Maybe I just old but I can not rap my head around how a human male that 5ft could be as strong as a 1/2 orc with the new system. i think different species should have ability modifier. my friends want me to start dm'ing again. I told them we will be starting out at lvl 1. we are finishing the starter set and then will be making characters to dive in. But i want to run legacy cause it makes more since to me more than 2024 version. Plus I started playing back in the late 70's - 80's, where having abilities great 18 is rare. I myself has not played in 20 years.
can someone help this make since to me? i cant wait to see their reaction when i say no gun powder.
Half orcs are no longer a species and have been replaced by orcs.
Orcs are simply not any stronger than humans. Their description says, "...orcs retain Gruumsh's gifts: endurance determination, and the ability to see in darkness."
I'm kind of confused what you're asking about with gunpowder.
Player Characters (and other characters built with the Players' Handbook rules) are exceptional members of their species, and while the typical monster-statted Orc (represented by the Tough statblock) is stronger than the typical monster-statted Human Commoner, it's fine if that doesn't apply to PC's, because the Monster-statted versions aren't entirely playing by Player Character rules, either.
It's a design choice to reduce the potential competition between character concept and game mechanics. One I personally like, but I wish they'd fully adapted the Tashas' model for free distribution of the bonuses instead of making the default that they're tied to Backgrounds. The Player Character party is always full of weirdos anyway, no need to have more mechanics to force them towards particular species choices.
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🎵I'm on top of the world, looking down on creation, wreaking death and devastation with my mind.
As the power that I've found erupts freely from the ground, I will cackle from the top of the world.🎵
Welcome to the game and to the site. I would encourage you to not cling to the past; this is a new game from what you played 20 years ago and can be a lot of fun.
Maybe I just old but I can not rap my head around how a human male that 5ft could be as strong as a 1/2 orc with the new system.
can someone help this make since to me?
Sure!
Player characters are exceptional. You can indeed make most orc NPCs or goliath NPCs or Dragonborn NPCs in your world be stronger than human, halfling and gnome NPCs. But you doing that to a bunch of background commoners etc is not a limitation on adventurer character creation. Players can be strong halflings or weak goliaths all they want, because they're not ordinary people anyway (even at level 1.)
Agreed, the old system of different races having specific ability score bonuses and penalties was vastly superior to the new concept of all races being completely bland and almost meaningless choices. Suggest you play 5th edition in its original form (i.e. not the inferior 2024 version), if you can track down copies of the books. Alternatively, earlier versions of D&D would likely be more to your taste.
I disagree. I found myself telling players that they shouldn't play certain races because they don't work well with their classes. I find the new system much less limiting.
Agreed, the old system of different races having specific ability score bonuses and penalties was vastly superior to the new concept of all races being completely bland and almost meaningless choices. Suggest you play 5th edition in its original form (i.e. not the inferior 2024 version), if you can track down copies of the books. Alternatively, earlier versions of D&D would likely be more to your taste.
I disagree. I found myself telling players that they shouldn't play certain races because they don't work well with their classes. I find the new system much less limiting.
Agreed. Ability score modifiers were the absolute blandest way to differentiate between PC race/species/lineage choices.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I started with 2nd Edition. The differences between a 2nd Edition dwarf fighter and a 2nd Edition elf fighter were so much less than the differences between the two in 5E: both have infravision, the elf gets +1 dex and -1 con while the dwarf gets +1 con and -1 cha (which was a practically useless stat in 2nd Edition). And given how the ability scores worked in 2nd Edition, that could easily translate into both characters having no modifiers for any of those ability scores- sure, the elf has a higher Dex, but it's only a 14 so he doesn't get a bonus to hit with ranged attacks or to AC so big deal.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
It's funny how people say the ASI's are the make or break of race differentiation when they have a pretty small impact, at least in 5e. It moves the stat numbers just enough to make someone feel like they missed out a bit if they don't optimize but not enough to actually make a particularly noticeable difference in play moment-to-moment, whereas apparently things like channeling divine power to heal with a touch or smite foes, having a breath weapon and growing wings, resistance to poison damage and effect along with seeing through contact with the ground, various flavors of innate spellcasting, growing enough you occupy 8 times as much space, or being able to shrug off what should be a debilitating wound have no influence on your variety of options- particularly when you don't have to weigh those effects against maxing out your main stat ASAP. There was a certain degree of thematic flavor to racial ASI's, but they had an influence on character building out of proportion to their actual effectiveness, so frankly that's even more reason the finger should come off the scale than if this was an earlier edition where your class picks were outright defined in part by what race you picked.
Perhaps if there was actually enough variety and secondary utility in the stats to provide a meaningful range of alternate builds, but there aren't. A Wizard with slightly higher than average STR at the expense of their INT is just a Wizard who still is going to be less capable at nearly any physical task than a dedicated STR weapon user, gain no new options with their spellcasting, and a 5% increase in chance to pass STR saves, which still leaves them far and away more likely to fail.
Perhaps if there was actually enough variety and secondary utility in the stats to provide a meaningful range of alternate builds, but there aren't. A Wizard with slightly higher than average STR at the expense of their INT is just a Wizard who still is going to be less capable at nearly any physical task than a dedicated STR weapon user, gain no new options with their spellcasting, and a 5% increase in chance to pass STR saves, which still leaves them far and away more likely to fail.
Sounds like you perhaps believe in min-maxing? I have never paid any heed to the concept that characters have to be built a certain way or they're not viable. That's not roleplaying, in my opinion. Again, a good, experienced DM can balance a game to work with any set of characters in a party. It's not a competitive game where the players and the DM are opposing one another, after all. Why shouldn't a wizard want to have a higher STR stat so that they are more capable with certain weapons, or to have a better saving throw, as you say? Your way of looking at things sounds more restrictive to me, but each to their own. :)
Probably also important to note that the groups I run almost invariably play with rolled stats, so it's not the case that (using that same example) a higher STR would dictate a trade off of a lower INT score.
Much like tables, min-maxing exists independent of my acknowledgement of its existence, but despite your arch assertions that's not what I'm getting at. Again, the point stands that having slightly more STR in any case except when your primary action is to use STR to attack and thus it is your main stat is going to have little to no effect on how your character experiences any aspect of the game. Ergo, what exactly is gained in any tangible sense from having all orcs get extra STR- particularly if it would be to the active detriment of another stat such as INT as you've expressed a preference for- aside from signaling that orcs should skew towards dumb muscle stereotypes? It's not about having a perfectly optimized build, it's about actually receiving some kind of appreciable positive feedback for getting a boost to STR over another stat in literally any case except when it would be optimal to have additional STR. If you're not getting that, then you're being forced to take a penalty for effectively no reason, which is simply poor design.
One of the downsides of race-linked ASIs is that some of them seemed rather arbitrary. Some races seemed to get their ability score bonuses set on the basis of “well, they have to have +2 on something”. I could see why Stout Halflings got +1 CON (it fitted with the other resilience features they had), whereas I couldn’t see why Lightfoots were on average marginally more charismatic (as opposed to, say, slightly wiser).
On the contrary, they provided for a lot of variety between all the different races and made mechanical sense as not all races are equal in a fantasy setting. Especially when both negative and positive modifiers were provided for. The exact opposite of bland. Furthermore, it should never have boiled down to a specific race being a required fit for a certain class, as a good/experienced DM can build and run a game for any mixture of the two that their players choose, i.e. balancing the challenges to fit with any character build choices the players made.
What percentage of DMs do you evaluate as good/experienced? Do you want more barriers stopping a new DM from becoming an experienced one? Can you balance challenges to challenge both a semi-optimized and a non-optimized character at once? Many times over the course of a campaign?
Much like tables, min-maxing exists independent of my acknowledgement of its existence, but despite your arch assertions that's not what I'm getting at. Again, the point stands that having slightly more STR in any case except when your primary action is to use STR to attack and thus it is your main stat is going to have little to no effect on how your character experiences any aspect of the game. Ergo, what exactly is gained in any tangible sense from having all orcs get extra STR- particularly if it would be to the active detriment of another stat such as INT as you've expressed a preference for- aside from signaling that orcs should skew towards dumb muscle stereotypes? It's not about having a perfectly optimized build, it's about actually receiving some kind of appreciable positive feedback for getting a boost to STR over another stat in literally any case except when it would be optimal to have additional STR. If you're not getting that, then you're being forced to take a penalty for effectively no reason, which is simply poor design.
[Redacted]. You also were the one who made reference to the STR/INT trade off, so I was just using your example as the frame of reference. As mentioned, there are no trade offs in our games as we prefer to use rolled stats, again for more variety instead of all the characters being in some kind of balance as afforded by the other systems of point buy or standard array... which is just bland and boring to us. Players can either buff their highest rolled stat by aligning it with their best bonus, or they can use that same bonus to offset one of their lowest stats. At the end of the day, having stat modifiers tied to race is a superior system for myself and those that I play with, it allows for more variety between the different races when you add that on top of all the other advantages/disadvantages each race has. The OP also appears to prefer that kind of approach, so that's that I guess. :)
Whatever you tell yourself, the objective fact is that as it’s been implemented in 5e- and probably in the past few editions as well- the slight difference in stat distributions caused by fixed racial mods does not move the needle forward to any truly significant degree. A +1 to rolls is nice to have, but on its own the RNG of how the d20 falls will always carry so much weight as to effectively eclipse the mod. If you enjoy the aesthetic, that’s fine, but that’s literally all the mods do for a character unless you’re optimizing.
Granted in the oldest editions there wasn't a huge variance, but that became more distinct in later ones before we then arrived at the current, lackluster state of affairs.
There was a different kind of variance. In 1e, when I started, you had to qualify for a race within a narrow band based on your stat rolls. If you had a low con, you weren’t allowed to play a dwarf. If you had a high cha, you weren’t allowed to be a half-orc, etc. You could always be human, but everything else, you needed to qualify for. (There were similar restrictions on class, but that’s another topic.) Each following edition has loosened the restrictions to the point now where you can just do what you want. Personally, I prefer this way. People can play what they want, and there is still no mistaking a halfling from a goliath (I know, there were no goliaths then, but that’s not the point), or an orc for an elf.
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Maybe I just old but I can not rap my head around how a human male that 5ft could be as strong as a 1/2 orc with the new system. i think different species should have ability modifier. my friends want me to start dm'ing again. I told them we will be starting out at lvl 1. we are finishing the starter set and then will be making characters to dive in. But i want to run legacy cause it makes more since to me more than 2024 version. Plus I started playing back in the late 70's - 80's, where having abilities great 18 is rare. I myself has not played in 20 years.
can someone help this make since to me? i cant wait to see their reaction when i say no gun powder.
I'm kind of confused what you're asking about with gunpowder.
Player Characters (and other characters built with the Players' Handbook rules) are exceptional members of their species, and while the typical monster-statted Orc (represented by the Tough statblock) is stronger than the typical monster-statted Human Commoner, it's fine if that doesn't apply to PC's, because the Monster-statted versions aren't entirely playing by Player Character rules, either.
It's a design choice to reduce the potential competition between character concept and game mechanics. One I personally like, but I wish they'd fully adapted the Tashas' model for free distribution of the bonuses instead of making the default that they're tied to Backgrounds. The Player Character party is always full of weirdos anyway, no need to have more mechanics to force them towards particular species choices.
🎵I'm on top of the world, looking down on creation, wreaking death and devastation with my mind.
As the power that I've found erupts freely from the ground, I will cackle from the top of the world.🎵
Charisma Saving Throw: DC 18, Failure: 20d6 Psychic Damage, Success: Half damage
Twenty years ago was 3.5 Edition, which had absolutely no cap on ability scores.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Welcome to the game and to the site. I would encourage you to not cling to the past; this is a new game from what you played 20 years ago and can be a lot of fun.
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Sure!
Player characters are exceptional. You can indeed make most orc NPCs or goliath NPCs or Dragonborn NPCs in your world be stronger than human, halfling and gnome NPCs. But you doing that to a bunch of background commoners etc is not a limitation on adventurer character creation. Players can be strong halflings or weak goliaths all they want, because they're not ordinary people anyway (even at level 1.)
I disagree. I found myself telling players that they shouldn't play certain races because they don't work well with their classes. I find the new system much less limiting.
Agreed. Ability score modifiers were the absolute blandest way to differentiate between PC race/species/lineage choices.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I started with 2nd Edition. The differences between a 2nd Edition dwarf fighter and a 2nd Edition elf fighter were so much less than the differences between the two in 5E: both have infravision, the elf gets +1 dex and -1 con while the dwarf gets +1 con and -1 cha (which was a practically useless stat in 2nd Edition). And given how the ability scores worked in 2nd Edition, that could easily translate into both characters having no modifiers for any of those ability scores- sure, the elf has a higher Dex, but it's only a 14 so he doesn't get a bonus to hit with ranged attacks or to AC so big deal.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
It's funny how people say the ASI's are the make or break of race differentiation when they have a pretty small impact, at least in 5e. It moves the stat numbers just enough to make someone feel like they missed out a bit if they don't optimize but not enough to actually make a particularly noticeable difference in play moment-to-moment, whereas apparently things like channeling divine power to heal with a touch or smite foes, having a breath weapon and growing wings, resistance to poison damage and effect along with seeing through contact with the ground, various flavors of innate spellcasting, growing enough you occupy 8 times as much space, or being able to shrug off what should be a debilitating wound have no influence on your variety of options- particularly when you don't have to weigh those effects against maxing out your main stat ASAP. There was a certain degree of thematic flavor to racial ASI's, but they had an influence on character building out of proportion to their actual effectiveness, so frankly that's even more reason the finger should come off the scale than if this was an earlier edition where your class picks were outright defined in part by what race you picked.
Perhaps if there was actually enough variety and secondary utility in the stats to provide a meaningful range of alternate builds, but there aren't. A Wizard with slightly higher than average STR at the expense of their INT is just a Wizard who still is going to be less capable at nearly any physical task than a dedicated STR weapon user, gain no new options with their spellcasting, and a 5% increase in chance to pass STR saves, which still leaves them far and away more likely to fail.
Much like tables, min-maxing exists independent of my acknowledgement of its existence, but despite your arch assertions that's not what I'm getting at. Again, the point stands that having slightly more STR in any case except when your primary action is to use STR to attack and thus it is your main stat is going to have little to no effect on how your character experiences any aspect of the game. Ergo, what exactly is gained in any tangible sense from having all orcs get extra STR- particularly if it would be to the active detriment of another stat such as INT as you've expressed a preference for- aside from signaling that orcs should skew towards dumb muscle stereotypes? It's not about having a perfectly optimized build, it's about actually receiving some kind of appreciable positive feedback for getting a boost to STR over another stat in literally any case except when it would be optimal to have additional STR. If you're not getting that, then you're being forced to take a penalty for effectively no reason, which is simply poor design.
One of the downsides of race-linked ASIs is that some of them seemed rather arbitrary. Some races seemed to get their ability score bonuses set on the basis of “well, they have to have +2 on something”. I could see why Stout Halflings got +1 CON (it fitted with the other resilience features they had), whereas I couldn’t see why Lightfoots were on average marginally more charismatic (as opposed to, say, slightly wiser).
What percentage of DMs do you evaluate as good/experienced? Do you want more barriers stopping a new DM from becoming an experienced one? Can you balance challenges to challenge both a semi-optimized and a non-optimized character at once? Many times over the course of a campaign?
Whatever you tell yourself, the objective fact is that as it’s been implemented in 5e- and probably in the past few editions as well- the slight difference in stat distributions caused by fixed racial mods does not move the needle forward to any truly significant degree. A +1 to rolls is nice to have, but on its own the RNG of how the d20 falls will always carry so much weight as to effectively eclipse the mod. If you enjoy the aesthetic, that’s fine, but that’s literally all the mods do for a character unless you’re optimizing.
There was a different kind of variance. In 1e, when I started, you had to qualify for a race within a narrow band based on your stat rolls. If you had a low con, you weren’t allowed to play a dwarf. If you had a high cha, you weren’t allowed to be a half-orc, etc. You could always be human, but everything else, you needed to qualify for. (There were similar restrictions on class, but that’s another topic.)
Each following edition has loosened the restrictions to the point now where you can just do what you want. Personally, I prefer this way. People can play what they want, and there is still no mistaking a halfling from a goliath (I know, there were no goliaths then, but that’s not the point), or an orc for an elf.