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

It's only a fallacy if it isn't relevant, and it's very much relevant.




Well here's the big think boyo: fantasy races =/ human races.

Quite frankly it's extremely racist of you to say it's similar.

Relevancy to the topic isn't a necessary quality for an argument to be a fallacy or not? And it is a slippery slope fallacy cause the argument is that if we remove ASI being locked down to races, we will also lose racial abilities. The the "slippery slope" is that we are setting on a path where all uniqueness in races is going to be removed. Though I don't think anyone has argued for removing racial abilities at all? In fact, I'd argue they do a lot more for racial uniqueness than ASIs and are usually something any class can benefit from.


The topic wasn't about racism at all, and was more an argument about the ramifications of adding in Tasha's updates to the dnd 5e ruleset into BG3. 5e assigns ASIs and abilities based on racial pick but even pre-Tasha's I would not say one race is better than another outright as they all have good flavor and RP potential. I just have the issue that pre-Tasha's the ASI a race gives would play a bit too much on what class you'd play with that race. Additionally racial ability wise almost all of them have something useful and different that sometimes it can be comparing apples and oranges. (Even if some argue Humans or Half Elves are the best mechanically, I tend to disagree because while a feat is great and the half elf stuff is strong, sometimes having something like spells and resistance or being a mount can be a lot stronger/more fun.)

Generally, in a session you want ever character have a chance to shine. A level playing field can help in that greatly, especially if you are running a very combat focused campaign. Going back to the earlier example, if a player picked an orc wizard and so only has a 13 in intelligence cause pointbuy, that hurts him significantly. Everyone else will have a +1 to +2 difference in their bonuses to attacking and he might even find that enemies have an easier time passing his spell DCs because of his lack of intelligence. This could make it considerably less fun for the player because they wanted to do a character concept that sounded cool, but the game punished them mechanically for doing so. With this uneven playing field, it can become very unfun for certain players. Tasha's makes it level so the orc can move that -2 around anywhere and move their pluses anywhere, and same for any race. It makes it that any idea has equal viability and that the dominant variable is player creativity and not what matches well with what Ability Score-wise.

A fallacy is a fallacy because it is flawed reasoning behind an argument, or because an argument is being used in a manner that is irrelevant to what you are discussing. You cannot commit a godwin fallacy when you are literally discussing Nazis, for example. A slippery slope argument is not by itself a fallacy. They're arguing that removing racial attributes is good because it evens playing field between races so that everyone can excel equally at every class. @Scribe argues that racial traits means they won't be equally excelling at every class anyway, and wonders why racial traits shouldn't be removed as well by their line of argument. This is not a fallacy.

Well, granted, the "When does it simply become 'forget about different races'" would be a fallacy if made as an assertion that this is what they want. But that isn't the argument.

I apologize if I misread it, it seemed like that was the direction their logic was going because they moved it toward the extreme of race no longer being meaningful which is what I thought was a slippery slope but I might just be reading into the "When does it simply become 'forget about different races'." line too much.

It's not racism to understand that a 3 foot tall being that has the body of a child, is weaker than an 8 foot tall being from a species renewed for physical health.

If one yes ANY experience in martial arts, or contact sport, this is as obvious as the sun rising on a new day.

Because fundamentally being worse than the rest of your party doesn't feel good.

People may roll an orc wizard for a variety of reasons. Some might do it for the racials (Savage Attacks isn't useful, but a wizard can still get great mileage out of Restless Endurance in a pinch) while others might just really like the aesthetic of a burly half-orc in wizard robes. Others might just want the novelty or to roleplay a character who, while competent in the field (has 16 INT), isn't respected by their peers because of racial bias. Or heck, maybe they just LOVE half-orcs as a race and really want to try wizard out.

What Tasha's rule does is allow the player to not be penalized for choosing flavor over mechanical strength. Or at least not punished as harshly. Being 5% more likely to fail at casting spells as a wizard is generally not good. It is why you almost never see a human or gnome wizard who sets their INT at 14 and feels this is fine. You always want your character's primary stat as high as it can be so you can succeed your important rolls as much as possible.

There's also the point that some campaigns are harder than others and some groups emphasize min-maxing more than most. In BG3 terms there are different difficulty settings, and maybe I want to play a half-orc wizard on a higher difficulty without turning it into an exercise in masochism.

Meanwhile if I DID want to be masochistic... I can always just not invest in my INT attribute when assigning my attribute points.

As I've said a few times now, all Tasha's rule does is add more options to character creation so that we can all make the sort of character we want without handicapping ourselves in the process.

Sorry for the double post, but I wanted to point out that this can ALSO be solved with racial abilities.

Goliaths and Fir Bolgs have a racial that doubles their carry weight. This allows them to lift twice as much, carry twice as much, and throw twice as much as anyone else without just giving them a flat boost to hit chance and damage that a strength bonus would give.

It also allows them to get that sweet fantasy of being a huge being capable of effortlessly picking a grown man up with one hand for intimidation purposes or moving the large obstacle blocking the path.

Similarly the halfling has a racial that explicitly allows it to run between and under enemy legs if they are a size larger than them.

Abilities like these are a lot more fun than pure ASIs in my opinion.

It doesnt matter to me if Abilities or special rules are more fun (and I would agree that they are), the fact remains that removal of ASI as a means of distinction between species undeniably removes differences, aka: makes them more similar.

I dont want that. I dont need that to understand that this is a fictional world that has no relation to the peoples and places of THIS world. A Halfling PC, should never be as strong as Half Orc or Goliath, at level 1, when both focus on Strength. It simply shouldnt.

Regardless, with the panel today, I think hoping for anything outside of the PHB is a fools hope anyway. I'm learning the mod system now, because I simply refuse to 'hope' that Larian will implement what I want.

I don't agree that a +1 here or there makes the races unique in a meaningful way. The racial ASIs dictate what races are best suited for what classes, but they don't fundamentally change how you play that class or add anything interesting to how your character solves the problems presented in the campaign. To that end their removal does nothing but improve the game while removing nothing of value.

Especially since, as an optional rule, YOU can always choose to adhere to the racial ASIs if you want to while I am free to ignore them for the sake of my own enjoyment.



What? Nobody here has made an argument pertaining to real life.

Also you can already make a gnome that is stronger than a half-orc so that argument falls pretty flat. A gnome barbarian will likely have 14 STR. If I made a half-orc druid I'd probably dump that to 10. The gnome is stronger than my half-orc by RAW at level 1.

By end-game the gnome will have 20 STR while my druid will still just have 10, making the gnome vastly stronger. AND, that gnome will be equal in strength to the Goliath fighter who equally invested in strength.

This is a key point. The max ability score for EVERY race through ASIs is 20. If my level 12 gnome can train hard to get 20 strength, exactly the same as a level 12 orc, then why can't my gnome start out with 16 STR? Backstory of intensive training or steroids or whatever

Indeed. All the strength bonus does is let the Goliath max strength sooner and enjoy their feats for a larger chunk of the game than the gnome, which is a pretty crap deal for the gnome player who might not even get all their feats before the campaign ends because they need one more ASI.

The realism argument falls through pretty fast. It doesn't add realism, it just makes the gnome's game worse.

Because the Orc is racially predisposed to being stronger than the Gnome.

This is all irrelevant.

Halfing, or Gnome Barbarian - 15 Str on Standard Array. Level 1.
Half Orc or Goliath Barbarian - 17 Str on Standard Array. Level 1.

Thats how the game reflects ONE of the ways the races are different.

That is it, that is all.

If it was up to me, we would go back to the old days, where they had negative modifiers, but I understand that wont happen.

Within my own alternative character generation method, I dont even have the ASI completely tied to race. I have it broken down as.

Lineage +1 ASI (depending on Lineage, so no you cannot put your Halfling +1 in Str)
Background + 1 ASI (each Background provides 2 or more options for an Attribute to be increased per my own assumptions)
Class + 1 ASI (each Class provides an ASI increase to 1 of 3 Attributes.

No Attribute may be increased by more than 2.

That way, you get to have your Halfling with +2/+1 however you like, but only because your whole character builds up to that combination.

I'd like to see Tasha in the game.

Like not just the cauldron rules, but the actual witch too. Babe Witch is always popular. Ethel gave us the hag angle, but Tasha could definitely work the glamour love potion turn you into a frog type thing. All her promo art has been ace. Umar Witch Project contingent for sure!

But yeah, I'd like them to put Tasha's and Xanathar's stuff in the game and rep it

Which is a better way to do it than 5e handled it to be sure, but given that we're discussing 5e we kind of have to go with the rule sets they presented.

Which includes Tasha's, since that is an official book put out by Wizards introducing an optional way to build your character.

Personally when 6e comes around I am kind of hoping they'll abandon the racial ASIs entirely and put more focus on designing the racial abilities to be unique, interesting, and at least close to all being compelling choices regardless of your class.

Especially for poor dragonborn who's racial abilities are really underwhelming in 5e.

I can almost be sure that 6e will remove ASI from lineages (they wont even call them race anymore) there is simply too much Social blowback at this point.

If I DM, I would allow characters to have at least 16 in their main Ability score no matter the race, which in all is only 1 point difference (i.e. 1 Racial bonus point is removed elsewhere).

Tasha's Cauldron/WotC is too generous and just flushes the whole Racial bonuses.

I like the Racial Ability differences for heroic characters, but a tiny moderation is cool to allow, for example, a Drow Wizard 16 Int (+1 Int instead of Chr) or a Mountain Dwarf Paladin 16 Chr (+1 Str instead of +2, or Point-Buy 16 Chr).

Nb : some mods will allow this (site: Nexus Mods), but it could be a nice minor tweak for BG3 vanilla.

Races in D&D are more akin to different species than they are to the concept of race used in the real world. Of course an elephant has higher constitution than a human. Have you ever felt an elephant hide? I have. Even "abstract" concepts like intelligence are easy to compare when you think of race in terms of species. Which is smarter, a human or a mouse? Having attribute differences for different species makes perfect sense in the context of roleplay and yes, I will say it is absolutely a good thing that it makes it more difficult for someone who is roleplaying a sub optimal combination compared to someone who is playing an ideal race + class combo. It reflects species realism. Poisons that would kill a human would not touch an elephant, a human would need to train their body to be resistant to them over time. In my opinion, it is not only fine that people who want to roleplay as some race + class combo which is not orthodox have to struggle a bit more as a result of it, it is actually a good thing. It reflects what it is like in the real world when someone starts from a disadvantaged position.

This has always been my thought as well. I never considered races in D&D as analogs of real world races and physical limitations and advantages seemed logical to me. People demand and seek immersion but it's jarring to me that a halfling with strength 20 can lift and carry the same as a half orc with strength 20. But clearly I am in the minority here.