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FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I have no problem with breaking the mold, it's when you suddenly invalidate all the lore in the established universe in the sake of not offending a fantasy race of human-like creatures.

That seems a bit hyperbolic. Racial stat bonuses are "all the lore in the established universe" in a game that is meant to be a generic rule system with a wide variety of settings, including player-made settings?

And let's be honest here, WOTC's statement about the moral issue is probably just because they expect it will get less complaints than admitting that racial bonuses are an obsolete relic and need to go away for pure game design reasons. WOTC knows a huge part of their market clings to the idea of "true D&D" and insists on keeping old mechanics regardless of their merits, just like GW can't ever change things like the the D6 system or IGOUGO without getting a bunch of outrage that they dared to change the core identity of the game.

No, I feel like you are conflating things that aren't equal.

It would be the equivalent of GW saying that all Space Marines are now 2W. Guess what happened when GW dropped that nugget? The community went apepoop.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
No, I feel like you are conflating things that aren't equal.

It would be the equivalent of GW saying that all Space Marines are now 2W. Guess what happened when GW dropped that nugget? The community went apepoop.

That's a very good comparison actually. Some people were content to discuss the game design issues with making the change: the need to restore some durability to the MEQ stat line in response to offensive power creep vs. concerns that W2 marines would drive further power creep and the inconsistent application of the change across the various marine ranges would create a divide between good marines and bad marines. These were legitimate points to be made and it's unclear that W2 marines were a good change. But some people acted like the world was ending because GW dared to touch the numbers in the MEQ stat line despite those numbers being created in an entirely different game and only being a heavily abstracted interpretation of the lore. I'm sure if you go back and look you can find plenty of hyperbolic comments about GW destroying decades of established fluff by changing that stat line. But it was an absurd thing to say back then and it's an absurd thing to say about D&D making a relatively minor rule change. Don't be in that second group.

Except w2 marines resulted in exponential power creep of weapon power to counter w2 marine durability resulting in needing spiraling changes. Aoc's, -1 dam's, inv save ignoring weapons and inv save ignore ignoring inv saves etc

-1 ap bcame eearly worthless thanks to power creep initldted by w2 marines.

PenitentJake wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:


GW has all but given us the writing on the wall that 10th will be some time in the next 12-24 months.

Have they though?

I know there's been a rumour, but that isn't exactly the same thing, is it?

Either way, to address the main point:

I don't think D&D's release will really affect 40k at all. It's true that a lot of people play both, but the games are of different types, and the settings are radically different. Also, as others have pointed out, D&D is not as much an investment as 40k; at worst, people who have a monthly hobby budget might end up throwing one month's allotment at D&D instead of 40k.

It is, however, a noticeable example of edition churn in both the biggest RPG and the biggest Table-Top Miniature game- a practice which I personally see as the biggest problem facing the industry as a whole. I don't particularly like 5th edition D&D, but despite that fact, I'd rather see them lean into the system they have, expand it and make it work than blow everything up. Given a choice between Darksun for 5th or buying a Player's Handbook AGAIN, Darksun is going to win every time.

I'd quit DnD for Darksun lmao

But like others have said - it's not comparable.

tneva82 wrote:
Except w2 marines resulted in exponential power creep of weapon power to counter w2 marine durability resulting in needing spiraling changes. Aoc's, -1 dam's, inv save ignoring weapons and inv save ignore ignoring inv saves etc

-1 ap bcame eearly worthless thanks to power creep initldted by w2 marines.

Right. There are valid game design arguments against W2 marines, that was the point. Were they an inherently bad idea from the beginning, or was it GW's inability to restrain themselves from further power creep that caused the problems? Or would GW have continued all the other power creep anyway even if marines had stayed at W1? You can argue about these things but it's completely absurd to say "oh noes GW is invalidating all of the lore" as your reason for objecting to the change.

 Stevefamine wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:


GW has all but given us the writing on the wall that 10th will be some time in the next 12-24 months.

It is, however, a noticeable example of edition churn in both the biggest RPG and the biggest Table-Top Miniature game- a practice which I personally see as the biggest problem facing the industry as a whole. I don't particularly like 5th edition D&D, but despite that fact, I'd rather see them lean into the system they have, expand it and make it work than blow everything up. Given a choice between Darksun for 5th or buying a Player's Handbook AGAIN, Darksun is going to win every time.

I'd quit DnD for Darksun lmao

But like others have said - it's not comparable.

True. Its also not churn in this case (especially compared to GW's 3-4 year cycle). They're promising backwards compatibility (which to me is actually more of a red flag than big changes, because it says they either don't see any real problems or they're brushing them aside) and by the time it comes out in 2024, 5th will be 10 years old. That isn't 'edition churn.' That's a fairly staid revision that's borderline too conservative, not blowing everything up. So far they've made some minor race changes, moved stats to backgrounds, and added feats to backgrounds.

The Dark Sun comparison though.... that's something I'm not just getting. Its not buy a (non-existent) Dark Sun supplement or buy the players handbook. That isn't even a choice you can make.
I can see wanting it more than a Spelljammer, Dragonlance or Planescape book, but whether it came out for 5th or not-6th, you'd need the PH just as much (or as little, because they do make a chunk of the rules and classes free).

I Dunno, I find immersion can be broken if things get too outlandish. If the Fairy Wizard, starts passing more strength checks than the Half Orc Barbarian, simply because anyone can take anything, and racial stats aren't a thing, color me confused. I think the way ADnD did it was best. You roll 4 D6s, 6 times, in ORDER of stat, and then you can pick a class based off your stat roles. So if you rolled a 6 on your charisma, you cannot pick a bard or a Paladin. No matter what race you chose. Gygax hated his players.

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:
I find it odd that people are acting like stat bonuses are the only thing that seperated an elf from a human in D&D, and not trance and the innate magic (or the speed & stealthiness Wood Elves have instead, or the ability of Sea Elves to all be Aquaman).

Having races be defined by the cool extra features makes far more sense than the little number that makes you pressured to play that race if you want to play class X or Y.

You're right. I'm so glad Elves are differentiated by having innate spells. That really sets them aside from Ardlings, which are differentiated by innate spells. And from Gnomes, which are differentiated by innate spells. And from Tieflings, which are differentiated by innate spells...

To be clear, I don't necessarily object to different races being defined by traits, rather than ability scores. However, this very clearly isn't the direction WotC is going in. Instead of replacing ASIs with more distinct traits, WotC is instead deleting existing traits and replacing them with innate spellcasting abilities that are copy-pasted across half a dozen "different" races.

Though, FWIW, I still think races should factor into ability scores, even if they're not the whole of it. e.g. I've seen suggestions that characters should get +1 to an ability score from their race, +1 from their background and +1 from their class (each could offer a couple of possibilities - so an orc might let you give +1 to Str or Con, while a Rogue might give +1 Dex or +1 Int).

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Without getting off the main topic, I don't have a personal problem with Tasha's. I welcome any policy that says rascism=bad.

Aside, it's hard to consider the changes made in Tasha's as "racism=bad", given that they were made specifically to placate racists.

Shall I remind you of how it came about? I'm going to anyway because it's one of the most bafflingly stupid decisions I've ever witnessed.

It began when some morons on twitter decided that D&D orcs were literally black people. Sounds a bit racist, no? Indeed, if WotC was a sane company, it probably would have either ignored this nonsense altogether or else said something to the effect of 'No, orcs aren't black people. Kindly take your racism elsewhere.'

Instead, WotC took the strange step of completely validating the racists and released a statement to the effect of: "Oh gosh, you're right! Orcs are black people! They're savage and stupid and evil, just like black people! But don't worry, in future we'll make them less savage, less stupid and less evil. That way they'll be less like black people!"

Phew, thank goodness WotC did their bit to fight racism.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I Dunno, I find immersion can be broken if things get too outlandish. If the Fairy Wizard, starts passing more strength checks than the Half Orc Barbarian, simply because anyone can take anything, and racial stats aren't a thing, color me confused.

Why is it a problem that an exceptionally strong fairy can be stronger than an exceptionally weak orc? And how would this even happen in a real game, where the wizard is going to put their points into INT and the barbarian is going to put them into STR/CON? This seems like an absurd hypothetical scenario that can only happen if both players decide to build completely dysfunctional characters just to prove it can be done.

A more reasonable comparison would be a fairy barbarian passing more strength checks than a half-orc wizard, and in that case it's completely appropriate that the character who specializes in feats of strength and has invested heavily into becoming an expert at them will be better at feats of strength than the spellcaster who only grudgingly leaves the library once a month to go in search of new spell components.

I think the way ADnD did it was best. You roll 4 D6s, 6 times, in ORDER of stat, and then you can pick a class based off your stat roles. So if you rolled a 6 on your charisma, you cannot pick a bard or a Paladin. No matter what race you chose. Gygax hated his players.

I will never understand this masochistic fetish for RNG. Oh, you had a cool story idea for a paladin? Too bad, RNG says you're playing an elf ranger with a bow. Deal with it.

(Or suicide characters until you roll one with the stats you actually wanted, because that's definitely the best way to spend the first session.)

Aecus Decimus wrote:

Why is it a problem that an exceptionally strong fairy can be stronger than an exceptionally weak orc?

I think it's just one of those things people find immersion-breaking.

A big factor is that Small characters are almost identical (mechanically) to Medium characters. And having a fairy, even a strong fairy, being stronger than an orc about three times the size and mass of said fairy can just feel very wrong.

Bear in mind that, in terms of characters, flaws and weaknesses are often more important and defining than their strengths. When you're small, you should have physical limitations as a consequence of your size. A fairy might be strong for its race, but that shouldn't translate to also being stronger than a much larger and musclebound orc.

That isn't to say the fairy should be worse in every regard, just that it shouldn't be able to rely on physically overpowering its enemies.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

I think the way ADnD did it was best. You roll 4 D6s, 6 times, in ORDER of stat, and then you can pick a class based off your stat roles. So if you rolled a 6 on your charisma, you cannot pick a bard or a Paladin. No matter what race you chose. Gygax hated his players.

I will never understand this masochistic fetish for RNG. Oh, you had a cool story idea for a paladin? Too bad, RNG says you're playing an elf ranger with a bow. Deal with it.

(Or suicide characters until you roll one with the stats you actually wanted, because that's definitely the best way to spend the first session.)

Yeah, the above sounds like something you might do for a silly one-off, not a default way to build characters. It was removed for good reason and I have no wish to ever see it return.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I Dunno, I find immersion can be broken if things get too outlandish. If the Fairy Wizard, starts passing more strength checks than the Half Orc Barbarian, simply because anyone can take anything, and racial stats aren't a thing, color me confused. I think the way ADnD did it was best. You roll 4 D6s, 6 times, in ORDER of stat, and then you can pick a class based off your stat roles. So if you rolled a 6 on your charisma, you cannot pick a bard or a Paladin. No matter what race you chose. Gygax hated his players.

... you do realise that even with stat bonuses it's likely that with the "roll in order" method that fairy wizard could indeed be stronger than the half orc barbarian (and also more stupid too?)
I mean sure, I guess not playing a fairy wizard is always an option after seeing where the stats go, but in my mind forcingf a palyer to play something you don't want to because of RNG is terrible game design for a co-operative game.
Gygax hating his players was not a good thing.

To be fair, 4d6 down the line can be fun if you don't have a preconceived character for a campaign and want to see what you can make of the hand fate deals you (think the D&D equivalent of a Random Start mod for a cRPG like Skyrim). It shouldn't be something that a player is forced to do without good reason (eg. it's a oneshot at a con and you only get 15 mins for chargen), but it can be an interesting and enjoyable experience.

It's still better then announcing myself as the DM and instantly getting bombarded with 9000 Hexblade Warlocks that are "Slightly on the evil side" or 8000 (And I'm so sick of this it pisses me off) Warforged Echoknights with a level of Warlock or "Insert stupid broken combo here"

DnD today is hard to introduce to people, because everyone is basically encouraged from jumpstreet to min-max, and forget roleplay. The reason I encourage strict character creation is to prevent the idiots who come to the table with "Dude I promise I rolled this sheet, I couldn't believe it, by the way, can I start off with three extra Feats? How about a Holy Avenger?"

No, everyone rolls their sheets at the same time, in front of the DM. The same way. We can start at advanced levels, but this "I'm level 1, but I'm already a well known hero, it's in my back story that I am a legend" nonsense is gone. You are all nobodies. Worthless Sell-swords and vagabonds who meet in a tavern. None of you possess Wonderous items, or are descended from Bahamut.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
The reason I encourage strict character creation is to prevent the idiots who come to the table with "Dude I promise I rolled this sheet, I couldn't believe it, by the way, can I start off with three extra Feats?

So just use point buy like everyone else? I really don't understand this whole thing about clinging to badly designed RNG just because it's the way D&D did it 40 years ago, not when it's been at least 20 years since WOTC provided a much better system.

Yeah, point buy is the way to go. Why shouldn't I play my character and class with the stats I want? What's wrong with having a special background? A good DM can and will work with their players to make the adventure enjoyable for everyone.

Here is your Holy Avenger that you start out with. Due to _reasons_ it lost most of it's innate power and you _think_ you are on a journey of atonement or whatever to restore this holy relic of your god. Weapon, motivation, plot device all in one package. Great!

Point buy is fine, but people start begging for 20s at start, and I frankly love the way One DnD has laid it out now. Race completely doesn't matter. Everyone gets +2, and +1, or 3 +1s. Then you pick a background, a class, and a feat. The end. No broken feats at start either. Everything at level 1 is boring feats, like the new Lucky, or Dungeon Delver. Also, everyone gets 50 gold at start for gear, and that's it. You get to pick your own starting gear, as long as you can afford it. No "Noble" birth where you start with 100G.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Point buy is fine, but people start begging for 20s at start, and I frankly love the way One DnD has laid it out now. Race completely doesn't matter. Everyone gets +2, and +1, or 3 +1s. Then you pick a background, a class, and a feat. The end. No broken feats at start either. Everything at level 1 is boring feats, like the new Lucky, or Dungeon Delver. Also, everyone gets 50 gold at start for gear, and that's it. You get to pick your own starting gear, as long as you can afford it. No "Noble" birth where you start with 100G.

Wait, now I'm confused. You originally said that removing racial modifiers is "destroying 40 years of lore" because of objectionable left-wing politics, now you're saying you love the new system?

(And if you're dealing with players who beg for 20s that the rules don't allow you have a major toxic player problem. I can't imagine continuing to play with that kind of group.)

Aecus Decimus wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Point buy is fine, but people start begging for 20s at start, and I frankly love the way One DnD has laid it out now. Race completely doesn't matter. Everyone gets +2, and +1, or 3 +1s. Then you pick a background, a class, and a feat. The end. No broken feats at start either. Everything at level 1 is boring feats, like the new Lucky, or Dungeon Delver. Also, everyone gets 50 gold at start for gear, and that's it. You get to pick your own starting gear, as long as you can afford it. No "Noble" birth where you start with 100G.

Wait, now I'm confused. You originally said that removing racial modifiers is "destroying 40 years of lore" because of objectionable left-wing politics, now you're saying you love the new system?

(And if you're dealing with players who beg for 20s that the rules don't allow you have a major toxic player problem. I can't imagine continuing to play with that kind of group.)

The new system completely removes racial bonuses. My point was that people are using "racism" as a excuse to butcher lore. If on the other hand, the game designers come out and say, Racial stats no longer exist, you are all equal, yeah, that works for me. No more level 1 broken characters, who are basically demi-gods at level 3-5. I prefer a game design where no one can get above an 18 at start, and there are no racial bonuses that are inherently better than another. For instance, a mountain dwarf was for most of 5th, the perfect race. For pretty much anything. Now that is gone. Like, you can't even pick it anymore, it's been removed. Now we all play on equal ground.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

Aecus Decimus wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Point buy is fine, but people start begging for 20s at start, and I frankly love the way One DnD has laid it out now. Race completely doesn't matter. Everyone gets +2, and +1, or 3 +1s. Then you pick a background, a class, and a feat. The end. No broken feats at start either. Everything at level 1 is boring feats, like the new Lucky, or Dungeon Delver. Also, everyone gets 50 gold at start for gear, and that's it. You get to pick your own starting gear, as long as you can afford it. No "Noble" birth where you start with 100G.

Wait, now I'm confused. You originally said that removing racial modifiers is "destroying 40 years of lore" because of objectionable left-wing politics, now you're saying you love the new system?

(And if you're dealing with players who beg for 20s that the rules don't allow you have a major toxic player problem. I can't imagine continuing to play with that kind of group.)

The new system completely removes racial bonuses.

It moves them, for now, to backgrounds. Which honestly are doing too much heavy lifting and they won't stick (partly because i remember the D&D Next (5e) playtest, and still have the playtest docs. Every couple months they started over, basically from scratch. And the design direction from the beginning did not last at all- it made radical changes in direction over the year+ of the playtest, and from the dev's own mouths, they were frantically trying to finish things by the get-this-to-the-printers deadline).

But anyway, backgrounds are now grossly overloaded. Every farmer in the world now speaks halfling, has +2 Con and +1 Wis, and is Tough (+2 hp per level), and gets Animal Handling and Nature proficiency as well as proficiency in Carpenter's Tools.
Every hermit gets Magic initiate (primal) so gets druid cantrips and a single 1st level druid spell. knows medicine, religion and herbalism kits, can speak to fairies (Sylvan language) and gets +2 Wisdom and +1 Con.

You can also just do a custom (or modified) background and go for +2/+1 or +1/+1/+1 to stats, 2 skills, a toll proficiency, a language and a feat. There's no reason not to do this, other than speed, because the created backgrounds are really stilted and overly specific (every Charlatan in the world speaks Infernal, for feth's sake), and it feels real bad.
(its also a mathematical mess to cover all the options. Just pairing up all the stat bonuses (+2 str/+1 con, +2 str/+1dex, etc) means writing 30 backgrounds. Adding feats as a variable escalates that by an order of magnitude. Skill pairs becomes another escalation. Its a crazy amount of... not work, but page count. Just letting people pick is far superior to assigning arbitrary combos and writing out each one.

My point was that people are using "racism" as a excuse to butcher lore. If on the other hand, the game designers come out and say, Racial stats no longer exist, you are all equal, yeah, that works for me. No more level 1 broken characters, who are basically demi-gods at level 3-5.

I now don't believe you've ever played 5e. Broken on the player's side is very build dependent (and requires a bizarrely permissive or oblivious DM in 5e), and is practically impossible at level 1, where random 1/2 level mooks and luck can just one shot any character. At 3-5, class features are barely coming online and any sort of class or subclass resources are measured by at most a handful. I really kind of want to see specific examples of what you consider broken or 'demi-god'.

But the stat thing already happened with Tasha's and other books. Everything going forward from that book got handwaved as +2/+1 or +1/1/1, pick whatever. And you could apply it retroactively.

I prefer a game design where no one can get above an 18 at start, and there are no racial bonuses that are inherently better than another.

Uh... Welcome to 5e by default, which involved their weirdly punishing point buy. Getting higher than a 17 was for all practical purposes impossible. Unless you were house ruling and going with rolled stats from older editions.

For instance, a mountain dwarf was for most of 5th, the perfect race. For pretty much anything. Now that is gone. Like, you can't even pick it anymore, it's been removed. Now we all play on equal ground.

Yeah.... mountain dwarves were decent fighters and barbarians. Ok paladins and rangers. (all of which made all of their bonus weapon and armor bonus proficiencies irrelevant). +2 str and +2 con rarely mattered that much over the +2/+1 other races got. They were terrible as primary spellcasters or rogues (which are dependent on finesse ranged weapons) and several ways of building martial classes were strictly better as dex-builds.
There were some melee warlock builds you could cheese out initially, but hexblade (stabbing people with your charisma) made all that irrelevant.

5e was designed around starting with a 16 in your attack stat, a few lower stats and a negative one. If you actually built characters by the rules, that's pretty much how they ended up (though you could go for some medium secondary stats if you tried). Everything was very same-y and mediocre. Mountain dwarves didn't buck that trend (and don't do amazingly in various surveys and analytics over the edition. Solid 4th, consistently, which isn't where I'd expect something 'broken').

The poll requires a "Doesn't matter" choice.

D&D and Warhammer of various types have coexisted in parallel but largely separate bubbles (with a small ven-diagram overlap) for as long as Warhammer has existed.

No one who can afford GW will base their D&D purchases on whether or not a new revision of any GW game is is being released and most folks who play D&D don't care about GW.