Here's the great thing about D&D (and other games), if you don't want to use any of that stuff, you don't have to. There are lots of people that do want that kind off thing. A company has to market to as broad of a market as they can. They will make things for one aspect of the market that doesn't appeal to another. If they do something that doesn't appeal to you, that doesn't mean they are ruining the game for you. Id if you feel it does, then you didn't really like the game to begin with.
I hate Rick & Morty with a fiery passion. When they released the book did i jump online and cry that the game is ruined forever and WotC has destroyed the enjoyment of the game and sold all my stuff? No, I just didn't buy it. If you don't like a product or service a company puts out, just don't buy it.
I guess I'm really just venting, but I'm so disappointed in the 2024 background mechanics.
I understand that it's logical to tie ability score increases and origin feats and skill proficiencies to backgrounds. It makes a ton of sense. But after being freed from racial/species pigeonholing (with Tasha's), now I'm back to... wizards are scribes, rogues are criminals, clerics are acolytes, etc. Sure, you can go against that grain; I'm sure plenty will. Whether it has a big impact at your table or not, though, your character will not be as good at their role as those who don't go with the flow.
The larger point I want to make here is this: I was really looking forward making my first new character in the 2024 rules. And suddenly I'm back to fretting as I weigh the plusses and minuses of this background over that background. Same as I used to have to do with species. Back then, I'd wonder what it would be like to play a species and would never quite be able to because the mechanics would have held my character back.
It should have been fun to make the new character. New rules! New abilities! Lots of stuff to inspire character creation! Instead, I got mired in the mechanics. Really wish they had just let players choose the origin feats and ability score increases they wanted, and have the backgrounds just provide the skills. I cannot fathom why they chose to transport the species issue to backgrounds. And I say that as someone who is absolutely going to play in the 2024 rules and happily pays WotC money for their products.
And YES, I'm assuming the DMG will have rules for custom backgrounds (optional or otherwise), but that's definitely not the book they belong in. I just wanted to make a character, guys. Now I've got this bitter experience to kick things off after months upon years of anticipation.
> And YES, I'm assuming the DMG will have rules for custom backgrounds (optional or otherwise)
They do, and they're exactly what everyone expected, and it took zero effort to determine what the rules were by reading the 10 examples. People are panicking like this is a video game and Homebrew isn't the primary way of customising your character.
And I again thinks its a huge miss to have moved the AIS from Races, and even further to make them placeable wherever. All it does is make things generic and the same...so there really its any choice to be made. And that kinda defeats the purpose of having them. They could have simplified it all by saying get pick 2 features, 2 AIS, 2 skills, and a feat. Make the "skin" whatever the hell you want. But is that interesting? Is that REALLY what one thinks of when they think of DnD? I don't think so. I just think its a bunch if whiners not wanting there to be any meat to any choices, whether its this or if it dying or what not....pretty sad really...lol
And I again thinks its a huge miss to have moved the AIS from Races, and even further to make them placeable wherever. All it does is make things generic and the same...so there really its any choice to be made. And that kinda defeats the purpose of having them. They could have simplified it all by saying get pick 2 features, 2 AIS, 2 skills, and a feat. Make the "skin" whatever the hell you want. But is that interesting? Is that REALLY what one thinks of when they think of DnD? I don't think so. I just think its a bunch if whiners not wanting there to be any meat to any choices, whether its this or if it dying or what not....pretty sad really...lol
I sort of agree though I would not phrase it that way in that I find the lack of penalties in 5e kind of off putting. But I',m old and from the generation where penalties built your character more than your strengths did. Unfortunately, what they used as backgrounds in the PH clearly favored certain classes. If it was yo the martials get good choices suck it full casters I'd be okay with it, but wizard gets one of the best background setups. Now if each background had some flexibility with stats/feats etc but each also came with some kind of disadvantage I would like what they presented a bit more. As is given how poorly balanced the options are and like I said favoring the wizard which is if not the best class a contender for that title I feel like custom options start feeling needed.
And I again thinks its a huge miss to have moved the AIS from Races, and even further to make them placeable wherever. All it does is make things generic and the same...so there really its any choice to be made. And that kinda defeats the purpose of having them. They could have simplified it all by saying get pick 2 features, 2 AIS, 2 skills, and a feat. Make the "skin" whatever the hell you want. But is that interesting? Is that REALLY what one thinks of when they think of DnD? I don't think so. I just think its a bunch if whiners not wanting there to be any meat to any choices, whether its this or if it dying or what not....pretty sad really...lol
I actually like the move of ASI, because if I'm a spellcaster elf who spends all my time practicing in a tower or lab, grew up as a sage and has no interest in physical pursuits, why is my Dex score increased? How do I get a buff to Int or Charisma for all my hard work.
> But is that interesting?
I find it far less interesting to say "Every Elf gets a Dex bonus because they're homegenous creatures with no variety". I'd actually prefer every character to make a unique backstory, and then get to pick elements of gameplay that support that backstory. The backgrounds are far better at giving interesting variety because they aren't the old essentially "our-world" racist model of "Everyone from there is like this" when we know for a fact every one of that race is different.
More choices is good. You're asking for boring generic homogeneity.
And I again thinks its a huge miss to have moved the AIS from Races, and even further to make them placeable wherever. All it does is make things generic and the same...so there really its any choice to be made. And that kinda defeats the purpose of having them. They could have simplified it all by saying get pick 2 features, 2 AIS, 2 skills, and a feat. Make the "skin" whatever the hell you want. But is that interesting? Is that REALLY what one thinks of when they think of DnD? I don't think so. I just think its a bunch if whiners not wanting there to be any meat to any choices, whether its this or if it dying or what not....pretty sad really...lol
I actually like the move of ASI, because if I'm a spellcaster elf who spends all my time practicing in a tower or lab, grew up as a sage and has no interest in physical pursuits, why is my Dex score increased? How do I get a buff to Int or Charisma for all my hard work.
> But is that interesting?
I find it far less interesting to say "Every Elf gets a Dex bonus because they're homegenous creatures with no variety". I'd actually prefer every character to make a unique backstory, and then get to pick elements of gameplay that support that backstory. The backgrounds are far better at giving interesting variety because they aren't the old essentially "our-world" racist model of "Everyone from there is like this" when we know for a fact every one of that race is different.
More choices is good. You're asking for boring generic homogeneity.
All elves having low light makes the same amount of sense as all elves have a bonus in dex. I don't think either route is inherently more interesting. I think a stronger combination of both would have been more interesting than just splitting parts of races off into backgrounds.
The appropriate metaphor is gumballs vs. kool-aid. if races are treated like kool-aid, then mixing them together won’t increase diversity. Pour fruit punch into lemonade and you’ll get a single color and a single flavor. You’ll lose diversity.
Races should be treated like gumballs. When mixed together, they become a rainbow of color. They do that _only_ if each gumball is kept distinct. Having each race have its own attribute bonuses was one way to keep them distinct.
Your metaphor requires monocultures and has uncomfortable bioessentialist overtones.
Is a trans woman AMAB required to live life as a cis het man because that's what this type of thought says they MUST do?
Is an intersex person required to pick from the gender binary because of societal expectations in the player's culture?
Is a male Japanese painter required to be a salaryman because that's the default in Japan as pop culture depicts it as?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
The appropriate metaphor is gumballs vs. kool-aid. if races are treated like kool-aid, then mixing them together won’t increase diversity. Pour fruit punch into lemonade and you’ll get a single color and a single flavor. You’ll lose diversity.
Races should be treated like gumballs. When mixed together, they become a rainbow of color. They do that _only_ if each gumball is kept distinct. Having each race have its own attribute bonuses was one way to keep them distinct.
Races should be treated like gumballs. When mixed together, they become a rainbow of color. They do that _only_ if each gumball is kept distinct. Having each race have its own attribute bonuses was one way to keep them distinct.
The more this discussion goes on the more I'm in favor of races being cosmetic skins with no mechanical effects whatsoever.
Ya, absolutely NOT. My preference would have been to give some AIS bonus due to Race to reflect the general tendencies, strengths and possible weaknesses inherent in that race. You know, like all the editions prior to 5. THEN I would have added additional ASI to the Backgrounds that made sense, more defined than what they have currently. Yes, this still could lead one to a "most optimized" set for a given class, BUT that is in fact perfectly fine. If people want to optimize, and are willing to accept the limitations that come with doing so, go for it. But for those who wanted a little more flexibility and /or not be so hedged in (or feeling that way anyway) well this would have allowed that. Yes, this could lead to a slight raising of the power curve, but not enough to matter. And yes, I DO think its good for the Races to have a basic general theme that the characters are a part of of. Sure if you want to custom homebrew races, cool too, but in almost all lore Elves ARE Dexterous as a Race and Beautiful and maybe you do knock em with a negative to Con like the old days.
My pt is, making the Races, Backgrounds, and even a lot of Class features just interchangeable skins is boring, lazy, and unnecessary. Imbalance is actually good. Though there is a good argument about HOW much, I firmly think that martials lagging casters in raw power is fine, the question is how much and what can be done to make the martials still feel cool....which is where WoTC keeps falling down on again and again and again unwilling or unable to actually give cool, powerful features to martials, hell they have gone out of their way to nerf or attemtped to nerf some in the playtest, lest we forget what they tried to do to Rogue sneak attack or what they DID do to Monks stunning strike and Open Hand capstone.
Ya, absolutely NOT. My preference would have been to give some AIS bonus due to Race to reflect the general tendencies, strengths and possible weaknesses inherent in that race. You know, like all the editions prior to 5. THEN I would have added additional ASI to the Backgrounds that made sense, more defined than what they have currently. Yes, this still could lead one to a "most optimized" set for a given class, BUT that is in fact perfectly fine. If people want to optimize, and are willing to accept the limitations that come with doing so, go for it. But for those who wanted a little more flexibility and /or not be so hedged in (or feeling that way anyway) well this would have allowed that. Yes, this could lead to a slight raising of the power curve, but not enough to matter. And yes, I DO think its good for the Races to have a basic general theme that the characters are a part of of. Sure if you want to custom homebrew races, cool too, but in almost all lore Elves ARE Dexterous as a Race and Beautiful and maybe you do knock em with a negative to Con like the old days.
My pt is, making the Races, Backgrounds, and even a lot of Class features just interchangeable skins is boring, lazy, and unnecessary. Imbalance is actually good. Though there is a good argument about HOW much, I firmly think that martials lagging casters in raw power is fine, the question is how much and what can be done to make the martials still feel cool....which is where WoTC keeps falling down on again and again and again unwilling or unable to actually give cool, powerful features to martials, hell they have gone out of their way to nerf or attemtped to nerf some in the playtest, lest we forget what they tried to do to Rogue sneak attack or what they DID do to Monks stunning strike and Open Hand capstone.
That monk bit only works if you ignore every other improvment.
I think monocultures and bioessentialism are lazy worldbuilding myself.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
Races should be treated like gumballs. When mixed together, they become a rainbow of color. They do that _only_ if each gumball is kept distinct. Having each race have its own attribute bonuses was one way to keep them distinct.
The more this discussion goes on the more I'm in favor of races being cosmetic skins with no mechanical effects whatsoever.
This is what it should be, and what 2024 moves towards, but isn't quite there.
The Darkvision question is one of pure biology, so there's a case for species distribution, though in reality it's almost a pointless element. But Dexterity is more affected by training than birth, and Wisdom is dramatically affected by nuture over nature. So Ability Scores are far less a species distribution and far more a Background thing.
Cultural background should define your "species elements" but in a setting like Eberron it becomes even less pointed. For example, an Elf who grows up in the traditional lands of Aerenal, it makes sense to have the HIgh Elf backround elements. That's a big part of their culture and every elf that grows up in the culture gets exposed in the same way.
But an elf that grows up on the streets of Sharn, or in a small Breland farming community, shouldn't have Prestidigitation or Detect Magic as an available skill, as they've never had that trained into them. An elf that goes up among the Tairendal has had tons of weapons and combat training, so why would they learn Pass Without Trace or Druidcraft?
The old subraces sort of handled it, but they were constrained by the base Elf as well.
What Backgrounds can do is make the 'species' largely a cosmetic skin. "Tall, thin, with pointy ears", but with a Sage background, is a very different character to "Tall, thin with pointy ears" but a Soldier background. They haven't completely given it up, but the massive opportunities for different and varied custom backgrounds is huge.
That said, the people who think there are only 10 backgrounds are more of a problem than the system.
Ya, absolutely NOT. My preference would have been to give some AIS bonus due to Race to reflect the general tendencies, strengths and possible weaknesses inherent in that race. You know, like all the editions prior to 5. THEN I would have added additional ASI to the Backgrounds that made sense, more defined than what they have currently. Yes, this still could lead one to a "most optimized" set for a given class, BUT that is in fact perfectly fine. If people want to optimize, and are willing to accept the limitations that come with doing so, go for it. But for those who wanted a little more flexibility and /or not be so hedged in (or feeling that way anyway) well this would have allowed that. Yes, this could lead to a slight raising of the power curve, but not enough to matter. And yes, I DO think its good for the Races to have a basic general theme that the characters are a part of of. Sure if you want to custom homebrew races, cool too, but in almost all lore Elves ARE Dexterous as a Race and Beautiful and maybe you do knock em with a negative to Con like the old days.
My pt is, making the Races, Backgrounds, and even a lot of Class features just interchangeable skins is boring, lazy, and unnecessary. Imbalance is actually good. Though there is a good argument about HOW much, I firmly think that martials lagging casters in raw power is fine, the question is how much and what can be done to make the martials still feel cool....which is where WoTC keeps falling down on again and again and again unwilling or unable to actually give cool, powerful features to martials, hell they have gone out of their way to nerf or attemtped to nerf some in the playtest, lest we forget what they tried to do to Rogue sneak attack or what they DID do to Monks stunning strike and Open Hand capstone.
I realized where the problem lies here:
> Sure if you want to custom homebrew races, cool too, but in almost all lore Elves ARE Dexterous as a Race and Beautiful and maybe you do knock em with a negative to Con like the old days.
That's great... if you want to play in Middle Earth. If you want to look at the total sum of human lore about "elves", they're far more what you call fae than a normal humanoid species. There's more lore about elves being 2-3ft tall than 5-6ft.
If you don't want to play in Forgotton Realms, Greyhawk, or any other Tolkien based low magic medieval world... the "standard" lore isn't relevant or appropriate. Forcing every world to be a carbon copy of Middle Earth is not "fun" or "interesting". It's literally boring.
The Darkvision question is one of pure biology, so there's a case for species distribution, though in reality it's almost a pointless element. But Dexterity is more affected by training than birth, and Wisdom is dramatically affected by nuture over nature. So Ability Scores are far less a species distribution and far more a Background thing.
Most studies in this area attribute our characteristics as being around 50:50 between nature and nurture (admittedly with any number of caveats). I think the notion of attributing Dexterity largely to nurture (training) over nature (birth) is where you're farthest from the mark. There is little doubt that certain groups of people are more likely to be one thing or another than the average person. Fast twitch muscles are more prevalent in those from a West African background (just look at the Olympic 100m final for the last 30 years or so). Obviously we can all improve on what nature has given us, at least within the boundaries of our own capabilities. This can be a touchy subject for some, it's just a shame its entered a fantasy game that's been happily chugging along for 50 years or so.
I think a paraphrased quote from the new DMG is most relevant here.
Rules Aren’t Physics Biology. The rules of the game are meant to provide a fun game experience, not to describe the laws of physics biology in the worlds of D&D, let alone the real world.
It is far more useful to have a system where everyone can express their character in their unique ways, than have everyone homogenised into "Elf, Gnome, Dwarf" etc. As I said, Darkvision less important from rules perspective, and in many settings, the "traditional Elf" is not only inaccurate, but largely irrelevant.
I'm going to forget about the real world justifications that get into biological theory (which I disagree with your assessment greatly, with good reason, but it's a pointless argument that's not relevant), because the goal here is to define a ruleset that makes the game more enjoyable.
We are aiming to have characters that are more real, and less "Every elf is Legolas, every Dwarf is Gimli" and the Backgrounds system is a much better way to establish unique characters within the various flavours. Especially in settings like Eberron where the "traditional culture" is often quite different.
Just ask the Gnomes who live in a fascist ideological state.
Sure if you want to custom homebrew races, cool too, but in almost all lore Elves ARE Dexterous as a Race and Beautiful and maybe you do knock em with a negative to Con like the old days.
In Tolkien-influenced lore Elves are just Better Than Human. That does include being dexterous and beautiful, but it's not limited to that (Tolkien seems to have been to some degree modeling his elves after the Tuatha Dé Danann... which are basically demigods).
In non-Tolkien lore 'elf' is to a large degree just synonymous with 'fey', and unless it's referring to nobility, likely small and not notably attractive (e.g. "The Elves and the Shoemaker" or Santa's Elves).
Races should be treated like gumballs. When mixed together, they become a rainbow of color. They do that _only_ if each gumball is kept distinct. Having each race have its own attribute bonuses was one way to keep them distinct.
The more this discussion goes on the more I'm in favor of races being cosmetic skins with no mechanical effects whatsoever.
People who think this are the ones approaching the subject of fantasy races as though they were all different ethnicities of human being rather than different species of creature.
ALL cheetahs are faster than ALL tree sloths. Even the fastest tree sloth is slower than the slowest of cheetahs.
D&D racial modifiers never even went to such an extreme analogy in the first place. 1 race had a dex range of 6-16, another 8-18, and another 10-20.
All three could have individuals with a dex score of 12 for example being equally as fast and similarly, species A might have someone with a dex 16, next to someone from species B with a dex score of 14 and a person from species c with a dex score of 11, all in spite of the stereotypes; but generally speaking, YES - Elves and Halflings are faster than dwarves who generally ARE more resilient and half-orcs are generally stronger than them all, etc.
These are truths that the modifiers reflected and are no less true by being associated with terms like 'bioessentialism' or whatever other excuse is used for anthropomorphizing all the other creatures. The company was wrong to cave to the interpretation of other creatures as expressions of 'humanity' rather than simply as other creatures.
Sure if you want to custom homebrew races, cool too, but in almost all lore Elves ARE Dexterous as a Race and Beautiful and maybe you do knock em with a negative to Con like the old days.
In Tolkien-influenced lore Elves are just Better Than Human. That does include being dexterous and beautiful, but it's not limited to that (Tolkien seems to have been to some degree modeling his elves after the Tuatha Dé Danann... which are basically demigods).
In non-Tolkien lore 'elf' is to a large degree just synonymous with 'fey', and unless it's referring to nobility, likely small and not notably attractive (e.g. "The Elves and the Shoemaker" or Santa's Elves).
Nods. Tolkien didn't much care the perception of elves as the cultural zeitgeist of his time perceived them - Santas elves included, which is why he did base his elves on the older Germanic, Scandinavian and other similar lores indeed possibly including the Tuatha De Danann.
Part of the point I'm making above however, is that unless you are using a campaign setting sourcebook (or whatever the DM's table sheet is called), which by definition supersedes the general rules of the core sourcebooks, and which specify a different conceptual model for elves etc. It should be assumed that the standard D&D elf IS indeed based on the Tolkien model of being an embodied spirit creature that is in several ways superior to the human being: 'the race of Man'; though not in other ways.
The ways in which they are superior is meant to be reflected in their various racial features, and so are the balancing negatives that compensate for said superiority to create relative mechanical equality between Elves and Humans et al.
More important than the mechanical stuff though is the RP perspective of Elves as an otherworldly creature and not merely a human with pointy ears. This also creates the niche for half-elves being exactly that - a means to play basically a human being but with some of the mechanical features of an elf so that a player can enjoy those without necessarily having to portray an otherworldly nature.
Races should be treated like gumballs. When mixed together, they become a rainbow of color. They do that _only_ if each gumball is kept distinct. Having each race have its own attribute bonuses was one way to keep them distinct.
The more this discussion goes on the more I'm in favor of races being cosmetic skins with no mechanical effects whatsoever.
You are certainly welcome to your opinion, but if you are going to do that, then you might as well get rid of race completely.
1. Not sure why we are discussing race in a Background Mechanics thread. Maybe we should stay on topic.
2. What I got from Panta’s comment was these discussions on race typically end up going down an uncomfortable path which tends to get threads locked. So maybe going to skins would keep these problematic posts from cropping up.
Actually going to lock this thread as looking back through this conversation seems to have run it's course and keeps veering off into edition wars and inappropriate topics.
Here's the great thing about D&D (and other games), if you don't want to use any of that stuff, you don't have to. There are lots of people that do want that kind off thing. A company has to market to as broad of a market as they can. They will make things for one aspect of the market that doesn't appeal to another. If they do something that doesn't appeal to you, that doesn't mean they are ruining the game for you. Id if you feel it does, then you didn't really like the game to begin with.
I hate Rick & Morty with a fiery passion. When they released the book did i jump online and cry that the game is ruined forever and WotC has destroyed the enjoyment of the game and sold all my stuff? No, I just didn't buy it. If you don't like a product or service a company puts out, just don't buy it.
> And YES, I'm assuming the DMG will have rules for custom backgrounds (optional or otherwise)
They do, and they're exactly what everyone expected, and it took zero effort to determine what the rules were by reading the 10 examples. People are panicking like this is a video game and Homebrew isn't the primary way of customising your character.
And I again thinks its a huge miss to have moved the AIS from Races, and even further to make them placeable wherever. All it does is make things generic and the same...so there really its any choice to be made. And that kinda defeats the purpose of having them. They could have simplified it all by saying get pick 2 features, 2 AIS, 2 skills, and a feat. Make the "skin" whatever the hell you want. But is that interesting? Is that REALLY what one thinks of when they think of DnD? I don't think so. I just think its a bunch if whiners not wanting there to be any meat to any choices, whether its this or if it dying or what not....pretty sad really...lol
I sort of agree though I would not phrase it that way in that I find the lack of penalties in 5e kind of off putting. But I',m old and from the generation where penalties built your character more than your strengths did. Unfortunately, what they used as backgrounds in the PH clearly favored certain classes. If it was yo the martials get good choices suck it full casters I'd be okay with it, but wizard gets one of the best background setups. Now if each background had some flexibility with stats/feats etc but each also came with some kind of disadvantage I would like what they presented a bit more. As is given how poorly balanced the options are and like I said favoring the wizard which is if not the best class a contender for that title I feel like custom options start feeling needed.
I actually like the move of ASI, because if I'm a spellcaster elf who spends all my time practicing in a tower or lab, grew up as a sage and has no interest in physical pursuits, why is my Dex score increased? How do I get a buff to Int or Charisma for all my hard work.
> But is that interesting?
I find it far less interesting to say "Every Elf gets a Dex bonus because they're homegenous creatures with no variety". I'd actually prefer every character to make a unique backstory, and then get to pick elements of gameplay that support that backstory. The backgrounds are far better at giving interesting variety because they aren't the old essentially "our-world" racist model of "Everyone from there is like this" when we know for a fact every one of that race is different.
More choices is good. You're asking for boring generic homogeneity.
All elves having low light makes the same amount of sense as all elves have a bonus in dex. I don't think either route is inherently more interesting. I think a stronger combination of both would have been more interesting than just splitting parts of races off into backgrounds.
Your metaphor requires monocultures and has uncomfortable bioessentialist overtones.
Is a trans woman AMAB required to live life as a cis het man because that's what this type of thought says they MUST do?
Is an intersex person required to pick from the gender binary because of societal expectations in the player's culture?
Is a male Japanese painter required to be a salaryman because that's the default in Japan as pop culture depicts it as?
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
But within that race it's a single color.
The more this discussion goes on the more I'm in favor of races being cosmetic skins with no mechanical effects whatsoever.
Ya, absolutely NOT. My preference would have been to give some AIS bonus due to Race to reflect the general tendencies, strengths and possible weaknesses inherent in that race. You know, like all the editions prior to 5. THEN I would have added additional ASI to the Backgrounds that made sense, more defined than what they have currently. Yes, this still could lead one to a "most optimized" set for a given class, BUT that is in fact perfectly fine. If people want to optimize, and are willing to accept the limitations that come with doing so, go for it. But for those who wanted a little more flexibility and /or not be so hedged in (or feeling that way anyway) well this would have allowed that. Yes, this could lead to a slight raising of the power curve, but not enough to matter. And yes, I DO think its good for the Races to have a basic general theme that the characters are a part of of. Sure if you want to custom homebrew races, cool too, but in almost all lore Elves ARE Dexterous as a Race and Beautiful and maybe you do knock em with a negative to Con like the old days.
My pt is, making the Races, Backgrounds, and even a lot of Class features just interchangeable skins is boring, lazy, and unnecessary. Imbalance is actually good. Though there is a good argument about HOW much, I firmly think that martials lagging casters in raw power is fine, the question is how much and what can be done to make the martials still feel cool....which is where WoTC keeps falling down on again and again and again unwilling or unable to actually give cool, powerful features to martials, hell they have gone out of their way to nerf or attemtped to nerf some in the playtest, lest we forget what they tried to do to Rogue sneak attack or what they DID do to Monks stunning strike and Open Hand capstone.
That monk bit only works if you ignore every other improvment.
I think monocultures and bioessentialism are lazy worldbuilding myself.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
This is what it should be, and what 2024 moves towards, but isn't quite there.
The Darkvision question is one of pure biology, so there's a case for species distribution, though in reality it's almost a pointless element. But Dexterity is more affected by training than birth, and Wisdom is dramatically affected by nuture over nature. So Ability Scores are far less a species distribution and far more a Background thing.
Cultural background should define your "species elements" but in a setting like Eberron it becomes even less pointed. For example, an Elf who grows up in the traditional lands of Aerenal, it makes sense to have the HIgh Elf backround elements. That's a big part of their culture and every elf that grows up in the culture gets exposed in the same way.
But an elf that grows up on the streets of Sharn, or in a small Breland farming community, shouldn't have Prestidigitation or Detect Magic as an available skill, as they've never had that trained into them. An elf that goes up among the Tairendal has had tons of weapons and combat training, so why would they learn Pass Without Trace or Druidcraft?
The old subraces sort of handled it, but they were constrained by the base Elf as well.
What Backgrounds can do is make the 'species' largely a cosmetic skin. "Tall, thin, with pointy ears", but with a Sage background, is a very different character to "Tall, thin with pointy ears" but a Soldier background. They haven't completely given it up, but the massive opportunities for different and varied custom backgrounds is huge.
That said, the people who think there are only 10 backgrounds are more of a problem than the system.
I realized where the problem lies here:
> Sure if you want to custom homebrew races, cool too, but in almost all lore Elves ARE Dexterous as a Race and Beautiful and maybe you do knock em with a negative to Con like the old days.
That's great... if you want to play in Middle Earth. If you want to look at the total sum of human lore about "elves", they're far more what you call fae than a normal humanoid species. There's more lore about elves being 2-3ft tall than 5-6ft.
If you don't want to play in Forgotton Realms, Greyhawk, or any other Tolkien based low magic medieval world... the "standard" lore isn't relevant or appropriate. Forcing every world to be a carbon copy of Middle Earth is not "fun" or "interesting". It's literally boring.
Most studies in this area attribute our characteristics as being around 50:50 between nature and nurture (admittedly with any number of caveats). I think the notion of attributing Dexterity largely to nurture (training) over nature (birth) is where you're farthest from the mark. There is little doubt that certain groups of people are more likely to be one thing or another than the average person. Fast twitch muscles are more prevalent in those from a West African background (just look at the Olympic 100m final for the last 30 years or so). Obviously we can all improve on what nature has given us, at least within the boundaries of our own capabilities. This can be a touchy subject for some, it's just a shame its entered a fantasy game that's been happily chugging along for 50 years or so.
I think a paraphrased quote from the new DMG is most relevant here.
It is far more useful to have a system where everyone can express their character in their unique ways, than have everyone homogenised into "Elf, Gnome, Dwarf" etc. As I said, Darkvision less important from rules perspective, and in many settings, the "traditional Elf" is not only inaccurate, but largely irrelevant.
I'm going to forget about the real world justifications that get into biological theory (which I disagree with your assessment greatly, with good reason, but it's a pointless argument that's not relevant), because the goal here is to define a ruleset that makes the game more enjoyable.
We are aiming to have characters that are more real, and less "Every elf is Legolas, every Dwarf is Gimli" and the Backgrounds system is a much better way to establish unique characters within the various flavours. Especially in settings like Eberron where the "traditional culture" is often quite different.
Just ask the Gnomes who live in a fascist ideological state.
In Tolkien-influenced lore Elves are just Better Than Human. That does include being dexterous and beautiful, but it's not limited to that (Tolkien seems to have been to some degree modeling his elves after the Tuatha Dé Danann... which are basically demigods).
In non-Tolkien lore 'elf' is to a large degree just synonymous with 'fey', and unless it's referring to nobility, likely small and not notably attractive (e.g. "The Elves and the Shoemaker" or Santa's Elves).
People who think this are the ones approaching the subject of fantasy races as though they were all different ethnicities of human being rather than different species of creature.
ALL cheetahs are faster than ALL tree sloths. Even the fastest tree sloth is slower than the slowest of cheetahs.
D&D racial modifiers never even went to such an extreme analogy in the first place. 1 race had a dex range of 6-16, another 8-18, and another 10-20.
All three could have individuals with a dex score of 12 for example being equally as fast and similarly, species A might have someone with a dex 16, next to someone from species B with a dex score of 14 and a person from species c with a dex score of 11, all in spite of the stereotypes; but generally speaking, YES - Elves and Halflings are faster than dwarves who generally ARE more resilient and half-orcs are generally stronger than them all, etc.
These are truths that the modifiers reflected and are no less true by being associated with terms like 'bioessentialism' or whatever other excuse is used for anthropomorphizing all the other creatures. The company was wrong to cave to the interpretation of other creatures as expressions of 'humanity' rather than simply as other creatures.
Nods. Tolkien didn't much care the perception of elves as the cultural zeitgeist of his time perceived them - Santas elves included, which is why he did base his elves on the older Germanic, Scandinavian and other similar lores indeed possibly including the Tuatha De Danann.
Part of the point I'm making above however, is that unless you are using a campaign setting sourcebook (or whatever the DM's table sheet is called), which by definition supersedes the general rules of the core sourcebooks, and which specify a different conceptual model for elves etc. It should be assumed that the standard D&D elf IS indeed based on the Tolkien model of being an embodied spirit creature that is in several ways superior to the human being: 'the race of Man'; though not in other ways.
The ways in which they are superior is meant to be reflected in their various racial features, and so are the balancing negatives that compensate for said superiority to create relative mechanical equality between Elves and Humans et al.
More important than the mechanical stuff though is the RP perspective of Elves as an otherworldly creature and not merely a human with pointy ears. This also creates the niche for half-elves being exactly that - a means to play basically a human being but with some of the mechanical features of an elf so that a player can enjoy those without necessarily having to portray an otherworldly nature.
Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
1. Not sure why we are discussing race in a Background Mechanics thread. Maybe we should stay on topic.
2. What I got from Panta’s comment was these discussions on race typically end up going down an uncomfortable path which tends to get threads locked. So maybe going to skins would keep these problematic posts from cropping up.
Not saying you are doing this, Wren.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
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ModeratorActually going to lock this thread as looking back through this conversation seems to have run it's course and keeps veering off into edition wars and inappropriate topics.
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