The biggest problem I see with the idea of shifting stats around are that some races offer things that certain classes are balanced to not have.
A prime example is the wizard. The wizard is balanced around not having armor. Now a wizard can get around this by MC (a fairly heavy price) or picking a race such as mountain dwarf. Since Mt Dwarf has no bonus to INT, that's a price being paid by the wizard to get his armor. if you let the dwarf put his stats wherever he wants them, now a prime balancing feature of the wizard (no armor) is removed, without any price being paid. It's strictly superior to the high elf for example, who's "supposed" to be a good wizard candidate race.
That's simply not right.
Githyanki and hobgoblin PCs get a bonus to intelligence and proficiency with armor already.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
The biggest problem I see with the idea of shifting stats around are that some races offer things that certain classes are balanced to not have.
A prime example is the wizard. The wizard is balanced around not having armor. Now a wizard can get around this by MC (a fairly heavy price) or picking a race such as mountain dwarf. Since Mt Dwarf has no bonus to INT, that's a price being paid by the wizard to get his armor. if you let the dwarf put his stats wherever he wants them, now a prime balancing feature of the wizard (no armor) is removed, without any price being paid. It's strictly superior to the high elf for example, who's "supposed" to be a good wizard candidate race.
That's simply not right.
Githyanki and hobgoblin PCs get a bonus to intelligence and proficiency with armor already.
yes I know. You could go sorcerer too, rather than wizard. The point stands still.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
The biggest problem I see with the idea of shifting stats around are that some races offer things that certain classes are balanced to not have.
A prime example is the wizard. The wizard is balanced around not having armor. Now a wizard can get around this by MC (a fairly heavy price) or picking a race such as mountain dwarf. Since Mt Dwarf has no bonus to INT, that's a price being paid by the wizard to get his armor. if you let the dwarf put his stats wherever he wants them, now a prime balancing feature of the wizard (no armor) is removed, without any price being paid. It's strictly superior to the high elf for example, who's "supposed" to be a good wizard candidate race.
That's simply not right.
Hobgoblins get armor, and are balanced as wizards. Wizards can take feats to get armor, too.
I really see no problem. Dwarf wizards are just now a small step better.
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
The biggest problem I see with the idea of shifting stats around are that some races offer things that certain classes are balanced to not have.
A prime example is the wizard. The wizard is balanced around not having armor. Now a wizard can get around this by MC (a fairly heavy price) or picking a race such as mountain dwarf. Since Mt Dwarf has no bonus to INT, that's a price being paid by the wizard to get his armor. if you let the dwarf put his stats wherever he wants them, now a prime balancing feature of the wizard (no armor) is removed, without any price being paid. It's strictly superior to the high elf for example, who's "supposed" to be a good wizard candidate race.
That's simply not right.
Githyanki and hobgoblin PCs get a bonus to intelligence and proficiency with armor already.
I find this to be a poor example. Most people wouldn't allow these races without the campaign being a "Monster Races" one. It's actually just another example of a min/max special snowflake build. Again, everyone can play what they want. For me, the suspension of disbelief ends when an Elf, Dwarf, Human and a Hobgoblin make up the party...
These races are your Int races for non-human allied races as far as I'm concerned. That way you don't have to play a Goblin Wizard, or some other poor choice mechanically.
This argument, taken to its ultimate conclusion, would ask: why play D&D at all? There are systems which give much more player agency while allowing for players to make a story together. Therefore, that one is playing D&D at all is a concession to mechanics over pure agency.
My opinion on this watering down of races is... well, it's essentially the same as my above point: if races aren't distinct, why include them at all? It's one less point of bookkeeping and a step towards character standardisation. Unless they make a difference, otherwise they don't merit inclusion. If you aren't interested in the tropes of a fantasy world, why are you playing a fantasy game? As the rules stand, you CAN play a gnomish paladin or a orcish wizard or whatever your heart's content already: very few classes are race-locked. And actually playing a character who isn't racially min-maxed to their class could be... an interesting character beat? I mean, in 5e you don't need to make sure your character is optimised: it's not a hard game. And would it not be more interesting for a Paladin who comes from a bookish Gnomish family who, despite their rejection of academics and the like, to have actually a decent understanding of history through osmosis rather than being +2 cha, +1 str or whatever. Non-optimal stats are a gift. They give your character a lot of personality.
It's not really watering down the races, they still appear the same physically, have every trait they used to have except their unique ability score increases, changed to make them more open.
To address the emboldened text, physical traits of the races don't make a mechanical difference, but they are included in the game.
And, non-optimal stats are a gift? How? If it's the main stat that your character should be using, non-optimal numbers in that ability is normally more of a curse than a gift.
The last line hints at the real problem. The issue isn't that certain races have the average member stronger or tougher or faster or smarter or more intuitive or more sociable by 10% or so.
The real problem is that depending on your class choice, there is a "main stat".
With attack roll alone, there is a possible argument for every single attribute being the one that contributes to attack roll. Some of them may seem weaker than others (primarily Constitution and Charisma), so the choice of it being Strength or Dexterity is just completely arbitrary. Wisdom determines one's perception, ability to remain calm under pressure, tune out distraction and focus-- why on earth is that not the primary attribute that decides your ability to hit a target in a high stress battle situation? Why is even its potential contribution completely ignored? And someone with a higher Intelligence is going to be able to discern the opponent's fighting style, come up with tactical moves on the fly, and know when and where to strike the opponent to maximize their chances of hitting and causing the maximum amount of damage. So why on earth does Intelligence give functionally no contribution to fighting whatsoever?
If intelligence and wisdom did not at all contribute to one's ability to fight and it entirely relied on strength, then the bullfighting would just not be a thing because every matador would be taken down by the bull that is easily 5x as strong as them. Similarly, humans would not have been so good at basically wiping out the megafauna of virtually every continent except Africa and South America even before the bronze age.
And going beyond basic attack rolls and damage rolls-- every class in D&D has had their abilities interpreted and written out in such a way to remove as much MAD as possible, leading to a situation where in any given class there is a "main stat" and everything else gets dumped.
The super easy solution would be to go across the character sheet and anywhere that you are expected to add an attribute bonus, simply add the character's proficiency bonus instead (which means, yes, a lot of the time one will merely be adding their proficiency bonus twice or 3x in cases where you have an ability to "double your proficiency bonus"). Maybe the exception would be the skills section.
Assuming that all characters have comparable stats, the explanation would simply be that whatever combination of attributes the character has is what contributes to that bonus.
The attributes would only come into play when one is very specifically rolling to accomplish a task that calls upon that attribute exclusively.
Sure, it'll flatten out the differences between characters, but that's fundamentally what one is going for by declaring that the smallest race and the biggest race are now equally agile and powerful. So if one's goal is to flatten out the characters so that every level X member of class Y are equal-- rather than screw with the races, just go across the character sheet and everywhere that you are asked to put an attribute bonus, just replace that with the proficiency bonus. It is a far simpler, easier and more elegant solution.
And if it bothers one that characters are going to be weaker than people are used to given that their "main stat" is not going to be boosted to the maximum of +5 at the earliest levels and that characters get big jumps in power at the levels where proficiency bonus increases-- yes, the actual solution is to start characters off at proficiency bonus of +5 and have it increase every 2 levels until it reaches +10 at level 20 and then having this higher proficiency bonus be added to all stats just once.
The system also eliminates any real value of ASI, which is overall a good thing because choosing them over feats is always the most boring option.
The biggest problem I see with the idea of shifting stats around are that some races offer things that certain classes are balanced to not have.
A prime example is the wizard. The wizard is balanced around not having armor. Now a wizard can get around this by MC (a fairly heavy price) or picking a race such as mountain dwarf. Since Mt Dwarf has no bonus to INT, that's a price being paid by the wizard to get his armor. if you let the dwarf put his stats wherever he wants them, now a prime balancing feature of the wizard (no armor) is removed, without any price being paid. It's strictly superior to the high elf for example, who's "supposed" to be a good wizard candidate race.
That's simply not right.
Githyanki and hobgoblin PCs get a bonus to intelligence and proficiency with armor already.
I find this to be a poor example. Most people wouldn't allow these races without the campaign being a "Monster Races" one. It's actually just another example of a min/max special snowflake build. Again, everyone can play what they want. For me, the suspension of disbelief ends when an Elf, Dwarf, Human and a Hobgoblin make up the party...
These races are your Int races for non-human allied races as far as I'm concerned. That way you don't have to play a Goblin Wizard, or some other poor choice mechanically.
Half of D&D campaign worlds, a party made up of an Elf, Dwarf, Human and Hobgoblin would be the most normal thing ever. And in the few that it wouldn't, half the time the Dwarf and Elf would be social pariahs from their society for even associating with one another.
So I guess your suspension of disbelief begins and ends with playing in the Ravenloft, Dark Sun and Dragonlance, before the end of the war, campaign settings.
Half of D&D campaign worlds, a party made up of an Elf, Dwarf, Human and Hobgoblin would be the most normal thing ever. And in the few that it wouldn't, half the time the Dwarf and Elf would be social pariahs from their society for even associating with one another.
So I guess your suspension of disbelief begins and ends with playing in the Ravenloft, Dark Sun and Dragonlance, before the end of the war, campaign settings.
I'm not sure where that information is coming from so, yeah. Reading through the Hobgoblin race description makes them sound extremely xenophobic and unlikely to just prance around with humans and their allies. Maybe you can provide me with some good source info?
This argument, taken to its ultimate conclusion, would ask: why play D&D at all? There are systems which give much more player agency while allowing for players to make a story together. Therefore, that one is playing D&D at all is a concession to mechanics over pure agency.
My opinion on this watering down of races is... well, it's essentially the same as my above point: if races aren't distinct, why include them at all? It's one less point of bookkeeping and a step towards character standardisation. Unless they make a difference, otherwise they don't merit inclusion. If you aren't interested in the tropes of a fantasy world, why are you playing a fantasy game? As the rules stand, you CAN play a gnomish paladin or a orcish wizard or whatever your heart's content already: very few classes are race-locked. And actually playing a character who isn't racially min-maxed to their class could be... an interesting character beat? I mean, in 5e you don't need to make sure your character is optimised: it's not a hard game. And would it not be more interesting for a Paladin who comes from a bookish Gnomish family who, despite their rejection of academics and the like, to have actually a decent understanding of history through osmosis rather than being +2 cha, +1 str or whatever. Non-optimal stats are a gift. They give your character a lot of personality.
It's not really watering down the races, they still appear the same physically, have every trait they used to have except their unique ability score increases, changed to make them more open.
To address the emboldened text, physical traits of the races don't make a mechanical difference, but they are included in the game.
And, non-optimal stats are a gift? How? If it's the main stat that your character should be using, non-optimal numbers in that ability is normally more of a curse than a gift.
Yes, if you are playing purely mechanically, you want optimised stats. If you are playing a character then non-optimised stats tells gives us questions about who they are and why they are the way they are. I mean, D&D, as a tactics game is a very boring game and if your character's depth ends with their combat abilities, then I can only feel like there are better games for that sort of experience. D&D loses its soul when it becomes about getting the biggest numbers. Besides playing an optimised character is playing someone thousands of other players have done before: it brings nothing fresh or new or novel to the table. If I never see another character with 3 18's and 3 10's, it will be too soon.
Non-optimised stats are great because they keep the characters grounded and therefore interesting. I don't know how many people you've met who are hyper specialised to do one thing super well and nothing else. They're not interesting people to get to know.
The biggest problem I see with the idea of shifting stats around are that some races offer things that certain classes are balanced to not have.
A prime example is the wizard. The wizard is balanced around not having armor. Now a wizard can get around this by MC (a fairly heavy price) or picking a race such as mountain dwarf. Since Mt Dwarf has no bonus to INT, that's a price being paid by the wizard to get his armor. if you let the dwarf put his stats wherever he wants them, now a prime balancing feature of the wizard (no armor) is removed, without any price being paid. It's strictly superior to the high elf for example, who's "supposed" to be a good wizard candidate race.
That's simply not right.
Githyanki and hobgoblin PCs get a bonus to intelligence and proficiency with armor already.
I find this to be a poor example. Most people wouldn't allow these races without the campaign being a "Monster Races" one. It's actually just another example of a min/max special snowflake build. Again, everyone can play what they want. For me, the suspension of disbelief ends when an Elf, Dwarf, Human and a Hobgoblin make up the party...
These races are your Int races for non-human allied races as far as I'm concerned. That way you don't have to play a Goblin Wizard, or some other poor choice mechanically.
And many people wouldn't. The original claim was that it would be "unbalanced" to have a character get a racial bonus to Int and proficiency with armor at the same time because they could play an armored wizard. I'm in a campaign with someone who's playing an armored githyanki wizard right now and I'm going to say straight up that this claim is completely false.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Half of D&D campaign worlds, a party made up of an Elf, Dwarf, Human and Hobgoblin would be the most normal thing ever. And in the few that it wouldn't, half the time the Dwarf and Elf would be social pariahs from their society for even associating with one another.
So I guess your suspension of disbelief begins and ends with playing in the Ravenloft, Dark Sun and Dragonlance, before the end of the war, campaign settings.
I'm not sure where that information is coming from so, yeah. Reading through the Hobgoblin race description makes them sound extremely xenophobic and unlikely to just prance around with humans and their allies. Maybe you can provide me with some good source info?
Because that description begins and ends with those who manage to remain in good graces with their clan/tribe and whose clan/tribe remains successful by not falling on the wrong side of a bunch of adventurers or a local lord's army that manages to wipe out most of them and kill their leaders, scattering the rest to the winds where other tribes won't want to pick them up as they are failures.
Hobgoblins who either get exiled or are the remnants of destroyed tribes often become mercenaries, at which time they aren't too picky about who they work for so long as it means getting a meal without having to engage in physical, manual grunt labor. In Faerun, there are some cities that have "monster districts" precisely for such people to settle into-- though those are notably the "bad part" of town. You'd also come across them in random taverns and pubs, just out there looking for someone to hire them on. And certainly anything running an "adventurer's guild" is likely to attract them on occasion. And, again, these would be the outcasts-- but then quite a lot of adventurers are outcasts.
In Eberron, while they have their own empire aside from the other kingdoms, its not entirely actively hostile with everyone else. Throughout the rest of the lands they are also pretty well integrated enough that they wouldn't be too odd of a sight. So you could have a mix of whatever races there, it just isn't special.
Even when the default setting was Greyhawk, picking up hobgoblins as hirelings and followers was not so unusual. They could just be rolled up on the random table, so if you had enough followers then you'd probably pick one up. So even before 3rd edition when there was virtually nothing positive to be said about the race, you could well have a party of a dwarf, elf, human and hobgoblin simply because they were all followers of some high level PC that just happened to roll that mix up on their followers table. So the high level PC could send the four of them off on some minor mission while he focused on some world-ending level threat.
I don't really see a huge problem with the INT and Armor Proficiencies. The Hobgoblin Devastator is a bad ass example of an armored caster. We just fought a couple recently so, I could definitely see someone making a Wizard or other caster Hobgoblin.
The more ridiculous aspect is the RP rationalization. My Githyanki isn't into the normal raiding and enslaving of other races and my Githzerai isn't a seclusionist in Limbo. My Hobgoblin doesn't give a rip for his Legion. Whatever.
Because that description begins and ends with those who manage to remain in good graces with their clan/tribe and whose clan/tribe remains successful by not falling on the wrong side of a bunch of adventurers or a local lord's army that manages to wipe out most of them and kill their leaders, scattering the rest to the winds where other tribes won't want to pick them up as they are failures.
Hobgoblins who either get exiled or are the remnants of destroyed tribes often become mercenaries, at which time they aren't too picky about who they work for so long as it means getting a meal without having to engage in physical, manual grunt labor. In Faerun, there are some cities that have "monster districts" precisely for such people to settle into-- though those are notably the "bad part" of town. You'd also come across them in random taverns and pubs, just out there looking for someone to hire them on. And certainly anything running an "adventurer's guild" is likely to attract them on occasion. And, again, these would be the outcasts-- but then quite a lot of adventurers are outcasts.
In Eberron, while they have their own empire aside from the other kingdoms, its not entirely actively hostile with everyone else. Throughout the rest of the lands they are also pretty well integrated enough that they wouldn't be too odd of a sight. So you could have a mix of whatever races there, it just isn't special.
Even when the default setting was Greyhawk, picking up hobgoblins as hirelings and followers was not so unusual. They could just be rolled up on the random table, so if you had enough followers then you'd probably pick one up. So even before 3rd edition when there was virtually nothing positive to be said about the race, you could well have a party of a dwarf, elf, human and hobgoblin simply because they were all followers of some high level PC that just happened to roll that mix up on their followers table. So the high level PC could send the four of them off on some minor mission while he focused on some world-ending level threat.
The biggest problem I see with the idea of shifting stats around are that some races offer things that certain classes are balanced to not have.
A prime example is the wizard. The wizard is balanced around not having armor. Now a wizard can get around this by MC (a fairly heavy price) or picking a race such as mountain dwarf. Since Mt Dwarf has no bonus to INT, that's a price being paid by the wizard to get his armor. if you let the dwarf put his stats wherever he wants them, now a prime balancing feature of the wizard (no armor) is removed, without any price being paid. It's strictly superior to the high elf for example, who's "supposed" to be a good wizard candidate race.
That's simply not right.
Githyanki and hobgoblin PCs get a bonus to intelligence and proficiency with armor already.
I find this to be a poor example. Most people wouldn't allow these races without the campaign being a "Monster Races" one. It's actually just another example of a min/max special snowflake build. Again, everyone can play what they want. For me, the suspension of disbelief ends when an Elf, Dwarf, Human and a Hobgoblin make up the party...
These races are your Int races for non-human allied races as far as I'm concerned. That way you don't have to play a Goblin Wizard, or some other poor choice mechanically.
And many people wouldn't. The original claim was that it would be "unbalanced" to have a character get a racial bonus to Int and proficiency with armor at the same time because they could play an armored wizard. I'm in a campaign with someone who's playing an armored githyanki wizard right now and I'm going to say straight up that this claim is completely false.
What's completely false is that a non-armor race is equal to a race that provides armor.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
The biggest problem I see with the idea of shifting stats around are that some races offer things that certain classes are balanced to not have.
A prime example is the wizard. The wizard is balanced around not having armor. Now a wizard can get around this by MC (a fairly heavy price) or picking a race such as mountain dwarf. Since Mt Dwarf has no bonus to INT, that's a price being paid by the wizard to get his armor. if you let the dwarf put his stats wherever he wants them, now a prime balancing feature of the wizard (no armor) is removed, without any price being paid. It's strictly superior to the high elf for example, who's "supposed" to be a good wizard candidate race.
That's simply not right.
Githyanki and hobgoblin PCs get a bonus to intelligence and proficiency with armor already.
I find this to be a poor example. Most people wouldn't allow these races without the campaign being a "Monster Races" one. It's actually just another example of a min/max special snowflake build. Again, everyone can play what they want. For me, the suspension of disbelief ends when an Elf, Dwarf, Human and a Hobgoblin make up the party...
These races are your Int races for non-human allied races as far as I'm concerned. That way you don't have to play a Goblin Wizard, or some other poor choice mechanically.
And many people wouldn't. The original claim was that it would be "unbalanced" to have a character get a racial bonus to Int and proficiency with armor at the same time because they could play an armored wizard. I'm in a campaign with someone who's playing an armored githyanki wizard right now and I'm going to say straight up that this claim is completely false.
What's completely false is that a non-armor race is equal to a race that provides armor.
Only if you ignore what advantages the non-armor race has instead.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Because I refuse to tolerate DDB's godawful interquoting nightmare nonsense of "Literally every post made in the entire thread gets quoted any time you hit the 'Quote' button" right now, doing this the old-fashioned way:
@Verenti Said: "Yes, if you are playing purely mechanically, you want optimised stats. If you are playing a character then non-optimised stats tells gives us questions about who they are and why they are the way they are. I mean, D&D, as a tactics game is a very boring game and if your character's depth ends with their combat abilities, then I can only feel like there are better games for that sort of experience. D&D loses its soul when it becomes about getting the biggest numbers. Besides playing an optimised character is playing someone thousands of other players have done before: it brings nothing fresh or new or novel to the table. If I never see another character with 3 18's and 3 10's, it will be too soon.
Non-optimised stats are great because they keep the characters grounded and therefore interesting. I don't know how many people you've met who are hyper specialised to do one thing super well and nothing else. They're not interesting people to get to know."
**
Alternatively, perhaps the nonstandard racial stat spread is its own story. The aforementioned orcish wizard has much higher intelligence than the typical orc, but also lower strength and constitution. How would that affect their upbringing within an orcish tribe? How does a 'stereotypical boring minmaxed wizard' work in a society where physical might and toughness is prized and the arts of the mind are actively scorned? How did such a character survive their upbringing? What scars did it leave behind?
Atypical species stats can be their own story just as much as atypical class stats, ne? And it's much easier to be an atypical [Species Here] than an atypical [Class Here], at least in mechanical terms.
It really is bizarre. There's so much backlash and pushback against the idea of different members of a species having different abilities. So many people trumpeting from the rooftops that EVERY gnome must be completely and absolutely identical to EVERY OTHER gnome, regardless of upbringing, training, or life situation or The Game Just Doesn't Make Sense. That if your particular gnome did not come out of the exact same injection mold that produced Memphis Cleavelland Jehosephat the Merry, the initial prototype for the entire gnomish race and thus the Only Possible Gnome In Existence, you are D&D-ing wrong.
...all while complaining that classes - i.e. the thing you've theoretically spent a significant portion of your life training for and which define your abilities and aptitudes - are much too restrictive and shouldn't be attribute dependent at all. That a ham-fisted rogue with no indoor voice and a total inability to find hidden dangers with anything but his face should be just as valid and viable as the usual dexterous, cunning skirmisher. God Help You if you want to play an atypical member of your species, That's Just Silly And Shouldn't Be Allowed, but your class should be as malleable as it can possibly be because nobody cares if your lifetime of training and the method by which you make your livelihood makes sense.
Seriously. How does that supremely backwards notion even enter people's heads?
...all while complaining that classes - i.e. the thing you've theoretically spent a significant portion of your life training for and which define your abilities and aptitudes - are much too restrictive and shouldn't be attribute dependent at all. That a ham-fisted rogue with no indoor voice and a total inability to find hidden dangers with anything but his face should be just as valid and viable as the usual dexterous, cunning skirmisher. God Help You if you want to play an atypical member of your species, That's Just Silly And Shouldn't Be Allowed, but your class should be as malleable as it can possibly be because nobody cares if your lifetime of training and the method by which you make your livelihood makes sense.
Seriously. How does that supremely backwards notion even enter people's heads?
Here's the deal.
Explain what the hell "dexterity" is. Like-- seriously-- try to explain that shit.
How the hell is your ability to move out of the way of something dropping on your head necessarily and inherently tied to your ability to move quietly. Why on earth would your ability to pluck something out of someone's pocket be ENTIRELY, completely, intrinsically tied to your ability to hit a target using a bow with no other possible aspect of your physical or mental abilities at all accounting for any part of that process.
What is this "dexterity" thing that, as long as you got it, it doesn't matter if you are too dumb to tell the difference between a screwdriver and a hammer-- so long as you have the "dexterity" thing, the thing that apparently means you will act first in combat, you can easily dismantle any lock or any trap you come across.
What exactly is the unbreakable link between one's ability to do gymnastics and one's ability to slip a dagger past a person's defenses and slip it right between their ribs?
The answer is-- NOTHING.
Dexterity in D&D is the biggest load of horseshit ever, tying together a ton of disparate abilities that have absolutely nothing remotely in common to do with one another. There is really no wonder it is the god stat of D&D 5E-- because it covers such a wide range of abilities, skills and functions that there "Strength" and "Constitution" cover only an insignificant, narrow range of a person's physical abilities by comparison.
Plenty of these abilities that are covered by Dexterity-- Initiative, Ranged Attacks, Disable Devices-- they should absolutely not be dexterity at all and have quite a lot more to do with other attributes. Initiative, as well as most "Dexterity" checks should be tied primarily to one's mental stats. Ranged attacks should absolutely be tied to the stat that governs one's perception and ability to remain calm under pressure. Disabling Devices absolutely has a hell of a lot more to do with one's knowledge-- i.g. Intelligence-- than it has to do with one's ability to do gymnastics. The greatest gymnist in the world would be a pretty lousy locksmith and a great locksmith could be a general obsese, slovenly person who isn't going to be beating anyone in a race, but so long as they know how to recognize a particular lock and how to take it apart they are going to do well.
And a person who is quite slow and has bad reactions can be quite good at being stealthy, particularly in a crowd. There are people who are quite good at avoiding detection, but can't juggle or any of the other crap associated with Dexterity worth a damn.
So-- given that Dexterity is a crappily designed stat that governs a ton of crap that ought to be governed by other stats-- or, in the very least, you wouldn't be able to do if those other stats were crap no matter how high your "Dexterity" is-- then there is absolutely no reason not to rule that any character with some mixture of Wisdom, Intelligence and Constitution can do everything that the Rogue class insists is governed by someone who has a high number in this ill-defined god stat of "Dexterity" just as well.
Because Dexterity is just stupid. And anyone who is a level 4 Rogue ought to be relatively just as good as anyone else who is a level 4 Rogue with whatever array of balanced stats they have-- they would just get the job done in an ever-so-slightly different way that can be explained narratively.
If you want to disagree-- please tell me how your experience in life tells you that every single person who is good at hitting a target with a gun or bow is also by the exact same traits an expert gymnast, locksmith, thief and dodger. Go down to your local gun-range, find the person with the highest score and go put them on American Ninja and bet your life-savings on their ability to effortlessly complete the course as you are simply too dense to understand what utter crap the classes tying all their skills into a single attribute is.
Seriously. How intellectually-bankrupt are people to be so incapable of thinking straight and realizing even the most obvious things?
None of that has anything to do with class or species. You won't get arguments from me that D&D's attribute/skill design system is antiquated and poorly balanced, but that poor design has absolutely nothing to do with the idea that every member of a given species should be completely and utterly identical to every other member of that species, or the idea that class should somehow ignore the game's underlying attribute design while species is forced to conform very strictly to it.
Why is that? Why is it that every single member of a species must be completely and utterly identical down to the last molecule of DNA to every other member of that species, but class is somehow just worthless putty that doesn't matter because Narrative?
Whether or not Dexterity should exist isn't up for debate here. Certain races already get boosts to Dex, and I see no problem with allowing other races to have those benefits, too.
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Githyanki and hobgoblin PCs get a bonus to intelligence and proficiency with armor already.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
yes I know. You could go sorcerer too, rather than wizard. The point stands still.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Hobgoblins get armor, and are balanced as wizards. Wizards can take feats to get armor, too.
I really see no problem. Dwarf wizards are just now a small step better.
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Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
I find this to be a poor example. Most people wouldn't allow these races without the campaign being a "Monster Races" one. It's actually just another example of a min/max special snowflake build. Again, everyone can play what they want. For me, the suspension of disbelief ends when an Elf, Dwarf, Human and a Hobgoblin make up the party...
These races are your Int races for non-human allied races as far as I'm concerned. That way you don't have to play a Goblin Wizard, or some other poor choice mechanically.
The last line hints at the real problem. The issue isn't that certain races have the average member stronger or tougher or faster or smarter or more intuitive or more sociable by 10% or so.
The real problem is that depending on your class choice, there is a "main stat".
With attack roll alone, there is a possible argument for every single attribute being the one that contributes to attack roll. Some of them may seem weaker than others (primarily Constitution and Charisma), so the choice of it being Strength or Dexterity is just completely arbitrary. Wisdom determines one's perception, ability to remain calm under pressure, tune out distraction and focus-- why on earth is that not the primary attribute that decides your ability to hit a target in a high stress battle situation? Why is even its potential contribution completely ignored? And someone with a higher Intelligence is going to be able to discern the opponent's fighting style, come up with tactical moves on the fly, and know when and where to strike the opponent to maximize their chances of hitting and causing the maximum amount of damage. So why on earth does Intelligence give functionally no contribution to fighting whatsoever?
If intelligence and wisdom did not at all contribute to one's ability to fight and it entirely relied on strength, then the bullfighting would just not be a thing because every matador would be taken down by the bull that is easily 5x as strong as them. Similarly, humans would not have been so good at basically wiping out the megafauna of virtually every continent except Africa and South America even before the bronze age.
And going beyond basic attack rolls and damage rolls-- every class in D&D has had their abilities interpreted and written out in such a way to remove as much MAD as possible, leading to a situation where in any given class there is a "main stat" and everything else gets dumped.
The super easy solution would be to go across the character sheet and anywhere that you are expected to add an attribute bonus, simply add the character's proficiency bonus instead (which means, yes, a lot of the time one will merely be adding their proficiency bonus twice or 3x in cases where you have an ability to "double your proficiency bonus"). Maybe the exception would be the skills section.
Assuming that all characters have comparable stats, the explanation would simply be that whatever combination of attributes the character has is what contributes to that bonus.
The attributes would only come into play when one is very specifically rolling to accomplish a task that calls upon that attribute exclusively.
Sure, it'll flatten out the differences between characters, but that's fundamentally what one is going for by declaring that the smallest race and the biggest race are now equally agile and powerful. So if one's goal is to flatten out the characters so that every level X member of class Y are equal-- rather than screw with the races, just go across the character sheet and everywhere that you are asked to put an attribute bonus, just replace that with the proficiency bonus. It is a far simpler, easier and more elegant solution.
And if it bothers one that characters are going to be weaker than people are used to given that their "main stat" is not going to be boosted to the maximum of +5 at the earliest levels and that characters get big jumps in power at the levels where proficiency bonus increases-- yes, the actual solution is to start characters off at proficiency bonus of +5 and have it increase every 2 levels until it reaches +10 at level 20 and then having this higher proficiency bonus be added to all stats just once.
The system also eliminates any real value of ASI, which is overall a good thing because choosing them over feats is always the most boring option.
Half of D&D campaign worlds, a party made up of an Elf, Dwarf, Human and Hobgoblin would be the most normal thing ever. And in the few that it wouldn't, half the time the Dwarf and Elf would be social pariahs from their society for even associating with one another.
So I guess your suspension of disbelief begins and ends with playing in the Ravenloft, Dark Sun and Dragonlance, before the end of the war, campaign settings.
I'm not sure where that information is coming from so, yeah. Reading through the Hobgoblin race description makes them sound extremely xenophobic and unlikely to just prance around with humans and their allies. Maybe you can provide me with some good source info?
Yes, if you are playing purely mechanically, you want optimised stats. If you are playing a character then non-optimised stats tells gives us questions about who they are and why they are the way they are. I mean, D&D, as a tactics game is a very boring game and if your character's depth ends with their combat abilities, then I can only feel like there are better games for that sort of experience. D&D loses its soul when it becomes about getting the biggest numbers. Besides playing an optimised character is playing someone thousands of other players have done before: it brings nothing fresh or new or novel to the table. If I never see another character with 3 18's and 3 10's, it will be too soon.
Non-optimised stats are great because they keep the characters grounded and therefore interesting. I don't know how many people you've met who are hyper specialised to do one thing super well and nothing else. They're not interesting people to get to know.
And many people wouldn't. The original claim was that it would be "unbalanced" to have a character get a racial bonus to Int and proficiency with armor at the same time because they could play an armored wizard. I'm in a campaign with someone who's playing an armored githyanki wizard right now and I'm going to say straight up that this claim is completely false.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Because that description begins and ends with those who manage to remain in good graces with their clan/tribe and whose clan/tribe remains successful by not falling on the wrong side of a bunch of adventurers or a local lord's army that manages to wipe out most of them and kill their leaders, scattering the rest to the winds where other tribes won't want to pick them up as they are failures.
Hobgoblins who either get exiled or are the remnants of destroyed tribes often become mercenaries, at which time they aren't too picky about who they work for so long as it means getting a meal without having to engage in physical, manual grunt labor. In Faerun, there are some cities that have "monster districts" precisely for such people to settle into-- though those are notably the "bad part" of town. You'd also come across them in random taverns and pubs, just out there looking for someone to hire them on. And certainly anything running an "adventurer's guild" is likely to attract them on occasion. And, again, these would be the outcasts-- but then quite a lot of adventurers are outcasts.
In Eberron, while they have their own empire aside from the other kingdoms, its not entirely actively hostile with everyone else. Throughout the rest of the lands they are also pretty well integrated enough that they wouldn't be too odd of a sight. So you could have a mix of whatever races there, it just isn't special.
Even when the default setting was Greyhawk, picking up hobgoblins as hirelings and followers was not so unusual. They could just be rolled up on the random table, so if you had enough followers then you'd probably pick one up. So even before 3rd edition when there was virtually nothing positive to be said about the race, you could well have a party of a dwarf, elf, human and hobgoblin simply because they were all followers of some high level PC that just happened to roll that mix up on their followers table. So the high level PC could send the four of them off on some minor mission while he focused on some world-ending level threat.
I don't really see a huge problem with the INT and Armor Proficiencies. The Hobgoblin Devastator is a bad ass example of an armored caster. We just fought a couple recently so, I could definitely see someone making a Wizard or other caster Hobgoblin.
The more ridiculous aspect is the RP rationalization. My Githyanki isn't into the normal raiding and enslaving of other races and my Githzerai isn't a seclusionist in Limbo. My Hobgoblin doesn't give a rip for his Legion. Whatever.
That all makes sense, thank you!
What's completely false is that a non-armor race is equal to a race that provides armor.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Only if you ignore what advantages the non-armor race has instead.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Because I refuse to tolerate DDB's godawful interquoting nightmare nonsense of "Literally every post made in the entire thread gets quoted any time you hit the 'Quote' button" right now, doing this the old-fashioned way:
@Verenti Said:
"Yes, if you are playing purely mechanically, you want optimised stats. If you are playing a character then non-optimised stats tells gives us questions about who they are and why they are the way they are. I mean, D&D, as a tactics game is a very boring game and if your character's depth ends with their combat abilities, then I can only feel like there are better games for that sort of experience. D&D loses its soul when it becomes about getting the biggest numbers. Besides playing an optimised character is playing someone thousands of other players have done before: it brings nothing fresh or new or novel to the table. If I never see another character with 3 18's and 3 10's, it will be too soon.
Non-optimised stats are great because they keep the characters grounded and therefore interesting. I don't know how many people you've met who are hyper specialised to do one thing super well and nothing else. They're not interesting people to get to know."
**
Alternatively, perhaps the nonstandard racial stat spread is its own story. The aforementioned orcish wizard has much higher intelligence than the typical orc, but also lower strength and constitution. How would that affect their upbringing within an orcish tribe? How does a 'stereotypical boring minmaxed wizard' work in a society where physical might and toughness is prized and the arts of the mind are actively scorned? How did such a character survive their upbringing? What scars did it leave behind?
Atypical species stats can be their own story just as much as atypical class stats, ne? And it's much easier to be an atypical [Species Here] than an atypical [Class Here], at least in mechanical terms.
It really is bizarre. There's so much backlash and pushback against the idea of different members of a species having different abilities. So many people trumpeting from the rooftops that EVERY gnome must be completely and absolutely identical to EVERY OTHER gnome, regardless of upbringing, training, or life situation or The Game Just Doesn't Make Sense. That if your particular gnome did not come out of the exact same injection mold that produced Memphis Cleavelland Jehosephat the Merry, the initial prototype for the entire gnomish race and thus the Only Possible Gnome In Existence, you are D&D-ing wrong.
...all while complaining that classes - i.e. the thing you've theoretically spent a significant portion of your life training for and which define your abilities and aptitudes - are much too restrictive and shouldn't be attribute dependent at all. That a ham-fisted rogue with no indoor voice and a total inability to find hidden dangers with anything but his face should be just as valid and viable as the usual dexterous, cunning skirmisher. God Help You if you want to play an atypical member of your species, That's Just Silly And Shouldn't Be Allowed, but your class should be as malleable as it can possibly be because nobody cares if your lifetime of training and the method by which you make your livelihood makes sense.
Seriously. How does that supremely backwards notion even enter people's heads?
Please do not contact or message me.
Here's the deal.
Explain what the hell "dexterity" is. Like-- seriously-- try to explain that shit.
How the hell is your ability to move out of the way of something dropping on your head necessarily and inherently tied to your ability to move quietly. Why on earth would your ability to pluck something out of someone's pocket be ENTIRELY, completely, intrinsically tied to your ability to hit a target using a bow with no other possible aspect of your physical or mental abilities at all accounting for any part of that process.
What is this "dexterity" thing that, as long as you got it, it doesn't matter if you are too dumb to tell the difference between a screwdriver and a hammer-- so long as you have the "dexterity" thing, the thing that apparently means you will act first in combat, you can easily dismantle any lock or any trap you come across.
What exactly is the unbreakable link between one's ability to do gymnastics and one's ability to slip a dagger past a person's defenses and slip it right between their ribs?
The answer is-- NOTHING.
Dexterity in D&D is the biggest load of horseshit ever, tying together a ton of disparate abilities that have absolutely nothing remotely in common to do with one another. There is really no wonder it is the god stat of D&D 5E-- because it covers such a wide range of abilities, skills and functions that there "Strength" and "Constitution" cover only an insignificant, narrow range of a person's physical abilities by comparison.
Plenty of these abilities that are covered by Dexterity-- Initiative, Ranged Attacks, Disable Devices-- they should absolutely not be dexterity at all and have quite a lot more to do with other attributes. Initiative, as well as most "Dexterity" checks should be tied primarily to one's mental stats. Ranged attacks should absolutely be tied to the stat that governs one's perception and ability to remain calm under pressure. Disabling Devices absolutely has a hell of a lot more to do with one's knowledge-- i.g. Intelligence-- than it has to do with one's ability to do gymnastics. The greatest gymnist in the world would be a pretty lousy locksmith and a great locksmith could be a general obsese, slovenly person who isn't going to be beating anyone in a race, but so long as they know how to recognize a particular lock and how to take it apart they are going to do well.
And a person who is quite slow and has bad reactions can be quite good at being stealthy, particularly in a crowd. There are people who are quite good at avoiding detection, but can't juggle or any of the other crap associated with Dexterity worth a damn.
So-- given that Dexterity is a crappily designed stat that governs a ton of crap that ought to be governed by other stats-- or, in the very least, you wouldn't be able to do if those other stats were crap no matter how high your "Dexterity" is-- then there is absolutely no reason not to rule that any character with some mixture of Wisdom, Intelligence and Constitution can do everything that the Rogue class insists is governed by someone who has a high number in this ill-defined god stat of "Dexterity" just as well.
Because Dexterity is just stupid. And anyone who is a level 4 Rogue ought to be relatively just as good as anyone else who is a level 4 Rogue with whatever array of balanced stats they have-- they would just get the job done in an ever-so-slightly different way that can be explained narratively.
If you want to disagree-- please tell me how your experience in life tells you that every single person who is good at hitting a target with a gun or bow is also by the exact same traits an expert gymnast, locksmith, thief and dodger. Go down to your local gun-range, find the person with the highest score and go put them on American Ninja and bet your life-savings on their ability to effortlessly complete the course as you are simply too dense to understand what utter crap the classes tying all their skills into a single attribute is.
Seriously. How intellectually-bankrupt are people to be so incapable of thinking straight and realizing even the most obvious things?
None of that has anything to do with class or species. You won't get arguments from me that D&D's attribute/skill design system is antiquated and poorly balanced, but that poor design has absolutely nothing to do with the idea that every member of a given species should be completely and utterly identical to every other member of that species, or the idea that class should somehow ignore the game's underlying attribute design while species is forced to conform very strictly to it.
Why is that? Why is it that every single member of a species must be completely and utterly identical down to the last molecule of DNA to every other member of that species, but class is somehow just worthless putty that doesn't matter because Narrative?
Please do not contact or message me.
Whether or not Dexterity should exist isn't up for debate here. Certain races already get boosts to Dex, and I see no problem with allowing other races to have those benefits, too.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms