Then it should be really easy to point where the rules are that back up your argument, rather than just insulting people and insisting they're wrong. Just because someone doesn't agree with you does not mean that they are being illogical and unreasonable.
The same way that damaged caused by an extra attack from haste is not considered damage from a spell, the benefits of a feat granted by a race aren't considered racial abilities.
This isn't really a comparable example; if a spell lets you make an extra weapon attack then that attack follows the normal rules for a weapon attack that you already have. This is the case even for green-flame blade as the spell itself only deals the additional damage that it defines. The weapon attacks exist and can be made without casting (or even having) either spell.
A racial trait that gives you a feat, gives you immediate benefits as part of that feat and trait, which can include skill proficiencies; all the Reborn rule cares about is that you have skill proficiencies as a result of your race, it doesn't even mention racial traits, so it doesn't matter how you get them. In fact it mentions "elements" which aren't defined anywhere in the rules at all.
And yet again, this issue equally applies to half-elves, who have the choice to either have Skill Versatility (two skill proficiencies) or another trait, which is either good or bad for them if they become Reborn. A variant human's feat is just a different way of implementing the same thing, a choice of options, with the exact same impacts and problems for becoming Reborn.
You are trying to argue variant human must be uniquely handled due to the feat, but there are no rules supporting that a feat granted by a race is somehow independent from that race, the fact that you wouldn't have it if you chose a different race suggests otherwise. The skill proficiency/proficiencies the feat grants are granted by the trait because without the trait you do not have them.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Then it should be really easy to point where the rules are that back up your argument, rather than just insulting people and insisting they're wrong. Just because someone doesn't agree with you does not mean that they are being illogical and unreasonable.
We would, but there isn't a page that just lists all the ways the rules don't work because that is also not the way rules work. You have the positive claim "that a skill granted by a feat granted by a racial trait is the same as a skill granted by a racial trait," you have to point to a rule that says that.
Meanwhile in the actual rules, feats have to explicitly say when a spell they grant counts as being granted by a class even though feats are granted by class features. And even if argued that spells have different rules, that still isn't a point in your favor.
Also, I asked a pretty important question that didn't get fully answered:
I'm glad you brought up the prodigy feat. Lineages' ancestral legacy doesn't let you keep tool proficiencies granted by race. Does that mean you lose only part of the feat, lose the whole feat, or keep the whole feat?
Do you keep the whole prodigy feat (including tool proficiency), do you keep the feat but lose the tool proficiency, or do you lose the feat but keep the skill proficiencies? If the first, ancestral legacy is doing more than RAW. If the second, does that mean the feat is effectively wasted since you can't take the feat again to reclaim the tool proficiency? And if the last, does that mean variant human reborn breaks feats by letting you take them twice?
Options 1 and 3 both make lineages stronger than RAW, option 2 might be a bit of a slap to the player, but honestly wouldn't even be one of the top ancestry picks available.
You have the positive claim "that a skill granted by a feat granted by a racial trait is the same as a skill granted by a racial trait," you have to point to a rule that says that.
If you remove the racial trait, you lose the skill proficiency, ergo the proficiency is part of the trait; it doesn't matter that there's a feat involved. If you have a wallet with $100 in it, then you have $100. If you give that wallet to someone else then you have given them $100 (and the wallet). What the rule in question is telling you to do is effectively "keep the $100", it doesn't matter that you have to ditch the wallet.
This is different from examples such as an attack made via haste which are more like a wallet containing a cheque for $100; having that wallet grants you the potential to have $100, but you have to cash the cheque to get it. If the money exists, it exists separately from the cheque (the actual money is in a bank account).
Might be torturing the metaphor a bit at this point, but the D&D rules are idiomatic rather than legalese, and this is the best metaphor I could think of.
Meanwhile in the actual rules, feats have to explicitly say when a spell they grant counts as being granted by a class even though feats are granted by class features. And even if argued that spells have different rules, that still isn't a point in your favor.
Feats have to say when a spell counts as being granted by a class because other rules depend upon the class that granted the spell, and you can take feats that grant spells for a class other than your own, e.g- a Bard taking Magic Initiate (Warlock) gains the spells, but can't cast them using their own Spellcasting feature.
Class Ability Score Increase features are also not the only way to gain feats; we're literally talking about a feat granted by a race. 😝
Also, I asked a pretty important question that didn't get fully answered:
I'm glad you brought up the prodigy feat. Lineages' ancestral legacy doesn't let you keep tool proficiencies granted by race. Does that mean you lose only part of the feat, lose the whole feat, or keep the whole feat?
Do you keep the whole prodigy feat (including tool proficiency), do you keep the feat but lose the tool proficiency, or do you lose the feat but keep the skill proficiencies? If the first, ancestral legacy is doing more than RAW. If the second, does that mean the feat is effectively wasted since you can't take the feat again to reclaim the tool proficiency? And if the last, does that mean variant human reborn breaks feats by letting you take them twice?
I specifically answered this; you keep the skill proficiency (because the Reborn rule tells you to) but you would lose everything else, including the feat. This is no different to keeping the skill proficiency from a racial trait in spite of losing the racial trait itself.
And you can't take Prodigy twice by becoming Reborn because you are no longer human so no longer meet the prerequisites for it. You could theoretically take Skill Expert twice but the second time will be costing you one of your ability score increases.
Options 1 and 3 both make lineages stronger than RAW, option 2 might be a bit of a slap to the player, but honestly wouldn't even be one of the top ancestry picks available.
The issue here isn't balance; plenty of people (including myself) have pointed out that the rule is badly written, and can easily be rewritten to make it properly balanced. And as I've already said many, many times now, the exact same issue applies to half-elves who can swap Skill Versatility for another trait; if they do then they lose out when they become Reborn compared to a half-elf that doesn't.
As ThriKeenWarrior suggested the rule can easily be rewritten to simply grant two skill proficiencies, with the option of swapping one for certain features (such as climb speed, swim speed etc.), this way every Lineage is equal in all cases.
This is part of why the answer I support is "ask your DM", because we're not talking about a well written, balanced rule, and your DM has to be involved in a character's transition to Reborn because it's not something that the player can simply choose to do whenever they wish. Your DM decides if you can, and they decide on the specifics in any case that is ambiguous or affects balance within their campaign.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
- in-person campaign that doesn't use DDB, so there's no tidy tracking of what choices were made in character creation and on level ups - VHuman rogue character becomes Reborn at a high level - persnickety DM forces them to try and untangle which proficiencies/expertises came from where. "Yes, you took Expertise in Deception at 6th level, but you took Deception originally as part of Skill Expert, so... uhhh"
This whole debate seems kind of silly to me. Variant humans get one skill and one feat, and no additional movement. If you choose Skill Expert (or Prodigy), it grants you one additional proficiency. Reborn gives you two skill proficiencies if you don't keep any racial movement trait, and you have none to keep. Last time I checked, one plus one equals two
At least shift the argument to a VHuman who chose Skilled as their feat... then it's four skills versus two, so there's something worth fighting over
For the record, as a DM I would take the "just keep your proficiencies" approach to a character that became Reborn during the campaign regardless of how many skills were affected, unless there was a specific reason not to -- i.e. character's soul has been dumped into a different body or something. DDB would make that impossible though if you actually switched the race on the character sheet. I tend to agree with Haravikk here that there is no actual RAW answer, or even an RAI. This is well into "you're on your own, DM" territory given all the optional rules from different books that have been cobbled together
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Reborn states that you keep any Skill Proficiencies that are part of your race.
And where does the variant human's feat come from? That's right, their race! So if it grants a skill proficiency it is also a skill proficiency from the race, because without the racial trait of that race you wouldn't have the skill proficiency, it is therefore a racial skill proficiency.
The Reborn rule refers to "elements" of your race, including skill proficiencies, it sets precisely zero other conditions about how exactly those skill proficiencies were granted; it does not refer exclusively to racial traits, nor imply that it should, and even if it did the "feat" trait is also a racial trait.
Is "You gain one feat of your choice." listed under skill proficiencies? No?
Neither is the skill proficiency you highlighted; that is found under a racial trait named "skills", so it's a racial trait granting a skill proficiency. A variant human's free feat is obtained from the racial trait "feat", if that feat includes a skill proficiency then you have obtained a skill proficiency from the racial trait named "feat". In both cases, you have obtained a skill proficiency from a racial trait.
Both are skill proficiencies of your race, because without the race you would not have them.
I am running out of ways to explain this; the Rules As Intended is absolutely debatable, that the rule could have been written better goes without saying, but the skill proficiency is also clearly being granted by the race, because that's how you obtained it; even if you don't agree that this is how it's supposed to work, it should be possible to see why this is the case.
That people don't agree is another part of why my position is "ask your DM", because they are there to make these kinds of decisions.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
The crux of this debate is adjudicating what counts as the source of the skill proficiency and the Reborn lineage provides no guidance on this. You can either use an inheritance rational or a proximate cause rational to decide. The only evidence I could find on which rational the writers use was the tweet JC gave regarding critical hits and Witch Bolt. This example is an extreme situation and so is tenuous evidence at best. If it had been about how to deal with critical hits on attacks that also do additional damage on a failed save it would have been a lot more relevant. This is still a different situation though and just because the rules work one way in one area doesn't mean they work that way everywhere (For example, do spells that create fire produce light even if the text of the spell doesn't explicitly say so?).
With One D&D it seems like they are doing a better job giving things rigorous definitions, like the term d20 test and the new Hidden condition. I expect this is because WotC is now trying to make a VTT and having to actually code the rules they write themselves. Maybe if they carry the Reborn lineage forward to One D&D we will learn which rational WotC uses for this situation.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Then it should be really easy to point where the rules are that back up your argument, rather than just insulting people and insisting they're wrong. Just because someone doesn't agree with you does not mean that they are being illogical and unreasonable.
This isn't really a comparable example; if a spell lets you make an extra weapon attack then that attack follows the normal rules for a weapon attack that you already have. This is the case even for green-flame blade as the spell itself only deals the additional damage that it defines. The weapon attacks exist and can be made without casting (or even having) either spell.
A racial trait that gives you a feat, gives you immediate benefits as part of that feat and trait, which can include skill proficiencies; all the Reborn rule cares about is that you have skill proficiencies as a result of your race, it doesn't even mention racial traits, so it doesn't matter how you get them. In fact it mentions "elements" which aren't defined anywhere in the rules at all.
And yet again, this issue equally applies to half-elves, who have the choice to either have Skill Versatility (two skill proficiencies) or another trait, which is either good or bad for them if they become Reborn. A variant human's feat is just a different way of implementing the same thing, a choice of options, with the exact same impacts and problems for becoming Reborn.
You are trying to argue variant human must be uniquely handled due to the feat, but there are no rules supporting that a feat granted by a race is somehow independent from that race, the fact that you wouldn't have it if you chose a different race suggests otherwise. The skill proficiency/proficiencies the feat grants are granted by the trait because without the trait you do not have them.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
We would, but there isn't a page that just lists all the ways the rules don't work because that is also not the way rules work. You have the positive claim "that a skill granted by a feat granted by a racial trait is the same as a skill granted by a racial trait," you have to point to a rule that says that.
Meanwhile in the actual rules, feats have to explicitly say when a spell they grant counts as being granted by a class even though feats are granted by class features. And even if argued that spells have different rules, that still isn't a point in your favor.
Also, I asked a pretty important question that didn't get fully answered:
Do you keep the whole prodigy feat (including tool proficiency), do you keep the feat but lose the tool proficiency, or do you lose the feat but keep the skill proficiencies? If the first, ancestral legacy is doing more than RAW. If the second, does that mean the feat is effectively wasted since you can't take the feat again to reclaim the tool proficiency? And if the last, does that mean variant human reborn breaks feats by letting you take them twice?
Options 1 and 3 both make lineages stronger than RAW, option 2 might be a bit of a slap to the player, but honestly wouldn't even be one of the top ancestry picks available.
If you remove the racial trait, you lose the skill proficiency, ergo the proficiency is part of the trait; it doesn't matter that there's a feat involved. If you have a wallet with $100 in it, then you have $100. If you give that wallet to someone else then you have given them $100 (and the wallet). What the rule in question is telling you to do is effectively "keep the $100", it doesn't matter that you have to ditch the wallet.
This is different from examples such as an attack made via haste which are more like a wallet containing a cheque for $100; having that wallet grants you the potential to have $100, but you have to cash the cheque to get it. If the money exists, it exists separately from the cheque (the actual money is in a bank account).
Might be torturing the metaphor a bit at this point, but the D&D rules are idiomatic rather than legalese, and this is the best metaphor I could think of.
Feats have to say when a spell counts as being granted by a class because other rules depend upon the class that granted the spell, and you can take feats that grant spells for a class other than your own, e.g- a Bard taking Magic Initiate (Warlock) gains the spells, but can't cast them using their own Spellcasting feature.
Class Ability Score Increase features are also not the only way to gain feats; we're literally talking about a feat granted by a race. 😝
I specifically answered this; you keep the skill proficiency (because the Reborn rule tells you to) but you would lose everything else, including the feat. This is no different to keeping the skill proficiency from a racial trait in spite of losing the racial trait itself.
And you can't take Prodigy twice by becoming Reborn because you are no longer human so no longer meet the prerequisites for it. You could theoretically take Skill Expert twice but the second time will be costing you one of your ability score increases.
The issue here isn't balance; plenty of people (including myself) have pointed out that the rule is badly written, and can easily be rewritten to make it properly balanced. And as I've already said many, many times now, the exact same issue applies to half-elves who can swap Skill Versatility for another trait; if they do then they lose out when they become Reborn compared to a half-elf that doesn't.
As ThriKeenWarrior suggested the rule can easily be rewritten to simply grant two skill proficiencies, with the option of swapping one for certain features (such as climb speed, swim speed etc.), this way every Lineage is equal in all cases.
This is part of why the answer I support is "ask your DM", because we're not talking about a well written, balanced rule, and your DM has to be involved in a character's transition to Reborn because it's not something that the player can simply choose to do whenever they wish. Your DM decides if you can, and they decide on the specifics in any case that is ambiguous or affects balance within their campaign.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
I'm imagining the following scenario:
- in-person campaign that doesn't use DDB, so there's no tidy tracking of what choices were made in character creation and on level ups
- VHuman rogue character becomes Reborn at a high level
- persnickety DM forces them to try and untangle which proficiencies/expertises came from where. "Yes, you took Expertise in Deception at 6th level, but you took Deception originally as part of Skill Expert, so... uhhh"
This whole debate seems kind of silly to me. Variant humans get one skill and one feat, and no additional movement. If you choose Skill Expert (or Prodigy), it grants you one additional proficiency. Reborn gives you two skill proficiencies if you don't keep any racial movement trait, and you have none to keep. Last time I checked, one plus one equals two
At least shift the argument to a VHuman who chose Skilled as their feat... then it's four skills versus two, so there's something worth fighting over
For the record, as a DM I would take the "just keep your proficiencies" approach to a character that became Reborn during the campaign regardless of how many skills were affected, unless there was a specific reason not to -- i.e. character's soul has been dumped into a different body or something. DDB would make that impossible though if you actually switched the race on the character sheet. I tend to agree with Haravikk here that there is no actual RAW answer, or even an RAI. This is well into "you're on your own, DM" territory given all the optional rules from different books that have been cobbled together
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
And where does the variant human's feat come from? That's right, their race! So if it grants a skill proficiency it is also a skill proficiency from the race, because without the racial trait of that race you wouldn't have the skill proficiency, it is therefore a racial skill proficiency.
The Reborn rule refers to "elements" of your race, including skill proficiencies, it sets precisely zero other conditions about how exactly those skill proficiencies were granted; it does not refer exclusively to racial traits, nor imply that it should, and even if it did the "feat" trait is also a racial trait.
Neither is the skill proficiency you highlighted; that is found under a racial trait named "skills", so it's a racial trait granting a skill proficiency. A variant human's free feat is obtained from the racial trait "feat", if that feat includes a skill proficiency then you have obtained a skill proficiency from the racial trait named "feat". In both cases, you have obtained a skill proficiency from a racial trait.
Both are skill proficiencies of your race, because without the race you would not have them.
I am running out of ways to explain this; the Rules As Intended is absolutely debatable, that the rule could have been written better goes without saying, but the skill proficiency is also clearly being granted by the race, because that's how you obtained it; even if you don't agree that this is how it's supposed to work, it should be possible to see why this is the case.
That people don't agree is another part of why my position is "ask your DM", because they are there to make these kinds of decisions.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
The crux of this debate is adjudicating what counts as the source of the skill proficiency and the Reborn lineage provides no guidance on this. You can either use an inheritance rational or a proximate cause rational to decide. The only evidence I could find on which rational the writers use was the tweet JC gave regarding critical hits and Witch Bolt. This example is an extreme situation and so is tenuous evidence at best. If it had been about how to deal with critical hits on attacks that also do additional damage on a failed save it would have been a lot more relevant. This is still a different situation though and just because the rules work one way in one area doesn't mean they work that way everywhere (For example, do spells that create fire produce light even if the text of the spell doesn't explicitly say so?).
With One D&D it seems like they are doing a better job giving things rigorous definitions, like the term d20 test and the new Hidden condition. I expect this is because WotC is now trying to make a VTT and having to actually code the rules they write themselves. Maybe if they carry the Reborn lineage forward to One D&D we will learn which rational WotC uses for this situation.