I am wondering how many of the people here stating that floating ASIs are a bad idea have actually had real table experience of playing it? Or is this all just opinion with nothing to back it up? Would love to hear some real world examples of it actually not working as opposed to thought experiments, as stated my experience both as DM and player is it does not “break” or impact the game in anyway, it doesn’t affect the mechanics, it doesn’t affect the roleplay or the world building in a negative way and actually enhances the game.
So anyone actually got any experience? Tasha’s has been out 18 months now, those that dislike it must have some real experiences as to how it is broken to feel this strongly, or are you just imagining the worst case without actually putting it into practice?
I mean, I get the whole, "Nobody's special if everyone is."
Yet, doesn't that only apply across campaigns and not within a single campaign? If we compare Dwarfs in a single campaign, we end up with most of the Dwarfs in the world being standard and player character Dwarfs, if they so choose, being the exceptional. The same goes for another individual campaign—the only exceptional people are the player characters.
I still side with DMs on this, though. All the sources are tools and not weapons, but we seem to have people who feel threatened by them, validated by those few who threaten people with them. Courtesy is a player not trying to crowbar a floating ASI character into a DM's standard ASI campaign by throwing a book with optional rules at the DM.
I’ve used the same evolving setting for almost 30 years, my high school friends’ retired PCs are high level NPCs in that world. My friends PCs now will eventually join that roster too. I don’t use those published, pre-packaged 1 — X campaigns and then wipe the slate clean, I write my own or “curate” from the old (actually modular) modules. Every player I have ever DMed for has left their mark on my world. I don’t see a series of individual, 1-off campaigns. I see 30 years of adventure following hundreds of PCs over more than a dozen campaigns across 4&½ editions. I’m glad players are happy, they’re their campaigns after all, not mine. But its my world being changed against my will. WotC is so concerned about not leaning on any one player’s PC, and that’s fine. The PCs are theirs, the campaigns are theirs (after all, their characters are the stars).
This seems a bit odd to me. You have used the same evolving setting for 30 years, with it presumably changing as it passed through the different rules for 4&1/2 editions. How is this change any different?
If your world and setting could survive going from 3.5e to 4e to 5e, why is it moving from fixed ASI to floating ASI any different?
Surely alot more in the rules and "general lore" has changed in your setting over 30 years than what is being discussed in this thread.
Also, how is this being changed against your will? Is WOTC forcing you to use MMM races instead of PHB ones?
If you dont use any of the prewritten adventures to begin with, it shouldn't matter if any of the new material they print use this new format either.
The only thing that might be odd is NEW races, but even then you were already going to have to do the leg work to figure out how they fit into the lore of your custom world, so putting the +2/+1 where you want for your world should practically be an afterthought.
I skipped 4e, I went 1e -> 2e -> 3/3.5 —> 5e.
I still use the 1e/2e lore for my version of Mystara, easy since WotC has never supported it. Gnolls in my world are still technically Goblinoids.
WotC is officially putting out an errata to retcon the PHB races and DDB will force it on my table since we don’t have the toxified remains of living creatures with the rules tattooed into the pages.
What do published “adventures” campaigns have to do with sourcebooks?
Again, I will have to add them back in for every PHB race and then address it every time someone makes a new character or just throw up my hands and accept what I don’t want in my world.
1. Which versions exactly is hardly important, and you still did not answer my main query. If your world could survive all of the mechanical changes that came with edition changes, why is the mechanical change of fixed->floating ASIs where you draw the line? Im not overly familiar with the other versions, but from what I have heard how abilities worked has changed drastically throughout D&D history. From your final comments, I see that you value Racial scores over several other things, but I am still unclear on why, especially when you seem to value them more than certain classes or how spellcasting/attacks works.
2. In that case, any errata changes that occur to the lore should not matter to your world. Not sure if that was part of your complaints, but I know it was something that had upset some groups recently, so I wanted to cover my bases
3. Seems like your issue then is with D&D Beyond and not WoTC, but in any case I thought they had stated that MMM races would be part of the sourcebook as a separate entity, not introduced as errata. Here is the relevant quote which Davyd has posted to another concerned thread (emphasis mine)
"But I have a feeling right now that the Call of the Netherdeep is not the book you are staring at on this road map, that you want to gnash your teeth and yell at me about, on our pre-order list, because Monster of the Multiverse also on our pre-order on our marketplace. Here's what I'll tell you about Monster of the Multiverse; one, it's a book that's meant to open up D&D lore a little bit so that you can use anything that you want in your homebrew world or even in the books that Wizards puts out. It you wanna use something from Eberron at Strixhaven, you know, this is a book that's going to be for you, it's also gonna be a really cool resource for newer players, like a one stop shop for a ton of monsters, a ton of player races. The big question that people have for us specifically around Monsters of the Multiverse is "Will this replace my previously purchased content?" It will not. This will absolutely not replace your previously purchased at D&D Beyond. We are currently working through with Wizard on the approach, you know, the nuts and bolts approach for making that work. Wizards of the Coast has asked us that they would like to take the lead on message around this book, we're allowing them that, but we did wanna make sure that you all understood that your stuff is not gonna get replaced, you're not gonna lose anything when this book is released. So, wanted to put that rumour, that concern, to bed. Lots more details to come on Monster of the Muliverse, but that's a big one we really wanted to get across in the mean time. That's enough about books, let's get into features....." -Joe Starr, during a developer update
4. My point is that if WoTC uses exclusively floating ASI races and similar mechanics moving forward with the new adventures, it wont affect your world since you dont use them. I do see how it feels like a tangent though, so feel free to ignore that point.
5.
See the quote on comment 3. You should not have to add them back at all because they are not getting replaced.
That sounds like an issue that could be solved by holding a session zero with your players before they make their characters. If you explain what you are using and your expectations for characters before they make them, you should be able to avoid frustration.
Your experience will vary greatly from mine, as I started in 5e. If this has crossed a line and you would rather go back to 3.5e to get back the "feel" of D&D, then more power to you. To me, this change seems like a relatively small one in the grand scheme of what goes into a character, so it feels like a weird "final straw" for some people to have
But again, my perception will probably be very different as I started in 5e, so we may just have to agree to disagree on the impact
Its not the lore I’m upset about them changing, it’s the fact that they are changing the mechanics too.
No. If you think that WotC isn’t gonna officially errata the current PHB when they release the do-over in ‘24 you’re not noticing which way the wind is blowing. Just like things were “optional” in Tasha’s and now less than a year later they are standard moving forward.
Again, I don’t give a fig about the Adventure content, it’s the sourcebook content that will also have the same changes.
Again, not yet….
And I’ll have to explain it every time.
In conclusion see the two posts I linked in bullet point 1.👆
1. Thanks for the links. I havent followed every comment in this thread as it has been going on for several days now. I will look them over at some point.
2. This still confuses me. You have played the same campaign world through multiple different versions of the game (where the mechanics have changed drastically in one aspect or another with each new version). Why is WoTC changing game mechanics now different than every other time the mechanics have changed for your world?
3. My focus really hasnt been on 2024. If thats your primary worry than I understand better. I have been approaching most arguments in this thread in relation to MMM primarily. At this point, I imagine floating ASIs wont even be the most drastic change in 2024 so I wont worry about it too much until I hear more.
5. Yes. Thats how session zero works for campaigns. You are supposed to explain your expectations every time you start a campaign.
Will just agree here session zero, I run one every time, even with players I have DMd before, and I verify the mechanics and home brew rules I will be running, even if my players have heard it before. Because, why should anyone assume I will run this campaign like the last.
As has been stated numerous times, the problem with that laying a race that is not “optimized” for a class is that you are instantly the week link in a party of characters who are optimized.
No one is "optimized" at level 1. Optimization is a process that takes a few levels to come into full play. It's not all your base numbers either, it includes the acquisition of gear into the mix as well. If the DM is noticing any "weak link-ness" on behalf of any given character relative to the rest of the party and hasn't compensated for it with an appropriate treasure drop by tier 2, then the DM is not 'optimizing' for fun.
No but over time if a player has to burn stat increases simply to get that 18-20 in there key stat when picking a different race would give them scope to pick a feat for instance, then they are always a step behind the other party members. If your solution to that is a +1 sword, or wand etc by level 2 then your handing out a powerful magic item that the party may decide to give to someone else to use.
People are starting to try and manufacture reason s why it is so bad really I think, if you haven’t tried it in an actual long term campaign, then by all means have an iPhone muon but please don’t go making assertions as to how it will or wont impact the game. I can tell you categorically it makes it a slightly better experience, it doesn’t break it, doesn’t make characters overpowered and it does open up even bigger character development ideas.
Again it's not about denying a player what they want; it's about maintaining the structure of the campaign world; typically as relates to the presence of NPC's.
Wrong argument to make. Rules for PCs don't affect NPCs.
Do they still give the correct numbers for npc's published in the current RAW?
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Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
Do people really do that in your experience or is that an exageration? I might say: "Great! I love Dwarves! You have 32 points to spend on Stats, and don't forget Dwarves get a +2 to Con, a +1 to Str and/or Wis, and a -2 to Cha." but they still can assign their points however they like; and I'm not going to stingy with the availability of magic that can buff their core concept stat should it turn out to be Dex, Int, or Cha. Again it's not about denying a player what they want; it's about maintaining the structure of the campaign world; typically as relates to the presence of NPC's.
Isn't that the entire idea? "Elves are nimble, dwarves are stout, halflings are lucky, half-orcs are strong, humans are boring, tieflings are banned," so on and so forth? Make it so painful to play against type that people just give it up as a bad job and play their species' iconic character?
Saying "I'll give magical items that make things easier!" is, frankly, an absolutely terrible answer. The dwarf that's more-or-less hardlocked away from Charisma classes by a severe penalty to Charisma isn't going to suddenly try to overcome that +4 differential because the DM says they might find an Ioun Stone a hundred sessions down the line - their character is going to be godawful for all the ninety-nine sessions before then, and there's no guarantee the dwarf trying to play a Charisma-based class with single-digit Charisma is even going to get the durned thing. There's no reason for the party to let him have it, after all - why patch 'terrible' to 'moderately maybe mediocre-ish' when they could use the same item to punch up their best speaker/Cha caster from 'great' to 'fantastic' instead?
The answer always seems to be "you can absolutely play what you want, but if 'what you want' doesn't line up with seventy year old fantasy tropes I've built into my game world I'm going to punish you harshly for playing what you want instead of what I want." Ideally there should be a back-and-forth between player and DM to determine a story acceptable to both parties, and many players pride themselves on their flexibility. Put it this way - I'd have no problem running with "every species except humans get a -2 in a painful stat somewhere because I hate nonhumans in my games". I can build characters through Sposta's "roll 3d6 in order, then figure it out at the table" method without issue. I can build characters with your "everybody gets a heavy stat penalty except humans" method without issue. I can roll a garbage, sub-60 point stat array at a tablefull of 90+-point superheroes and I will play it. There's very little I wouldn't be willing to try at least once and usually twice.
But I'm not going to be attached to or invested in those characters. They're going to be things I'm doing for the enjoyment of having a game of D&D to play, not because I find the character particularly compelling or enjoyable. At Sposta's table I'd play whatever the numbers told me to play and if it died, oh well - play whatever the numbers tell me to play next and see what happens. At your table I'd play whichever tired, dried-up overplayed Tolkienite archetype made my butthole pucker the least on whichever day I wrote the sheet and I'd do a pretty damn good job of executing on the trope, but I also wouldn't care at all if the character died. It's not my character, it's just a pregen I'm borrowing from Tolkien, why would I care? And I've had to be talked out of playing with a sub-60 array with three sub-10 numbers and no score higher than 13 twice - in both cases the DM said "Yeah no, I'm not tolerating that in my game, use this instead" - but I would've played the lowball array to the best of my ability and then shrugged and moved on when it died.
If a DM wants to put their foot down and insist I play specific characters, then if I want a seat at that table I'll play those characters. But that DM won't be getting my best because all I'm doing is just voicing an NPC for them, not really playing the game. If that's what they want? Sure. See how long it lasts, maybe try out some purely mechanical thing I haven't had a chance to run yet. But elsewise, nah. Why get invested when it's not my character, or the characters of my tablemates?
Giving every race "+2/+1 or +1/+1/+1 as the PC sees fit" is poor game design because you've taken what is self-evidently a game-wide rule and failed to state it as such, instead bottling it inside every actual race. Furthermore, presenting it as an optional rule in Tasha's and then in reality making it mandatory for all races afterward is simply deceitful towards the player-base.
An example of why this being bad game design is an issue: it makes it easy for the developers to "accidentally forget" to update humans to have a reason to exist in the new design philosophy.
The problems inherent in assigning "+2 to X and +1 to Y" to a race are not fixed by giving PCs the ability to assign the stat points wherever they like, because the actual problem is that racial ASIs fail to accurately convey the flavor they're intended to convey. You fix it by adding genuine flavor to each race.
Example problem: Giving half-orcs +2S, +1C doesn't make half-orcs feel any orcier than humans, largely because it's not the case that every class has a good way to use every stat. It's not like 5E is designed in such a way that e.g. a half-orc druid actually ends up feeling "orcier" in a meaningful way due to the ability points being moved around - in fact, with respect to most stories I've read, they end up feeling a good deal less orcy. It's just not a genuine way to convey flavor in most cases.
What's happened in practice is WOTC is using this as an excuse to both:
Be lazy about race design - all races now take less work than before to develop for the same benefit. Getting the same money for less work? That's a no-brainer.
Ultimate pro move by WOTC: look at the new Fire Genasi darkvision. Why put in work when you'll get paid without putting in work?
Pretend to not be lazy about race design, which is the real crime here, because their move is being widely interpreted as actually addressing a problem, when the real problem is being allowed to simply fester.
Again it's not about denying a player what they want; it's about maintaining the structure of the campaign world; typically as relates to the presence of NPC's.
Wrong argument to make. Rules for PCs don't affect NPCs.
Do they still give the correct numbers for npc's published in the current RAW?
The whole point of floating ASIs is your character is different to the norm. No one is saying all elves have to be clumsy, this elf, this player is playing has a silly low dex, but is hyper intelligent, he was bullied for it by the other elves, and so ran off with his best friend, a reindeer, with a glowing red nose.
your NPCs can be however you want, one of mine is an elf so fat he can’t move, his dex is 6 but his charisma is 22. He is carried round on a palanquin by a group of bearers. My players love him.
2. This still confuses me. You have played the same campaign world through multiple different versions of the game (where the mechanics have changed drastically in one aspect or another with each new version). Why is WoTC changing game mechanics now different than every other time the mechanics have changed for your world?
5. Yes. Thats how session zero works for campaigns. You are supposed to explain your expectations every time you start a campaign.
2. I don’t mind that they’re “changing mechanics.” I mind that they are removing something that I feel is intrinsic to D&D for me. That should be clear if you read the two posts I linked for you.
5. Please don’t patronize me. I’ve been playing D&D for almost 3 decades. I was running “session 0” back when it was still called “character creation” because everyone created their characters together for the campaign so that they could discuss them and form well-rounded parties. I don’t mind saying “we’re using the racial ASIs, not the floating ones.” What I will mind is the time ai’ll loose providing them over and over on a case by case basis because they are no longer provided, not even as an option.
Again it's not about denying a player what they want; it's about maintaining the structure of the campaign world; typically as relates to the presence of NPC's.
Wrong argument to make. Rules for PCs don't affect NPCs.
Do they still give the correct numbers for npc's published in the current RAW?
NPCs don't get ASIs. Their attributes are simply set at whatever value they need to be (if they're even set at all - a lot of NPCs don't need a full stat block).
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Isn't that the entire idea? "Elves are nimble, dwarves are stout, halflings are lucky, half-orcs are strong, humans are boring, tieflings are banned," so on and so forth? Make it so painful to play against type that people just give it up as a bad job and play their species' iconic character?
My impression is that this has evolved over time and editions.
back in the day, class and race were effectively linked.
then, they shifted to mechanically disincentivizing playing against type.
over more time, they changed (this was subtle) to mechanically incentivizing playing to type.
now they appear to be shifting to (at least) saying that any race can play any class equally well.
So, from the game's perspective, progress. Though, D&D is all about types (race, class, and alignment being the big sets of types), and people have gotten very attached to that. And so we get these endless threads.
Giving every race "+2/+1 or +1/+1/+1 as the PC sees fit" is poor game design because you've taken what is self-evidently a game-wide rule and failed to state it as such, instead bottling it inside every actual race. Furthermore, presenting it as an optional rule in Tasha's and then in reality making it mandatory for all races afterward is simply deceitful towards the player-base.
An example of why this being bad game design is an issue: it makes it easy for the developers to "accidentally forget" to update humans to have a reason to exist in the new design philosophy.
The problems inherent in assigning "+2 to X and +1 to Y" to a race are not fixed by giving PCs the ability to assign the stat points wherever they like, because the actual problem is that racial ASIs fail to accurately convey the flavor they're intended to convey. You fix it by adding genuine flavor to each race.
Example problem: Giving half-orcs +2S, +1C doesn't make half-orcs feel any orcier than humans, largely because it's not the case that every class has a good way to use every stat. It's not like 5E is designed in such a way that e.g. a half-orc druid actually ends up feeling "orcier" in a meaningful way due to the ability points being moved around - in fact, with respect to most stories I've read, they end up feeling a good deal less orcy. It's just not a genuine way to convey flavor in most cases.
What's happened in practice is WOTC is using this as an excuse to both:
Be lazy about race design - all races now take less work than before to develop for the same benefit. Getting the same money for less work? That's a no-brainer.
Ultimate pro move by WOTC: look at the new Fire Genasi darkvision. Why put in work when you'll get paid without putting in work?
Pretend to not be lazy about race design, which is the real crime here, because their move is being widely interpreted as actually addressing a problem, when the real problem is being allowed to simply fester.
Still looking at you, PHB humans.
Half Orc wizard at one of my tables, I let him swap his +2 strength for int, why did i do that. This was 5 years ago, long before Tasha’s.
Because the player has a great backstory that explained how he was different to other half orcs, and, mechanically. I use fixed array for stats, had I enforced racial ASIs he would have had int 15, and strength 9, he would have been burning all his stat increases just to get to a decent spell caster level that was useful to the party. Yes at level 1-3 it light not have shown as much, but level 4 onwards, when the other characters had a key stat already at 18 or 19 he would have been lagging behind.
So either I force him to suffer and no longer enjoy the game, I make him pick a better option, but make the other players pick worse combinations so they are all equally rubbish, or, I do the right thing and say, yep it makes perfect sense that not all half orcs are created equal, no problem, take your plus 2 strength, put it in intelligence. Yep your con can seat to reflect you had to build a tough hide because you kept being bullied for being the weakest of the tribe.
The character wasn’t less “orcy” whatever that means, he kept the half orc elements within the context of his background.
Having an orc with 17 int at level 1 didn’t break anything, relentless endurance came in handy, and led to some great cinematic moments as the wizard went down, to then get up and fire off one last spell before collapsing again, and most importantly the character advanced skill wise at the same pace as the others.
I have countless experiences like that to back up my argument that it is a good thing.
You're both trying to change each others opinions on how the game design works based on personal feelings on evolution/biology. One is an argument for it, and the other is an argument against it because of player agency.
Both of you are right, and both of you are never going to change the other persons mind.
I love and value the diverse opinions and the ferociousness on how they will defend their logic. Trying to change individuals opinions on it though and call them out on why they are incorrect on an opinion is going to lead to dogpiling. We're better than that. Present your case, speak your minds and move on.
You're both trying to change each others opinions on how the game design works based on personal feelings on evolution/biology. One is an argument for it, and the other is an argument against it because of player agency.
Both of you are right, and both of you are never going to change the other persons mind.
I love and value the diverse opinions and the ferociousness on how they will defend their logic. Trying to change individuals opinions on it though and call them out on why they are incorrect on an opinion is going to lead to dogpiling. We're better than that. Present your case, speak your minds and move on.
My issue here is not peoples opinion, it is that people are stating opinion as fact. Saying floating ASIs breaks the game because I think this is not giving a valid opinion not to have them.
I have no issue with people not wanting to apply them but, stating that it breaks the game with no real world experience is an invalid argument. So far I have yet to find anyone who has applied the rule to a campaign and regretted it and said never again because it broke the system.
A number of real world examples have been given by people why they are a good thing. That has been met with esoteric arguments about world building, or opinions that it makes a race less like that race.
Do people really do that in your experience or is that an exageration? I might say: "Great! I love Dwarves! You have 32 points to spend on Stats, and don't forget Dwarves get a +2 to Con, a +1 to Str and/or Wis, and a -2 to Cha." but they still can assign their points however they like; and I'm not going to stingy with the availability of magic that can buff their core concept stat should it turn out to be Dex, Int, or Cha. Again it's not about denying a player what they want; it's about maintaining the structure of the campaign world; typically as relates to the presence of NPC's.
Isn't that the entire idea? "Elves are nimble, dwarves are stout, halflings are lucky, half-orcs are strong, humans are boring, tieflings are banned," so on and so forth? Make it so painful to play against type that people just give it up as a bad job and play their species' iconic character?
No, not at all. (You have apparently played with some right ******** my friend. Show me on the character sheet where the bad DMs hurt you.)
What’s “against type” for a Nimble Elf? Because even the Str builds don’t want negative modifiers for their Dex Saves & Initiative.
What’s “against type” for a Stout Dwarf? Because nobody dumps Con.
What’s “against type” for a Lucky Hin? You’ve seen how many natural 1s I roll, I self nerf every time I play anything but a Hin.
What’s “against type” for a Strong Orc? Because any Wiz or Sorcerer who wants to use a staff instead of a dagger will appreciate knowing they can dump Str and still break even.
What’s “against type” for a Human? Humans are like a medium sized black handbag, it may be boring, but it goes with everything,
Why should I allow Tieflings in my Mystara when there are lore reasons for them to not be there.
Here is a handful of PCs that you would claim are “anchors on their parties,” and not a one of them is a bad:
You're both trying to change each others opinions on how the game design works based on personal feelings on evolution/biology. One is an argument for it, and the other is an argument against it because of player agency.
Both of you are right, and both of you are never going to change the other persons mind.
I love and value the diverse opinions and the ferociousness on how they will defend their logic. Trying to change individuals opinions on it though and call them out on why they are incorrect on an opinion is going to lead to dogpiling. We're better than that. Present your case, speak your minds and move on.
Which is why I feel WotC should officially provide both as options.
Do people really do that in your experience or is that an exageration? I might say: "Great! I love Dwarves! You have 32 points to spend on Stats, and don't forget Dwarves get a +2 to Con, a +1 to Str and/or Wis, and a -2 to Cha." but they still can assign their points however they like; and I'm not going to stingy with the availability of magic that can buff their core concept stat should it turn out to be Dex, Int, or Cha. Again it's not about denying a player what they want; it's about maintaining the structure of the campaign world; typically as relates to the presence of NPC's.
Isn't that the entire idea? "Elves are nimble, dwarves are stout, halflings are lucky, half-orcs are strong, humans are boring, tieflings are banned," so on and so forth? Make it so painful to play against type that people just give it up as a bad job and play their species' iconic character?
Saying "I'll give magical items that make things easier!" is, frankly, an absolutely terrible answer. The dwarf that's more-or-less hardlocked away from Charisma classes by a severe penalty to Charisma isn't going to suddenly try to overcome that +4 differential because the DM says they might find an Ioun Stone a hundred sessions down the line - their character is going to be godawful for all the ninety-nine sessions before then, and there's no guarantee the dwarf trying to play a Charisma-based class with single-digit Charisma is even going to get the durned thing. There's no reason for the party to let him have it, after all - why patch 'terrible' to 'moderately maybe mediocre-ish' when they could use the same item to punch up their best speaker/Cha caster from 'great' to 'fantastic' instead?
The answer always seems to be "you can absolutely play what you want, but if 'what you want' doesn't line up with seventy year old fantasy tropes I've built into my game world I'm going to punish you harshly for playing what you want instead of what I want." Ideally there should be a back-and-forth between player and DM to determine a story acceptable to both parties, and many players pride themselves on their flexibility. Put it this way - I'd have no problem running with "every species except humans get a -2 in a painful stat somewhere because I hate nonhumans in my games". I can build characters through Sposta's "roll 3d6 in order, then figure it out at the table" method without issue. I can build characters with your "everybody gets a heavy stat penalty except humans" method without issue. I can roll a garbage, sub-60 point stat array at a tablefull of 90+-point superheroes and I will play it. There's very little I wouldn't be willing to try at least once and usually twice.
But I'm not going to be attached to or invested in those characters. They're going to be things I'm doing for the enjoyment of having a game of D&D to play, not because I find the character particularly compelling or enjoyable. At Sposta's table I'd play whatever the numbers told me to play and if it died, oh well - play whatever the numbers tell me to play next and see what happens. At your table I'd play whichever tired, dried-up overplayed Tolkienite archetype made my butthole pucker the least on whichever day I wrote the sheet and I'd do a pretty damn good job of executing on the trope, but I also wouldn't care at all if the character died. It's not my character, it's just a pregen I'm borrowing from Tolkien, why would I care? And I've had to be talked out of playing with a sub-60 array with three sub-10 numbers and no score higher than 13 twice - in both cases the DM said "Yeah no, I'm not tolerating that in my game, use this instead" - but I would've played the lowball array to the best of my ability and then shrugged and moved on when it died.
If a DM wants to put their foot down and insist I play specific characters, then if I want a seat at that table I'll play those characters. But that DM won't be getting my best because all I'm doing is just voicing an NPC for them, not really playing the game. If that's what they want? Sure. See how long it lasts, maybe try out some purely mechanical thing I haven't had a chance to run yet. But elsewise, nah. Why get invested when it's not my character, or the characters of my tablemates?
Elves are smart, dwarves are stout, halflings are nimble, h-orcs are strong, h-elves are appealing, humans are versatile, tieflings... weren't in the original set, but they are not banned, we have one in the party now - a swashbuckler.
It's not "so" painful, it's just a wee bit more of a challenge. ditto it's not a 'severe' penalty to charisma that locks you out of the class. It's just not starting with paragon-hero power levels at level 1, versus having to hero-'s journey a bit to fully develop your powers as was more typical of earlier versions of play. 100 sessions counts as being stingy, as does no guarantee. Just show me 1 modules worth of 'journey'. They wont be single digit either. 13 is the lowest you'd start with if you put a 15 in there by RAW; and I allow 16's via a 30+ point array. If there is a second CHA based character who did begin with an 18, they wont need a magical boost as they will hit the cap by level 4 or 8 anyway and will have a weakness of their own to compensate for.
I disagree with "punish you harshly" versus "provide a more challenging experience", but in essence you are correct. You know what (kind of) world you are subscribing to in advance, and it is a world where those tropes ARE still true. If you are playing a counter-trope character, overcoming the trope is part of the experience. Humans have a penalty too, by the by; it's just also a floating penalty. What tables are using 60 and 90 point arrays? I've been arguing for 32 point arrays over 27 hither dither and yon, and often been complained to about power creep.
Did you say you wanted to play a character with 3 scores less than a 10 and a 13 as your highest score, as a PC, and a DM told you no? I presume this was a rolled character as opposed to point-buy or standard array? Do you prefer rolling for attributes versus assigning a default array or building your array from a certain number of points?
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Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
Isn't that the entire idea? "Elves are nimble, dwarves are stout, halflings are lucky, half-orcs are strong, humans are boring, tieflings are banned," so on and so forth? Make it so painful to play against type that people just give it up as a bad job and play their species' iconic character?
My impression is that this has evolved over time and editions.
back in the day, class and race were effectively linked.
then, they shifted to mechanically disincentivizing playing against type.
over more time, they changed (this was subtle) to mechanically incentivizing playing to type.
now they appear to be shifting to (at least) saying that any race can play any class equally well.
So, from the game's perspective, progress. Though, D&D is all about types (race, class, and alignment being the big sets of types), and people have gotten very attached to that. And so we get these endless threads.
Nods, Yurei was responding to me, and I'm one of those that gets upset each time one of those changes were made; and earlier - like nevermind just race and class, I was also happy with Barbarians were chaotic neutral, and bards couldn't be lawful, and druids had to be chaotic, and monks were lawful neutral, and paladins were lawful good, and rangers were lawful neutral, etc. and would loose powers if alignment restrictions were violated. I sort of got over that change eventually..., so will see where I'm at with current changes in another 10 years.
;-P
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I never felt like set stats for races contributed much. It was like trying to suggest lore by making metagamers pick particular races to slightly suggest things like kobolds aren't barbarians. Which is super weird, just write a sentence that says your lore instead of this weird soft suggestion bs. It never actually effected role play as an orc wizard was still smart like other wizards it was just unmeta and some people assumed unmeta= unusual in the world. Now I get people liked the build craft of working around the different races but I think abilities work better for that and would rather them go towards more mechanically interesting races.
When we have something that 80% of the community is at least ok with, with the majority loving it, there is no much room to discuss it.
D&D is free enough that, if you are in the 20%, homebrew it and get on with your life. - and it's not like you need to actually do any work, you already have legacy editions that have those ASIs ready for you. You like penalties? Use 3.5e ASIs. You like vanilla 5e? Use the PHB.
Not only that, but people don't realize that D&D is part of a big corporation now and that having a product state that a whole race is less intelligent than another is just an awful outlook nowadays. Physical traits might pass by, but mental ones? Just doesn't sit well.
I just wish they would call them species instead of races, since that would go some way in underlining the huge physiological differences between them (which is way more problematic when you use the word race). No problem with a looser stat definition per se, there will always be unique individuals in any species that stands out. But I've always been happy to modify such things in dialogue with players, so it doesn't really make a huge change for anything that I do.
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I am wondering how many of the people here stating that floating ASIs are a bad idea have actually had real table experience of playing it? Or is this all just opinion with nothing to back it up? Would love to hear some real world examples of it actually not working as opposed to thought experiments, as stated my experience both as DM and player is it does not “break” or impact the game in anyway, it doesn’t affect the mechanics, it doesn’t affect the roleplay or the world building in a negative way and actually enhances the game.
So anyone actually got any experience? Tasha’s has been out 18 months now, those that dislike it must have some real experiences as to how it is broken to feel this strongly, or are you just imagining the worst case without actually putting it into practice?
Will just agree here session zero, I run one every time, even with players I have DMd before, and I verify the mechanics and home brew rules I will be running, even if my players have heard it before. Because, why should anyone assume I will run this campaign like the last.
No but over time if a player has to burn stat increases simply to get that 18-20 in there key stat when picking a different race would give them scope to pick a feat for instance, then they are always a step behind the other party members. If your solution to that is a +1 sword, or wand etc by level 2 then your handing out a powerful magic item that the party may decide to give to someone else to use.
People are starting to try and manufacture reason s why it is so bad really I think, if you haven’t tried it in an actual long term campaign, then by all means have an iPhone muon but please don’t go making assertions as to how it will or wont impact the game. I can tell you categorically it makes it a slightly better experience, it doesn’t break it, doesn’t make characters overpowered and it does open up even bigger character development ideas.
Do they still give the correct numbers for npc's published in the current RAW?
Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
Isn't that the entire idea? "Elves are nimble, dwarves are stout, halflings are lucky, half-orcs are strong, humans are boring, tieflings are banned," so on and so forth? Make it so painful to play against type that people just give it up as a bad job and play their species' iconic character?
Saying "I'll give magical items that make things easier!" is, frankly, an absolutely terrible answer. The dwarf that's more-or-less hardlocked away from Charisma classes by a severe penalty to Charisma isn't going to suddenly try to overcome that +4 differential because the DM says they might find an Ioun Stone a hundred sessions down the line - their character is going to be godawful for all the ninety-nine sessions before then, and there's no guarantee the dwarf trying to play a Charisma-based class with single-digit Charisma is even going to get the durned thing. There's no reason for the party to let him have it, after all - why patch 'terrible' to 'moderately maybe mediocre-ish' when they could use the same item to punch up their best speaker/Cha caster from 'great' to 'fantastic' instead?
The answer always seems to be "you can absolutely play what you want, but if 'what you want' doesn't line up with seventy year old fantasy tropes I've built into my game world I'm going to punish you harshly for playing what you want instead of what I want." Ideally there should be a back-and-forth between player and DM to determine a story acceptable to both parties, and many players pride themselves on their flexibility. Put it this way - I'd have no problem running with "every species except humans get a -2 in a painful stat somewhere because I hate nonhumans in my games". I can build characters through Sposta's "roll 3d6 in order, then figure it out at the table" method without issue. I can build characters with your "everybody gets a heavy stat penalty except humans" method without issue. I can roll a garbage, sub-60 point stat array at a tablefull of 90+-point superheroes and I will play it. There's very little I wouldn't be willing to try at least once and usually twice.
But I'm not going to be attached to or invested in those characters. They're going to be things I'm doing for the enjoyment of having a game of D&D to play, not because I find the character particularly compelling or enjoyable. At Sposta's table I'd play whatever the numbers told me to play and if it died, oh well - play whatever the numbers tell me to play next and see what happens. At your table I'd play whichever tired, dried-up overplayed Tolkienite archetype made my butthole pucker the least on whichever day I wrote the sheet and I'd do a pretty damn good job of executing on the trope, but I also wouldn't care at all if the character died. It's not my character, it's just a pregen I'm borrowing from Tolkien, why would I care? And I've had to be talked out of playing with a sub-60 array with three sub-10 numbers and no score higher than 13 twice - in both cases the DM said "Yeah no, I'm not tolerating that in my game, use this instead" - but I would've played the lowball array to the best of my ability and then shrugged and moved on when it died.
If a DM wants to put their foot down and insist I play specific characters, then if I want a seat at that table I'll play those characters. But that DM won't be getting my best because all I'm doing is just voicing an NPC for them, not really playing the game. If that's what they want? Sure. See how long it lasts, maybe try out some purely mechanical thing I haven't had a chance to run yet. But elsewise, nah. Why get invested when it's not my character, or the characters of my tablemates?
Please do not contact or message me.
The whole point of floating ASIs is your character is different to the norm. No one is saying all elves have to be clumsy, this elf, this player is playing has a silly low dex, but is hyper intelligent, he was bullied for it by the other elves, and so ran off with his best friend, a reindeer, with a glowing red nose.
your NPCs can be however you want, one of mine is an elf so fat he can’t move, his dex is 6 but his charisma is 22. He is carried round on a palanquin by a group of bearers. My players love him.
2. I don’t mind that they’re “changing mechanics.” I mind that they are removing something that I feel is intrinsic to D&D for me. That should be clear if you read the two posts I linked for you.
5. Please don’t patronize me. I’ve been playing D&D for almost 3 decades. I was running “session 0” back when it was still called “character creation” because everyone created their characters together for the campaign so that they could discuss them and form well-rounded parties.
I don’t mind saying “we’re using the racial ASIs, not the floating ones.” What I will mind is the time ai’ll loose providing them over and over on a case by case basis because they are no longer provided, not even as an option.
All clear now, or not yet?
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NPCs don't get ASIs. Their attributes are simply set at whatever value they need to be (if they're even set at all - a lot of NPCs don't need a full stat block).
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My impression is that this has evolved over time and editions.
So, from the game's perspective, progress. Though, D&D is all about types (race, class, and alignment being the big sets of types), and people have gotten very attached to that. And so we get these endless threads.
Half Orc wizard at one of my tables, I let him swap his +2 strength for int, why did i do that. This was 5 years ago, long before Tasha’s.
Because the player has a great backstory that explained how he was different to other half orcs, and, mechanically. I use fixed array for stats, had I enforced racial ASIs he would have had int 15, and strength 9, he would have been burning all his stat increases just to get to a decent spell caster level that was useful to the party. Yes at level 1-3 it light not have shown as much, but level 4 onwards, when the other characters had a key stat already at 18 or 19 he would have been lagging behind.
So either I force him to suffer and no longer enjoy the game, I make him pick a better option, but make the other players pick worse combinations so they are all equally rubbish, or, I do the right thing and say, yep it makes perfect sense that not all half orcs are created equal, no problem, take your plus 2 strength, put it in intelligence. Yep your con can seat to reflect you had to build a tough hide because you kept being bullied for being the weakest of the tribe.
The character wasn’t less “orcy” whatever that means, he kept the half orc elements within the context of his background.
Having an orc with 17 int at level 1 didn’t break anything, relentless endurance came in handy, and led to some great cinematic moments as the wizard went down, to then get up and fire off one last spell before collapsing again, and most importantly the character advanced skill wise at the same pace as the others.
I have countless experiences like that to back up my argument that it is a good thing.
Here's the thing.
Both of you are right.
You're both trying to change each others opinions on how the game design works based on personal feelings on evolution/biology. One is an argument for it, and the other is an argument against it because of player agency.
Both of you are right, and both of you are never going to change the other persons mind.
I love and value the diverse opinions and the ferociousness on how they will defend their logic. Trying to change individuals opinions on it though and call them out on why they are incorrect on an opinion is going to lead to dogpiling. We're better than that. Present your case, speak your minds and move on.
My issue here is not peoples opinion, it is that people are stating opinion as fact. Saying floating ASIs breaks the game because I think this is not giving a valid opinion not to have them.
I have no issue with people not wanting to apply them but, stating that it breaks the game with no real world experience is an invalid argument. So far I have yet to find anyone who has applied the rule to a campaign and regretted it and said never again because it broke the system.
A number of real world examples have been given by people why they are a good thing. That has been met with esoteric arguments about world building, or opinions that it makes a race less like that race.
No, not at all. (You have apparently played with some right ******** my friend. Show me on the character sheet where the bad DMs hurt you.)
Here is a handful of PCs that you would claim are “anchors on their parties,” and not a one of them is a bad:
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Which is why I feel WotC should officially provide both as options.
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Elves are smart, dwarves are stout, halflings are nimble, h-orcs are strong, h-elves are appealing, humans are versatile, tieflings... weren't in the original set, but they are not banned, we have one in the party now - a swashbuckler.
It's not "so" painful, it's just a wee bit more of a challenge. ditto it's not a 'severe' penalty to charisma that locks you out of the class. It's just not starting with paragon-hero power levels at level 1, versus having to hero-'s journey a bit to fully develop your powers as was more typical of earlier versions of play. 100 sessions counts as being stingy, as does no guarantee. Just show me 1 modules worth of 'journey'. They wont be single digit either. 13 is the lowest you'd start with if you put a 15 in there by RAW; and I allow 16's via a 30+ point array. If there is a second CHA based character who did begin with an 18, they wont need a magical boost as they will hit the cap by level 4 or 8 anyway and will have a weakness of their own to compensate for.
I disagree with "punish you harshly" versus "provide a more challenging experience", but in essence you are correct. You know what (kind of) world you are subscribing to in advance, and it is a world where those tropes ARE still true. If you are playing a counter-trope character, overcoming the trope is part of the experience. Humans have a penalty too, by the by; it's just also a floating penalty. What tables are using 60 and 90 point arrays? I've been arguing for 32 point arrays over 27 hither dither and yon, and often been complained to about power creep.
Did you say you wanted to play a character with 3 scores less than a 10 and a 13 as your highest score, as a PC, and a DM told you no? I presume this was a rolled character as opposed to point-buy or standard array? Do you prefer rolling for attributes versus assigning a default array or building your array from a certain number of points?
Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
Nods, Yurei was responding to me, and I'm one of those that gets upset each time one of those changes were made; and earlier - like nevermind just race and class, I was also happy with Barbarians were chaotic neutral, and bards couldn't be lawful, and druids had to be chaotic, and monks were lawful neutral, and paladins were lawful good, and rangers were lawful neutral, etc. and would loose powers if alignment restrictions were violated. I sort of got over that change eventually..., so will see where I'm at with current changes in another 10 years.
;-P
Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
I never felt like set stats for races contributed much. It was like trying to suggest lore by making metagamers pick particular races to slightly suggest things like kobolds aren't barbarians. Which is super weird, just write a sentence that says your lore instead of this weird soft suggestion bs. It never actually effected role play as an orc wizard was still smart like other wizards it was just unmeta and some people assumed unmeta= unusual in the world. Now I get people liked the build craft of working around the different races but I think abilities work better for that and would rather them go towards more mechanically interesting races.
When we have something that 80% of the community is at least ok with, with the majority loving it, there is no much room to discuss it.
D&D is free enough that, if you are in the 20%, homebrew it and get on with your life. - and it's not like you need to actually do any work, you already have legacy editions that have those ASIs ready for you. You like penalties? Use 3.5e ASIs. You like vanilla 5e? Use the PHB.
Not only that, but people don't realize that D&D is part of a big corporation now and that having a product state that a whole race is less intelligent than another is just an awful outlook nowadays. Physical traits might pass by, but mental ones? Just doesn't sit well.
I just wish they would call them species instead of races, since that would go some way in underlining the huge physiological differences between them (which is way more problematic when you use the word race).
No problem with a looser stat definition per se, there will always be unique individuals in any species that stands out. But I've always been happy to modify such things in dialogue with players, so it doesn't really make a huge change for anything that I do.