I would assume that the Charisma bonus is because they come from a cut throat political society where you need to know how to talk and navigate society in order to not get dead. That's the explanation I can think of anyway. Or maybe there's some kind of inborn magic at play.
I think Charisma is a bit of a misnomer in 5e. It’s less about how charismatic you are and more about how much you are able to influence other people (i.e persuasion, intimidation). Tieflings and drow get Charisma bonuses because they are naturally intimidating and so can get people to do what they want. It’s also the reason why a lot of the mind control spells require Charisma saving throws. It requires you to resist the caster’s influence. In fact, I think Influence would be a better name for Charisma.
An entire race being described as "naturally" intimidating is very strange to me. Whether or not an entire classification of anything is intimidating is extremely subjective and tied almost entirely to external forces. A society that only has ever known Tieflings to be joyful bakers that have never lifted a finger to hurt someone and have a reputation of being overall not incredibly powerful people would not easily find most Tieflings intimidating. Instead of just
giving them free stats towards intimidation it's more appropriate for the DM to lower the DC if the persons being intimidated are particularly fearful of that race. I can scare my sister with a tarantula, but if someone brought me one I'd be thrilled, they're cool creatures, but not to her. In a CRPG we don't have that luxury, though...
I think it'd be nice if ability score increases came from a mix of race, background, and (maybe) class. Representing inborn (or cultural) traits, learned skills while growing up, and initial class training.
E.g., a half-orc gets +1 Str; a dwarf gets +1 Con; a full orc gets +1 Str/+1 Con/-1 Int; a gnome gets +1 Int; humans get +1 to two stats and -1 to another stat of choice; etc
An entertainer gets +1 Cha, an acolyte gets +1 Int, a hermit gets +1 Wis
A fighter gets +1 Str or Dex, a Wizard gets +1 Int, a Bard gets +1 Cha
This would:
- make background more important than it currently is
- retain differences between races (you could alternatively remove the ASI from class and make races give larger bonuses, still leaving race+background as sources of ASI)
- provide much more flexibility in Point-Buy builds, as you only need a single +1 in order to get 16 in a stat. So it'd constrain only *one* of race/background/class, allowing you to play a ~fully powerful half-orc wizard, but who has by default more strength than an elven wizard
Alternatively/in-addition: Potentially racial ASIs should add to stat caps. An orc has a natural str cap of 22; a dwarf has a Con cap of 22; an elf has a dex cap of 22, etc. This retains the effect of racial traits, but doesn't punish "off-race" combinations for starting adventurers. Because yes, a gnome that has trained for 20 years should be able to start out level 1 with 16 strength. They have worked hard to become strong; *however,* eventually they'll run into their racial limits.
Not a terrible idea. Like I said, I'll accept that some races
might have
physical stat block changes if properly justified, and making background actually
matter to your stat blocks is a way of justifying having those racial stats, but at that point you're looking at PF2e character creation.
