Just to fact-check, if I’m not mistaken, the original D&D had no ASIs for races whatsoever. (Granted, it also had race-as-class and minimum ability scores for races, so I’m not saying it was good, but there it is.) D&D doesn’t need ASIs of any sort (race or lineage) to be D&D.
Honestly at this point, I’m thinking of homebrewing my own version of D&D with the goal of simplifying everything for new players (D&D is still too complex, but that’s a different topic). Racial bonuses can totally get cut.
So this is gonna be a little longer than what I normally post; grab you snacks and your favorite beverages - we are going for a ride!!
Lets start of with some light reading - both these blurbs are DIRECT QUOTES from the Core Rulebook of Star Trek Adventures. They give background information on the setting regarding species and identity in the Federation.
Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations
The United Federation of Planets enshrines the rights and freedoms of all individuals, and forbids all manner of unfair discrimination by species, ethnicity, nationality, spiritual or political beliefs (so long as those beliefs are not harmful to, or unfairly imposed upon, others), gender, sex, sexuality, or a range of other factors, such as disability or neurological variation. Within the federation, all people are given the means and opportunities to pursue their ambitions and realize their potential, and the differences between individuals are celebrated for their differing perspectives, rather than being ignored or marginalized as they may have been in the past.
To reflect this, characters in STA may be of any ethnicity, religion, sex, gender, sexuality, and so forth, without limit or restriction. Such variations will rarely have any impact upon the character in game terms, though Players may choose to make some facets of the character more prominent if they wish to draw attention to them.
Mixed-Heritage Characters
Many Starfleet Officers have parents from different species. To create characters of mixed-heritage, choose two species, one of which will be the primary species. The character is treated as a member of the primary species for attribute bonuses; most mixed-heritage characters take more after one parent than the other. The character gains the species Traits of both parent species, and may select Talents from both parent species.
Sounds nice right? Especially the first blurb will resonate with many of us. But here's the rub - that's the Federations stance. That's not the Klingons, or the Romulans, or the Remans, or the Dominions stance on things. And the Borg? Species 8472 - the Undine? You think THEY will care that your half-klingon character wanted to study archeology in spite of his klingon mothers insistence of becoming a warrior/starfleet captain? No - those species want to see your character, and all that he holds dear in life, dead. Just so that they can profit from your death in some way.
How's that for stereotyping a highly-advanced society/species?
As for the second blurb - sounds nice again, right? Here's where complexity and game design comes in. Many of us remember how weird and wacky things got in 3rd and 3.5th Edition in regards to templates. Even if you reduced it to the species in the players handbook, complexity would skyrocket. Hells, lets just take the "standard" fantasy races - humans, elfs, dwarves and gnomes. That would give us this fun list!
Human-Elf
Human-Dwarf
Human-Gnome
Elf-Dwarf
Elf-Gnome
Dwarf-Gnome
Then you would have to decide - does your Dwarf-Gnome look more like Dwarf or a Gnome? What traits of each parentage are stronger in him? And what about your Aarakroa-Tortle!?! At that point it would be better for the Lore and the Rules System to say: "NOPE! Only certain species can crossbreed!" or just flat out say "HAHAHAAHA!! NOPE! No-one is biologically compatible in that way!" Soooo - kinda like we have right now?
To me, the species in D&D are more like what you see in Mass Effect rather than the homogenized mass that you see in Star Trek.
Then we come to the character creation process, which looks like this:
Step 1) Choose the character's species. Gain +x to Attributes depending on species. Like choosing a species/race in D&D.
Step 2) Choose the character's Environment; this is the type of world the character was raised on. Gain + 1 to one Attribute depending on what type of world you grew up on. Part of the Background/Culture of making a D&D character.
Step 3) Choose the character's Upbringing; this is the kind of education the character had during their formative years, and the kind of influence their parents and mentors had. YOU CAN EITHER ACCEPT YOUR UPBRINGING OR REJECT IT! Gain + 1 to an Attribute if you accept, or +1 to another if you reject your upbringing. Part of the Background/Culture of making a D&D character.
Step 4) The character attends Starfleet Academy, and chooses which track of the Academy they join - Command, Operations, or Sciences. Gain + 3 to Attributes. Like choosing a class in D&D.
Again, sounds nice! Lotsa stuff to like here - this list reads like what many people in this thread have been asking for in regards to character creation. Well mostly; species still have fixed Attributes to them - Vulcans get +1 to Control, Fitness and Reason, while Klingons get +1 to Daring, Fitness, and Presence. Humans get +1 to three different Attributes of their choice - sounds familiar so far? Vulcans are logical and calculating, Klingons the brash and boisterous, and Humans are ohh so mallable in their thinking? Ohhh the bad, evil stereotyping! Whatever are we supposed to do with our Player Characters?!? We can't go against that!
Of particular note should be the 3rd step - accepting or rejecting your upbringing. Again, sounds nice - what if I don't want to be a Farmer (gaining my choice of proficiency in Nature, Survival or Animal handling) but a Scholar (gaining my choice of proficiency in Religion, History or Arcana)? More freedom for your character creation sounds awesome!!
But what if you couldn't choose? What if you lived in a "stereotypical Eurofantasy setting" - a place crawling with wild beasts, where dragons fly through the sky. Where vast stretches of the world would not be mapped, even with magic. Where, realistically, not every farmers son would speak AND READ three different languages from different species - where even THE SAME SPECIES would have a different language and culture, based on different locations and different events that have shaped their evolution. Where, realistically, without mass production and advanced preservation techniques, you would need MANY farmers to sustain a countries population, especially if they needed a sizeable force under arms to defend themselves against monsters, rival kingdoms, demons and devils, evil cults that want to destroy society, or eldritch abominations from a universe of madness. A setting where even in a civilized city you might just end up getting mugged and stabbed, and where travel between neighboring cities might take DAYS or WEEKS, not hours. Where a certain book in a library might be THE ONLY ONE in existence. Somewhere where Little Timmy might have grown up in a great big Jungle, like the native people of the Amazon or the African heartland still do.
Somewhere where people don't have all the freedoms and privileges we have today - where you would be constrained by the very world around you; how would you represent that in a mechanical way in-game?
Perhaps with a single background, ne? Something that represents what came BEFORE you decided to move on and do things differently as an adventurer.
Change can be good - many people prefer 5E over 4E. Change can be bad - there are people that don't like 5E at all. However, big and sweeping changes to a rules system - and only a rules system, because fluff and lore are as easily changeable as the pen you wield - will take time, and SHOULD NOT be handled as half-assed as WotC has done so with Tashas and the latest UA. Nearly all of what I have posted about the way STA handles things are changes I would LOVE to see in the future of D&D.
So in the end I have to ask myself - do I want this game to be hyper-realistic, historically accurate, and mimic the real world?
Just to fact-check, if I’m not mistaken, the original D&D had no ASIs for races whatsoever.
I don't recall them existing in early basic D&D, though by AD&D they existed.
Yeah, you are correct. The original basic had Races as Classes. The Race/Class System wasn’t introduced until “1e” (aka AD&D 1st Edition).
There were no ASI's in 1e either. What you rolled is what you had unless you were lucky enough to find the stats increasing tomes.
I wasn't going to post in this thread anymore, but this is simply incorrect: "As has already been noted, dwarven characters get a bonus of 1 added to their initial constitution ability, and a penalty of 1 on their charisma score due to racial characteristics." (p16 of the Official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook)
Of possible additional noteworthiness: races in AD&D had ability minimums and maximums (you had to roll well enough to even qualify for a race, and if you rolled too well the offending ability was scaled back to the racial cap); races had culturally determined abilities (dwarves had stonecunning, even if it didn't have a name back then); class options were restricted by race, and there was a level cap for race/class combos based on ability scores. We've come a fairly long way since then.
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Sorry, what I meant was ASI by level. In 5e when you get to level 4 you can choose to place +1 twice or get a Feat (if you game has them). And you gain further ASI as you gain more levels depending on class. In 1e there was no such thing attached to class and levels.
And I would NOT call beginning stat adjustment ASI. Ability Score Increase is not fundamentally correct. The races that had a bonus almost always had an associated penalty. -2 to charisma is NOT an increase.
Just to fact-check, if I’m not mistaken, the original D&D had no ASIs for races whatsoever.
I don't recall them existing in early basic D&D, though by AD&D they existed.
Yeah, you are correct. The original basic had Races as Classes. The Race/Class System wasn’t introduced until “1e” (aka AD&D 1st Edition).
There were no ASI's in 1e either. What you rolled is what you had unless you were lucky enough to find the stats increasing tomes.
I wasn't going to post in this thread anymore, but this is simply incorrect: "As has already been noted, dwarven characters get a bonus of 1 added to their initial constitution ability, and a penalty of 1 on their charisma score due to racial characteristics." (p16 of the Official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook)
Of possible additional noteworthiness: races in AD&D had ability minimums and maximums (you had to roll well enough to even qualify for a race, and if you rolled too well the offending ability was scaled back to the racial cap); races had culturally determined abilities (dwarves had stonecunning, even if it didn't have a name back then); class options were restricted by race, and there was a level cap for race/class combos based on ability scores. We've come a fairly long way since then.
They don't men Racial ASIs, they mean ASIs at levels.
Just to fact-check, if I’m not mistaken, the original D&D had no ASIs for races whatsoever.
I don't recall them existing in early basic D&D, though by AD&D they existed.
Yeah, you are correct. The original basic had Races as Classes. The Race/Class System wasn’t introduced until “1e” (aka AD&D 1st Edition).
There were no ASI's in 1e either. What you rolled is what you had unless you were lucky enough to find the stats increasing tomes.
I wasn't going to post in this thread anymore, but this is simply incorrect: "As has already been noted, dwarven characters get a bonus of 1 added to their initial constitution ability, and a penalty of 1 on their charisma score due to racial characteristics." (p16 of the Official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook)
Of possible additional noteworthiness: races in AD&D had ability minimums and maximums (you had to roll well enough to even qualify for a race, and if you rolled too well the offending ability was scaled back to the racial cap); races had culturally determined abilities (dwarves had stonecunning, even if it didn't have a name back then); class options were restricted by race, and there was a level cap for race/class combos based on ability scores. We've come a fairly long way since then.
Sorry, what I meant was ASI by level. In 5e when you get to level 4 you can choose to place +1 twice or get a Feat (if you game has them). And you gain further ASI as you gain more levels depending on class. In 1e there was no such thing attached to class and levels.
And I would NOT call beginning stat adjustment ASI. Ability Score Increase is not fundamentally correct. The races that had a bonus almost always had an associated penalty. -2 to charisma is NOT an increase.
I don't think ASIs by level are an issue for anyone in this thread. It's the racial determination that has a number of people in a tizzy, and the UA doesn't mention ASIs by level in any way. I also don't think the increase vs penalty thing matters for them, and there have been a few posts explaining bonuses and penalties are fundamentally the same thing anyway (I don't entirely agree, but ok).
The Star Trek and Star Wars (FFG version) RPGs both have species-based diversity translated into abilities at character creation. So does Shadowrun. So do most of the smaller, "indie" RPGs on my shelf that use multiple races/species. It's a lot more than 60% of the market.
Sorry, what I meant was ASI by level. In 5e when you get to level 4 you can choose to place +1 twice or get a Feat (if you game has them). And you gain further ASI as you gain more levels depending on class. In 1e there was no such thing attached to class and levels.
And I would NOT call beginning stat adjustment ASI. Ability Score Increase is not fundamentally correct. The races that had a bonus almost always had an associated penalty. -2 to charisma is NOT an increase.
If that is the case, then it really doesn't apply to this topic as it has nothing to do with the mechanics of Race.
Sorry, what I meant was ASI by level. In 5e when you get to level 4 you can choose to place +1 twice or get a Feat (if you game has them). And you gain further ASI as you gain more levels depending on class. In 1e there was no such thing attached to class and levels.
And I would NOT call beginning stat adjustment ASI. Ability Score Increase is not fundamentally correct. The races that had a bonus almost always had an associated penalty. -2 to charisma is NOT an increase.
If that is the case, then it really doesn't apply to this topic as it has nothing to do with the mechanics of Race.
No, but it has to do with the total Ability Scores which were in part determined by race during creation. It’s as tangentially related as those Star Trek posts were earlier.
Next, "This makes D&D not be D&D anymore" (or any other of the vast variety of statements basically saying this, like the checker analogy)
[sic]
If me getting to play D&D in a more unique and personalized way makes the game not feel like D&D anymore, I don't know what you think D&D is, but I'm sure I don't want to play it.
Horse poopy.
You could always play it exactly how you wanted to. That has always been the spirit of D&D. If you felt you couldn’t play the way you wanted before that’s all on you. I’m sorry you are so narrow minded that you can’t do anything that isn’t in a book somewhere.
When you start changing and/or taking away enough that the game doesn’t have the same feel anymore then it stops being D&D. Why do you want D&D to feel like Savage Lands when Savage Lands exists?!?
Now, "Double-Standard much?" (Or any similar phrase)
I get it. I honestly, sincerely get why you're upset. To an extent, I do agree with you and see your point here. ....
You misunderstand. The double standard I was referring to had nothing to do with what they wrote and everything to do with what you wrote.
You don’t want to have to houserule this stuff for your own table. It’s too much work for you and you don’t feel like you should have to houserule things to work the way you want they should just work the way you want so they have to change it from the way it works now to suite you. But I want things to work the way they did before. But you tell me that I should, to quote Yurei “JUST HOMEBREW IT!!!1!!111!!”
So you said that you shouldn’t have to do it but I should be perfectly happy to live with the same circumstance that you have decided that you’re too good for. That’s the double standard to which I referred. Your double standard.
You could always play it exactly how you wanted to. That has always been the spirit of D&D. If you felt you couldn’t play the way you wanted before that’s all on you. I’m sorry you are so narrow minded that you can’t do anything that isn’t in a book somewhere.
When you start changing and/or taking away enough that the game doesn’t have the same feel anymore then it stops being D&D. Why do you want D&D to feel like Savage Lands when Savage Lands exists?!?
...
You misunderstand. The double standard I was referring to had nothing to do with what they wrote and everything to do with what you wrote.
You don’t want to have to houserule this stuff for your own table. It’s too much work for you and you don’t feel like you should have to houserule things to work the way you want they should just work the way you want so they have to change it from the way it works now to suite you. But I want things to work the way they did before. But you tell me that I should, to quote Yurei “JUST HOMEBREW IT!!!1!!111!!”
So you said that you shouldn’t have to do it but I should be perfectly happy to live with the same circumstance that you have decided that you’re too good for. That’s the double standard to which I referred. Your double standard.
Right, let us come down to this.
Everyone is able to play D&D exactly how they want to play it, you are right. Anyone can homebrew and house rule. However, those most likely to do so, to be able to do so well, and to realise they can do so are the more experienced players. New players to the system are more likely to, initially, play RAW (or as close as they can get). When putting together my first character, I looked only at the PHB, and disregarded any variant rules. This was in spite of having watched several online D&D series and knowing that homebrew/house rules were available.
Now consider a brand new player who has suffered from hurtful practices in the past who recognises those in the rules. Being brand new, the group has said beforehand they are going to start with RAW and see how it goes (or even aren't really aware that other options exist), but this new player finds that starting point painful. There is a good chance they will just give up and not bother.
If, instead, there were clearly stated (if optional) rules which nullify (or at least moderate) the sections which the player finds painful, they are more likely to stay on and enjoy the game.
On the other side, we have experienced players who want the game to continue as it has in the past. These are exactly the types who are willing and able to homebrew or house rule things well, who have many years' experience with the game and know what they want to do. It makes sense for these people to be the ones who are left to house rule their way forward if they want to use new content "the old way".
"So you said that you shouldn’t have to do it but I should be perfectly happy to live with the same circumstance that you have decided that you’re too good for. That’s the double standard to which I referred. Your double standard."
Let's break this down.
Person One: You can play it how you want, just homebrew it.
Person Two: Well that sucks.
WotC: Rules are changing to X
Person One: That sucks.
Person Two: You can play it how you want, just homebrew it.
Person One: That not fair!
Person Two: But that is what you told me to do?!
Person One: You should be the one to do homebrew, not me!
Person Two: If it was fair for me to have to homebrew, then it is only fair that you have to home brew this time
I would love to see that when you finish it!
When players get creative.
So this is gonna be a little longer than what I normally post; grab you snacks and your favorite beverages - we are going for a ride!!
Lets start of with some light reading - both these blurbs are DIRECT QUOTES from the Core Rulebook of Star Trek Adventures. They give background information on the setting regarding species and identity in the Federation.
Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations
The United Federation of Planets enshrines the rights and freedoms of all individuals, and forbids all manner of unfair discrimination by species, ethnicity, nationality, spiritual or political beliefs (so long as those beliefs are not harmful to, or unfairly imposed upon, others), gender, sex, sexuality, or a range of other factors, such as disability or neurological variation. Within the federation, all people are given the means and opportunities to pursue their ambitions and realize their potential, and the differences between individuals are celebrated for their differing perspectives, rather than being ignored or marginalized as they may have been in the past.
To reflect this, characters in STA may be of any ethnicity, religion, sex, gender, sexuality, and so forth, without limit or restriction. Such variations will rarely have any impact upon the character in game terms, though Players may choose to make some facets of the character more prominent if they wish to draw attention to them.
Mixed-Heritage Characters
Many Starfleet Officers have parents from different species. To create characters of mixed-heritage, choose two species, one of which will be the primary species. The character is treated as a member of the primary species for attribute bonuses; most mixed-heritage characters take more after one parent than the other. The character gains the species Traits of both parent species, and may select Talents from both parent species.
Sounds nice right? Especially the first blurb will resonate with many of us. But here's the rub - that's the Federations stance. That's not the Klingons, or the Romulans, or the Remans, or the Dominions stance on things. And the Borg? Species 8472 - the Undine? You think THEY will care that your half-klingon character wanted to study archeology in spite of his klingon mothers insistence of becoming a warrior/starfleet captain? No - those species want to see your character, and all that he holds dear in life, dead. Just so that they can profit from your death in some way.
How's that for stereotyping a highly-advanced society/species?
As for the second blurb - sounds nice again, right? Here's where complexity and game design comes in. Many of us remember how weird and wacky things got in 3rd and 3.5th Edition in regards to templates. Even if you reduced it to the species in the players handbook, complexity would skyrocket. Hells, lets just take the "standard" fantasy races - humans, elfs, dwarves and gnomes. That would give us this fun list!
Then you would have to decide - does your Dwarf-Gnome look more like Dwarf or a Gnome? What traits of each parentage are stronger in him? And what about your Aarakroa-Tortle!?! At that point it would be better for the Lore and the Rules System to say: "NOPE! Only certain species can crossbreed!" or just flat out say "HAHAHAAHA!! NOPE! No-one is biologically compatible in that way!" Soooo - kinda like we have right now?
To me, the species in D&D are more like what you see in Mass Effect rather than the homogenized mass that you see in Star Trek.
Then we come to the character creation process, which looks like this:
Step 1) Choose the character's species. Gain +x to Attributes depending on species. Like choosing a species/race in D&D.
Step 2) Choose the character's Environment; this is the type of world the character was raised on. Gain + 1 to one Attribute depending on what type of world you grew up on. Part of the Background/Culture of making a D&D character.
Step 3) Choose the character's Upbringing; this is the kind of education the character had during their formative years, and the kind of influence their parents and mentors had. YOU CAN EITHER ACCEPT YOUR UPBRINGING OR REJECT IT! Gain + 1 to an Attribute if you accept, or +1 to another if you reject your upbringing. Part of the Background/Culture of making a D&D character.
Step 4) The character attends Starfleet Academy, and chooses which track of the Academy they join - Command, Operations, or Sciences. Gain + 3 to Attributes. Like choosing a class in D&D.
Again, sounds nice! Lotsa stuff to like here - this list reads like what many people in this thread have been asking for in regards to character creation. Well mostly; species still have fixed Attributes to them - Vulcans get +1 to Control, Fitness and Reason, while Klingons get +1 to Daring, Fitness, and Presence. Humans get +1 to three different Attributes of their choice - sounds familiar so far? Vulcans are logical and calculating, Klingons the brash and boisterous, and Humans are ohh so mallable in their thinking? Ohhh the bad, evil stereotyping! Whatever are we supposed to do with our Player Characters?!? We can't go against that!
Of particular note should be the 3rd step - accepting or rejecting your upbringing. Again, sounds nice - what if I don't want to be a Farmer (gaining my choice of proficiency in Nature, Survival or Animal handling) but a Scholar (gaining my choice of proficiency in Religion, History or Arcana)? More freedom for your character creation sounds awesome!!
But what if you couldn't choose? What if you lived in a "stereotypical Eurofantasy setting" - a place crawling with wild beasts, where dragons fly through the sky. Where vast stretches of the world would not be mapped, even with magic. Where, realistically, not every farmers son would speak AND READ three different languages from different species - where even THE SAME SPECIES would have a different language and culture, based on different locations and different events that have shaped their evolution. Where, realistically, without mass production and advanced preservation techniques, you would need MANY farmers to sustain a countries population, especially if they needed a sizeable force under arms to defend themselves against monsters, rival kingdoms, demons and devils, evil cults that want to destroy society, or eldritch abominations from a universe of madness. A setting where even in a civilized city you might just end up getting mugged and stabbed, and where travel between neighboring cities might take DAYS or WEEKS, not hours. Where a certain book in a library might be THE ONLY ONE in existence. Somewhere where Little Timmy might have grown up in a great big Jungle, like the native people of the Amazon or the African heartland still do.
Somewhere where people don't have all the freedoms and privileges we have today - where you would be constrained by the very world around you; how would you represent that in a mechanical way in-game?
Perhaps with a single background, ne? Something that represents what came BEFORE you decided to move on and do things differently as an adventurer.
Change can be good - many people prefer 5E over 4E. Change can be bad - there are people that don't like 5E at all. However, big and sweeping changes to a rules system - and only a rules system, because fluff and lore are as easily changeable as the pen you wield - will take time, and SHOULD NOT be handled as half-assed as WotC has done so with Tashas and the latest UA. Nearly all of what I have posted about the way STA handles things are changes I would LOVE to see in the future of D&D.
So in the end I have to ask myself - do I want this game to be hyper-realistic, historically accurate, and mimic the real world?
Or do I want some Dungeons and some Dragons?
#OpenDnD
I agree this is a big shift for a lot of people and the game as it stands now in 5e. It needs to be done right in a 6th edition.
I don't recall them existing in early basic D&D, though by AD&D they existed.
Yeah, you are correct. The original basic had Races as Classes. The Race/Class System wasn’t introduced until “1e” (aka AD&D 1st Edition).
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There were no ASI's in 1e either. What you rolled is what you had unless you were lucky enough to find the stats increasing tomes.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
There's a table of adjustments in the AD&D 1e PHB:
There were also minimum and maximum scores, separate from those adjustments.
I wasn't going to post in this thread anymore, but this is simply incorrect:
"As has already been noted, dwarven characters get a bonus of 1 added to their initial constitution ability, and a penalty of 1 on their charisma score due to racial characteristics." (p16 of the Official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook)
Of possible additional noteworthiness: races in AD&D had ability minimums and maximums (you had to roll well enough to even qualify for a race, and if you rolled too well the offending ability was scaled back to the racial cap); races had culturally determined abilities (dwarves had stonecunning, even if it didn't have a name back then); class options were restricted by race, and there was a level cap for race/class combos based on ability scores. We've come a fairly long way since then.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Sorry, what I meant was ASI by level. In 5e when you get to level 4 you can choose to place +1 twice or get a Feat (if you game has them). And you gain further ASI as you gain more levels depending on class. In 1e there was no such thing attached to class and levels.
And I would NOT call beginning stat adjustment ASI. Ability Score Increase is not fundamentally correct. The races that had a bonus almost always had an associated penalty. -2 to charisma is NOT an increase.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
They don't men Racial ASIs, they mean ASIs at levels.
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Yeah, I don't miss those days at all.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Ability Score Increases were not originally give at levels, just at creation. That started in 3rd edition along with Feats.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
I don't think ASIs by level are an issue for anyone in this thread. It's the racial determination that has a number of people in a tizzy, and the UA doesn't mention ASIs by level in any way. I also don't think the increase vs penalty thing matters for them, and there have been a few posts explaining bonuses and penalties are fundamentally the same thing anyway (I don't entirely agree, but ok).
The Star Trek and Star Wars (FFG version) RPGs both have species-based diversity translated into abilities at character creation. So does Shadowrun. So do most of the smaller, "indie" RPGs on my shelf that use multiple races/species. It's a lot more than 60% of the market.
Right, that's me back to lurking I guess.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I've been on record at least a dozen times by now that you couldn't pay me to play AD&D again, even if I had tons of fun with it back in the day.
Sorry, sorry, lurking.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
If that is the case, then it really doesn't apply to this topic as it has nothing to do with the mechanics of Race.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Same!
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
No, but it has to do with the total Ability Scores which were in part determined by race during creation. It’s as tangentially related as those Star Trek posts were earlier.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
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Horse poopy.
You could always play it exactly how you wanted to. That has always been the spirit of D&D. If you felt you couldn’t play the way you wanted before that’s all on you. I’m sorry you are so narrow minded that you can’t do anything that isn’t in a book somewhere.
When you start changing and/or taking away enough that the game doesn’t have the same feel anymore then it stops being D&D. Why do you want D&D to feel like Savage Lands when Savage Lands exists?!?
You misunderstand. The double standard I was referring to had nothing to do with what they wrote and everything to do with what you wrote.
You don’t want to have to houserule this stuff for your own table. It’s too much work for you and you don’t feel like you should have to houserule things to work the way you want they should just work the way you want so they have to change it from the way it works now to suite you. But I want things to work the way they did before. But you tell me that I should, to quote Yurei “JUST HOMEBREW IT!!!1!!111!!”
So you said that you shouldn’t have to do it but I should be perfectly happy to live with the same circumstance that you have decided that you’re too good for. That’s the double standard to which I referred. Your double standard.
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Right, let us come down to this.
Everyone is able to play D&D exactly how they want to play it, you are right. Anyone can homebrew and house rule. However, those most likely to do so, to be able to do so well, and to realise they can do so are the more experienced players. New players to the system are more likely to, initially, play RAW (or as close as they can get). When putting together my first character, I looked only at the PHB, and disregarded any variant rules. This was in spite of having watched several online D&D series and knowing that homebrew/house rules were available.
Now consider a brand new player who has suffered from hurtful practices in the past who recognises those in the rules. Being brand new, the group has said beforehand they are going to start with RAW and see how it goes (or even aren't really aware that other options exist), but this new player finds that starting point painful. There is a good chance they will just give up and not bother.
If, instead, there were clearly stated (if optional) rules which nullify (or at least moderate) the sections which the player finds painful, they are more likely to stay on and enjoy the game.
On the other side, we have experienced players who want the game to continue as it has in the past. These are exactly the types who are willing and able to homebrew or house rule things well, who have many years' experience with the game and know what they want to do. It makes sense for these people to be the ones who are left to house rule their way forward if they want to use new content "the old way".
"So you said that you shouldn’t have to do it but I should be perfectly happy to live with the same circumstance that you have decided that you’re too good for. That’s the double standard to which I referred. Your double standard."
Let's break this down.
Person One: You can play it how you want, just homebrew it.
Person Two: Well that sucks.
WotC: Rules are changing to X
Person One: That sucks.
Person Two: You can play it how you want, just homebrew it.
Person One: That not fair!
Person Two: But that is what you told me to do?!
Person One: You should be the one to do homebrew, not me!
Person Two: If it was fair for me to have to homebrew, then it is only fair that you have to home brew this time
Person One: DoUbLe StAnDaRds MuCh!!!
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