Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General The One D&D project. Thoughts?

I didnt say that ...
All i say is that dumping main stat of class dont fit my idea of effective gaming.

You want to play 12 Int 14 Str Wizard and bashing people with a weapon? I would recomend you to try Eldrich Knight ...

Sadly thats not true ... as stated before ... 12 Intel Wizard can prepare 2 less spells for a day that 16 Intel Wizard ... and therefore there are at least two spells first one cant cast while second one can.

12 Intel wizard can still cast "fist" though.

The ASI bonus was moved from race to background. Your race now determines your biological characteristics (orcs are superhumanly strong, dwarves have more HP and poison resistance, dragonborn can breathe fire, etc.) while background determines your cultural stuff (Your lifestyle prior to adventuring, the sort of training you underwent, and the environment you grew up and worked in).

Orcs are still massively stronger than other races, it just isn't represented as +2 to strength, and you can still make an orc with +2 to strength by choosing a warrior background.

It is just now also possible to make an orc who grew up in a library and never benched a press in his life with a tiny 8 STR... But because of his racial traits he can still lift and carry as much as another race with 16 STR.

That is not a description being shifted because that trait is one which they already had, always had, and wasn't going anywhere. That trait, by virtue of always existing and still existing, has no bearing on the removal of the ability score propensity as part of defining the natural (I.e. natively biological propensity) strength of orcs as a species of creature, compared to other similar humanoids. They haven't conveyed that aspect of their being in a different way - they've just removed the conveyance of it.

Let's add to the list. In the new texts:

Dragonborn are still naturally, as part of their innate biology and growth, a very strong species of creatures compared to other humanoids... right? Only, not... They're not, because that propensity has been removed and it has not been replaced in any way. It is simply no longer conveyed as a thing.

Dwarves are still sturdy and resilient of constitution as an innate and natural part of their biology, making them hardier compared to other humanoids... Only, not... they're not, any more, because that propensity for higher constitution has been removed and it has not been replaced with anything else - it is no longer conveyed as a thing. Also, all the surface dwarf types have been homogenised into one with the features of both being lumped together; everyone's a hill dwarf, and mountain dwarves ceased to exist mechanically, despite the long, many-generational division of these peoples traditionally being pronounced enough to give them slightly different traits. No longer.

Elves still have a natural grace and balance, and a propensity towards fine and precise motor skills, comparative to other similar humanoid species... Only not... not any more, because that propensity towards dexterity has been removed, and it has not been replaced with anything else - it is no longer conveyed as a thing. Instead, all elf types now get spellcasting, increasing the mechanical homogenisation between the different subtypes of elves.

Gnomes, as a species, still have a propensity towards better detail recollection and information retention, comparative to other similar humanoid species... Only... no, they don't, not any more. That propensity towards a keener mind compared to other species averages has been removed, has not been replaced by anything else, and is simply no longer conveyed. (Forest gnomes can no longer innately communicate with animals - they must cast a spell to do so, and spend spell slots if they want to do it more than once. Rock gnomes lost their innate expertise for working out and understanding mechanical devices and such, which is/was an innate part of their naturally sharper minds, not of training)

Halflings, as a species, are still small, light and nimble and tend to be a little quicker of reflex and surer of foot, compared to other larger humanoids (with the exception of the graceful elves)... right? No, not any more. That propensity towards nimbleness and sure-footedness has been removed, and has not been replaced by anything; it's simply not conveyed as a thing any more. Stout/Strongheart halflings no longer exist; their natural-born resilience is not conveyed in any way any more. Liughtfoots lost their ability to hide in spaces where other creatures usually could not. These features were not replaced with anything new.

Tieflings, by their birthright and regardless of their other heritages, still evoke a certain sense of presence, owing to their fiendish traits, whether for good or ill... Only... No. They don't. Not any more. The propensity towards greater personal as a result of their fiendish traits has been removed, and it has not been replaced by anything else - it is simply not conveyed any more. Despite the fact that they've written in acknowledgement to other flavours of fiendish tieflings - giving us abyssal and Cthonic (I'm guessing the traditional 'lothic' was considered a bit too archaic or unrecognisable?), we've also gone down from nine variants with different spell choices, to only three. You want to be Infernal? Then your spells are Hellish Rebuke and Darkness - all those other lovely options, gone.

In short, don't pretend that they've just "shifted" these natural-born and innate propensities towards ways in which these different species of peoples are different - they have not been. They've just been erased.

It's easy to say "Sure, but you can still put your points in those places if you want to - they've only given you the freedom to put them elsewhere if you want", but that misses the point. We allocate our attributes ourselves, as a representative of our personal characters, and the things they've focused in and the lives they've led up to this point: we put the 6 that we rolled into Strength for our half-orc character to represent the fact that he's studied bookishly in a library his whole life and has never once pressed any benches. That is the choice that we, as players make to represent that. The ability scores that stand outside of our allocation of rolls/point buy choices are representative of innate propensities that physically and biologically make the race that we have picked different from other humanoids. This is what is being removed - and it's wrong.

Beside that, The "you can still put the scores in the old way" defence doesn't work - because the more recent races don't have those propensities listed at all. They do not exist. Suppose I want to make a Fairy, or an Owlin, or a Thir-kreen, or a Hadozee... Suppose I want to make the Fairest Fairy, the Owliest Owlin, the Keenest Thri-keen or the Dozeest Hadozee... Suppose they are truly representatives of the features of their individual race that make them different from other similar humanoids; how exactly ARE they innately, biologically different from other species; what propensities towards different abilities do they tend to naturally display? None. The answer is None. That's not a positive comment.

Don't get me wrong - a lot of the character-relate things they've done, shifting many things into background where they rightfully belong - a lot of that is great. Removing ability score propensities from races, however, is not a good move. It removes flavour and feel, and trends towards blandness. It's already visible in the more recent races; Wizards have grown so afraid of defining races and giving them unique presence and flavour that the newest ones don't even have physical descriptions that you can work with, and they certainly don't have even a tenth of the descriptive flavour of the original races.

To the above post, I won’t quote it for reasons of brevity but from what I have read there seems to be an ‘equalling out’ of all races? So any kind of innate advantages or disadvantages are done away with? Is there a chance this has anything to do with real world politics at all, everyone is equal etc etc?

It seems a strange decision regardless, a bit like making a RPG with animals as characters and all the different species have no biological advantages or disadvantages and they’re fundamentally all the same. Or am I totally misreading this?

About the ability scores. What's being overlooked is that we are talking about player characters here. PC's being an exception to the norm is fine by me. A High Elf Cleric being able to put +2 to Wis is a good change. Elves as NPC's absolutely can still have +2 Dex and be heavily railroaded towards finesse type characters. But I do appreciate the freedom of being able to play a Str or Cha based elf without being penalized for it by my stats costing more, thus having weaker ability scores overall.

What I do have an issue with however, is making all elves baby spellcasters. A martial class spellcaster who only knows 1-3 spells becomes a gimmick. I would like to keep spellcasting separated, or these abilities changed so that elves are magically enhanced rather than just flat out teleporting or throwing Fire Bolts i.e. casting actual spells. Detect Magic is a good example of something that can be explained as a spell-like ability or a sense, rather than literally casting a spell with verbal and somatic components and all.

I don't like the Ardlings. Aasimar are already there to contrast Tieflings (and doing a much better job at it imo). I don't think throwing in more weird fantastical races is really doing anything to improve the game. On the contrary, each new race steals a bit of spotlight from the existing ones, and eventually it will just be a bland mess of everything imaginable. If it was up to me, even Tieflings and Dragonborn would be optional in the base game. I think the unusual races have the most impact when they are properly moderated in any setting.

The original "roll 3d6 for stats" that was introduced in 1rst edition used the dice to set up a bell curve that was supposed to represent human (or dwarf, or elf, or whatever) variation. The problem with this is that 3d6 does not have enough range to truly represent all variation within a population.

For example, rolling an 18 for intelligence is supposed to mean your character is a genius. But... 18 on 3d6 is a 1 in 216 chance. This is less than 3 sigma above average. An 18 intelligence human would be right on the border of being able to get into Mensa (which is top 2%). This doesn't even come close to the genius of a John Von Neuman, a person who in the real world did roll his stats naturally...

The addition of d100 to strength mitigated this to some extent, but at the top end an 18/00 strength was still less than 4 sigma above average, and probably not at the level of current day elite athletes.

My purpose for pointing this out is that if we are to assume that player characters are exceptional, then it is not a problem at all that they are outside of the 3d6 bell curve established for racial norms, since that doesn't really have enough range to cover exceptional abilities anyway. This is why the change to stat bonuses does not really bug me. It wasn't a good model of the range of abilities in the first place, so granting more freedom to make the character you want is a worthwhile change.

Well said @Niara.

That's not being overlooked, because there is no longer any mention what bonuses the average member of a race gets. Are Dwarves generally more wise? Are Elves more dextrous? Are Tieflings more charismatic? Do the multiple dwarf sub-races--that have for ages lived in different environments and had to adapt differently--have different stats? In One D&D: no.
Especially, as @Niara said, for the new races. For the old races you can fall back on 5e lore; but all the new races are designed with the "+2/+1 to any stats" in mind and thus there is very little flavor-text on what physical/mental traits these races have inherent bonuses to.


I'll generalize this issue to all races: I dislike that many of the "racial abilities" are now essentially spells. It's boring, makes everyone more homogenous, is more restricting than just having racial abilities. Why are Dwarves are arbitrarily limited to casting Tremorsense PB times per day? If they were truly in-tune with Stone, they should be able to do it whenever. Forest gnomes can no longer just communicate with animals, they have to cast a spell (1x/day) to do so.

I'm worried that Ardlings (as the newest race in the One D&D options) will be the template for all new races, where one of the major racial traits--and the thing that distinguishes subraces--is just that you get different spells at 1st, 3rd, and 5th level. I don't want all races to be wizards.

I'm personally a fan of stat maximums, the upper range an ability can reach naturally for a certain race. To me putting the ability modifications into your pre-adventuring 'vocation' starts making everyone seem like just another flavor of Human.

I almost made mention of this in another topic where this game up, but for me the statistics you were born with weren't things you could improve with hard work, if you were born with 18 intelligence going to university wouldn't make you 19 Intelligent it would give you skill proficiencies, but that's not the case anymore.
Dwarves were the hardy race because on average they all had the 'Miner' background which gives them +2 Constitution, a community of seafaring Dwarves will be statistically the same as what we thought of as Halflings, because they all have +2 Dexterity from their 'Sailor' background. It does kind of rub me the wrong way, I'm trying to rationalize it with how I've viewed ability scores for so many years.

I think that some of these concerns could be mitigated via stat blocks for typical non-player characters of various professions. Racial characteristics could be reflected in the fact that NPC orcs are stronger than NPC halflings.

I completely agree with everything you said Niara ... except this one:
Since Dwarves sub-species was erased from existence ... and they all now get Toughness ...
Isnt *that* the way to show they are sturdy and resilient? O_o

Basically, yes - that is what is happening. It's a move that is being made based on responding to the hypersensitive, offended-at-everything social media crowd; it's a design choice that literally does not care whether it makes for a better or more interesting game, and is made solely based on what they think they need to do to stop the twitter troglodytes cancelling them (the secret is there is nothing - because that crowd cannot be satisfied because the atmosphere there is one of taking offence by default; they cannot be pleased and Wizards will learn this the hard way if they keep on as they are). The problem is that it's gone well pest the concept of being inclusive or sensitive - it's gone out the other side to the point where being different at all, or rather the act of showing people as being different, is immediately vilified.

They're reached a point where they're afraid to define anything, or describe anything, because giving things definition, descriptions or cultural background makes them different,and you can't have people being different, that's bad - or rather, they'd phrase it as illustrating the ways in which different peoples are different is 'racist' and Wizards are terrified of the twitter crowd giving them that brand. It's gone so far that any trace of different peoples being intrinsically different from one another is being removed as much as possible.

That different peoples are different is something we should celebrate, not something we should be trying to erase. It isn't racist to say that orcs, by their birth and species, are naturally stronger than other comparative humanoids; pretending that they Aren't is erasure of their uniqueness and a part of their biological identity as a species (and we are talking about species here, not cultural sects; literally, physically, biologically different creatures entirely; fantasy in D&D species are not and have never been analogues for human races; they may have cultural inspirations in some places, but they are nevertheless their own peoples, not representatives for something else).


Except.... they're not. Those propensities are going away. There will be no 'regular halfings' or 'regular orcs'; the new races don't even HAVE those propensities listed any more, so we-as-creators-of-NPCs literally cannot fall back on those for them. They don't exist for the new races, and the won't exist for the current ones, if these changes are made. You can't even buy the older books digitally any more - they've removed things like Volo's Guide for purchase entirely.


No, because, as I mentioned, that already existed and was not going anywhere. All they've done is made it so that ALL dwarves are Hill dwarves and Mountain dwarves no longer exist at all. There is nothing that has actually been given back, to replace the work done by the racial ability score propensity.

Anyway... That's my comment on this comment, so I'll leave it there probably.

Orcs aren't real; you can't be racist towards a fictional construct.

Fingers crossed that getting rid of race-based ASI norms will be one of the ideas dumped in response to feedback. I'm not a PnP player myself, but have always assumed that one of the advantages of having a real life DM to debate with is that if you want to play a character outside the norm and can make a compelling case for why they are different and how it's affected their backstory and attributes then that could be accommodated, and it seems all to the good to give permission and encouragement for such flexibility. But that's a long way from getting rid of the norms entirely, and I've always enjoyed how D&D translates normal physical and cultural characteristics of races into specific feats, abilities, etc and found that this in turn gave me an "in" to roleplaying them and made playing different races interesting and distinct.

More generally, I like the idea of clearly separating out which attributes are physical/innate and which cultural, but even with the cultural side there should be recommended norms that can then be swapped if, for example, you're a halfling that grew up amongst gnomes or whatever. I wasn't entirely sure how, for example, they were suggesting elven weapon training would be handled, and whether it would still exist as a concept or whether players are just able to select the same bundle of weapon proficiencies if they want.

Of course, for the cRPGs I play there isn't a DM who can make case-by-case decisions, but that shouldn't be the central consideration in designing the D&D system anyway, and individual developers can always decide to keep race-based restrictions or to default to the norm but give players the ability to swap things around.

I disagree. A race can very easily have depth and flavor without racial stat bonuses that ultimately do little more than push more archetypical race/class combinations together. That the newer races are lacking flavor is more an issue with less lore being written for them compared to the core races, which is a separate problem from whether or not the rabbit people get a +2 to INT or WIS.

The point of my post was that a lot of the flavor of the races are in the actual racial abilities, which is where the racial flavor should come from. A +2 makes orcs better at being barbarians and fighters than other races, but it's a poor representation of their superhuman strength and resilience compared to Powerful Build. Which, yes, I know they already had. I said as much in my first post in this thread. That doesn't change that it is a better way to represent raw physicality than the ASI bonus was. At least in my opinion.

A lot of your specific complaints were that the removed ASI bonuses (and certain sub-race features) weren't replaced by new traits to reflect what was lost, and you know what? In that we agree. I definitely wouldn't mind say, elves getting a free Proficiency in Acrobatics to represent their biological superhuman balance and agility. Or maybe something like Advantage on checks against things that might knock them off their feet. Just like I feel Dragonborn need a little extra (potentially something like Powerful Build to represent their natural strength, or maybe a naked AC bonus to represent their scales and physical toughness) could use a little extra.

Racial ASIs being moved to background is a great change in my opinion because background representing our characters' lifestyle and training and where the focus of their Attribute Bonuses would be makes sense. But that doesn't mean I want races to be less unique. If anything I want more racial abilities because while they can slightly gravitate toward certain group roles they also tend to be useful or flavorful for most classes. I'd much rather be a halfling barbarian who can slide between an enemy's legs using my nimbleness and small stature AND ALSO be able to hit 16 in my primary attribute rather than not.

+1 that races need more to be unique and racial features more impactful, if WotC is going to continue with the lack of racial ASIs. Powerful Build in particular is so...not impactful. I can lift/push/carry more, hooray! So I basically get to be the party pack mule (until we get bags of holding)...

If Powerful Build gave Expertise or Advantage on Athletics checks or actually affected grappling (e.g., allowed you to grapple larger creatures and/or prevented smaller creatures from grappling you), then that would actually be impactful. At the absolute minimum it should be harder for me to be moved while grappled and/or shoved. But it doesn't give those things, and thus feels like a largely useless feature that doesn't really help (me at least) feel like I'm playing an Orc or Firbolg or whatever.

I agree with you. It WotC added those types of racial abilities to all races, then I'd be much happier with the floating ASIs. Orcs would still be strong; Elves would still be dexterous, haflings would still be nimble, etc, AND all race-class combos could still start with 16 in their primary. There would still be race-class synergies, but it'd be more like synergetic moves rather than raw stat bonuses.

Your character's starting attributes weren't a representation of their background or life choices, it was a representation of a race in the world. I'm trying to make it work in my mind, how a gnome, a halfling, a human, an orc, and a goliath are all going to have the same starting strength merely because they all spent a few years as stevedores. The dissonance in physical stats is more straightforward, but the mental stats too, most Orc's I've known have struggled to speak common if they even knew it, Orcish is a language without a lot of complex concepts, because the people who speak it aren't typically able to grasp them, It also doesn't have it's own script, a trait common among languages in illiterate cultures, so I'm guessing Orc culture for a while at least wasn't written, gosh the world building!. Yet any Orc player gets to start out speaking three languages.

If you're going to open up character creation to the panoply of races (not all of them well thought out), you've got to give me something, maybe -1 to a stat? Like all Orc characters have -1 Int, even if they can put +2 +1 anywhere they want, just something to remind me that Orcs are not the same as Dwarves.

Yeah Attributes in D&D are pretty bizarre as a construct and could probably use a further overhaul.

I feel what's needed is a bit of a Zeno's paradox type situation for the Attributes, you know where when you get closer to either extreme (high or low) it should push out to create room for more nuance.

Maybe similar to way 18 Strength worked in 2e for Martial classes (from 18/01 to 18/99 or 18/00), but just doing that for every attribute? The high end is now 20 rather than 18 like it used to be, but they could do something similar. Perhaps 20/01 to 20/00, where the second value can capture more of the flavor element?

So say a Human can hit a 20/99 in STR but a Halfling caps out at 20/50 (to represent them being Half the size?) or similarly maybe an Orc never rolls lower than a 20/75 for STR because they're pretty huge? But then Orc might take a hit in INT or whatever, capping at 20/25 there. Perhaps Elves and Halflings never roll lower than 20/75 for DEX, because they're supposed to be all naturally dexterous that way etc. Then do that same sort of thing for all 6 attributes whenever they hit the 20. Sure it's a bit sleight of hand to just move another column over to the right for everything lol, but at least it'd providing for a large spread. Save anything higher than a 20/00 for monsters and demi-gods and whatnot.

I also feel like the low end is kind of wasted. The difference between say a 1 or 2 and a 3 in INT (to accommodate monsters and beasts vs 'intelligent creatures') is fairly huge, but then there's also a pretty massive gap between 3 and that baseline range of 8 and up, for the sort of standard starting range INT for PC's. It's a bit weird to do a scheme at base 10, but then to go all skipping about and having it where only even values make a difference. Almost to the point where it's like why even bother counting up 1-20 if so many of the intermediate values aren't really used for anything? Instead it might be interesting if 2 was the base starting value for PC attributes, and anything lower works similar to the 20 at the high end. Basically 1/01 to 1/00 covering everything from earthworms to the smartest of beasts and children in the case of INT. Just to open up the spread so it covers more of the fullest possible range.

I don't know, obviously that's all a bit vague and I'm just spitballing here, cause none of the numbers in D&D actually mean anything until the rest of mechanics are built out around them, but it just seems like we could use a bit more room with the min/max values at the high and low end. Just to accommodate some of the older ideas about what the attributes were meant to suggest vs how they actually worked in the mechanics of the gameplay.

I think that an aspect of the whole racial ASI issue is that the players handbook is supposed to be setting neutral. Having read it, I don't think that that's actually true and they clearly have the Forgotten Realms in mind, but they want it to be looked at as setting neutral. They want players to either grab a setting book or create their own setting. And I think that this change gives DMs freedom to do stuff with their settings more easily. After all, why should orcs be the same at EVERY table unless the DM goes to the trouble of reworking them personally? Perhaps the given updated changes could do more to each race something special to reflect their base physical differences, but the stat increases to me are the least flavorful part of the choice and are almost purely utilitarian.

Let me bring up the Scarred Lands campaign setting as a counterpoint. That setting has its own version of the base races, with a few exceptions. I like orcs as a player people in general, but I couldn't care less about half-orcs in the PHB, but I LOVE the orcs of scarred lands. Because they are written with a lot of interesting culture and background to them. They still had the +2 to strength, +1 constitution, but their interesting culture made me excited to build an orc wizard because of the unique way they view magic, so I wanted to play that out regardless.

I dunno ...
It seems to me that any time you create two same characters, of wich one will be a Dwarf and one will be anything else ...
In each case Dwarf will have more HP ... even tho their Con can be exactly the same ...

Seems like Dwarves are more resilient to me. O_o