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Voss wrote:

 Gert wrote:
One is the cash cow of a relatively small UK-based company and the other belongs to Hasbro. Not really a big shock that one gets more stuff put out than the other.

I'm honestly not sure where you're going with that statement.

Hasbro gives very few craps about D&D, to the point that it often didn't even show up in the company's yearly reports. Despite D&D's general name recognition, they bought WotC for Magic, and merely tolerate D&D as long as it doesn't lose money. Wizards execs have tried and failed to make D&D a big money maker (Hasbro has a tier system for properties, Magic is on par with Monopoly, and D&D falls under 'other games'), and honestly the D&D rules development team is probably smaller than GW's at this point (though they use a lot of freelancers for art). Of the very small number of rulebooks they put out for 5th edition (seriously, compare it to 3rd or TSR during 2nd, or even what they planned for 4th before they gave up on that ediition), a good 20% are produced by people outside the company.

Seriously, the exactly _one_ Forgotten Realms sourcebook (Sword Coast Adventures) produced for 5th edition was a joint project mostly done by Green Ronin, a competitor. Compare that to the _hundreds_ of FR sourcebooks produced for second and third editions.
If you add various adventure module hardbacks, you get to maybe... 10? That's wildly conservative for an edition that's 8 years old, and a game that used to produce 50+ books a year, not 50 over the editions 8 year life span (50 including character sheets, multiple gift sets of the same books, DM screen and multiple starter sets, one of which doesn't come out until October, despite the announcement of a new edition). The lack of push on D&D products, despite pop-culture tie-ins like Stranger Things (and a movie!) is honestly baffling.

Its a nostalgia product where the owners are content to sit on it and figure the nostalgia won't make them money.

Something tells me that your kinda out of touch with current D&D & WoTC/Hasbro.
To start with, there's alot more than maybe 10 books....

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I miss the option "doesn't matter"
To me they're not related, DnD is not really a thing in Germany I think as we have DSA.

This. It's rare to find German DnD groups compared to other gaming systems. Heck, I know more people who have played "Plüsch, Power & Plunder" (a P&P system for playing stuffed animals in a nightmarish toy story setting) than people who played DnD. I personally haven't played it (or had the chance to) after moving back to Germany from the US.

ccs wrote:
Something tells me that your kinda out of touch with current D&D & WoTC/Hasbro.
To start with, there's alot more than maybe 10 books....

In it's currently 8 years of existence, D&D 5 got 53 books released.

During the 8 years of D&D 3 and 3.5, it got a total of 248 books from it's official publisher.

 Dysartes wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
To me they're not related, DnD is not really a thing in Germany I think as we have DSA.

Y'all have a government agency restricting TTRPGs? Oof.

The story is even more hilarious. When DnD "took off" in the US, the German game company with the most German name called "Schmidt Spiele" tried to license it. There are some myths as to what happened exactly, but in the end there was no agreement and the management from Schmidt Spiele was pissed. So they tasked a bunch of translators and nerds to create a not-DnD for them, which did everything a little bit different than DnD did to prevent lawsuits - for example it uses cleverness instead of intelligence, intuition instead of wisdom and reversed the dice scale, so a roll of one is a crit instead of a fumble. Add a rather ridiculous setting (the Arrabian Nights setting is neighbors with dark age Europe, ancient Japan-China, hellenic Greece-Spain, a swamp full of intelligent lizard people and the unholy demon lands, all within a few weeks of travel) combined with a ton of pop culture references, bad jokes and some unique artwork, and DSA (translates to "The Dark Eye") was born.

Due to the reach of Schmidt Spiele which had their games in pretty much every convenient store, DnD was pushed out of the market and never really was a big thing here outside of areas close to American military bases until the internet happened. At that point DSA was well established and till today is still pretty much the default way for Germans to play P&P.

 Jidmah wrote:
Due to the reach of Schmidt Spiele which had their games in pretty much every convenient store, DnD was pushed out of the market and never really was a big thing here outside of areas close to American military bases until the internet happened. At that point DSA was well established and till today is still pretty much the default way for Germans to play P&P.

Funny you say that. For my perception DSA was always a nearly extinct game that only some older people used to play, while D&D was the prevalent system. My hometown did have a US military base until a few years ever since the end of WW2. I never thought about a correlation here. Interesting.

Add a rather ridiculous setting (the Arrabian Nights setting is neighbors with dark age Europe, ancient Japan-China, hellenic Greece-Spain, a swamp full of intelligent lizard people and the unholy demon lands, all within a few weeks of travel) combined with a ton of pop culture references, bad jokes and some unique artwork, and DSA (translates to "The Dark Eye") was born.

So like XV-XVIth century europe, but with elfs and orks etc? Sounds really fun.

Karol wrote:

Add a rather ridiculous setting (the Arrabian Nights setting is neighbors with dark age Europe, ancient Japan-China, hellenic Greece-Spain, a swamp full of intelligent lizard people and the unholy demon lands, all within a few weeks of travel) combined with a ton of pop culture references, bad jokes and some unique artwork, and DSA (translates to "The Dark Eye") was born.

So like XV-XVIth century europe, but with elfs and orks etc? Sounds really fun.

More like X-XVII, but yes. They essentially crammed all possible medieval settings into a continent that is roughly twice the size of Germany.

The demon lands used to be the country presenting the be polish/slavic background which was first razed by ogres and then taken over by demon worshippers. Judging from your stories, you'll feel right at home

Voss wrote:


I'm honestly not sure where you're going with that statement.

40k and DnD aren't comparable because DnD isn't Hasbro's or even WoC's big money maker. 40k has the churn because GW needs it to constantly make money, DnD doesn't need to be making money for Hasbro because Hasbro owns half the toy ranges under the sun, MtG, and most of the biggest board game systems. DnD is more comparable to something like MESBG.

Voss wrote:

 Gert wrote:
One is the cash cow of a relatively small UK-based company and the other belongs to Hasbro. Not really a big shock that one gets more stuff put out than the other.

I'm honestly not sure where you're going with that statement.

Hasbro gives very few craps about D&D, to the point that it often didn't even show up in the company's yearly reports. Despite D&D's general name recognition, they bought WotC for Magic, and merely tolerate D&D as long as it doesn't lose money. Wizards execs have tried and failed to make D&D a big money maker (Hasbro has a tier system for properties, Magic is on par with Monopoly, and D&D falls under 'other games'), and honestly the D&D rules development team is probably smaller than GW's at this point (though they use a lot of freelancers for art). Of the very small number of rulebooks they put out for 5th edition (seriously, compare it to 3rd or TSR during 2nd, or even what they planned for 4th before they gave up on that ediition), a good 20% are produced by people outside the company.

Seriously, the exactly _one_ Forgotten Realms sourcebook (Sword Coast Adventures) produced for 5th edition was a joint project mostly done by Green Ronin, a competitor. Compare that to the _hundreds_ of FR sourcebooks produced for second and third editions.
If you add various adventure module hardbacks, you get to maybe... 10? That's wildly conservative for an edition that's 8 years old, and a game that used to produce 50+ books a year, not 50 over the editions 8 year life span (50 including character sheets, multiple gift sets of the same books, DM screen and multiple starter sets, one of which doesn't come out until October, despite the announcement of a new edition). The lack of push on D&D products, despite pop-culture tie-ins like Stranger Things (and a movie!) is honestly baffling.

Its a nostalgia product where the owners are content to sit on it and figure the nostalgia won't make them money.

It's funny you mention all this, because so many of 5th ed books are either "guest works" ala the Stranger Things spin off, the Rick and Morty Spin off, or the literal Magic the Gathering Spinoff, OR they are literal copies of previous works, done with 5e rules. DM guide and players manual use the same art and class descriptions basically. All the spells are copy pasted...etc. The adventure books are just re-hashed versions of old favorites, or attempts to glom off the success of other notable works, such as the completely stupid Harry Potter DLC book. There is very little if anything actually NEW in 5th, with the exception of their hard left turn books (Tashas), that basically undo the last 40 years of DnD. What, you want to play a half orc scholar but you don't like racial bonues? Put them whereever you want!

Then you have the Matt Mercer effect. DnD 5E became cool for the first time when that idiot decided to make a web series out of it. Suddenly everyone wanted to play like critical role, but it was too much to learn. So we dumbed down DnD to such an extent that now stats don't matter, race doesn't matter, and you are given bonuses for "good role play". This then resulted in his works becoming cannonized, further breaking the game. Echo Knights and other edgelord crap that is stupidly unbalanced. But people were buying it so who cares?

Now DnD:One is starting off with a new system that basically completely re-builds character creation, makes race the least important decision, and invalidates all older rule books. So yeah, anyone wanting to play the new DnD will have to, at a minimum, buy the new system "One" which is supposedly an online subscription, and a players manual. So we're looking at $60+Sub fee/system purchase.

This is going to be an expensive hobby for the next few years, until someone finds a way to crack One, and offer it for free, like BattleScribe.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Good or bad for GW?

Neither. Sure, there's cross-over, but they're not going to eat one another's market share as they service different aspects of the industry.

They're different markets. If 10th Ed came out on the same day as Elden Ring 2 or the Playstation 6 I'd say the same thing.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
It's funny you mention all this, because so many of 5th ed books are either "guest works" ala the Stranger Things spin off, the Rick and Morty Spin off, or the literal Magic the Gathering Spinoff, OR they are literal copies of previous works, done with 5e rules. DM guide and players manual use the same art and class descriptions basically. All the spells are copy pasted...etc. The adventure books are just re-hashed versions of old favorites, or attempts to glom off the success of other notable works, such as the completely stupid Harry Potter DLC book. There is very little if anything actually NEW in 5th, with the exception of their hard left turn books (Tashas), that basically undo the last 40 years of DnD. What, you want to play a half orc scholar but you don't like racial bonues? Put them whereever you want!

Then you have the Matt Mercer effect. DnD 5E became cool for the first time when that idiot decided to make a web series out of it. Suddenly everyone wanted to play like critical role, but it was too much to learn. So we dumbed down DnD to such an extent that now stats don't matter, race doesn't matter, and you are given bonuses for "good role play". This then resulted in his works becoming cannonized, further breaking the game. Echo Knights and other edgelord crap that is stupidly unbalanced. But people were buying it so who cares?

Are DnD groups that different from other P&P games? In almost all cases I know, people eventually find a version they like and just stop updating.

Now DnD:One is starting off with a new system that basically completely re-builds character creation, makes race the least important decision, and invalidates all older rule books. So yeah, anyone wanting to play the new DnD will have to, at a minimum, buy the new system "One" which is supposedly an online subscription, and a players manual. So we're looking at $60+Sub fee/system purchase.

This is going to be an expensive hobby for the next few years, until someone finds a way to crack One, and offer it for free, like BattleScribe.

So $132 a year, right? Seems super cheap compared to 40k

ccs wrote:

Voss wrote:

 Gert wrote:
One is the cash cow of a relatively small UK-based company and the other belongs to Hasbro. Not really a big shock that one gets more stuff put out than the other.

I'm honestly not sure where you're going with that statement.

Hasbro gives very few craps about D&D, to the point that it often didn't even show up in the company's yearly reports. Despite D&D's general name recognition, they bought WotC for Magic, and merely tolerate D&D as long as it doesn't lose money. Wizards execs have tried and failed to make D&D a big money maker (Hasbro has a tier system for properties, Magic is on par with Monopoly, and D&D falls under 'other games'), and honestly the D&D rules development team is probably smaller than GW's at this point (though they use a lot of freelancers for art). Of the very small number of rulebooks they put out for 5th edition (seriously, compare it to 3rd or TSR during 2nd, or even what they planned for 4th before they gave up on that ediition), a good 20% are produced by people outside the company.

Seriously, the exactly _one_ Forgotten Realms sourcebook (Sword Coast Adventures) produced for 5th edition was a joint project mostly done by Green Ronin, a competitor. Compare that to the _hundreds_ of FR sourcebooks produced for second and third editions.
If you add various adventure module hardbacks, you get to maybe... 10? That's wildly conservative for an edition that's 8 years old, and a game that used to produce 50+ books a year, not 50 over the editions 8 year life span (50 including character sheets, multiple gift sets of the same books, DM screen and multiple starter sets, one of which doesn't come out until October, despite the announcement of a new edition). The lack of push on D&D products, despite pop-culture tie-ins like Stranger Things (and a movie!) is honestly baffling.

Its a nostalgia product where the owners are content to sit on it and figure the nostalgia won't make them money.

Something tells me that your kinda out of touch with current D&D & WoTC/Hasbro.
To start with, there's alot more than maybe 10 books....

10 Forgotten Realms books. Only IF you include adventures. Compare that to the literal hundreds of FR books from previous editions.

But no, I'm not out of touch, the 50 total products for 5e is taken right from their RPG products page: https://dnd.wizards.com/products?category=tabletop-rpg
That's literally it (and a lot are gift sets, filler, or just pure junk products (IMO), with several produced largely by somebody else.)

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: This is going to be an expensive hobby for the next few years, until someone finds a way to crack One, and offer it for free, like BattleScribe.

That's honestly laughable. The average player (not DM) can get away with buying zero books and just borrow a book at the table. At most they'll 'need' a player's handbook (and not at all if their subclass is on the online starter rules document), and maybe a class, race or subclass from a later book...if they want it. The monetary outlay for D&D is trivial. Unless your idea of D&D is collecting rulebooks (which is true for some people, including myself- though I mostly toss D&D books on Christmas and birthday gift idea lists). Even then its maybe $200 a year with their current development speed and production schedule.

 Jidmah wrote:


More like X-XVII, but yes. They essentially crammed all possible medieval settings into a continent that is roughly twice the size of Germany.

The demon lands used to be the country presenting the be polish/slavic background which was first razed by ogres and then taken over by demon worshippers. Judging from your stories, you'll feel right at home

Sounds cool. XVth century was wild around here. Hellenic byzentines, turks and their allias in anatolia, tatars in the Krym region, middle ages style knighly orders in the north, zmudzins running around in furs fighting with stone weapons and horse jaws, while at the same time visiting spaniars and italians are already having their renaissance, while portugal is being all sneaky like and doing exploring around africa. The setting sounds awesome, plus in german I can actualy properly read without a dictionary. There seems to be a ton of material online. Thank you for the information about the setting.

 Jidmah wrote:

The story is even more hilarious. When DnD "took off" in the US, the German game company with the most German name called "Schmidt Spiele" tried to license it. There are some myths as to what happened exactly, but in the end there was no agreement and the management from Schmidt Spiele was pissed. So they tasked a bunch of translators and nerds to create a not-DnD for them, which did everything a little bit different than DnD did to prevent lawsuits - for example it uses cleverness instead of intelligence, intuition instead of wisdom and reversed the dice scale, so a roll of one is a crit instead of a fumble. Add a rather ridiculous setting (the Arrabian Nights setting is neighbors with dark age Europe, ancient Japan-China, hellenic Greece-Spain, a swamp full of intelligent lizard people and the unholy demon lands, all within a few weeks of travel) combined with a ton of pop culture references, bad jokes and some unique artwork, and DSA (translates to "The Dark Eye") was born.

I think you've just sold me on The Dark Eye.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

It's funny you mention all this, because so many of 5th ed books are either "guest works" ala the Stranger Things spin off, the Rick and Morty Spin off, or the literal Magic the Gathering Spinoff, OR they are literal copies of previous works, done with 5e rules. DM guide and players manual use the same art and class descriptions basically. All the spells are copy pasted...etc. The adventure books are just re-hashed versions of old favorites, or attempts to glom off the success of other notable works, such as the completely stupid Harry Potter DLC book. There is very little if anything actually NEW in 5th, with the exception of their hard left turn books (Tashas), that basically undo the last 40 years of DnD. What, you want to play a half orc scholar but you don't like racial bonues? Put them whereever you want!

Then you have the Matt Mercer effect. DnD 5E became cool for the first time when that idiot decided to make a web series out of it. Suddenly everyone wanted to play like critical role, but it was too much to learn. So we dumbed down DnD to such an extent that now stats don't matter, race doesn't matter, and you are given bonuses for "good role play". This then resulted in his works becoming cannonized, further breaking the game. Echo Knights and other edgelord crap that is stupidly unbalanced. But people were buying it so who cares?

Now DnD:One is starting off with a new system that basically completely re-builds character creation, makes race the least important decision, and invalidates all older rule books. So yeah, anyone wanting to play the new DnD will have to, at a minimum, buy the new system "One" which is supposedly an online subscription, and a players manual. So we're looking at $60+Sub fee/system purchase.

This is going to be an expensive hobby for the next few years, until someone finds a way to crack One, and offer it for free, like BattleScribe.

I agree with anything except the last statement. I don't see D&D:One costing me a penny when I can play Pathfinder for free.

I never got into pathfinder personally. I have to admit it was a fun idea, with the company having paid professional DM's that started "adventurer's guilds" and whatnot, but I couldn't get into the world setting. Again, entirely personal, YMMV.

 vipoid wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

The story is even more hilarious. When DnD "took off" in the US, the German game company with the most German name called "Schmidt Spiele" tried to license it. There are some myths as to what happened exactly, but in the end there was no agreement and the management from Schmidt Spiele was pissed. So they tasked a bunch of translators and nerds to create a not-DnD for them, which did everything a little bit different than DnD did to prevent lawsuits - for example it uses cleverness instead of intelligence, intuition instead of wisdom and reversed the dice scale, so a roll of one is a crit instead of a fumble. Add a rather ridiculous setting (the Arrabian Nights setting is neighbors with dark age Europe, ancient Japan-China, hellenic Greece-Spain, a swamp full of intelligent lizard people and the unholy demon lands, all within a few weeks of travel) combined with a ton of pop culture references, bad jokes and some unique artwork, and DSA (translates to "The Dark Eye") was born.

I think you've just sold me on The Dark Eye.

Take a look at the mechanics first. No judgements, but they're not for everybody, and can get... controversial... among people who get worked up about such things. (And I mean that purely as game mechanics, not politics or 'politics'). I've seen people describe past editions as 'start with AD&D THAC0, drag it through Runequest & Call of Cthulu, throw it in a blender and then translate it from German to English by way of Japanese.'

I don't think its quite that bad, but what I've seen does have a fair amount of book-keeping, and some quirky translation issues.

 vipoid wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

The story is even more hilarious. When DnD "took off" in the US, the German game company with the most German name called "Schmidt Spiele" tried to license it. There are some myths as to what happened exactly, but in the end there was no agreement and the management from Schmidt Spiele was pissed. So they tasked a bunch of translators and nerds to create a not-DnD for them, which did everything a little bit different than DnD did to prevent lawsuits - for example it uses cleverness instead of intelligence, intuition instead of wisdom and reversed the dice scale, so a roll of one is a crit instead of a fumble. Add a rather ridiculous setting (the Arrabian Nights setting is neighbors with dark age Europe, ancient Japan-China, hellenic Greece-Spain, a swamp full of intelligent lizard people and the unholy demon lands, all within a few weeks of travel) combined with a ton of pop culture references, bad jokes and some unique artwork, and DSA (translates to "The Dark Eye") was born.

I think you've just sold me on The Dark Eye.

Give it a try, it's awesome.
There even are some pretty decent video games made from it, the Drakensang series, for example.

Just maybe don't use all of the rules... or half of them. Or even a tenth of them. The Dark Eye is infamous for having ridiculous amounts of rules on literally everything, including whole books for literally playing as a cat, having sex and on how to be faithful to a single specific god.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Karol wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:


More like X-XVII, but yes. They essentially crammed all possible medieval settings into a continent that is roughly twice the size of Germany.

The demon lands used to be the country presenting the be polish/slavic background which was first razed by ogres and then taken over by demon worshippers. Judging from your stories, you'll feel right at home

Sounds cool. XVth century was wild around here. Hellenic byzentines, turks and their allias in anatolia, tatars in the Krym region, middle ages style knighly orders in the north, zmudzins running around in furs fighting with stone weapons and horse jaws, while at the same time visiting spaniars and italians are already having their renaissance, while portugal is being all sneaky like and doing exploring around africa. The setting sounds awesome, plus in german I can actualy properly read without a dictionary. There seems to be a ton of material online. Thank you for the information about the setting.

Yes, that sound a lot like how DSA is. Glad to be of help, enjoy

My D&D friend group is entirely different than my 40k group. I'm the only connection between the two

It won't affect most. Many players are either into one and dabble in the other. A new D&D edition isnt nearly as much of a time sink unless your a dungeon master yourself and youre starting a new group.

Voss wrote:
Take a look at the mechanics first. No judgements, but they're not for everybody, and can get... controversial... among people who get worked up about such things. (And I mean that purely as game mechanics, not politics or 'politics'). I've seen people describe past editions as 'start with AD&D THAC0, drag it through Runequest & Call of Cthulu, throw it in a blender and then translate it from German to English by way of Japanese.'

Well now I have to see them.

In all seriousness, I appreciate the input. I'll give it a look and see if it's for me (then it'll just be a matter of convincing the rest of my group to try it).

 Jidmah wrote:

Give it a try, it's awesome.
There even are some pretty decent video games made from it, the Drakensang series, for example.

Just maybe don't use all of the rules... or half of them. Or even a tenth of them. The Dark Eye is infamous for having ridiculous amounts of rules on literally everything, including whole books for literally playing as a cat, having sex and on how to be faithful to a single specific god.

Rofl, I'll bear that in mind. Though I regret to say you've inspired me to find the rules for playing as a cat.

Incidentally, is the game improved if I imagine all the rules being shouted in a German accent?

If you want to play as a cat in D&D, vipoid, have a look at Animal Adventures - I think it is available via Steamforged Games, and they've released miniatures for both cats and dogs (and a crab?) in various class roles.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
There is very little if anything actually NEW in 5th, with the exception of their hard left turn books (Tashas), that basically undo the last 40 years of DnD. What, you want to play a half orc scholar but you don't like racial bonues? Put them whereever you want!

How is it a "hard left turn" to make a fairly minor and long-overdue change? Racial bonuses were a relic of D&D's broken early days and only kept around because of irrational resistance to change. Any narrative value they had was far outweighed by the way they locked in various race/class pairs and punished you for taking anything else. Want to play a ranged character? You're an elf, because +1 to hit is better than anything else and playing a non-elf character is crippling yourself right from day one. Playing a sorcerer? If you play a race without +2 charisma you're an idiot. Etc. Getting rid of racial bonuses lets you pick your race based on what feels appropriate for the character instead of what makes your build function.

So we dumbed down DnD to such an extent that now stats don't matter, race doesn't matter, and you are given bonuses for "good role play".

Stats absolutely matter, in fact they matter more in 5E than in previous editions since you have much less ability to make up for low stats by stacking broken feats/magic items/etc. Race matters from a roleplaying point of view as it should. And giving roleplaying XP is a thing any decent DM was already doing because direct incentives to do more than roll your attack dice lead to better games in the majority of groups. So I'm really not seeing how any of this is "dumbed down". The absurd complexity of previous editions is not the same thing as depth.

Now DnD:One is starting off with a new system that basically completely re-builds character creation, makes race the least important decision, and invalidates all older rule books. So yeah, anyone wanting to play the new DnD will have to, at a minimum, buy the new system "One" which is supposedly an online subscription, and a players manual. So we're looking at $60+Sub fee/system purchase.

So, one copy of the online subscription for your group to share? Seems like a pretty cheap transition, especially if someone in Russia or China makes a Wahapedia equivalent and copy/pastes all of the subscription content into a free site.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I never got into pathfinder personally. I have to admit it was a fun idea, with the company having paid professional DM's that started "adventurer's guilds" and whatnot, but I couldn't get into the world setting. Again, entirely personal, YMMV.

Don't worry, you missed nothing. Pathfinder is just a semi-fixed version of 3.5e. They at least try to make martial classes keep up with spellcasters for a while longer but ramp up the rules bloat to an absurd level. And TBH I've never seen anyone playing the official organized play stuff, it's all people who liked 3.5e and didn't make the change to 4e running private home games with the least-bad version of 3.5e.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

How is it a "hard left turn" to make a fairly minor and long-overdue change? Racial bonuses were a relic of D&D's broken early days and only kept around because of irrational resistance to change. Any narrative value they had was far outweighed by the way they locked in various race/class pairs and punished you for taking anything else. Want to play a ranged character? You're an elf, because +1 to hit is better than anything else and playing a non-elf character is crippling yourself right from day one. Playing a sorcerer? If you play a race without +2 charisma you're an idiot. Etc. Getting rid of racial bonuses lets you pick your race based on what feels appropriate for the character instead of what makes your build function.

I don't see how a +1 bonus on a given roll is crippling yourself in a cooperative game where the Game Master has to cater to the strengths and weaknesses of their group anyway in order to create an interesting adventure. I played some D&D over the years, starting out with a 2 point difference in your main attribute - while annoying if you want top efficiency - is hardly making your character unplayable.

a_typical_hero wrote:
I don't see how a +1 bonus on a given roll is crippling yourself in a cooperative game where the Game Master has to cater to the strengths and weaknesses of their group anyway in order to create an interesting adventure. I played some D&D over the years, starting out with a 2 point difference in your main attribute - while annoying if you want top efficiency - is hardly making your character unplayable.

It's crippling because of how the D20 system works. Even for a basic fighter type +1 to hit is an incredibly powerful bonus when you're hitting on a 15+ or worse, that's 20-50% more damage balanced against some relatively minor lore bonuses. And if you're a spellcaster that's +1 to save DC (a major damage buff) on top of +1 to hit (or better spells per day in older editions) and +1 to a bunch of useful skills. If you cared at all about character optimization by far the primary deciding factor in picking a race was getting the correct racial bonuses. And what do you get in exchange for this balance issue? Some "roleplaying" justification for pushing people into using the same stock character archetypes of the dexterous elf, strong half-orc, etc. Good riddance to that nonsense.

And sure, the DM can adjust things, but that assumes everyone in the group has the same level of optimization. How do you balance the target's AC when you have a well-optimized elf archer with +10 to hit and a poorly optimized halfling fighter with +4 to hit? Either the elf is challenged but the halfling can't hit at all or the halfling is challenged but the elf yawns and rolls another hit.

I'm personally not a fan of every Fantasy Race drifting ever closer to being Humans with Accessories. I feel it's just really diluting the point of having separated fantasy races by having them become mechanically similar.

With 5e balancing, the difference in an Attribute Optimized character and an unoptimized character is... +1 or 2 to hit in their main attack profile.

 Thadin wrote:
I'm personally not a fan of every Fantasy Race drifting ever closer to being Humans with Accessories. I feel it's just really diluting the point of having separated fantasy races by having them become mechanically similar.

This is a feature not a bug. Race (like gender, height, hair color, etc) should be primarily a roleplaying choice, not a set of dice math buffs. You should play an elf because it fits your character concept, not because +2 dex is a vital dice math buff even though your character's backstory and personality are far more like a human. The old cliche party of a halfling rogue, elf archer, human cleric of a lawful good god, etc, can GDIAF.

With 5e balancing, the difference in an Attribute Optimized character and an unoptimized character is... +1 or 2 to hit in their main attack profile.

Yes, if you consider just attribute optimization it's "only" a 20-50% difference in offense plus various skill bonuses. But the players who pick their race for the correct bonuses are likely to make all of the other choices the same way, resulting in a larger power gap.

I don't see the point of races in fantasy if they're not different enough to merit it. The idea of completely disregarding bonuses due to race is an odd one, because elves and orcs should be more different than they are now. Why is a bonus for playing as a race that's better than another at something, because the gods willed it, a bad thing to have in a roleplaying game? It's like the slow dilution in what races provide from Morrowind to Skyrim. In Morrowind, High Elves were so proficient and sensitive to magic, that they started with 2.5x Intelligence in magicka, and Orcs and humans started with 1x intelligence as magicka, but everyone could be a good mage if they put in the effort. If you pick an Orc mage, play with the starting drawbacks, because it's what you chose. Eventually, or immediately depending on what level you start as, you'll be as good, regardless. I'm tired of RPGs becoming streamlined, boring, and safe.

 TheBestBucketHead wrote:
I don't see the point of races in fantasy if they're not different enough to merit it.

What is the point of hair color in fantasy? Should you not describe your character's hair color unless it gives a 20% difference in damage or skill rolls?

Why is a bonus for playing as a race that's better than another at something, because the gods willed it, a bad thing to have in a roleplaying game?

Because it completely removes character diversity in any game where people aren't 100% committed to ignoring character optimization factors. If the gods have willed that high elves are the best mages then virtually all mages will be high elves because it's the obvious best choice. Even if your character backstory and personality are better suited to being an orc most of the time you're going to handwave it away as "an elf who was raised by orcs and so acts exactly like them but still gets that precious mage buff". And that's what we saw over and over again in D&D: you pick your character archetype, and then you pick one of the 1-2 races that gives the correct racial stat bonuses. Instead of a wide range of races you had a short list of cookie cutter builds made with stock fantasy cliches and a lot of pressure to never deviate from them.

And of course it then skews the demographics of the world when the inevitable supplement bloat happens. Lore-wise the world is mostly human with a good amount of elves and dwaves and some half-orcs and hobbits hiding in the corners. But 99% of adventurers are some obscure race from a supplement because that's the only way to get things like +2 INT and +2 DEX on the same character. So what if there are only 200 of them left in the entire world following the disaster that destroyed their homeland, every wizard you meet is that race because the only thing better than +1 to your spellcasting attribute is +1 to your spellcasting attribute and a +1 AC bonus.

I'm tired of RPGs becoming streamlined, boring, and safe.

Why? RPGs should be roleplaying games, not skirmish-scale miniatures games with really convoluted rules. Streamlining puts more emphasis on the roleplaying instead of character build optimization and tabletop strategy.

Wargamers: I can only play a High Elf Mage because it's the most optimal option. This is a problem in DND.

Roleplayers: High elf mages are cool, I'll play a high elf mage. Or, my idea for a gnome mage is cool, ill play a gnome mage. I've got an idea for a goblin ranger to play.

I don't know if you've actually played DND 5e, but most players don't think like Wargamers.

I'm currently DMing for two parties. Changeling Artificer, Dragonborn Paladin, Elf Druid, Human Cleric and a Dwarf Barbarian, all using default racial attributes.

My other party is Human Fighter, Human Barbarian, Human Wizard, Tiefling Artificer and Kobold Paladin.

The only problem I've had where people were pressed over racial attributes, was when I tried organizing a DND party with some 40k/AoS players. All hung up over the minute little numbers and bonuses that trying to get them to make a Character was such a pain that I decided to disband that effort.

Removing Racial Attributes also doesn't magically make Minmaxing go away. It just shifts things. Now High Elf isn't the best wizard, Tortle is. So on and so forth.

My first character was a Half Orc Cleric. I'm particular towards human sorcerers, with a feat, of course. Remember, removing the difference between races in fantasy does not add choices, it removes choices. Now everything might as well just be a human. Let's go further, why have classes? I play a system without classes and is point buy, and you buy the race you want with points, and I still buy sub optimal races.

Now, why should every race be equally good at everything, and why should that mean people will only pick optimal characters with every single thing being minmaxed? Why does it limit characters?

It enhances characters, immensely, because now your character has more defining them than being a different color human. You can still have a damn good wizard with one less Intelligence, or, god forbid, at most 3 less intelligence.

If your only issue is that people minmax, remove subclasses, feats, and races. You will always pick what suits you best. But, even in a video game where I'm playing solo, I picked Dark Elf as a mage in Morrowind, despite the fact that they are about as optimal as an Orc mid game, and way worse than high elves mid to late game. Why? Because it's fun. I wanted to roleplay a Telvanni mage, and a high elf or breton just didn't do it for me.

Add in multiple players, all in it for RP, and what do you get? Fun and interesting choices for race. Trying to win a campaign in d&d by minmaxing is a fool's errand, and even with racial differences, you can become as good as any other race at something within 4 levels. At the very latest, it can take up to level 8 to make an Orc wizard just as good as any other race.

And, I recently watched a show where green hair was cursed, so hair can matter for RP. If we were playing in a campaign where people with white hair had magic powers, people with black hair had better strength, and people with brown hair were average, I'd expect hair color to matter.

 TheBestBucketHead wrote:
Remember, removing the difference between races in fantasy does not add choices, it removes choices.

Only if you define "choice" in roll-playing terms, where only things that have a direct mechanical effect on your dice rolling matter. In roleplaying terms it's still a significant choice.

Let's go further, why have classes?

Good question. D&D has them because of "legacy code" issues related to its origin as a fantasy hero add-on for a historical wargame. If you're designing a game from scratch and not worrying about people who will complain if you change too much you probably wouldn't lock everything into rigid classes.

You can still have a damn good wizard with one less Intelligence, or, god forbid, at most 3 less intelligence.

You can still have that character if you want. Nobody is forcing you to use any particular combination of attributes, if you want a lower-intelligence wizard then make one. What removing fixed racial bonuses does is remove the problem where, if you care about character optimization at all, you're locked into playing the same 1-2 races that have +2 INT. Or +2 DEX for an archer, +2 STR/CON for a melee fighter, etc.

At the very latest, it can take up to level 8 to make an Orc wizard just as good as any other race.

And a level 8 character that started with +2 INT will be a stronger character than the level 8 orc wizard. That's the problem, getting there eventually doesn't matter if the rest of the party reached that point several levels ago and has now exceeded it. No matter how far you go you'll always be lagging behind.


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 Thadin wrote:
I don't know if you've actually played DND 5e, but most players don't think like Wargamers.

In your experience. In my experience they do. But maybe this is because I've played most of my D&D in 3.5e/Pathfinder, a system that punishes you brutally if you don't optimize your character build to get +30 on every roll. Maybe 5e attracts a completely different group in general, I've only played it with the same people I played the older systems with. But I doubt it's gone through such a complete culture change that min/maxing and picking races based on getting the right bonuses for your build are as unheard of as you claim.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, let's remember the context here. This whole discussion came up because of a post making the complaint that removing racial bonuses is some kind of "hard left turn" into woke culture or whatever the right-wing outrage machine wants to call it these days:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
There is very little if anything actually NEW in 5th, with the exception of their hard left turn books (Tashas), that basically undo the last 40 years of DnD. What, you want to play a half orc scholar but you don't like racial bonues? Put them whereever you want!

Whether or not you like racial attribute bonuses there is clearly a reason for removing them that has nothing to do with left-wing politics.