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 agree with this post, but quick correction: It was always an awful outlook, we just happen to be experiencing a very overdue attempt to reflect on design philosophy.
This opinion will probably ruffle some feathers, but whatever good memories and nostalgia come from the old ways of character creation (which were dead LONG before floating ASI's so idk why they even get this much heat for this) don't stand up to the negative influence of bio-essentialism in the game's design. I would rather not have a bunch of printed optional rules for character stats, I want it to be floating ASI's, because printing optional rules that discuss the old ways is giving power and validity to a way of thinking that was ignorant to the harm it could and did cause.
Like RaSeyssel says, it's easy enough to homebrew the rules you want in place, especially when they are just rules that were already used by previous versions of the game. So go do that if you don't like floating ASI's for your game.
Published words have great power. I hope WotC is more responsible then to allow bio-essentialism a foot in their world because they want to cater to as many people as possible with published optional rulesets.
I always found Irl arguments weird because magic exists and these concepts are very complicated in the real world. Like in the real world IQ corresponds to certain intellectual skills but doesn't correspond to being correct in the same way a high roll in dnd does, you can be intelligently wrong about things, its called debating. So even these rules would not capture the actual complexity of this issue. At the same time why should it be realistic? We could create increasingly complex rules at infinitude to closer and closer represent reality but never hit it and possibly not make a fun game.
Let's run with with the premise. Can I change my spellcasting ability to be Strength? If not, why not? I know that it doesn't make sense, but it's what I want to do. Realism is an important and integral part of any game. We don't want 100% realism because that's real life and defies the point of playing. On the other hand, it's very important to keep as much as possible while making the game feasible. It's important to be able.to parse and predict how your actions influence the world while also aiding suspension of disbelief.
You may feel that racial ASIs aren't necessary for you to suspend your disbelief or to feel that your actions have predictable outcomes, and that's a valid feeling, but the "the world has [insert fantastical or unrealistic element that's necessary for it to work here] means that it's pointless objecting to [insert unrealistic or internally inconsistent event here]" is really nothing more than "I don't care and you're wrong for disagreeing with me" with a bit more effort put into phrasing. Let's use that logic in a hypothetical situation where WotC removes ability modifiers completely and you're unhappy about it. Would "but you can throw fireballs, so objecting to the removal of skills becauseit doesn't allow variation in characters is pointless, enjoy your if your "if you roll 11 or higher you succeed, else you lose" game" be a valid rebuttal to your position and make you feel happy about losing the modifier system? If not, why not?
Again, if you don't like racial ASIs and feel that they interfere with your fun, then that's perfectly valid. "X is unrealistic, therefore arguing about y not being realistic is moot" isn't productive.
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This opinion will probably ruffle some feathers, but whatever good memories and nostalgia come from the old ways of character creation (which were dead LONG before floating ASI's so idk why they even get this much heat for this) don't stand up to the negative influence of bio-essentialism in the game's design. I would rather not have a bunch of printed optional rules for character stats, I want it to be floating ASI's, because printing optional rules that discuss the old ways is giving power and validity to a way of thinking that was ignorant to the harm it could and did cause.
This is a bit of a tangent, and I don't want to ignore the rest of your (HeironymusZot's) post. The rest of this isn't really directed at you.
So, it's quite possible to recapture that old-school experience without the specifics of racial ASIs. You can still run a game where you generate characters, including rolling for all your stats in order, then choosing your class and race. You can still generate 3-5 level 1 characters, play them all alongside each other, and see who survives. You can use strict XP-based leveling and only allow new characters to come in at level 1. The game can still be brutal and unforgiving, in that lateral-thinking sword-and-sorcery way.
With floating ASIs, the only difference is that the "which stats do I want to shore up with a +2" and "which race do I want to play" choices are unlinked.
And if, somehow, the nostalgic parts of your brain just can't abide that one particular difference, well:
It's worth your time and energy to generate some static ASIs for the races in your game. Clearly the benefit is just that high for you.
You may need to accept that some people will see that as a red flag, and maybe not want to play at your table. But that's OK, we're generally already selecting our playmates by common interests.
... the negative influence of bio-essentialism in the game's design.
The negative influence of half the races lacking darkvision? The negative influence of not every race having magic resistance or hunter's instincts, or maybe skill versatility or mind link or natural armor?
Bioessentialism is bad because in real life it's used to imply a division within the human race based on ethnicity that would prove one kind of human is better than another. That's negative, yes. Don't want that. But this is D&D and we're not talking about one group within a race vs another (though we could be, what with several races coming in multiple varieties). We're talking about fantasy races all having different qualities because, well, they're different races. Different races which all have the exact same potential when it comes to the six attributes, mind you. I get that someone might not want to play a dwarf if a dwarf character can't be as intelligent as a gnome character with the same stat array at first. I get that they might think that unfair even, if they really wanted to play a highly intelligent dwarf. But at the same time I can only assume they want to play that highly intelligent dwarf because of something that makes that character a dwarf. Seems to me like a tiny bit of a double standard, wanting to play a given race because of some intrinsic quality that race has, but not wanting races to have certain other intrinsic qualities.
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Let's run with with the premise. Can I change my spellcasting ability to be Strength? If not, why not? I know that it doesn't make sense, but it's what I want to do. Realism is an important and integral part of any game. We don't want 100% realism because that's real life and defies the point of playing. On the other hand, it's very important to keep as much as possible while making the game feasible. It's important to be able.to parse and predict how your actions influence the world while also aiding suspension of disbelief.
You may feel that racial ASIs aren't necessary for you to suspend your disbelief or to feel that your actions have predictable outcomes, and that's a valid feeling, but the "the world has [insert fantastical or unrealistic element that's necessary for it to work here] means that it's pointless objecting to [insert unrealistic or internally inconsistent event here]" is really nothing more than "I don't care and you're wrong for disagreeing with me" with a bit more effort put into phrasing. Let's use that logic in a hypothetical situation where WotC removes ability modifiers completely and you're unhappy about it. Would "but you can throw fireballs, so objecting to the removal of skills becauseit doesn't allow variation in characters is pointless, enjoy your if your "if you roll 11 or higher you succeed, else you lose" game" be a valid rebuttal to your position and make you feel happy about losing the modifier system? If not, why not?
Again, if you don't like racial ASIs and feel that they interfere with your fun, then that's perfectly valid. "X is unrealistic, therefore arguing about y not being realistic is moot" isn't productive.
Hmm ... I think the word you're looking for here is verisimilitude rather than realism, which is the quality of seeming true or being believable. You might think it's splitting hairs, but it matters because just on the face of it you're asking for realism in a blatantly unreal setting where the basic laws of physics are violated regularly, but more importantly it points out that what makes different people suspend their disbelief is different depending on the person and that your line somehow involves people of different ancestries being required to have different inherent capabilities is completely arbitrary. So yes, the argument that "asking for realism is moot" IS a productive argument, if only to get you to realize that your standards for verisimilitude are yours and that other people have different standards that are just as valid.
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The negative influence of half the races lacking darkvision? The negative influence of not every race having magic resistance or hunter's instincts, or maybe skill versatility or mind link or natural armor?
Bioessentialism is bad because in real life it's used to imply a division within the human race based on ethnicity that would prove one kind of human is better than another. That's negative, yes. Don't want that. But this is D&D and we're not talking about one group within a race vs another (though we could be, what with several races coming in multiple varieties). We're talking about fantasy races all having different qualities because, well, they're different races. Different races which all have the exact same potential when it comes to the six attributes, mind you. I get that someone might not want to play a dwarf if a dwarf character can't be as intelligent as a gnome character with the same stat array at first. I get that they might think that unfair even, if they really wanted to play a highly intelligent dwarf. But at the same time I can only assume they want to play that highly intelligent dwarf because of something that makes that character a dwarf. Seems to me like a tiny bit of a double standard, wanting to play a given race because of some intrinsic quality that race has, but not wanting races to have certain other intrinsic qualities.
Dwarves have a culture. Trappings, history, traditions. Perhaps somebody might want to play a dwarf to explore and experience dwarven culture, trappingsa, history, and traditions - experience what it is to be a dwarf - without necessarily wanting their wizard to be actively terrible. I know, most people hear the words "dwarven spellcaster" and immediately break out in hives because the Bearded Folk are supposed to be a warrior tradition and not playing to the iconic character of the dwarven race means you are No True Dwarf Sir. But if you can't think of a good reason for dwarven spellcasters to exist inside of, like...fifteen seconds even in a 'warrior' culture, I'd be shocked and dismayed.
I know you're on record, repeatedly, as saying "not getting a bonus is not the same as receiving a penalty." Psychology begs to differ, Pangurjan. It's been proven time and time again that the human brain is wired to perceive the withholding of a prize/bonus/benefit/Good Thing the exact same way they perceive the imposition of a penalty/malus/Bad Thing. The brain sees both as undesirable, and furthermore sees them as the same kind of undesirable. The brain sees no difference between the two, even if a person's rational mind can. Yes, you can train yourself not to care, and you can be all "the bonus you get somewhere else is just as good!", but in the former case you're actively exerting effort to overcome natural biological processing and in the latter case you're kind of objectively wrong.
Think of it this way: when Christmas bonus time comes around, everybody else in your workplace gets their Christmas bonus in money. You, on the other hand? You get your Christmas bonus in the form of a shipment of fine work boots monetarily equivalent in value to the money everybody else got. You get zero dollars, but you do get a dozen-odd pairs of really nice work boots. I imagine you'd feel some kinda way about that, ne? Never mind that work boots are super neat and useful for some jobs and having a whole shipment of them means you never need to buy your own again. I imagine if you work in an office job where nobody needs fine work boots, you'd be confused and annoyed, ne? Why would your employer go out of their way to screw you over like that? Well, they don't see it as screwing you at all. They gave you exactly the same level of value as everybody else, it's not their fault you can't appreciate the benefits of a shipment of fine work boots. Everybody needs work boots sometime - why shouldn't you be happy that you don't have to buy work boots for that one home improvement job in your whole-ass life a few years down the line where having some nice work boots is a benefit, huh?
The dwarven wizard who gets a Strength bonus instead of an Intelligence bonus passes precisely five percent more Strength checks than they otherwise might. Wizards almost never make Strength checks, and when they do they invariably fail them because wizards almost never bother with Strength, or with the corresponding Athletics proficiency. For the one in a thousand wizards that do? Maybe they value that Strength bonus...but they also lose out on a spell every day. They get one fewer spell prepared every day, the spells they do have prepared are weaker, and many of the wizard's subclass bonuses that are driven by Intelligence are weaker as well. You are five percent better at a thing wizards are actively encouraged to be bad at and to do as little as possible in exchange for being a whole lot more than five percent worse at all of the things you play a wizard to do. You are objectively worse at your job, and every time something bad happens that you could've prevented if you'd been able to pick just one more spell to have at the ready, you're going to look at that extra point of Strength modifier that hasn't been useful one single time in your character's seven entire levels of existing and just kinda hate life.
Your brain will see it as a penalty. And it will absolutely make your experience with the character worse, even if you have the great good fortune to be afforded the chance to believe racism, bioessentialism, and all the other issues people have been raising since before Diversity and Dragons came out are all just lies, the way so many people keep claiming.
Your brain will see it as a penalty. And it will absolutely make your experience with the character worse, even if you have the great good fortune to be afforded the chance to believe racism, bioessentialism, and all the other issues people have been raising since before Diversity and Dragons came out are all just lies, the way so many people keep claiming.
My brain also tells me a piece of birthday cake (or even an entire birthday cake) is better for me than a well-made chicken salad. And my body tells me it's not worth it getting out of bed if I won't have a cup of coffee within the next 15 minutes. Both my mind and body raise no objections to my pushing-50 ass playing football with my nephews and their friends, at least not until about 5 mins in. Point is, not everything my brain sees is objectively correct. Mine even more than most, not gonna lie.
However, and I'd like this to be on the record, I never said nor even implied racism, sexism, bioessentialism and other bigotry are lies. These are things that exist. What I'm saying is that they don't translate directly to D&D's racial differences, and that if they're directly transposed anyway then there should really be an issue with more than just ASIs.
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[racism, sexism, bioessentialism and other bigotry] are things that exist. What I'm saying is that they don't translate directly to D&D's racial differences, and that if they're directly transposed anyway then there should really be an issue with more than just ASIs.
Oh, there's plenty more essentialism/etc in D&D than just racial ASIs. The whole game exudes it. Fixed racial ASIs are just the most glaring --- both because they are quantitative and because of historical implications of rating peoples by relative intelligence and such.
Yurei, having a +3 Intelligence modifier instead of a +4 is actively terrible??
It is actively inferior. Telling people "Your roleplaying concept will make you inferior, and you're going to remain inferior for the next year (at which point everyone has a 20 anyway)" is a pretty strong incentive to just play a different character.
Considering Bounded Accuracy, a +1 is a significant difference and, in my experience, a noticeable one. A +1 in your primary ability means a +1 to attack and damage rolls, spell saves, maybe AC. It's significant.
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Yurei, having a +3 Intelligence modifier instead of a +4 is actively terrible??
It is actively inferior. Telling people "Your roleplaying concept will make you inferior, and you're going to remain inferior for the next year (at which point everyone has a 20 anyway)" is a pretty strong incentive to just play a different character.
It makes a 5% difference to rolls using the corresponding attribute, and depending on what you choose instead you could be better in other areas (a hill dwarf wizard will be pretty happy with those extra hit points and higher Con saves and maybe Wis saves, for instance). A gnome wizard has excellent Int for spellcasting and the darkvision and gnome cunning are pretty good too, but being slower, not getting a starting feat or being lucky or having an increased AC through one of several options or any number of other things is also "actively inferior". It's myopic to pretend only one or two attributes matter.
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Yurei, having a +3 Intelligence modifier instead of a +4 is actively terrible?? Just because you don't get a +2 racial ASI to a stat doesn't mean that you have to put your 8 in it. I don't think that not having an 18 in your primary stat is being actively terrible and, if you could attempt to be honest, neither do you.
Additionally, no one on here is saying that dwarves should not be spellcasters. Not one. So you can officially put that bit of hyperbolic ad hominem to bed. It seems like the only person saying that ability scores MUST DICTATE YOUR CLASS ALWAYS!!! is you. You are the only one saying that if you do not start level 1 with an 18 in your primary stat you are bad and you should feel bad.
The other topic regarding racial ASIs that has not been brought up is innate spellcasting. Every race that has this uses the spellcasting modifier that they get at least a +1 to and in most cases a +2. So now, if you choose to have your Tiefling dump Cha because you want a Strong, Intelligent Teifling Eldritch Knight, your Hellish Rebuke is now worse off for it. Because they have now separated racial ASIs from the actual race, you can have a racial feature that is, in your description, actively terrible. Whereas with fixed racial ASIs, the worst DC you could have at level 1 is a 10, now you can have a 9 (or an 8 if you go point buy).
What is the whole, entire argument people keep making about retaining fixed ASIs? What do people keep saying?
Variations on "dwarves just aren't dwarfy if they're not stout, strong, and burly!" "Orcs should ALWAYS be stronger than halflings, PERIOD!" "The fixed numbers speak to the true nature and character of the species, they're important!"
All things that can be easily boiled down to "I don't want to see any against-type bullshit, play your species' iconic character build or don't play at my table." After all, a dwarf that emphasizes pursuits of the mind, research, and the acquisition of lore is just not dwarfy. It's not a real dwarf if it's not guzzling ale at a physically implausible rate, crowing about the Honor of [Its] Ancestors, and swinging a battleaxe into the teeth of anyone who offends their beard. The iconic character is baked into the stats and lore of the species (in Faerun), and people have decided their deep emotional attachments to those iconic characters and that lore cannot and will not coexist with against-type bullshit. Dwarven spellcasters don't exist. Hell, dwarven women don't exist, outside of lame meme jokes about nobody but dwarves being able to tell dwarf sexes apart.
The whole "there has to be a type to play against in the first place!" argument falls apart because the PC's existence has never broken the 'type' of an entire NPC species before. One single PC dwarf having low numbers in Strength or Con does not mean spit-all nada against the backdrop of an entire species of alcoholic beard-obsessed axe berserkers that apparently reproduce via planting their own beard hair in a cabbage garden watered by the blood of their clan's enemies. "The Type" is omnipresent and inescapable unless the DM goes well out of their way to do otherwise via extensive homebrew worldbuilding, and even then - even then! - it's simply extending the "Against Type" thing to an entire species/culture in a homebrew world. "The Type" is inescapable. Every last single dwarf will draw comparisons to The Iconic Dwarf no matter what else simply due to shared dwarfdom. Nothing else need apply at all.
Some people think that's awesome, a sign of D&D's strong roots and traditions, and a splendid example of The Way Gaming Should Be. Other people emphatically do not. For the last forty-eight years, the game has almost exclusively supported the former set of people and told the latter set to suck eggs and die. Now the game has decided to stop telling people to suck eggs and die. Surprisingly enough, the people who've been told to suck eggs and die for the last however-many-years-they've-been-at-this are kinda thrilled about not being castigated for their every decision anymore.
Please stop trying to reinstate "Suck eggs and die", if you all would? I will gladly assist in writing up a comprehensive guide on Iconic Characters for every species if that will help you folks continue to run games for those iconic characters. Fair trade for letting the rest of us have our own little treasured collection of off-type weirdoes?
Yurei, having a +3 Intelligence modifier instead of a +4 is actively terrible??
It is actively inferior. Telling people "Your roleplaying concept will make you inferior, and you're going to remain inferior for the next year (at which point everyone has a 20 anyway)" is a pretty strong incentive to just play a different character.
Actively inferior to what? To what you might have been? That is like saying that there is only one set way to play a certain class and if you don't do it that way you're fun is bad and you should feel bad. What if a Fighter chooses the Tough feat over the GWM feat? Is he wrong? Sure, he won't be dealing as much damage, but that doesn't make him wrong.
Additionally, not have an 18 Intelligence might mean you have a 10 in your Charisma and now are more likely to make your saves against being charmed. You are all arguing that someone who chooses to have more well rounded stats instead of min/maxing is actively terrible and should go jump off a bridge. Everything is a trade off. If you have one stat higher, that means another one is going to be lower. Having a great spell DC won't be much use to you if you fail every charm attempt and end up using those powerful spells on your friends.
I just don't buy the argument that a Wizard with a 16 Int is just trash and nobody should ever play that way ever.
Look at it this way. You have no control over how many times someone tries to charm you over the course of an adventure. It might be a lot, or it might be none at all. Conversely, you have a lot of control over how many times you cast a spell that's improved by higher Intelligence. You can do it a number of times a day equal to the number of spell slots you have, or close to it. Are you likely to be targeted by charms that many times every day? No? Then isn't it better to take the Intelligence boost?
This holds up even if you expand the bennies of Charisma to everything they truly encompass. How many times a day are you going to need to persuade someone? How many times a day will you need to do a battle of wills against a sentient magic item? Add all that stuff together and it still isn't close to the number of spells you're likely to use in that same period of time. And every last one of those spells can benefit from your Intelligence being high, if you want them to.
It makes a 5% difference to rolls using the corresponding attribute, and depending on what you choose instead you could be better in other areas (a hill dwarf wizard will be pretty happy with those extra hit points and higher Con saves and maybe Wis saves, for instance). A gnome wizard has excellent Int for spellcasting and the darkvision and gnome cunning are pretty good too, but being slower, not getting a starting feat or being lucky or having an increased AC through one of several options or any number of other things is also "actively inferior". It's myopic to pretend only one or two attributes matter.
It's not just skill rolls, Pang. Prepared spellcasters actively lose spells. They get to prepare fewer spells than their counterparts because of their lower defining attribute, and many of them have special abilities that are weaker, have fewer uses, or both if the character has a low defining attribute. The artificer's Flash of Genius is a perfect example - succeeding on five percent more Strength checks 'naturally' doesn't really help offset that you get one fewer uses of Flash and all those uses are weaker. Hell, for artificers the extra Intelligence helps them succeed on Strength rolls more often! A strong Flash of Genius is a whole lot more useful for clearing emergency Strength checks than one random point of Strength unlikely to make any real difference in the thick of things.
Some classes don't care as much. A rogue can afford to care less about having a piss-poor Dex because even though Dex is technically their defining attribute, none of their class features are directly gated or driven by Dexterity. With enough jiggering and Hexblade dips you can even change their defining attribute entirely. But - and I cannot stress this enough - not all classes can do this. Innate casters care a lot more about their defining attribute than rogues or fighters do, and prepared casters care even more because their defining attribute both gates and drives literally everything they do. The "I wanted to play something off the beaten path" 15-Intelligence artificer only gets to prepare three spells at level 1 rather than 4, those spells are weaker, their attacks are weaker for half the subclasses starting at 3rd, and they only get two uses of a +2 bonus to a roll with Flash of Genius rather than three uses of a +3 bonus.
Not all classes are created equal, not all characters can ignore their defining attribute, and not all "a 15 is perfectly fine, nobody ever died because they only had a 15" stories are true.
It's delusional to pretend that all attributes matter equally, or even close to equally.
It's intellectually dishonest to imply I said otherwise.
The implication of not allowing floating attribute modifiers is that it's fair to do so -- which is only true if all attributes matter equally -- or that you don't actually care whether it's fair.
You kinda have been implying otherwise the entire time. The idea that "five percent higher chance to succeed isn't important" as a principle argument against allowing players to play as they wish implies that there's no other pressing reason for the character to care about their defining attribute. For a lot of classes, I would argue most classes, that is simply not the case. Losing even one available spell preparation is a big deal; why do you think so many build guides advise players to race to 20 in their defining attribute for spellcasters as quickly as they possibly can?
And frankly, a multiattack-y class like the fighter can make more attack rolls in one combat than they can roll skill checks in an entire noncombat session. It's disingenuous to suggest/imply that an additional bonus in some rarely used facet of the character will always equally offset something they do a dozen times a fight. The fighter with a 16 Charisma and a 14 Strength does better in the two or three Charisma checks they make in town, yes...and when they're bleeding out on the floor because they whiffed a bunch of attack rolls against a tough enemy, I imagine those improved Charisma checks will be a cold comfort indeed, ne?
The implication of not allowing floating attribute modifiers is that it's fair to do so -- which is only true if all attributes matter equally -- or that you don't actually care whether it's fair.
Up to a point it's fair enough to me, but neither option would suggest that I think the attributes are equal.
1) You kinda have been implying otherwise the entire time. The idea that "five percent higher chance to succeed isn't important" as a principle argument against allowing players to play as they wish implies that there's no other pressing reason for the character to care about their defining attribute. For a lot of classes, I would argue most classes, that is simply not the case. Losing even one available spell preparation is a big deal; why do you think so many build guides advise players to race to 20 in their defining attribute for spellcasters as quickly as they possibly can?
2) And frankly, a multiattack-y class like the fighter can make more attack rolls in one combat than they can roll skill checks in an entire noncombat session. It's disingenuous to suggest/imply that an additional bonus in some rarely used facet of the character will always equally offset something they do a dozen times a fight. The fighter with a 16 Charisma and a 14 Strength does better in the two or three Charisma checks they make in town, yes...and when they're bleeding out on the floor because they whiffed a bunch of attack rolls against a tough enemy, I imagine those improved Charisma checks will be a cold comfort indeed, ne?
1) Not really. Five percent is five percent. It's not a lot, is what I'm saying. As for build guides, my issue with those is they advise playing what's best mechanically (something that presumably shouldn't sit entirely well with you either, by the by), which suggests being mechanically stronger is important. I don't think it should be. In fact, I think it's important that it shouldn't be. If being mechanically stronger is important, that means that a) less optimized builds are to be discouraged and b) DMs shouldn't run adventures for the actual party sitting at the table but for some theoretical ideal party, which is patently inane. Now, I suspect your counterargument here will be that both a) and b) happen all the time. You'd be right about that too. I just happen not to like it or think that it's right, whether it happens all the time or not.
2) So this fighter had two 14s and chose to use one of them for Cha? Did they have 6 of them, of did they simply choose to put one of their two high stats in Cha? I mean, I'm not sitting in judgment either way, but all three official statgen methods allow the player to chose what stat goes where and that has as much or more impact than the attribute modifiers.
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Actually, it's not. If we consider a level 1 fighter vs an AC 12 target (longsword, dueling style)
Str 15: 65% chance to hit, 1d8+4 damage, 5% to crit for +1d8, expected damage 5.75
Str 16: 70% chance to hit, 1d8+5 damage, 5% to crit for +1d8, expected damage 6.875
6.875/5.75 = 1.196
So, 5% is actually 19%. Now, lets look at spellcasters. Assume target has a +0 save
Int 15: save DC 12; target saves 45% of the time. A save negates effect has a 55% chance to apply, a save ends effect lasts an average of 1.22 rounds.
Int 16: save DC 13; target saves 40% of the time. A save negates effect has a 60% chance to apply (+9% to expected effect), a save ends effect lasts an average of 1.5 rounds (+22.7% to expected duration).
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I agree with this post, but quick correction: It was always an awful outlook, we just happen to be experiencing a very overdue attempt to reflect on design philosophy.
This opinion will probably ruffle some feathers, but whatever good memories and nostalgia come from the old ways of character creation (which were dead LONG before floating ASI's so idk why they even get this much heat for this) don't stand up to the negative influence of bio-essentialism in the game's design. I would rather not have a bunch of printed optional rules for character stats, I want it to be floating ASI's, because printing optional rules that discuss the old ways is giving power and validity to a way of thinking that was ignorant to the harm it could and did cause.
Like RaSeyssel says, it's easy enough to homebrew the rules you want in place, especially when they are just rules that were already used by previous versions of the game. So go do that if you don't like floating ASI's for your game.
Published words have great power. I hope WotC is more responsible then to allow bio-essentialism a foot in their world because they want to cater to as many people as possible with published optional rulesets.
Let's run with with the premise. Can I change my spellcasting ability to be Strength? If not, why not? I know that it doesn't make sense, but it's what I want to do. Realism is an important and integral part of any game. We don't want 100% realism because that's real life and defies the point of playing. On the other hand, it's very important to keep as much as possible while making the game feasible. It's important to be able.to parse and predict how your actions influence the world while also aiding suspension of disbelief.
You may feel that racial ASIs aren't necessary for you to suspend your disbelief or to feel that your actions have predictable outcomes, and that's a valid feeling, but the "the world has [insert fantastical or unrealistic element that's necessary for it to work here] means that it's pointless objecting to [insert unrealistic or internally inconsistent event here]" is really nothing more than "I don't care and you're wrong for disagreeing with me" with a bit more effort put into phrasing. Let's use that logic in a hypothetical situation where WotC removes ability modifiers completely and you're unhappy about it. Would "but you can throw fireballs, so objecting to the removal of skills becauseit doesn't allow variation in characters is pointless, enjoy your if your "if you roll 11 or higher you succeed, else you lose" game" be a valid rebuttal to your position and make you feel happy about losing the modifier system? If not, why not?
Again, if you don't like racial ASIs and feel that they interfere with your fun, then that's perfectly valid. "X is unrealistic, therefore arguing about y not being realistic is moot" isn't productive.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
This is a bit of a tangent, and I don't want to ignore the rest of your (HeironymusZot's) post. The rest of this isn't really directed at you.
So, it's quite possible to recapture that old-school experience without the specifics of racial ASIs. You can still run a game where you generate characters, including rolling for all your stats in order, then choosing your class and race. You can still generate 3-5 level 1 characters, play them all alongside each other, and see who survives. You can use strict XP-based leveling and only allow new characters to come in at level 1. The game can still be brutal and unforgiving, in that lateral-thinking sword-and-sorcery way.
With floating ASIs, the only difference is that the "which stats do I want to shore up with a +2" and "which race do I want to play" choices are unlinked.
And if, somehow, the nostalgic parts of your brain just can't abide that one particular difference, well:
The negative influence of half the races lacking darkvision? The negative influence of not every race having magic resistance or hunter's instincts, or maybe skill versatility or mind link or natural armor?
Bioessentialism is bad because in real life it's used to imply a division within the human race based on ethnicity that would prove one kind of human is better than another. That's negative, yes. Don't want that. But this is D&D and we're not talking about one group within a race vs another (though we could be, what with several races coming in multiple varieties). We're talking about fantasy races all having different qualities because, well, they're different races. Different races which all have the exact same potential when it comes to the six attributes, mind you. I get that someone might not want to play a dwarf if a dwarf character can't be as intelligent as a gnome character with the same stat array at first. I get that they might think that unfair even, if they really wanted to play a highly intelligent dwarf. But at the same time I can only assume they want to play that highly intelligent dwarf because of something that makes that character a dwarf. Seems to me like a tiny bit of a double standard, wanting to play a given race because of some intrinsic quality that race has, but not wanting races to have certain other intrinsic qualities.
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Hmm ... I think the word you're looking for here is verisimilitude rather than realism, which is the quality of seeming true or being believable. You might think it's splitting hairs, but it matters because just on the face of it you're asking for realism in a blatantly unreal setting where the basic laws of physics are violated regularly, but more importantly it points out that what makes different people suspend their disbelief is different depending on the person and that your line somehow involves people of different ancestries being required to have different inherent capabilities is completely arbitrary. So yes, the argument that "asking for realism is moot" IS a productive argument, if only to get you to realize that your standards for verisimilitude are yours and that other people have different standards that are just as valid.
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!
Dwarves have a culture. Trappings, history, traditions. Perhaps somebody might want to play a dwarf to explore and experience dwarven culture, trappingsa, history, and traditions - experience what it is to be a dwarf - without necessarily wanting their wizard to be actively terrible. I know, most people hear the words "dwarven spellcaster" and immediately break out in hives because the Bearded Folk are supposed to be a warrior tradition and not playing to the iconic character of the dwarven race means you are No True Dwarf Sir. But if you can't think of a good reason for dwarven spellcasters to exist inside of, like...fifteen seconds even in a 'warrior' culture, I'd be shocked and dismayed.
I know you're on record, repeatedly, as saying "not getting a bonus is not the same as receiving a penalty." Psychology begs to differ, Pangurjan. It's been proven time and time again that the human brain is wired to perceive the withholding of a prize/bonus/benefit/Good Thing the exact same way they perceive the imposition of a penalty/malus/Bad Thing. The brain sees both as undesirable, and furthermore sees them as the same kind of undesirable. The brain sees no difference between the two, even if a person's rational mind can. Yes, you can train yourself not to care, and you can be all "the bonus you get somewhere else is just as good!", but in the former case you're actively exerting effort to overcome natural biological processing and in the latter case you're kind of objectively wrong.
Think of it this way: when Christmas bonus time comes around, everybody else in your workplace gets their Christmas bonus in money. You, on the other hand? You get your Christmas bonus in the form of a shipment of fine work boots monetarily equivalent in value to the money everybody else got. You get zero dollars, but you do get a dozen-odd pairs of really nice work boots. I imagine you'd feel some kinda way about that, ne? Never mind that work boots are super neat and useful for some jobs and having a whole shipment of them means you never need to buy your own again. I imagine if you work in an office job where nobody needs fine work boots, you'd be confused and annoyed, ne? Why would your employer go out of their way to screw you over like that? Well, they don't see it as screwing you at all. They gave you exactly the same level of value as everybody else, it's not their fault you can't appreciate the benefits of a shipment of fine work boots. Everybody needs work boots sometime - why shouldn't you be happy that you don't have to buy work boots for that one home improvement job in your whole-ass life a few years down the line where having some nice work boots is a benefit, huh?
The dwarven wizard who gets a Strength bonus instead of an Intelligence bonus passes precisely five percent more Strength checks than they otherwise might. Wizards almost never make Strength checks, and when they do they invariably fail them because wizards almost never bother with Strength, or with the corresponding Athletics proficiency. For the one in a thousand wizards that do? Maybe they value that Strength bonus...but they also lose out on a spell every day. They get one fewer spell prepared every day, the spells they do have prepared are weaker, and many of the wizard's subclass bonuses that are driven by Intelligence are weaker as well. You are five percent better at a thing wizards are actively encouraged to be bad at and to do as little as possible in exchange for being a whole lot more than five percent worse at all of the things you play a wizard to do. You are objectively worse at your job, and every time something bad happens that you could've prevented if you'd been able to pick just one more spell to have at the ready, you're going to look at that extra point of Strength modifier that hasn't been useful one single time in your character's seven entire levels of existing and just kinda hate life.
Your brain will see it as a penalty. And it will absolutely make your experience with the character worse, even if you have the great good fortune to be afforded the chance to believe racism, bioessentialism, and all the other issues people have been raising since before Diversity and Dragons came out are all just lies, the way so many people keep claiming.
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My brain also tells me a piece of birthday cake (or even an entire birthday cake) is better for me than a well-made chicken salad. And my body tells me it's not worth it getting out of bed if I won't have a cup of coffee within the next 15 minutes. Both my mind and body raise no objections to my pushing-50 ass playing football with my nephews and their friends, at least not until about 5 mins in. Point is, not everything my brain sees is objectively correct. Mine even more than most, not gonna lie.
However, and I'd like this to be on the record, I never said nor even implied racism, sexism, bioessentialism and other bigotry are lies. These are things that exist. What I'm saying is that they don't translate directly to D&D's racial differences, and that if they're directly transposed anyway then there should really be an issue with more than just ASIs.
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Oh, there's plenty more essentialism/etc in D&D than just racial ASIs. The whole game exudes it. Fixed racial ASIs are just the most glaring --- both because they are quantitative and because of historical implications of rating peoples by relative intelligence and such.
It is actively inferior. Telling people "Your roleplaying concept will make you inferior, and you're going to remain inferior for the next year (at which point everyone has a 20 anyway)" is a pretty strong incentive to just play a different character.
Considering Bounded Accuracy, a +1 is a significant difference and, in my experience, a noticeable one. A +1 in your primary ability means a +1 to attack and damage rolls, spell saves, maybe AC. It's significant.
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!
It makes a 5% difference to rolls using the corresponding attribute, and depending on what you choose instead you could be better in other areas (a hill dwarf wizard will be pretty happy with those extra hit points and higher Con saves and maybe Wis saves, for instance). A gnome wizard has excellent Int for spellcasting and the darkvision and gnome cunning are pretty good too, but being slower, not getting a starting feat or being lucky or having an increased AC through one of several options or any number of other things is also "actively inferior". It's myopic to pretend only one or two attributes matter.
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What is the whole, entire argument people keep making about retaining fixed ASIs? What do people keep saying?
Variations on "dwarves just aren't dwarfy if they're not stout, strong, and burly!" "Orcs should ALWAYS be stronger than halflings, PERIOD!" "The fixed numbers speak to the true nature and character of the species, they're important!"
All things that can be easily boiled down to "I don't want to see any against-type bullshit, play your species' iconic character build or don't play at my table." After all, a dwarf that emphasizes pursuits of the mind, research, and the acquisition of lore is just not dwarfy. It's not a real dwarf if it's not guzzling ale at a physically implausible rate, crowing about the Honor of [Its] Ancestors, and swinging a battleaxe into the teeth of anyone who offends their beard. The iconic character is baked into the stats and lore of the species (in Faerun), and people have decided their deep emotional attachments to those iconic characters and that lore cannot and will not coexist with against-type bullshit. Dwarven spellcasters don't exist. Hell, dwarven women don't exist, outside of lame meme jokes about nobody but dwarves being able to tell dwarf sexes apart.
The whole "there has to be a type to play against in the first place!" argument falls apart because the PC's existence has never broken the 'type' of an entire NPC species before. One single PC dwarf having low numbers in Strength or Con does not mean spit-all nada against the backdrop of an entire species of alcoholic beard-obsessed axe berserkers that apparently reproduce via planting their own beard hair in a cabbage garden watered by the blood of their clan's enemies. "The Type" is omnipresent and inescapable unless the DM goes well out of their way to do otherwise via extensive homebrew worldbuilding, and even then - even then! - it's simply extending the "Against Type" thing to an entire species/culture in a homebrew world. "The Type" is inescapable. Every last single dwarf will draw comparisons to The Iconic Dwarf no matter what else simply due to shared dwarfdom. Nothing else need apply at all.
Some people think that's awesome, a sign of D&D's strong roots and traditions, and a splendid example of The Way Gaming Should Be. Other people emphatically do not. For the last forty-eight years, the game has almost exclusively supported the former set of people and told the latter set to suck eggs and die. Now the game has decided to stop telling people to suck eggs and die. Surprisingly enough, the people who've been told to suck eggs and die for the last however-many-years-they've-been-at-this are kinda thrilled about not being castigated for their every decision anymore.
Please stop trying to reinstate "Suck eggs and die", if you all would? I will gladly assist in writing up a comprehensive guide on Iconic Characters for every species if that will help you folks continue to run games for those iconic characters. Fair trade for letting the rest of us have our own little treasured collection of off-type weirdoes?
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It's delusional to pretend that all attributes matter equally, or even close to equally.
Look at it this way. You have no control over how many times someone tries to charm you over the course of an adventure. It might be a lot, or it might be none at all. Conversely, you have a lot of control over how many times you cast a spell that's improved by higher Intelligence. You can do it a number of times a day equal to the number of spell slots you have, or close to it. Are you likely to be targeted by charms that many times every day? No? Then isn't it better to take the Intelligence boost?
This holds up even if you expand the bennies of Charisma to everything they truly encompass. How many times a day are you going to need to persuade someone? How many times a day will you need to do a battle of wills against a sentient magic item? Add all that stuff together and it still isn't close to the number of spells you're likely to use in that same period of time. And every last one of those spells can benefit from your Intelligence being high, if you want them to.
It's not just skill rolls, Pang. Prepared spellcasters actively lose spells. They get to prepare fewer spells than their counterparts because of their lower defining attribute, and many of them have special abilities that are weaker, have fewer uses, or both if the character has a low defining attribute. The artificer's Flash of Genius is a perfect example - succeeding on five percent more Strength checks 'naturally' doesn't really help offset that you get one fewer uses of Flash and all those uses are weaker. Hell, for artificers the extra Intelligence helps them succeed on Strength rolls more often! A strong Flash of Genius is a whole lot more useful for clearing emergency Strength checks than one random point of Strength unlikely to make any real difference in the thick of things.
Some classes don't care as much. A rogue can afford to care less about having a piss-poor Dex because even though Dex is technically their defining attribute, none of their class features are directly gated or driven by Dexterity. With enough jiggering and Hexblade dips you can even change their defining attribute entirely. But - and I cannot stress this enough - not all classes can do this. Innate casters care a lot more about their defining attribute than rogues or fighters do, and prepared casters care even more because their defining attribute both gates and drives literally everything they do. The "I wanted to play something off the beaten path" 15-Intelligence artificer only gets to prepare three spells at level 1 rather than 4, those spells are weaker, their attacks are weaker for half the subclasses starting at 3rd, and they only get two uses of a +2 bonus to a roll with Flash of Genius rather than three uses of a +3 bonus.
Not all classes are created equal, not all characters can ignore their defining attribute, and not all "a 15 is perfectly fine, nobody ever died because they only had a 15" stories are true.
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It's intellectually dishonest to imply I said otherwise.
Did I say that?
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The implication of not allowing floating attribute modifiers is that it's fair to do so -- which is only true if all attributes matter equally -- or that you don't actually care whether it's fair.
You kinda have been implying otherwise the entire time. The idea that "five percent higher chance to succeed isn't important" as a principle argument against allowing players to play as they wish implies that there's no other pressing reason for the character to care about their defining attribute. For a lot of classes, I would argue most classes, that is simply not the case. Losing even one available spell preparation is a big deal; why do you think so many build guides advise players to race to 20 in their defining attribute for spellcasters as quickly as they possibly can?
And frankly, a multiattack-y class like the fighter can make more attack rolls in one combat than they can roll skill checks in an entire noncombat session. It's disingenuous to suggest/imply that an additional bonus in some rarely used facet of the character will always equally offset something they do a dozen times a fight. The fighter with a 16 Charisma and a 14 Strength does better in the two or three Charisma checks they make in town, yes...and when they're bleeding out on the floor because they whiffed a bunch of attack rolls against a tough enemy, I imagine those improved Charisma checks will be a cold comfort indeed, ne?
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Up to a point it's fair enough to me, but neither option would suggest that I think the attributes are equal.
1) Not really. Five percent is five percent. It's not a lot, is what I'm saying. As for build guides, my issue with those is they advise playing what's best mechanically (something that presumably shouldn't sit entirely well with you either, by the by), which suggests being mechanically stronger is important. I don't think it should be. In fact, I think it's important that it shouldn't be. If being mechanically stronger is important, that means that a) less optimized builds are to be discouraged and b) DMs shouldn't run adventures for the actual party sitting at the table but for some theoretical ideal party, which is patently inane. Now, I suspect your counterargument here will be that both a) and b) happen all the time. You'd be right about that too. I just happen not to like it or think that it's right, whether it happens all the time or not.
2) So this fighter had two 14s and chose to use one of them for Cha? Did they have 6 of them, of did they simply choose to put one of their two high stats in Cha? I mean, I'm not sitting in judgment either way, but all three official statgen methods allow the player to chose what stat goes where and that has as much or more impact than the attribute modifiers.
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Actually, it's not. If we consider a level 1 fighter vs an AC 12 target (longsword, dueling style)
So, 5% is actually 19%. Now, lets look at spellcasters. Assume target has a +0 save