun stone as freebie)] That isn't an array to complain about. Actually, my variant human bard has the array [6, 16, 15, 11, 13, 18] and that's without a -2 yet as I don't have a second +2 either. If I compensate for Str with an ioun stone too, then, relative to me, being a dwarf only cost this player a -2 to Charisma, 1 skill proficiency, and the other half of the Actor feat, but gets them:
Darkvision, Resilience vs. poison, proficiency with axes and hammers, tool proficiency for either smithing, brewing, or masonry, stonecunning, and either an additional +1HP per level, or proficiency with light and medium armor.
and now with the changes in order:
the -2 to CHA is gone (so now they are only down 1 skill proficiency and half of a feat)
Custom lineage adds the ability to take a feat ({Actor perhaps?}[is it at the cost of any of the other abilities?] They are now down by only 1 skill proficiency [which stonecunning kind of counts as actually])
They can put at least a +2 in Charisma (perhaps as much as a +5 (are both of their +2's floating and does anything say they can't put them onto the same stat or is one of them now reduced to a +1 and it says in two attributes?)
meaning that at the very least we are both equally charming and debonaire bards; at the very least; but whereas I only get a bonus skill proficiency, the Dwarf still gets all of this:
Darkvision, Resilience vs. poison, proficiency with axes and hammers, tool proficiency for either smithing, brewing, or masonry, stonecunning, and either an additional +1HP per level, or proficiency with light and medium armor.
"Just for being a Dwarf."
This is the problem when you keep giving without taking anything away. The message is clear here: "Don't play a human - It just doesn't pay!"
If they are going to keep making changes like this; at the very least, they need to also compensate humans with some extra things too. There is no reason humans can't have a few more racial features also, with similar functions
- I wrote a bunch of how to fix humans suggestions over the past hour or so, but i think I'll post them in a new thread instead as I suppose it would count as off topic for this thread.
Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.