I'm disappointed with the rules for half-races. Pick a race and pretend you're half something else? That's just flavoring and we could already do that.
Agreed, I wish these were more crunchy, especially if Half-Elf and Half-Orc are now being discontinued. I like the idea of hybrids in concept, especially for homebrew settings, but right now the rules for them are so barebones in this iteration of the playtest.
They're close; if they let us mix and match a little bit more than just the physical attributes, it would be better. Let us mix up the abilities too. I like the versatility, but let it be more. Let me make a Half-Evlen Ardling, and let me mix and match the racial spell lists.
With each patch note like that I feel that wizards of the coast are making races less unique. Maybe the excuse is people making builds that tell you "pick this to get something-something" and Wotc thought there would be less for roleplay. But still there are races that are optimal in their way of choosing class and there are some who have less choice like goliaths and pure ocs usually being barbarian and fighters.
Also if that will come out there will be "flavoring" like "I want to play as gorilla" or something.
I looked through the races in this document, and I can still see distinction among them. If we were talking about Custom Lineage, I'd understand what you mean, but this isn't it.
On another note, this caught my attention after I gave it a second look-over:
Humans are as diverse in appearance as the people of Earth, and they have many gods. Scholars dispute the origin of humanity, but one of the earliest known human gatherings is said to have occurred in Sigil, the torus-shaped city at the center of the multiverse and the place where the Common tongue was born. From there, humans could have spread to every corner of the multiverse, bringing Sigil’s cosmopolitanism with them.
The Lady of Pain being the creator of humanity confirmed?
Thoughts so far. I feel underwhelmed by the halfling. We have lost all of the halfling subraces and lost things like Hiding behind larger creatures and the poison resistance of Lightfoot vs Stout. It seems like halfling is just missing something here to really get it to stand out besides the luck thing especially when other races are getting things like spells, flight, tremor sense and limited dash bonus actions. Next Human, I do not understand the need for "you gain the skilled feat or another 1st level feat of your choice". It should probably just read "you gain a 1st level feat of your choice". Waiting for class playtest material, but I suspect that there should be 4 spell lists. Divine, Arcane, Primal + ????. The Divine = Paladin, Cleric, Primal= Druid, Ranger, Arcane = Wizard, Sorc, Artificer or Warlock. And the final ??? I feel could be Bard and either Warlock or Artificer.
Loss of crit on sneak attack means rogue is going to need a lot of help. Though since Sneak attack damage type is the same as the weapon, just making it "additional weapon damage" could allow it to classify for crits and still allow rogues to keep their big crit energy which I am hoping for.
Initial worries are Inspiration system may be getting utilized in too many features.
I think the way they simplified the half-race options is a good way to go. It also opens the possibility of doing whatever two parents we want, which is good in my opinion. Also, it was obvious that they are going to make full Orc a playable race now, which I'm totally in!!
Another think I like a lot is the inclusion of the new Ardling in contraposition of the Tiefling. It gives two things in one!! The celestial/good planetouched option (never undestand the tiefling inclusion but not the aasimar one in previous edition) AND the animal-folk options. I like the idea of having just one animal-folk related, not 200-races of different options. I would have made the shifter as the option to go, BUT, reading the lore I always thinked that the aasimar were a little bored compared with the tieflings, now I see the ardling much more interesting options: a hound-ardling deamon hunter, I could want to play one for sure!! And love that cats are in the chaotic good, they truly are, hehehehe.
Finally, with the race selection, is it fixed?? Could it include something more?? If not, I would ask the developers to consider include the Genasi as base option. For completition, that way we have Upper-planes options, Down-plane options AND elemental-planes options right from the start. For me, that would be the perfect core races options :)
Man, I'm not sure how I feel about expanding critical success to skill checks. If you were a DM and someone asked to attempt something ridiculous, you could give them a roll and just set the DC stupidly high so they'd always fail. But with these rules, you kind of have to say "No, you can't do that" to avoid someone jumping a 50 ft chasm in a single bound, or other such 'impossible' feats because now there's always a 5% chance they'll succeed. Unless I've read the rules wrong, of course.
I also am not sure how to feel about removing critical hits from spells. One the one hand, most spells were saving throws anyway, so it doesn't matter as much and it helps provide some bonus for martials; one the other hand spells with spell attack rolls were already kinda bad in comparison to saving throw spells, so removing their ability to crit makes them even worse. Are they removing Spell Attack rolls from the game entirely?
The rules say that critics do not override the normal limits of the action. So if you couldn't do it, there's no crit worth it. You should no longer roll first, because there is no chance of success.
As for restricting crits to weapon damage, that seems fine to me. The damage of the weapon is much more controlled than that of spells, sneak attack, smites, etc... There were very abusive combos, like the rogue elf with Elven Acurracy (and if you add a level in hexblade, it's hilarious).
By the way, does it seem that way to me, or do monsters no longer crit? RAW it seems to me that it is so, that the critics are only for the player characters. I also think it's a good decision.
What I don't really like is the removal of class-specific spell lists. Although that remains to be seen. Perhaps the classes expand the list with exclusive spells. I say this because one of the wizard's advantages was his spell list. And another thing that I don't quite like is that agathys armor is no longer a warlock exclusive spell. It's not something that bothers me much, but I liked that it was only for warlocks.
Background-linked ASIS makes much more sense to me than race-linked free ASIS. I understand the reasons for making the ASIS variants, but then justify them with the background. That is something that I have been asking for in the surveys for a long time, so I imagine that I was not the only one.
I also really like the change in humans. There is no variant human anymore (which was really the standard because the other one was not used by anyone at all because it was crap). And the feat is limited to a level 1 feat. I like that, I like that a lot.
In general, except for specific things like gnomes having advantage on any int save (there will be some), wis and char, I like the changes in the races.
These changes give me a very good feeling, and I think they fix some things that had gotten out of hand. Especially the critics.
I'm generally in favour of the background and feat changes, they seem mostly good; couple of minor tweaks I may suggest it seems good overall.
The inspiration changes I'm not in favour of at all though; tying it to natural 20's favours characters that roll more attacks, and rewards luckier players for being lucky (they've already got a critical hit, so they're not the ones who need help). And it doesn't fix the main problem which is that inspiration as written has never been a good bonus; single use advantage declared before a roll is so easily wasted so either nobody uses it, or half the time they regret doing so. Most groups I've played treat it as a re-roll instead, which is better, but I'd rather see it be become something really important like an automatic success (minimal, so never a critical hit).
Even having it trigger on 1's as more of a bounce back mechanic wouldn't really work, as control casters spend a lot of their time forcing their enemies to roll instead of themselves. I'd much rather see it become a mixed "bad luck" and "good roleplay" mechanic, e.g- if a player casts a big spell and it fails, the DM can give them a point of inspiration (to do better), or if they engage in some good roleplay that can't be rewarded directly (by not asking them to roll a check), give them inspiration as a deferred success.
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To make a point according to the play test material the Nat 20 gain an inspiration is IN ADDITION to the current way of getting inspiration. The GM can always still give it for good roleplay moments. Also you can give inspiration to others if you have yours already so the players rolling super well can give it to the player who has been less lucky. Beyond that I completely agree with the advantage after the roll suggestion the same way Lucky feat works.
getting rid of crits for spell attacks seems unbalanced to me. 10% relative nerf to casters. you get inspiration but no crit... makes the game less fun for casters. critical roll... who cares... youre a caster...
i would say the game might move faster, but people will still crit fish since you get inspiration.
I get nerfing guiding bolt crits, or sneak dice... but nerfing anything that isnt a weapon or a fist seems like an overcorrection.
Agreed on getting rid of crits for spell attacks. As a DM, I'd override this rule anyway and have crits occur on spells as well. But I do like that the playtest rule negates the paladin ability to add on Smite after a crit is scored. That always irked me.
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Shawn D. Robertson
"Deride not the differing views of others, for it is in thoughtful and considerate conversation we find our greatest friends."
By the way, does it seem that way to me, or do monsters no longer crit? RAW it seems to me that it is so, that the critics are only for the player characters. I also think it's a good decision.
Monster attacks are listed in stat blocks as "melee weapon attacks" when it comes to horns, claws, bites, tentacles, and all of that sort of stuff, so they'd still crit under the new rules. Just spell or spell-like abilities would no longer have a chance. At least based upon what we're seeing in the UA doc. I have a feeling spell attacks that require attack rolls will be (or is already intended to be) allowed to achieve crits as well. Just my DM opinion though.
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Shawn D. Robertson
"Deride not the differing views of others, for it is in thoughtful and considerate conversation we find our greatest friends."
I'm disappointed with the rules for half-races. Pick a race and pretend you're half something else? That's just flavoring and we could already do that.
Agreed, I wish these were more crunchy, especially if Half-Elf and Half-Orc are now being discontinued. I like the idea of hybrids in concept, especially for homebrew settings, but right now the rules for them are so barebones in this iteration of the playtest.
They're close; if they let us mix and match a little bit more than just the physical attributes, it would be better. Let us mix up the abilities too. I like the versatility, but let it be more. Let me make a Half-Evlen Ardling, and let me mix and match the racial spell lists.
I agree with all of these statements, BUT ... I can see why they wrote these bits as they are. They wanted it to be more about ease of creation and flavor, not so much about mechanics. I like crunchy rules too. A LOT. But there is something to be said for accessibility for new players. AND ... many of the DMs among us will just allow players to do things exactly like your suggestion about mixing the racial spell lists anyway. Problem solved!
As far as mixing abilities from different races during the creation of a hybrid; I think the reason they didn't do that was balance. Some racial abilities are no-doubt weighted more or less useful, and it would be easily abusable if we let players choose which ones they wanted to mix and match. Not saying it would be nutty overpowered, but it would be easily abusable.
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Shawn D. Robertson
"Deride not the differing views of others, for it is in thoughtful and considerate conversation we find our greatest friends."
I'm disappointed with the rules for half-races. Pick a race and pretend you're half something else? That's just flavoring and we could already do that.
This is true, I feel, and I personally agree. However, I do think it's a good thing to include in the rules, so newer players (or players who don't always think outside the box) will be inspired to create some truly unique characters. Like you said, we could already do this, but there's no harm in reminding players of the possibilities. And also, they did add some mechanical choices in the need to decide which race you get your racial abilities from.
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Shawn D. Robertson
"Deride not the differing views of others, for it is in thoughtful and considerate conversation we find our greatest friends."
To make a point according to the play test material the Nat 20 gain an inspiration is IN ADDITION to the current way of getting inspiration. The GM can always still give it for good roleplay moments. Also you can give inspiration to others if you have yours already so the players rolling super well can give it to the player who has been less lucky. Beyond that I completely agree with the advantage after the roll suggestion the same way Lucky feat works.
Ah, I missed that then, but my point on it rewarding already luckier players still stands; it overwhelmingly favours characters that can roll a lot of d20's, especially attacks. A control or support character may spend multiple rounds without rolling a single d20, so they may never gain inspiration this way; it will either disproportionately benefit some characters and not others, or force the DM to dish it out extra inspiration for purely mechanical reasons (i.e- being a good player using support abilities). I just don't think it's a good mechanism at at all, it needs a more fundamental redesign.
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.
By the way, does it seem that way to me, or do monsters no longer crit? RAW it seems to me that it is so, that the critics are only for the player characters. I also think it's a good decision.
Monster attacks are listed in stat blocks as "melee weapon attacks" when it comes to horns, claws, bites, tentacles, and all of that sort of stuff, so they'd still crit under the new rules. Just spell or spell-like abilities would no longer have a chance. At least based upon what we're seeing in the UA doc. I have a feeling spell attacks that require attack rolls will be (or is already intended to be) allowed to achieve crits as well. Just my DM opinion though.
I think this is incorrect. The playtest says “Weapons and Unarmed Strikes* have a special feature for player characters: Critical Hits.” I think this is pretty clear that they’re not intended for NPCs, which would include monsters.
Races in Dungeons & Dragons represent different species of creature, not different flavors of a single species. Races MUST reflect their inherent differences in deviations from the game rule 'average' (aka Humans).
Races have racially unique traits. Externally visible ones like coloration, fur, hide, carapace, manipulation appendages (hands, fingers, claws, webbing), strength, alacrity, and so on. Internal ones like multiple hearts, digestive systems capable of deriving nutrients from different sources, acid for blood...
Humans are not as fast as Cheetahs or Peregrine Falcons. Humans are not as strong as chimpanzees or rhinos. Humans cannot smell as well as cats or dogs. Humans cannot breathe water as do fish and octopi. Humans cannot derive nutrients from soil as oak trees or fungi. Humans do not have the same traits as orcs, elves, dwarves, ogres, dragons, or any of the other non-human races. Period.
While attempting to entirely move bonuses from races to backgrounds in an interesting consideration... for a different RPG where all characters are of the same race/species. The Call of Cthulhu system shows a good representation of a skill based system where this would be appropriate.
Please stop trying to bring real-world socio-political issues into an escapist game. If you are looking to appease a certain crowd, a search & replace should do it. s/Race/Species - now you are out of their crosshairs.
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"I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members."
I would like to have an optional rule to make race selection matter more in the long run. Perhaps a racial ability unlocked at 10th level or so, that you could swap for a class ability, or racial feats with a level requirement.
I agree that inspiration is skewed to favour characters that roll a lot, that needs to be balanced.
I am ok with no crits on spells, because many of them already do a lot of damage and often at a distance, plus AOE and other effects. But no crits for enemies? It makes it feel even more like the PCs live in a sheltered world. I like that my players weigh the risks of staying in range of an enemy that can attack 2 or 3 times. It just feels more fair, like everyone in the world follows the same rules, and the better strategists and more creative players are rewarded.
I like the revisions to backgrounds. The ASIs being tied to them really doesn't matter since we're building them as a package so we'd just chuck them where we need them anyway.
For example a High Elf spy. +1 to dex, con, and cha. Proficient in persuasion and deception. Tool proficiency, thieves' tools. Language, thieves' cant.
Equipment: dark common clothes, two daggers, thieves' tools. pouch. burglar's pack. 4 gold
Starting feat: magic initiate (arcane) (he is a high elf after all)
Your character's career was likely close to an arcane trickster, mixing magic and personality to seek out secrets.
However he becomes a Warlock and that is where our campaign starts.
Honestly a character who starts with three cantrips and a level 1 spell would be considered a fairly powerful magic user among the general population.
It's also good that if you start with proficiency in a tool set you can buy the matching equipment, like taking proficiency in thieves' tools and buying some thieves' tools. It was a little annoying that you had to wait till you found a shop to get them in 5th. Why would you have a career using them, then forget to bring them to the fight?
Races in Dungeons & Dragons represent different species of creature, not different flavors of a single species. Races MUST reflect their inherent differences in deviations from the game rule 'average' (aka Humans).
Races have racially unique traits. Externally visible ones like coloration, fur, hide, carapace, manipulation appendages (hands, fingers, claws, webbing), strength, alacrity, and so on. Internal ones like multiple hearts, digestive systems capable of deriving nutrients from different sources, acid for blood...
Humans are not as fast as Cheetahs or Peregrine Falcons. Humans are not as strong as chimpanzees or rhinos. Humans cannot smell as well as cats or dogs. Humans cannot breathe water as do fish and octopi. Humans cannot derive nutrients from soil as oak trees or fungi. Humans do not have the same traits as orcs, elves, dwarves, ogres, dragons, or any of the other non-human races. Period.
While attempting to entirely move bonuses from races to backgrounds in an interesting consideration... for a different RPG where all characters are of the same race/species. The Call of Cthulhu system shows a good representation of a skill based system where this would be appropriate.
Please stop trying to bring real-world socio-political issues into an escapist game. If you are looking to appease a certain crowd, a search & replace should do it. s/Race/Species - now you are out of their crosshairs.
And yet it's always the ability score increases that are fixated upon with these comments like that and not literally anything else the races can do. Looking at the races presented in this UA, only the ardling has resistance to radiant damage, can fly, or use healing magic innately. Only the halfling can slip through larger creatures without any effort or use luck. Only the dragonborn can use a breath weapon. Gnomes have a built-in intellect fortress (without the psychic resistance), and dwarves have poison resistance, can use tremorsense, and innately have tool proficiencies.
Any time this race/species argument is brought up, the position arguing against the direction it's going hyper-focuses on the ASIs, as if that's the only thing the different races are being played for.
It seems like they are nerfing critical hits, too. They are only applicable to weapon or unarmed strikes, and only roll the damage die for the weapon or unarmed strike. So no spell crits and no sneak attack massive crit damage.
I think it's important to recall a basic precept of D&D. Unless the rules specifically state you can't do something....... you can do it.
Nowhere in the playtest rules does it say that Critical Hits can't be applied to sneak attack, or smite. Spellcasters have had the advantage in damage for quite some time. And though this may be an attempt to boost melee damage the rules doesn't specifically say crits can't be applied to spells.
It seems like they are nerfing critical hits, too. They are only applicable to weapon or unarmed strikes, and only roll the damage die for the weapon or unarmed strike. So no spell crits and no sneak attack massive crit damage.
I think it's important to recall a basic precept of D&D. Unless the rules specifically state you can't do something....... you can do it.
Nowhere in the playtest rules does it say that Critical Hits can't be applied to sneak attack, or smite. Spellcasters have had the advantage in damage for quite some time. And though this may be an attempt to boost melee damage the rules doesn't specifically say crits can't be applied to spells.
This is backwards. The rules tell you what you can do. Almost all rules are telling you what your options are. The rule presented here tells you that you roll the weapon’s dice only. “The rules don’t say I can’t” is not the game telling you what you can do.
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They're close; if they let us mix and match a little bit more than just the physical attributes, it would be better. Let us mix up the abilities too. I like the versatility, but let it be more. Let me make a Half-Evlen Ardling, and let me mix and match the racial spell lists.
I looked through the races in this document, and I can still see distinction among them. If we were talking about Custom Lineage, I'd understand what you mean, but this isn't it.
On another note, this caught my attention after I gave it a second look-over:
The Lady of Pain being the creator of humanity confirmed?
Thoughts so far. I feel underwhelmed by the halfling. We have lost all of the halfling subraces and lost things like Hiding behind larger creatures and the poison resistance of Lightfoot vs Stout. It seems like halfling is just missing something here to really get it to stand out besides the luck thing especially when other races are getting things like spells, flight, tremor sense and limited dash bonus actions. Next Human, I do not understand the need for "you gain the skilled feat or another 1st level feat of your choice". It should probably just read "you gain a 1st level feat of your choice". Waiting for class playtest material, but I suspect that there should be 4 spell lists. Divine, Arcane, Primal + ????. The Divine = Paladin, Cleric, Primal= Druid, Ranger, Arcane = Wizard, Sorc, Artificer or Warlock. And the final ??? I feel could be Bard and either Warlock or Artificer.
Loss of crit on sneak attack means rogue is going to need a lot of help. Though since Sneak attack damage type is the same as the weapon, just making it "additional weapon damage" could allow it to classify for crits and still allow rogues to keep their big crit energy which I am hoping for.
Initial worries are Inspiration system may be getting utilized in too many features.
I think the way they simplified the half-race options is a good way to go. It also opens the possibility of doing whatever two parents we want, which is good in my opinion. Also, it was obvious that they are going to make full Orc a playable race now, which I'm totally in!!
Another think I like a lot is the inclusion of the new Ardling in contraposition of the Tiefling. It gives two things in one!! The celestial/good planetouched option (never undestand the tiefling inclusion but not the aasimar one in previous edition) AND the animal-folk options. I like the idea of having just one animal-folk related, not 200-races of different options. I would have made the shifter as the option to go, BUT, reading the lore I always thinked that the aasimar were a little bored compared with the tieflings, now I see the ardling much more interesting options: a hound-ardling deamon hunter, I could want to play one for sure!! And love that cats are in the chaotic good, they truly are, hehehehe.
Finally, with the race selection, is it fixed?? Could it include something more?? If not, I would ask the developers to consider include the Genasi as base option. For completition, that way we have Upper-planes options, Down-plane options AND elemental-planes options right from the start. For me, that would be the perfect core races options :)
The rules say that critics do not override the normal limits of the action. So if you couldn't do it, there's no crit worth it. You should no longer roll first, because there is no chance of success.
As for restricting crits to weapon damage, that seems fine to me. The damage of the weapon is much more controlled than that of spells, sneak attack, smites, etc... There were very abusive combos, like the rogue elf with Elven Acurracy (and if you add a level in hexblade, it's hilarious).
By the way, does it seem that way to me, or do monsters no longer crit? RAW it seems to me that it is so, that the critics are only for the player characters. I also think it's a good decision.
What I don't really like is the removal of class-specific spell lists. Although that remains to be seen. Perhaps the classes expand the list with exclusive spells. I say this because one of the wizard's advantages was his spell list. And another thing that I don't quite like is that agathys armor is no longer a warlock exclusive spell. It's not something that bothers me much, but I liked that it was only for warlocks.
Background-linked ASIS makes much more sense to me than race-linked free ASIS. I understand the reasons for making the ASIS variants, but then justify them with the background. That is something that I have been asking for in the surveys for a long time, so I imagine that I was not the only one.
I also really like the change in humans. There is no variant human anymore (which was really the standard because the other one was not used by anyone at all because it was crap). And the feat is limited to a level 1 feat. I like that, I like that a lot.
In general, except for specific things like gnomes having advantage on any int save (there will be some), wis and char, I like the changes in the races.
These changes give me a very good feeling, and I think they fix some things that had gotten out of hand. Especially the critics.
I'm generally in favour of the background and feat changes, they seem mostly good; couple of minor tweaks I may suggest it seems good overall.
The inspiration changes I'm not in favour of at all though; tying it to natural 20's favours characters that roll more attacks, and rewards luckier players for being lucky (they've already got a critical hit, so they're not the ones who need help). And it doesn't fix the main problem which is that inspiration as written has never been a good bonus; single use advantage declared before a roll is so easily wasted so either nobody uses it, or half the time they regret doing so. Most groups I've played treat it as a re-roll instead, which is better, but I'd rather see it be become something really important like an automatic success (minimal, so never a critical hit).
Even having it trigger on 1's as more of a bounce back mechanic wouldn't really work, as control casters spend a lot of their time forcing their enemies to roll instead of themselves. I'd much rather see it become a mixed "bad luck" and "good roleplay" mechanic, e.g- if a player casts a big spell and it fails, the DM can give them a point of inspiration (to do better), or if they engage in some good roleplay that can't be rewarded directly (by not asking them to roll a check), give them inspiration as a deferred success.
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.
To make a point according to the play test material the Nat 20 gain an inspiration is IN ADDITION to the current way of getting inspiration. The GM can always still give it for good roleplay moments. Also you can give inspiration to others if you have yours already so the players rolling super well can give it to the player who has been less lucky. Beyond that I completely agree with the advantage after the roll suggestion the same way Lucky feat works.
Agreed on getting rid of crits for spell attacks. As a DM, I'd override this rule anyway and have crits occur on spells as well. But I do like that the playtest rule negates the paladin ability to add on Smite after a crit is scored. That always irked me.
Shawn D. Robertson
"Deride not the differing views of others, for it is in thoughtful and considerate conversation we find our greatest friends."
~Me~
Monster attacks are listed in stat blocks as "melee weapon attacks" when it comes to horns, claws, bites, tentacles, and all of that sort of stuff, so they'd still crit under the new rules. Just spell or spell-like abilities would no longer have a chance. At least based upon what we're seeing in the UA doc. I have a feeling spell attacks that require attack rolls will be (or is already intended to be) allowed to achieve crits as well. Just my DM opinion though.
Shawn D. Robertson
"Deride not the differing views of others, for it is in thoughtful and considerate conversation we find our greatest friends."
~Me~
I agree with all of these statements, BUT ... I can see why they wrote these bits as they are. They wanted it to be more about ease of creation and flavor, not so much about mechanics. I like crunchy rules too. A LOT. But there is something to be said for accessibility for new players. AND ... many of the DMs among us will just allow players to do things exactly like your suggestion about mixing the racial spell lists anyway. Problem solved!
As far as mixing abilities from different races during the creation of a hybrid; I think the reason they didn't do that was balance. Some racial abilities are no-doubt weighted more or less useful, and it would be easily abusable if we let players choose which ones they wanted to mix and match. Not saying it would be nutty overpowered, but it would be easily abusable.
Shawn D. Robertson
"Deride not the differing views of others, for it is in thoughtful and considerate conversation we find our greatest friends."
~Me~
This is true, I feel, and I personally agree. However, I do think it's a good thing to include in the rules, so newer players (or players who don't always think outside the box) will be inspired to create some truly unique characters. Like you said, we could already do this, but there's no harm in reminding players of the possibilities. And also, they did add some mechanical choices in the need to decide which race you get your racial abilities from.
Shawn D. Robertson
"Deride not the differing views of others, for it is in thoughtful and considerate conversation we find our greatest friends."
~Me~
Ah, I missed that then, but my point on it rewarding already luckier players still stands; it overwhelmingly favours characters that can roll a lot of d20's, especially attacks. A control or support character may spend multiple rounds without rolling a single d20, so they may never gain inspiration this way; it will either disproportionately benefit some characters and not others, or force the DM to dish it out extra inspiration for purely mechanical reasons (i.e- being a good player using support abilities). I just don't think it's a good mechanism at at all, it needs a more fundamental redesign.
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 think this is incorrect. The playtest says “Weapons and Unarmed Strikes* have a special feature for player characters: Critical Hits.” I think this is pretty clear that they’re not intended for NPCs, which would include monsters.
Races in Dungeons & Dragons represent different species of creature, not different flavors of a single species. Races MUST reflect their inherent differences in deviations from the game rule 'average' (aka Humans).
Races have racially unique traits. Externally visible ones like coloration, fur, hide, carapace, manipulation appendages (hands, fingers, claws, webbing), strength, alacrity, and so on. Internal ones like multiple hearts, digestive systems capable of deriving nutrients from different sources, acid for blood...
Humans are not as fast as Cheetahs or Peregrine Falcons.
Humans are not as strong as chimpanzees or rhinos.
Humans cannot smell as well as cats or dogs.
Humans cannot breathe water as do fish and octopi.
Humans cannot derive nutrients from soil as oak trees or fungi.
Humans do not have the same traits as orcs, elves, dwarves, ogres, dragons, or any of the other non-human races. Period.
While attempting to entirely move bonuses from races to backgrounds in an interesting consideration... for a different RPG where all characters are of the same race/species. The Call of Cthulhu system shows a good representation of a skill based system where this would be appropriate.
Please stop trying to bring real-world socio-political issues into an escapist game. If you are looking to appease a certain crowd, a search & replace should do it. s/Race/Species - now you are out of their crosshairs.
"I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members."
I would like to have an optional rule to make race selection matter more in the long run. Perhaps a racial ability unlocked at 10th level or so, that you could swap for a class ability, or racial feats with a level requirement.
I agree that inspiration is skewed to favour characters that roll a lot, that needs to be balanced.
I am ok with no crits on spells, because many of them already do a lot of damage and often at a distance, plus AOE and other effects. But no crits for enemies? It makes it feel even more like the PCs live in a sheltered world. I like that my players weigh the risks of staying in range of an enemy that can attack 2 or 3 times. It just feels more fair, like everyone in the world follows the same rules, and the better strategists and more creative players are rewarded.
My initial reaction is quite positive.
I like the revisions to backgrounds. The ASIs being tied to them really doesn't matter since we're building them as a package so we'd just chuck them where we need them anyway.
For example a High Elf spy. +1 to dex, con, and cha. Proficient in persuasion and deception. Tool proficiency, thieves' tools. Language, thieves' cant.
Equipment: dark common clothes, two daggers, thieves' tools. pouch. burglar's pack. 4 gold
Starting feat: magic initiate (arcane) (he is a high elf after all)
Your character's career was likely close to an arcane trickster, mixing magic and personality to seek out secrets.
However he becomes a Warlock and that is where our campaign starts.
Honestly a character who starts with three cantrips and a level 1 spell would be considered a fairly powerful magic user among the general population.
It's also good that if you start with proficiency in a tool set you can buy the matching equipment, like taking proficiency in thieves' tools and buying some thieves' tools. It was a little annoying that you had to wait till you found a shop to get them in 5th. Why would you have a career using them, then forget to bring them to the fight?
And yet it's always the ability score increases that are fixated upon with these comments like that and not literally anything else the races can do. Looking at the races presented in this UA, only the ardling has resistance to radiant damage, can fly, or use healing magic innately. Only the halfling can slip through larger creatures without any effort or use luck. Only the dragonborn can use a breath weapon. Gnomes have a built-in intellect fortress (without the psychic resistance), and dwarves have poison resistance, can use tremorsense, and innately have tool proficiencies.
Any time this race/species argument is brought up, the position arguing against the direction it's going hyper-focuses on the ASIs, as if that's the only thing the different races are being played for.
I think it's important to recall a basic precept of D&D. Unless the rules specifically state you can't do something....... you can do it.
Nowhere in the playtest rules does it say that Critical Hits can't be applied to sneak attack, or smite. Spellcasters have had the advantage in damage for quite some time. And though this may be an attempt to boost melee damage the rules doesn't specifically say crits can't be applied to spells.
This is backwards. The rules tell you what you can do. Almost all rules are telling you what your options are. The rule presented here tells you that you roll the weapon’s dice only. “The rules don’t say I can’t” is not the game telling you what you can do.