Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Xanathar and Tasha Rules

If you are a goblin, yes.

This might come as a shock to some but plenty of roleplayers also want their characters to be mechanically effective too. In the aforementioned goblin druid example this goblin would just be inferior to an elven druid out-right even if their story doesn't involve being an inferior druid.

However if someone wanted to roleplay a goblin druid who is struggling to be as competent as other druids of different races the option is still there to just not max your Wis to get the character YOU wanted.

Tasha's rules do nothing but give players more options to make sure the character roleplay and the character mechanics are working together instead of in opposition to each other.

Tasha's Rules, while they can be used for min maxing, also means they can be used for creating the exact character a player wants to do. If I want to play an Smart and Eloquent Orc Wizard now via Tasha I could without having my INT dropped to 12-13, as before that -2 to Int would make him effectively worse off in the party and therefor only "effective" ability score wise if I am rolling stats and get an 18 that I can downgrade to a 16. Power and role play often need to be balanced or in line with each other. That isn't to say someone couldn't have played an orc wizard before and have both fun and effectiveness, but with Tasha's it is now easier for us to craft characters specific to us.
There are other ideas this enables like I could play a very not charismatic Tiefling Artificer or a Dexterous but physically weak Dragonborn Rogue without feeling like my Ability scores do not reflect my character. It allows players to fine tune both their strengths and weaknesses.

Except you are not playing an orc wizard.
Kinda sad how people are unwilling to not play a powergaming minmax and what excuses they are using to hide that.

How would I not be playing an Orc wizard if my race is Orc and my class is Wizard? If I roleplay the backstory effectively and the implications of my character in the world I would definitely being playing that character?

Also powergaming is part of why I feel like Tasha's changes were necessary. Powergaming led to certain race and class combos always being put together, kinda hampering creativity. I have heard a lot about Tabaxi monks,Tiefling warlocks, and Dragonborn paladins because the ability score and racial abilities tend to bring people to putting together what seems the "strongest" and throwing out ideas like Orc wizard or Kobold barbarian because they end up feeling weaker than the player who picked the ideal race-class combo. Tasha's removes class and race being intertwined and opens up options without penalizing the player mechanically. I can have fun with a Kenku fighter or a Lizardfolk warlock, still playing their racial qualities like the Lizardfolk's unique mindset while also being able to have a normal power level compared to everyone else that isn't minmaxing.

Elaborating on one of those, I'll be using the Lizardfolk as an example:

I could be creating him with point buy

So I start off with a statline (before race) of:
STR 9
DEX 14
CON 12
INT 12
WIS 12
CHA 14

For me this character has lower than average strength but is skinny and dextrous, compared to other lizardfolk from his tribe he is weaker and therefor has a bit of an inferiority complex about that.
Lizardfolk as 2 con and 1 wisdom, but I don't really want him to be more wise because he will fall into the pact I give him and I don't want him to have more constitution as that'll start to break from my weaker than other warriors idea. SO I will move the 1 wis to int for some book smarts and the 2 con to cha. True this races his charisma to 16 which is the ideal point buy stat but this still fits cause he'll be able to broker a deal with an entity for power, specifically a great old one entity as the foreign mindsets will match. I won't give him training in persuasion or intimidation though because to others he likely would not be that persuasive. I'd grab skills that match the lifestyle I imagine for him and maybe arcana as one granted by his pact. I would likely mention that this magic was considered taboo by his tribe and he was promptly banished by those warriors that he grew to resent.

They would not. If a goblin would only be able to reach 14 Wis then a Wood Elf would only be able to reach 15. A High Elf would also start at 14 Wis.

With point buy min maxing you can put a stat to 15 before race and then you add racial. A wood elf can reach 16 and a half elf can as well.

Do you not know how the ASIs work? 15 is the max you can put in an attribute. Wood elves get a +1, which lets them get to 16.

A goblin can get to 15, but there's no mechanical difference between 14 and 15 so you'd never do that normally aside from specific attribute boosting strategies.

So the goblin only gets a +2 to its Wis related rolls, including spell saves and the like, while the wood elf gets +3.

It isn't a huge difference but it is an average 5% higher chance to succeed at casting druid spells, which over the course of a long game can add up to a lot.

Yes, I do; I was going by the example provided.

Indeed, it can add up.

So do you min max, because that 5% is unbearable, or do you RP and pick a race that does not get the exact benefit that is only about 5% better, that better fits what you want?

Do you want races to be more similar? Or less?

And what happens when some race provides no meaningful benefit to being a fighter, while Half-Orcs are over there with their purely racial benefits? Do we ask that they lose those, or do we turn them into feats so that all races have the same potential?

When does it simply become 'forget about different races'.

I think with Tasha's, we are already there.

I think currently where we are right now post Tasha is the ideal. Races still have a lot that makes them unique and players have a 2 and a 1 they can assign freely. While a half orc has relentless endurance and savage attacks, those can apply to more than just the fighter and is something distinct to them, and while useful, doesn't make them absolutely better pick than say an Arakocra who can now be an effective strength based fighter in pointbuy and is able to fly. Races still have their differences but now there is less dependence on picking the right race to have a place at tables that emphasize combat or difficulty. Also it doesn't erase the flavor of races cause a typical member of that race will have the listed ability scores. That hasn't changed, lorewise it still exists, but most players are not playing a typical villager so being able to manipulate them is good for players to make a unique player character.

The beauty of Tasha's rules is that I don't have to make that choice. I can play the character I want to roleplay and still be mechanically viable so that I am not just worse at what I set out to do purely because I had a character concept I really loved.

For the record, look at my avatar. A Githyanki ranger. It is not optimized at all and I still play it. But, with Tasha's rules, I'd be able to move his +1 INT to WIS so I am not wasting an attribute on a dump stat.

Still have the same character I did before. He's just more competent at tracking, perception, and ranger spells. Which fits my character concept more because he's SUPPOSED to be competent. He's a dang Githyanki. Incompetent Githyanki don't survive to adulthood.



This is a Slippery Slope fallacy. Nobody here, nor Tasha's, is calling for the removal of racial abilities. Just racial ability scores. These are different things and people who are against racial ASIs are not automatically opposed to racial abilities in general.

Personally I really don't like the racial ASIs because of how all important they are. Being a +1 behind someone else means you'll be behind that player for the ENTIRE GAME. By level 4 you're getting that +2 into your primary attribute while the other druid just picked up Warcaster and got a massive boost in effectiveness. At level 8 you pick up your Warcaster feat, but they are going up to 18 WIS.

You're always just a little worse than someone else who picked a more optimized race and that feels bad.

The gap in racial abilities isn't that extreme. The half-orc fighter has his awesome crit racial and can resist death which are both fun and flavorful unique benefits half-orcs get over anyone else.

But my halfling fighter, using Tasha's rule to change his ASIs, has Brave, Nimbleness, and Lucky which are all unique and different abilities the half-orc doesn't get.

Which set of racial abilities is strictly better? Depends a lot more on how you engage in combat than a pure, mathematical +1 to all attack and damage rolls would've been. It is also a much more fun and interesting difference that defines the two races far, far more than a simple bonus.

So no. I don't agree that removing ASIs will necessarily mean all racial abilities will be removed in time. If anything the removal of racial ASIs adds more emphasis on the fun, thematic racial abilities that can change your playstyle so that you're not just worse as a halfling barbarian. You're just different.

Basically racial abilities offers more room for races being side grades rather than some being strictly superior to others for different classes. It obviously isn't perfectly balanced but it IS more fun. At least for me.

I was writing a response but wow @CJMPinger and @SaurianDruid said it much better than I would've. Also props to @spectralhunter for conciseness.
+3

See, I disagree we are already there. Race (or Lineage) still matters, because if you want to be the best Fighter/Barbarian, you still want to be a specific race, and it isnt Halfling.

Also, at my table, we wont be using Tasha's, we will be using my own character generation system.

Which is kinda the funny part in all this. All the 'omg I am missing out on my +2'...well you could already do it. its your table. Do what you and your game wants to do. We dont need Wizard's permission to do what we want...but we already HAVE that permission, and have forever.

I would love them to add this stuff, mostly for the subclasses and the cantrips.
For the people that don't like the changes in Tasha's, just consider that they may bring more people into the game that might not otherwise play because what they liked was unoptimised. If you don't like the new rules then don't use them at your table.

This is well said, however I disagree about rolling being better than point buy. I have crap luck and always end up with lower stats by rolling. Point buy at least guarantees I can get something playable that won't get other people killed. :P

It isn't about being the very best that no one ever was. It is about leveling the playing field so that the disparity in power between racial choices isn't as severe.

The people who min/max to the highest degree were always gonna do that with their tortle barbarians, yuan-ti sorcerers, and variant human anything. All this does is allow roleplayers to make their unorthodox roleplay concepts a little more mechanically viable.



The difference being that since Tasha's is an official rulebook it can be added to DnDBeyond, which will help me quite a lot as I do all my DnD online. It'll also help people in Adventure League and, as is relevant in this discussion, can be added to Baldur's Gate 3 as an officially supported character creation rule.

So. Yah. Not everyone needs Wizards' permission, but HAVING that permission at all is still nice.

Not trying to be argumentative but why does it have to be a level playing field? Why can't some races outperform in certain areas? For instance, let's use the orc wizard as an example. I assume people roll an orc wizard mainly to roleplay since the orc (I think) racial traits are not that useful to a wizard. People roleplay orcs because of the potential conflicts that may arise. If that's the core reason, why the need to min max our stats? An 18 vs 20 is a minor difference after a couple of ASIs but it seems like everyone needs that 20.

People tend to follow RAW if they can. That way if you happen to play in a different table, you don't have to concern yourself with a bunch of homebrew. It allows the game to be consistent. So yes, I agree, you don't need permission but it's better if the official rules were followed by all.

Yeah, and fair enough for the online options. I still see it as a net loss for the game, and that wont change.

At this point all I see is a bunch of people trying to tell me that in a world where some people are literally born better because of racial abilities and ASIs, there's no racism.