Also, it's Chaotic Evil and not Lawful Evil. And if you think alignment was ever seriously objective...you know what? I can't help you there.
Sorry, you're wrong. 1E AD&D Monster Manual lists Orks as Lawful Evil.
ORC FREQUENCY: Common NO. APPEARING: 30-300 ARMOR CLASS: 6 MOVE: 9" HIT DICE: 1 % IN LAIR: 35% TREASURE TYPE: Individuals 1; C, 0, Q ( X IO), S in lair NO. OF ATTACKS: I DAMAGE/ATTACK: 1-8 or by weapon type SPECIAL ATTACKS: Nil SPECIAL DEFENSES: Nil MAGIC RESISTANCE Standard INTELLIGENCE: Average (low) ALIGNMENT: Lawful evil SIZE: M (6'+ tall)
And Alignment IS an Objective Morality System. Otherwise spells like Detect Good/Evil couldn't have existed.
Orcs are described as, "usually chaotic evil," in Volo's Guide to Monsters. You know, the 5th Edition book because everyone here is talking about 5th Edition. Stop being so confrontational and calm down.
But, since you're dredging up the old TSR past, alignment wasn't objective back then. It wasn't clearly defined and left up to interpretation by the reader. You know, because TSR was so famously hands-off back then. The closest thing we had was that different alignments had their own languages, and something like Lawful might be akin to Latin. And 2nd edition explicitly treated alignment as, "a guide to his basic moral and ethical attitudes toward others, society, good, evil, and the forces of the universe in general." That's not hard-coded.
Point of order: it's vastly easier for a DM to assign a fixed ASI boost to a lineage that doesn't have one than it is for the same DM to rip out a fixed ASI and replace it, Tasha's style, with a floating boost. Even now that DDB has actually implemented Tasha's Cauldron enough to get the floating boosts to work, it's the difference between having to stop a player, back them up, explain a rule they didn't know about, ask them if they want to use it, and deal with their confusion...or the DM saying "when you get to this step of character creation, consult this chart I made. Whatever your lineage is, put your ability boosts into the stats the chart says - species have fixed scores in my world, you don't get to assign your stats yourself" and being done with it.
I'd disagree. It's still optional, you could still use any race/lineage which has static ASIs. If they want to use the (also optional) new races/lineages, then they would need to use the new system (or homebrew static ASIs and whatever else for them). But that doesn't mean it's no longer optional. They still have the option not to use the new system.
Sure anything is technically "optional" in the game. In this case I am saying that the new material is adhering to Tasha's as the norm and not the thing you can use.
It is a change of the norm which is not exactly what was advertised.
I'd disagree. It's still optional, you could still use any race/lineage which has static ASIs. If they want to use the (also optional) new races/lineages, then they would need to use the new system (or homebrew static ASIs and whatever else for them). But that doesn't mean it's no longer optional. They still have the option not to use the new system.
Sure anything is technically "optional" in the game. In this case I am saying that the new material is adhering to Tasha's as the norm and not the thing you can use.
It is a change of the norm which is not exactly what was advertised.
The three options presented to players in the latest UA aren't races. They're lineages. And their ASIs function as they do for custom linages in Tasha's.
I'd disagree. It's still optional, you could still use any race/lineage which has static ASIs. If they want to use the (also optional) new races/lineages, then they would need to use the new system (or homebrew static ASIs and whatever else for them). But that doesn't mean it's no longer optional. They still have the option not to use the new system.
Sure anything is technically "optional" in the game. In this case I am saying that the new material is adhering to Tasha's as the norm and not the thing you can use.
It is a change of the norm which is not exactly what was advertised.
The three options presented to players in the latest UA aren't races. They're lineages. And their ASIs function as they do for custom linages in Tasha's.
Which is not what was advertised when Tasha's came out. Again I personally do not care and actually prefer this.
But I get what they are saying....its a norm shift and it was not advertised as such.
... all characters of a given lineage must be absolutely identical forever, ...
But they aren't, and never were. Min/maxers likely ended up with a whole bunch of near identical twins (which is fine, I don't have a problem with that per se), but otherwise stat distribution (especially if you rolled to generate stats) isn't going to end up the same for every orc, every halfling, every thrice-damned human whose meemaw diddled a succubus, every gnome who stuck his nose were he shouldn't and got cursed by a hag, every half-drow who had to endure a half-century of slave labour and torture, and so on. This isn't even up for debate, as far as I can tell.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I dislike the new lineages and I've seen more complaints about them then support. I've homebrewed a modified version of Dhampir for my personal use and I gave them a fixed +2 to Con and +1 to Dex. It also makes no sense how the sidebar is giving us permission to homebrew things when almost everyone has been doing just that for almost seven years now. Wizards has made D&D allegorical with these changes, something Tolkien abhorred. I do as well. I do disagree with mental ability score penalties, but a kobold should not be as strong as a goliath.
Orcs are described as, "usually chaotic evil," in Volo's Guide to Monsters. You know, the 5th Edition book because everyone here is talking about 5th Edition. Stop being so confrontational and calm down.
Except we were talking about how the game WAS, specifically that Orks were created by Gruumsh and that came from 1E AD&D.
But, since you're dredging up the old TSR past, alignment wasn't objective back then. It wasn't clearly defined and left up to interpretation by the reader. You know, because TSR was so famously hands-off back then. The closest thing we had was that different alignments had their own languages, and something like Lawful might be akin to Latin. E
Except Alignment Languages were absolutely controlled by your character's alignment (with the exception of the Assassin due to their ability to act as spies). If/when you changed alignment, you literally could not speak the previous Alignment Language. That makes it a clearly definable and objective system.
I dislike the new lineages and I've seen more complaints about them then support. I've homebrewed a modified version of Dhampir for my personal use and I gave them a fixed +2 to Con and +1 to Dex. It also makes no sense how the sidebar is giving us permission to homebrew things when almost everyone has been doing just that for almost seven years now. Wizards has made D&D allegorical with these changes, something Tolkien abhorred. I do as well. I do disagree with mental ability score penalties, but a kobold should not be as strong as a goliath.
Tolkien may have abhorred it, but he still engaged in it, even if by accident. Though he is on record in his personal correspondence having based Orcs on the popular conception of East Asians at the time, and most of his races can be mapped pretty closely onto existing human races in the real world. And that's even ignoring that, as has been brought up numerous times in this thread, D&D was not intended to be Tolkienesque at any point in its early history.
... all characters of a given lineage must be absolutely identical forever, ...
But they aren't, and never were. Min/maxers likely ended up with a whole bunch of near identical twins (which is fine, I don't have a problem with that per se), but otherwise stat distribution (especially if you rolled to generate stats) isn't going to end up the same for every orc, every halfling, every thrice-damned human whose meemaw diddled a succubus, every gnome who stuck his nose were he shouldn't and got cursed by a hag, every half-drow who had to endure a half-century of slave labour and torture, and so on. This isn't even up for debate, as far as I can tell.
Query for you, Pang.
If someone were to say "Damnit, I hate that Wizards is letting players assign their numbers where they want now!", would a casual observer unfamiliar with the game know that this person was only talking about the three points associated with their lineage?
Serious question, for all the folks so hell-bent on NOT MY D&D-ing this: what is the functional difference between granting a player control over 72 points of their numbers and granting them control over 75 points of their numbers? Why is it that assigning those first 72 points is a sacred right all players should absolutely defend, a cherished cornerstone of player agency and creating your own character, but if you try and assign those last three points yourself instead of letting the DM (or Jeremy Crawford) do it for you lightning will smite you to Hell?
It's stupid. It's just stupid. The biological differences between species is better reflected in qualitative species traits such as Powerful Build, Innate Spellcasting, and other things that make a difference. It should be in the lore and cultures of the world, how the character is viewed by and interacts with others, and where the party is or is not welcome.
If the DM is going to force the player to conform to the DM's own specific view of What A Species Should Be, then the DM can damn well assign his own stat array to every species, tell players which class that species is allowed to be, and just make the sheet his own damn self. All tiffles are Fiend pact warlocks, all half-orcs are Berserker barbarians, all elves are Hunter rangers, so on and so forth.
If a DM can't trust their player to engage with the world, find a worthwhile place within it, and create a character the DM is happy to run a game for, why the **** is that person the DM in the first place? And/or why is that player still at the table?
I dislike the new lineages and I've seen more complaints about them then support. I've homebrewed a modified version of Dhampir for my personal use and I gave them a fixed +2 to Con and +1 to Dex. It also makes no sense how the sidebar is giving us permission to homebrew things when almost everyone has been doing just that for almost seven years now. Wizards has made D&D allegorical with these changes, something Tolkien abhorred. I do as well. I do disagree with mental ability score penalties, but a kobold should not be as strong as a goliath.
Tolkien may have abhorred it, but he still engaged in it, even if by accident. Though he is on record in his personal correspondence having based Orcs on the popular conception of East Asians at the time, and most of his races can be mapped pretty closely onto existing human races in the real world. And that's even ignoring that, as has been brought up numerous times in this thread, D&D was not intended to be Tolkienesque at any point in its early history.
It is not directly Tolkienesque, but in my opinion his books inspired the fantasy the game was based on. And I honestly love his work enough that most of my games related to traditional fantasy will be based on his writing.
Fundamental lore thing that a lot of gatekeepers and wiki-stalkers completely ignore: The stories that came before only matter as far as they improve the story you're telling now.
Except that's not the problem. If we were talking about AU versions of Greyhawk, you'd be correct. But we're not and its basically upending what Gygax created for no discernible reason other than either stupidity (didn't do their research) or laziness (note, I'm not saying its malice, per se, but enough incompetence is indistinguishable from malice). And its not like there were a massive amounts of lore to contend with, so it comes off as more laziness. And it DOES affect home campaigns because it creates needless dissension, overriding what many DMs had established for their campaigns regardless of edition. THAT'S the problem. Instead of being a setting which DMs can make their own, WotC embraced the "We say its this way because....".
Fundamental lore thing that a lot of gatekeepers and wiki-stalkers completely ignore: The stories that came before only matter as far as they improve the story you're telling now.
Except that's not the problem. If we were talking about AU versions of Greyhawk, you'd be correct. But we're not and its basically upending what Gygax created for no discernible reason other than either stupidity (didn't do their research) or laziness (note, I'm not saying its malice, per se, but enough incompetence is indistinguishable from malice). And its not like there were a massive amounts of lore to contend with, so it comes off as more laziness. And it DOES affect home campaigns because it creates needless dissension, overriding what many DMs had established for their campaigns regardless of edition. THAT'S the problem. Instead of being a setting which DMs can make their own, WotC embraced the "We say its this way because....".
Brooklyn, is anyone other than you talking about Greyhawk lore?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
If you're hewing strictly to old 1980s established lore for your private Greyhawk campaign? Great! Do that! Make sure new players at your table are read in and vetted on that lore and they understand enough of it to hit the ground running, and you're golden.
Nobody else cares. Nobody else even KNOWS this shit anymore except the Old Guard, and the Old Guard is more invested in making sure anybody who doesn't know it never plays D&D again than passing on their knowledge.
We ride Horses, shear Sheep and milk Cows. And even though we are talking about sentient beings in a fictional medieval-esq fantasy setting, people are trying to tell us that we should feel bad that we don't milk Horses, ride Sheep and shear Cows.
Brooklyn, is anyone other than you talking about Greyhawk lore?
Maybe not in the circles YOU run in....
Brooklyn, I applaud your passion for the old lore of this game. As a fan of history and mythology myself, reading and discovering new pieces of lore in the various media I consume is something that I enjoy immensely.
However, not everyone is as enamored by the lore of old D&D, especially if they are more invested in the newer editions and worlds or perfer to create their own worlds with their own lore. For some, the freedom to create and invent is more important than adhering to the lore of the published settings and the old rules.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
The underlying issue in all of this is that WoTC is kowtowing to groups who don't even really care about D&D.
Their only interest is imposing their worldview on others. Once they do, they just move on. They are NOT long term customers.
Having a meaningful/consistent structure to the different species is important. Otherwise character creation is an anything goes exercise, and it all becomes meaningless.
No matter how much they want it otherwise, a bear will always be stronger than a mouse, and a monkey will always be more intelligent than a rabbit. That is , different species have consistent differences.
Orcs are described as, "usually chaotic evil," in Volo's Guide to Monsters. You know, the 5th Edition book because everyone here is talking about 5th Edition. Stop being so confrontational and calm down.
Except we were talking about how the game WAS, specifically that Orks were created by Gruumsh and that came from 1E AD&D.
But, since you're dredging up the old TSR past, alignment wasn't objective back then. It wasn't clearly defined and left up to interpretation by the reader. You know, because TSR was so famously hands-off back then. The closest thing we had was that different alignments had their own languages, and something like Lawful might be akin to Latin. E
Except Alignment Languages were absolutely controlled by your character's alignment (with the exception of the Assassin due to their ability to act as spies). If/when you changed alignment, you literally could not speak the previous Alignment Language. That makes it a clearly definable and objective system.
No, that doesn't make alignment objective. It makes it mechanical. And this thread is literally titled "Design Direction Changes for Race in D&D 5e." The opening post is about "racial flexibility" and how ability score improvements are now, by RAW, no longer set in stone. Chronologically, it was a direct response to the UA that was released...let me just check my notes...yesterday. Stop trying to make this thread about something it isn't.
And are we really just going to gloss over the fact you didn't melt your brain over there being two people named Iggwilv? For someone who cares so much about lore, you're acting like a hypocrite.
And that's great, in your world with players you choose to play with who are happy with that. It's and optional rule, same even if it weren't, you as DM are perfectly entitled to decide not to use it. Just as it's perfectly acceptable to choose not to allow variant human, feats (altogether or certain ones), or even particular races.
It's far easier to ban a roles that to homebrew a new one. Tcoe brings in an optional rule which those of us who wish to can easily use. You don't have to.
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Orcs are described as, "usually chaotic evil," in Volo's Guide to Monsters. You know, the 5th Edition book because everyone here is talking about 5th Edition. Stop being so confrontational and calm down.
But, since you're dredging up the old TSR past, alignment wasn't objective back then. It wasn't clearly defined and left up to interpretation by the reader. You know, because TSR was so famously hands-off back then. The closest thing we had was that different alignments had their own languages, and something like Lawful might be akin to Latin. And 2nd edition explicitly treated alignment as, "a guide to his basic moral and ethical attitudes toward others, society, good, evil, and the forces of the universe in general." That's not hard-coded.
Point of order: it's vastly easier for a DM to assign a fixed ASI boost to a lineage that doesn't have one than it is for the same DM to rip out a fixed ASI and replace it, Tasha's style, with a floating boost. Even now that DDB has actually implemented Tasha's Cauldron enough to get the floating boosts to work, it's the difference between having to stop a player, back them up, explain a rule they didn't know about, ask them if they want to use it, and deal with their confusion...or the DM saying "when you get to this step of character creation, consult this chart I made. Whatever your lineage is, put your ability boosts into the stats the chart says - species have fixed scores in my world, you don't get to assign your stats yourself" and being done with it.
Please do not contact or message me.
Sure anything is technically "optional" in the game. In this case I am saying that the new material is adhering to Tasha's as the norm and not the thing you can use.
It is a change of the norm which is not exactly what was advertised.
The three options presented to players in the latest UA aren't races. They're lineages. And their ASIs function as they do for custom linages in Tasha's.
Which is not what was advertised when Tasha's came out. Again I personally do not care and actually prefer this.
But I get what they are saying....its a norm shift and it was not advertised as such.
But they aren't, and never were. Min/maxers likely ended up with a whole bunch of near identical twins (which is fine, I don't have a problem with that per se), but otherwise stat distribution (especially if you rolled to generate stats) isn't going to end up the same for every orc, every halfling, every thrice-damned human whose meemaw diddled a succubus, every gnome who stuck his nose were he shouldn't and got cursed by a hag, every half-drow who had to endure a half-century of slave labour and torture, and so on. This isn't even up for debate, as far as I can tell.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I dislike the new lineages and I've seen more complaints about them then support. I've homebrewed a modified version of Dhampir for my personal use and I gave them a fixed +2 to Con and +1 to Dex. It also makes no sense how the sidebar is giving us permission to homebrew things when almost everyone has been doing just that for almost seven years now. Wizards has made D&D allegorical with these changes, something Tolkien abhorred. I do as well. I do disagree with mental ability score penalties, but a kobold should not be as strong as a goliath.
I have a weird sense of humor.
I also make maps.(That's a link)
Except we were talking about how the game WAS, specifically that Orks were created by Gruumsh and that came from 1E AD&D.
Except Alignment Languages were absolutely controlled by your character's alignment (with the exception of the Assassin due to their ability to act as spies). If/when you changed alignment, you literally could not speak the previous Alignment Language. That makes it a clearly definable and objective system.
Tolkien may have abhorred it, but he still engaged in it, even if by accident. Though he is on record in his personal correspondence having based Orcs on the popular conception of East Asians at the time, and most of his races can be mapped pretty closely onto existing human races in the real world. And that's even ignoring that, as has been brought up numerous times in this thread, D&D was not intended to be Tolkienesque at any point in its early history.
Query for you, Pang.
If someone were to say "Damnit, I hate that Wizards is letting players assign their numbers where they want now!", would a casual observer unfamiliar with the game know that this person was only talking about the three points associated with their lineage?
Serious question, for all the folks so hell-bent on NOT MY D&D-ing this: what is the functional difference between granting a player control over 72 points of their numbers and granting them control over 75 points of their numbers? Why is it that assigning those first 72 points is a sacred right all players should absolutely defend, a cherished cornerstone of player agency and creating your own character, but if you try and assign those last three points yourself instead of letting the DM (or Jeremy Crawford) do it for you lightning will smite you to Hell?
It's stupid. It's just stupid. The biological differences between species is better reflected in qualitative species traits such as Powerful Build, Innate Spellcasting, and other things that make a difference. It should be in the lore and cultures of the world, how the character is viewed by and interacts with others, and where the party is or is not welcome.
If the DM is going to force the player to conform to the DM's own specific view of What A Species Should Be, then the DM can damn well assign his own stat array to every species, tell players which class that species is allowed to be, and just make the sheet his own damn self. All tiffles are Fiend pact warlocks, all half-orcs are Berserker barbarians, all elves are Hunter rangers, so on and so forth.
If a DM can't trust their player to engage with the world, find a worthwhile place within it, and create a character the DM is happy to run a game for, why the **** is that person the DM in the first place? And/or why is that player still at the table?
Please do not contact or message me.
It is not directly Tolkienesque, but in my opinion his books inspired the fantasy the game was based on. And I honestly love his work enough that most of my games related to traditional fantasy will be based on his writing.
I have a weird sense of humor.
I also make maps.(That's a link)
Except that's not the problem. If we were talking about AU versions of Greyhawk, you'd be correct. But we're not and its basically upending what Gygax created for no discernible reason other than either stupidity (didn't do their research) or laziness (note, I'm not saying its malice, per se, but enough incompetence is indistinguishable from malice). And its not like there were a massive amounts of lore to contend with, so it comes off as more laziness. And it DOES affect home campaigns because it creates needless dissension, overriding what many DMs had established for their campaigns regardless of edition. THAT'S the problem. Instead of being a setting which DMs can make their own, WotC embraced the "We say its this way because....".
Brooklyn, is anyone other than you talking about Greyhawk lore?
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
My Improved Lineage System
Maybe not in the circles YOU run in....
Brooklyn.
Nobody cares.
If you're hewing strictly to old 1980s established lore for your private Greyhawk campaign? Great! Do that! Make sure new players at your table are read in and vetted on that lore and they understand enough of it to hit the ground running, and you're golden.
Nobody else cares. Nobody else even KNOWS this shit anymore except the Old Guard, and the Old Guard is more invested in making sure anybody who doesn't know it never plays D&D again than passing on their knowledge.
Stop clogging my thread with it. Please.
Please do not contact or message me.
We ride Horses, shear Sheep and milk Cows. And even though we are talking about sentient beings in a fictional medieval-esq fantasy setting, people are trying to tell us that we should feel bad that we don't milk Horses, ride Sheep and shear Cows.
#OpenDnD
Brooklyn, I applaud your passion for the old lore of this game. As a fan of history and mythology myself, reading and discovering new pieces of lore in the various media I consume is something that I enjoy immensely.
However, not everyone is as enamored by the lore of old D&D, especially if they are more invested in the newer editions and worlds or perfer to create their own worlds with their own lore. For some, the freedom to create and invent is more important than adhering to the lore of the published settings and the old rules.
"Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
Characters for Tenebris Sine Fine
RoughCoronet's Greater Wills
The underlying issue in all of this is that WoTC is kowtowing to groups who don't even really care about D&D.
Their only interest is imposing their worldview on others. Once they do, they just move on. They are NOT long term customers.
Having a meaningful/consistent structure to the different species is important. Otherwise character creation is an anything goes exercise, and it all becomes meaningless.
No matter how much they want it otherwise, a bear will always be stronger than a mouse, and a monkey will always be more intelligent than a rabbit. That is , different species have consistent differences.
No, that doesn't make alignment objective. It makes it mechanical. And this thread is literally titled "Design Direction Changes for Race in D&D 5e." The opening post is about "racial flexibility" and how ability score improvements are now, by RAW, no longer set in stone. Chronologically, it was a direct response to the UA that was released...let me just check my notes...yesterday. Stop trying to make this thread about something it isn't.
And are we really just going to gloss over the fact you didn't melt your brain over there being two people named Iggwilv? For someone who cares so much about lore, you're acting like a hypocrite.
And that's great, in your world with players you choose to play with who are happy with that. It's and optional rule, same even if it weren't, you as DM are perfectly entitled to decide not to use it. Just as it's perfectly acceptable to choose not to allow variant human, feats (altogether or certain ones), or even particular races.
It's far easier to ban a roles that to homebrew a new one. Tcoe brings in an optional rule which those of us who wish to can easily use. You don't have to.