THis echoes what I've been saying. D&D used to be humancentric and demi-humans were exotic. Now they're all the same, so everyone will play their blue-haired, side-shaved, spectacle wearing half-dragonborn half-tiefling Portland barrista.
@@yurisc4633 classic false dichotomy of "if you make good choices, you don't care about roleplay". way to prove the video right. simply picking a non-human race isn't "roleplay" anymore than having a nose is "roleplay". roleplay is a completely different thing than wearing a costume.
@@yurisc4633 ahhhh, sneaky. going from saying they like winning but not roleplay to just saying that they like winning. as if it's good to like winning or to make good choices. moving the goalpost is a classic anti-min-maxer.
@@RPGPundit nah all those San Francisco people are watching and copying anime. There are very very few anime that have fantasy races hating each other. If they do it's the bare minimum "demons vs angels" even though they all look human. Anime and Japanese game is where we got the rainbow hair. Japanese media I believe made our modern media leftists
It's more accurate to call it "mainstream fantasy". If you want some interesting stats, look up what the most commonly selected races in RPGs and MMOs are. If I remember correctly, there's a good interview with one of the original WoW devs at Blizzard talking about this. The TLDR is that your average consumer will - more often than not - gravitate towards attractive human characters. Your average consumer - again, more often than not - has a difficult time identifying with non-human characters because they have more interest in self inserting or experiencing a power fantasy than playing a role or looking at something that it's conventionally attractive. Every medium does this because it's the marketable thing. If you want meaningful depth and variety you're probably not going to find it in mass marketed material that's specifically been watered down to appeal to the widest number of people.
To avoid "bio-essentialism" WotC removed racial perks like weapon profiencies (elves were good with longswords and bows, for example) but that bit them in the ass because the giff (hippo humanoids from Spelljammer) were militaristic and were trained with firearms so they handwaved it that the giffs' god blessed them to be naturally gifted with firearms. What a bunch of hypocrites! (no pun intended).
A god making you better than other races by fiat hardly seems more progressive than a biological or cultural advantage, but what do I know. I studied engineering, not basket weaving.
In a way that would be a cool idea, where each stat has its disadvantage and each PC is weighed down by something e.g. ugly masks for charisma, near constant stream of noise for intelligence, constant dripping of poison or alcohol or cold water for constitution, etc.
In fantasy games, I usually don’t allow for non-human PC’s until there’s a clear culture and history established for the other potential player races. This allows some degree of exploration in a new setting as well. As for the projection of woke emancipation theory, what can you expect from people who see skin color but can’t see history, culture, or tradition?
It used be interesting to RP an non human, like "I live for a millennia, how does that influence how I think?" for elves, or "I don't feel mammalian emotions, how does that change my attitude toward death?" for lizardfolk. If done right, it could be a lot of fun and interesting to put yourself in a different frame of mind. But I agree, if everyone is just the same with a different paintjob, what's the point? This I why for my homebrew Pathfinder game I have variant human ancestries (Leng touched, Tcho Tcho, and Ghoul) with distinct differences from Vanilla humans.
Halflings can be hardy like dwarves now, despite being half the size. A human can be as smart as an elf, despite elves having hundreds of years to learn. But they don't care. These people don't even make an attempt to role play. They always try to insert themselves.
The original point of non-human PCs have racial ability score bonuses was that only humans had no level cap for classes in AD&D (the exception was the Thief class). I roll my eyes every time someone screams "bio-essentialism!" when the idea of D&D races/species have better ability scores than others - species are built different. Humans are well rounded, while elves are more nimble and dwarves are built tougher. This isn't racist but evolutionary (despite D&D being actually more creationist). Just look at how different the great cats are specialized - cheetahs are faster than lions, tigers can swim, cougars live in mountainous areas, etc. The wokeists scream for diversity but then wants everyone to be the same to the point we should just play grey vague humanoids...
And Jaguars are units that can rip apart crocodilians in the water. I've also made similar examples towards some of these wokies; however, they can't wrap their head around biology and anatomy (while they're also trying to make cats and dogs vegan).
@crankysmurf "Bio-Essentialism?" Is that yet another addition to the loony-lexicon to proudly stand with "Cis-Gendered", "Black-Coded","I identify as...",and "My pronouns are..."?
I was teaching a high school group to play using an ORS system. I skipped the race section and none of them seemed to miss it. Only later did I point out that we hadn't incorporated the different races into character generation. Only 1 in 5 felt the need to ret-con that she was anything other than human. Compare this to another group of students with whom I did go through the races as we were playing a more modern system. Only 1 in 5 choose human... Cuz it's cozplay to them.
"It's racist to have races be monoculture!" Noone except Tolkien has the time to make hundreds, if not thousands, of different cultures for each playable race! There are over 7000 languages and dialects and almost as many distinct cultures in the real world. The reason we give non-human species/aliens/races mono-cultures is for ease of use on the high level - Star Trek and Star Wars did this: Vulcans are cold and logical while Klingons love to fight - but once you get to explore individuals you can find the exception. This is what happens when wokeists only see skin colour and live in metropolitan American "melting pot" cities with no homogenous groups like in most countries.
With all the racemixing in those cities they essentially are homogenous. They just don't have any culture to go with it, except for corporate brand loyalty. That's the point of it all.
Racist means nothing anymore within modern western culture, it a rhetorical mechanism used by westerners to ‘justify’ headhunting other westerners. The rest of you should wake up and realize you’re well into being warred upon by these people
@@dereklong801 They argue that culture shouldn't tied to race/species. Now they say that a dwarf who grew up amongst the elves shouldn't have dwarven racial traits (like knowing stone crafting) because they didn't grow up that. To me as someone who's ethnic Chinese who grew up most of my life in Canada this is a tad racist because these wokeist want to erace cultures by saying that there shouldn't be homogeny of a group and thus no unified culture - I shouldn't recognized my Chinese culture and heritage because I didn't grow up in China. Everything to them should be like the "melting pot" of metro American cities (which still do have ethnic areas...).
One of the things that makes D&D work is the simplicity of choosing Class or Class+Race. There is also something about having these things come packaged with abilities. It gives them mechanical weight, makes them an interesting choice in play. I saw the changes to race and it doesn't really make much sense to me in terms of keeping the feel of D&D
RPGPundit: _Humans are the best race_ Me: THAT'S GOING IN THE BOOK OF GRUDGES!📜🖍😫 As someone who is clearly a Dwarf with gigantism we are obviously the superior race.😌
I t hink the best real life comparison to a Halflings would be certain Pygmy populations, who are not disabled nor children, but their small size has certainly made them vulnerable, as today they are frequently targeted for mutilation, slavery, and killings.
WotC design philosophy since 5E seems to be "every PC is same, with buffs" and "balance" means "my buffs equal your buffs or its not fair". Which just means everyone plays the same character with flavor added for free.
What I've done making my own system, every Race option has what I call an Ability Scaffold, where each Ability Score gets a value between 1-6, with a maximum total value of 21, to determine their starting Ability Scores with an additional 3d6 roll (no rerolls), but it also determines their Ability Maximum by adding 18 to the Scaffold value. Humans are different: they only get 3 in every Scaffold, but they get a unique bonus: every Race Level they take (maximum of 10 Race Levels for any Race) increases one of their Ability Scores and Maximums by +1. Humans start out slightly weaker than other races on average, but with time and effort, they can ascend further than anyone else in their favored Ability. Humans also gain an additional Perk (what D&D calls Feats), an additional Skill, and some reliability abilities to make them as versatile as possible. I want every Race to feel completely different to play, and so far, it's worked well with my groups.
This is an extension of the culture of everybody gets a medal. Your 3.9 GPA masters degree in aerospace engineering from Purdue shouldn’t make it easier for you to get a high-paying position at SpaceX. In fact, if you’re a white male, then it should be easier for the black woman who, with a stellar 2.3 GPA, barely earned a third-rate mechanical engineering bachelors from DeVry U.
I said that back in 2014 and 2015. No one listened. A bunch of fauxbertarian losers refused to fend off the freaks flooding the hobby and pretending the issue was with you for being "triggered." Likely were all tumblrite SJW shills, or just stupid imbeciles that would deny disaster until it was right on top of them.
These aren't casuals, they're activists. "casuals" implies people curious to play the game. If the activists didn't think they could push their ideology in the hobby, they wouldn't be interested in the game at all.
@@RPGPunditAgreed 100%. As a DM, I’ve had many casual players who weren’t as deep into table top gaming as us diehards but they still played, went along with us and had fun. You’re 100% right when you said the other people are activists.
I've seen people who want to play a skeleton and I questioned why would someone play a skeleton, which most townsfolk would be scared of. Someone took offense, saying that it was basically as racist as people not allowing orcs, goblins, and hobgoblins as playable races since they've been traditionally deemed as "monsters." Sigh.
In world of the Last Sun there are "transparent mutants, who are basically transparent in everything except bones, so they look like skeletons. Every other humanoid race hates them. They're not evil, its just the visceral instinct that makes everyone hate them.
I have seen players do humans wrong as well. It is the old Meisner vs Stanislavski argument, or how one should portray authentically one thing. Should we delve inside to our comprehension of a thing or be present at the table and act upon the moment? So far I found no satisfactory answers that pleases me.
This is what frustrates me. Fantasy is, at its core, a symbolic and moral genre; it's a critique of human nature. The fact that broader society can't understand it and has to have an autistic degree of literalism doesn't speak well of the state of our society.
This is why I don't allow watering down of racial differences in my D&D games. If anything I make the various races FAR more differenet biologically and culturally from any of the human cultures in the setting, and insist my players stay in character.
I like how Shadowrun 5e dealth with their race, called Metatype. In Shadowrun 5e they have this grid/table where you had to choose from A to E (A,b,c,d,e) and A was the best and allow the player to choose stronger race like an Elf or Troll. Depending on the race, like Ork or Troll for example had higher potential in Strength than Humans, Ork started at 3 and could raise up 8 in strength, while the Troll started at 5 and could raise to 10. I truly believe that the way DND and Pathfinder 2e are handling race/ancestry is the wrong way to go.
All this deracination of the fantasy races really makes me want to work on the setting idea I've had kicking around for awhile that consciously *doubles down* on the concept of racial monocultures. All the demihumans have their instinctual cultural affinities, and feel a natural kinship with others of their kind. Humans find this strange and disturbing, an uncanny kind of Stepford Wives vibe to the way every elf, dwarf, etc. falls right in line with their race's cultural norms. And demihumans in turn find *humans* strange and disturbing, because you never know what to expect from a human and they're always bickering amongst themselves over cultural and ideological differences they keep inventing.
I've said the same things before; however, idiots refuse to accept biology over woke ideology. Your race gives you innate bonuses, because of how your race was created or had evolved (depending on the setting) (example: a Tabaxi) Your rolled stats are a combination of your specific genetics (example: said-Tabaxi has more DEX than most Tabaxi, due to both parents being Olympic-level sprinters) AND your personal training and experiences (example: said-Tabaxi wants to try to be physically stronger than his Leonin best friend, so he has more STR than most Tabaxi). Tasha's Cauldron of Everything was a powergamer's paradise and a wokie's wet dream. No race has an identity, and races are allowed to have no context for their traits. To put in a weapons analogy: a Human is like a sword. It can't chop as well as an axe nor pierce as well as a spear nor bludgeon as well as a warhammer. However, it has the ability to do all three, yet the others can do at most two. Every race is a sword now, giving them nothing to stand out.
@@ShinAk1raSama I didn't see any questions in that post that I needed to respond to, only a repetition and deliberation of what I had already argued in my video. If I missed something let me know.
In pre-2024 D&D Tieflings literally have "virtue" names that you can use to reflect the archetypal personality of the N/PC albeit it might sometimes have an ironic aspect to it. I understand that, in the 2024 edition, cultural names related to races/species no longer exist either.
A lot of modern game designers are terrified of saying your characters have penalties, limitations and weaknesses that have mechanical consequence. So many two handed sword swinging Halfling Barbarian Wizard heroes raging their way to Comic Con.
I really think there should be a balance. Naturally you don’t want races to feel constraining to the point where humans are the only ones with variety, but exploring what ways the culture of a people would differ based on distinct biological differences is an interesting subject of fantasy.
Kids used to freely customizing their avatars may prefer it that way, but once again this is a deal breaker for me. Playable non-human races must come with hardcoded powers and limitations. Btw I'm off next week for a short trip to Southern Poland, never been there. Are there quintessential "Baptism of Fire" spots I should visit in Krakow or around?
Let it. At the end of the day, it's the customer not buying the product that will decide the fate of D&D; not a bunch of non-fan, "Didn't Earn Its" with well past exaggerated opinions of their importance.
This has been a major complaint about modern D&D and a major reason why I struggled with BG3. Elves and Dwarves in the Forgotten Realms have very distinctive appearances but the game just gives them human ethnic traits which not only devalues what makes humans unique but also just turns those races just slightly odd-looking humans.
Make them humans that got transformed or cursed into goo. Way easier and less dumb than to say that somehow theyre not unholy monsters like slime orcs.
Random rolls for background events. I love diced character history. We all need more tables to throw dice against. For many years I used the Paul Jacquays "Heroes for..." series (Tomorrow, Modern and Fantasy). Good old AD&D 1e Oriental Adventures had a pretty neat family background/inheritance system for that setting.
One of the weirdest discussions regarding those "problematic" stat modifiers for races was in some reddit thread where someone unironically wondered if the orcs' -4 INT meant they're all mentally disabled in some way.
It's like when people buy skins for their characters in fortnite or similar games; it doesn't add anything to your game, it's just cool to show something that others don't have. It's something that teenagers tend to like and be willing to spend money on, so wotc is just marketing the product the target market they want to sell to. I'd like to know why the hate so much their old and (once) loyal customers, and decided to get rid of them.. Gen x is the target market with more spending potential and has shown over the years to be willing to buy new products and remain loyal to the brand, they have proved this many times in the past 30 years; but no, f°°k the gen x, we want gen z even though we have no idea if they will spend money on our products. I think this is poor marketing,.
Q : Ignoring your no’s and forcing themselves on you anyway, western progressives or “struggle-snuggler” ? A : Yes Note : Anyone that does not see you as entitled to a choice (regarding yourself) when that choice conflicts with their will regarding you, is dangerous to anyone not them.
Nice video. Hum, about the differences between the race and what Dnd 2024 is doing is slowly happening in Pathfinder as well, but my sentiment about it was well of course as you pointed out there is a lot of wokeness to go around but also, there seem to be a wave of DM who actually hates to DM, they hate having to think, to come up with stuff, they hate having to make decision. And they are basically saying well; I don't know how to make an encounter and when my player do something I cannot react, the game is bad, I need to ban half the spell from the book. DM are calling for spell to be ban left and right. IN pathfinder there are couple ancestry(the next name for races) because races is problematic anyways...or heritage that have the power to fly in the lore, but apparently Most GM/DM in 2024 have no idea that a game master can create literally any encounter that exist. Most of them will tell you, there is absolutely nothing a DM can do against a level 1 player with the ability to fly. Apparently its one of the most broken thing you could ever have. And what I was going to add to that is that specifically in Pathfinder, the concensus seem to be that removing difference between ancestry/race is better for balance and remove the idea that one person can be more knowledgeable about the game and create an OP build, while someone else in the party is just average. I find that Balance is a bit overrate in that circumstance. If all players are having fun, who care if one of the player has a more optimize build. But I almost never try to optimize my character, or rarely so I have trouble relating to their issue on this.
I always thought the racial level restrictions were pretty dumb, but I did enjoy some of the unique abilities. Humans getting extra feats in modern editions seems like a better tradeoff there. Are you familiar with the 13th Age ruleset? How do you feel about their replacing skills with backgrounds? I like that, too, and it makes adding racial bonuses to certain activities a bit easier and more thematic.
@@RPGPundit It's worth picking up the core rulebook and giving it a look over. The core mechanics are basically 4th Ed. D&D, but with some changes on top you might find interesting. Or not. I dunno! But worth a look.
There are a lot of OSR adjacent individuals who make similar arguments, " the 100 level elf." Leveling is a result of population density. There can be no LeBron James without people to train LeBron James and the infrastructure necessary to free up people to devote themselves to such tasks full time. Demihumans would never have the necessary infrastructure to produce a 20th level character like Lebron.. or who's a Canadian example? Justin Trudeau! Elves would never have the infrastructure and population to produce a 36th level character like Justin Trudeau
I have a world where nearly every race has ties to humanity either by originating as human and evolving due to the plane of existence they found themselves in or their distant relatives through the common ancestors in Giants. However, all the races still have their downfalls and benefits I don't understand making everything so bland
@@alexboggs6416 Why wouldn't there be differences to classes involving both magic and skills? Makes a players choices in character creation more important... as it is, it's just cosplay like the video says.
@@nickerson1971 hold up now, I didn't say there shouldn't be differences in classes and skills. It just threw me off to hear the same spell had different costs depending on the class. That I don't understand. Why would it call on more power to perform the same spell if two people know it? Like a Sorcerer casting fireball as a level 1 spell but a wizard casts it at 3. It would take the same amount of power and skill to do the same spell regardless of class if they have access to it.
Considering some folks think it's okay to play a wheelchair-bound PC in a dungeon crawl (something no wheelchair-bound player I've played with will do), this honestly doesn't surprise me.
I hear ya. In all the years I’ve played table top gaming, I’ve seen several players in wheel chairs, and 100% of them played normal PCs like everyone else and had fun. I’ve also seen white players play dark skinned PCs and I’ve seen black players play pale skinned PCs.
I do enjoy playing non-human races - but I make an effort to make them, you know, non-human. And it goes beyond looking funny. An interesting exercise - I don't remember who, exactly, I heard this from - was to make everyone play a Male Human Paladin from the same religious order. How do the players differentiate themselves from one another? Personality and history. All the other options have been stripped away.
Honestly I much prefer the way the various races are handled in the Palladium Rifts megaverse a lot better than anything AD&D has done since 3e. I think we need to recognize the other races have advantages and disadvantages and big difference in their culture as opposed to the humans. This is one of the reasons I really don't like 5e. Hasbro and WotC pretty much ruined a decent roleplay game system with their constant reinventing rules and fixing what was not broken about AD&D
When I saw the new info I said basically the same thing. Why not just do away with races (or "species") completely and let the players make characters that look like anything they can imagine. Then they can choose from a table of special abilities for their 1 "special trick" that each race gets. As an optional rule the DM could also require them to roll on the "Flaws" table. Sadly, this seems to be the direction they are going :-/
Honestly I always thought that Level Limits was a terrible way to try and balance the races. It's a bizarre mechanic that's simultaneously ham-fisted and moronic. I got rid of it in my games, and charged long-lived races a XP penalty that made it more expensive to level up if your race lives a long time (+5% for every century they lived after the first). Thus an Elf who lives 500 years can still reach level 20, but it's 20% more expensive to do so.
I would love the new sensibilities to check the old Stormbringer game... were your origins and "race" give you complete unvalanced characteristics, skills & income. BAM ... MINDBLOW
This is a continuation of a process of deconstruction that the Woke people at WotC have been pushing for a while now. So there has been a string of videos related to this topic, as they implement and then brag about each step or reducing the PC races to meaninglessness.
It's the woke idea that race is a social construct rather than a biological reality, taken to an extreme with demi-humans, a different species. But they didn't have the nuts to just remove ability score bonuses, so they brought them back in with 'Heritage' and 'Background'.
The purpose for demi-humans is verisimillitude to the notion of an alternate humanoid cousin races who survive and thrive in different circumstances with alternate powers, often with enhanced longevity better than humans, and the high plausibility they do in fact exist and inhabitated the earth at one time in ancient past (if not still hidden). I'm of the school of thought that Elves and orcs crossbreed with humans but not with gnomes, halflings, and dwarves, but some dwarfism afflicted or midget afflicted humans are transmuted from 1 a modern dimension to become the healthy gnome, halfling, and dwarf prototypes in the Fantasy world.
Regardless of race, the characters are always gonna be interpreted as "humans" since the players are humans, RARELY a player role-plays as anything other than a human, regardless of racial bonus, penalties and biology.
Never really liked the demi-human class limitations, it all seemed thrown together for 'balance'. Tolkien's elves were not equal to humans, they were massively superior.
They removed the gendered factions in z here 5e B4 The Lost City Added a black woman as a worrier Maden Add an Elf leader to Mages faction and did not give the cyinadicans a sunlight weekeness (Luckly Goodman games for all their faults did not mess with that their OAR book)
I wouldn't mind so much if it's imaginative, but it's hard enough to get them invested when they either run away from actual roleplaying, hide from combat unless they have backup despite the fact most of their opposition was wiped out by a rival who flew off with an unknown magical treasure they didn't even blink at! It needed work, but was better than the other game given that DM decided to jump settings instead of actually use his game's setting properly! Sorry can't see any reason to bother with the new phb hope their new dmg is better.
Ah yes, because every character can use breath weapons or tremorsense. Like I don't get this logic. The actual abilities and spells your Species (also a better term cause race should apply to "sub-races") reflects what you are than a small state boost. Also yeah, what you trained to do before becoming an adventure should define your stats and skills more dramatically than what you are. So much of what defines a Species is still in-tact. Yeah they are trying to free players up to do what they want, because yes the newer market doesn't want to be forced to pick certain things for optimization. D&D 5E isn't even that tactical to begin with. I know I don't want to feel like an inferior spellcaster just because I wanted to be an Orc-Wizard. But alot of those limitations still exist, halflings can't use heavy weapons even if they have the strength for it etc.
By the same logic as the malleability of bonuses, and the removing of all disadvantages, why would a breath weapon be racially specific? If you think that halflings can't use a breath weapon, you're a white supremacist!
This post makes me think of two astronaughts on the moon, where one is discovering a secret and the other is behind him with a gun pointed at the first Astronaught saying "it always was". Outside of really rare out there races like Shardminds who actual felt Alien, most were just humans with a magical theme and super human powers. The closest to alien now is Dragonborn.
Nyxads are fast, quick, smart and perceptive. they lack strength and durability. they make damned good rogues and damned good multiclass rogues. but then, no matter what class you play as a nyxad, you are going to use your fast movement, swift reflexes, potent perception and high intelligence to your advantage and probably aren't going to pick a class or build that favors strength, constitution, or any armor that restricts movement. and in fact, you probably don't want a weapon you can't conceal or at least deceive about. this is going to inherently push you towards unarmored dagger builds and push you towards quiet weapons like the bow even if your class isn't rogue. because even in OSR without finesse, enemy AC and HP totals were low enough that most enemies could be one shot from full HP by an average strength halfling wizard with a dagger. this turned fights from HP slogs to fishing for morale rolls. which was good. the reason i liked OSR wasn't the lower PC power level relative to the enemy or the lethality. it was that henchmen armies and multiple PCs per player gave a player a means to participate when thier main PC was sleeped or charmed
Making it so that D&D creatures that had penalties in sunlight now don't is not really minor news in terms of the game. If you are complaining that I'm not talking about the Olympics or US politics, I think you have the wrong channel.
it seems to me you wouldn't even be playing this new edition anyway so I don't see how their changes and choices affect you. Just go play 1e or something where female characters have arbitrary limitations put on them. If you think the game needs to be realistic by imposing stuff like this, be logically consistent - e.g. strictly enforce all encumbrance rules. Make sure encumbrance is checked every time a player picks up or drops an item. Don't forget to remove class limits if you want realism too; it makes no sense for a dwarf to stop getting better at combat just because he's hit an arbitrary level. Heck, 1e and 2e books both admitted that level caps were an arbitrary shoehorn to balance demi-humans compared to humans. Oh and if you're keen on your bio-essentialism, always roll on a chart to see where an arrow hits a player because bows are immensely more lethal in real life than in D&D. Backstabs should typically be an auto-kill too. You should probably also create a table to roll on every time someone hits with a sword or axe to see whether they chop a limb or the opponent dies from blood loss. Realism is the goal here right? Or do you pick and choose your game preferences based on your political beliefs? Do you easily accept D&D's written explanations (at least since 1e) that adventurers by definition are an exception to the rules and stereotypes of the societies they come from, but can't accept that sometimes these exceptions might mean an elf isn't always inherently more nimble? OR, is it too hard to conceive that maybe all Elves *are* more nimble, but not always nimbler enough to warrant a statistical advantage? And why are the demi-humans all just "humans in cosplay" to you now - do you not roleplay in your games? Being an elf is immensely different than being a dwarf if you're actually roleplaying, benefits/consequences/etc. Is your imagination limited? Well anyway. My advice is, if you truly want politics out of the game, that means you also shouldn't inject *your* politics into the game either. It goes both ways. Going on a political tyrade against edition changes because it contradicts your political worldview puts you in the same category as any writer who shoehorns their own politics into whatever game system they're writing. Regardless. D&D as a system, no matter which edition, has far greater problems than whether choosing Elf or Dwarf changes your ability scores. What you choose to rant on says more about you than it does about the new D&D. And for the record, I'm not stanning for the new edition, I plan to stick to 2e which I've been playing since the early 90's. I just think it's silly for a person to rail this hard against a system they don't even have to play.
Well, in the first place, "realism" is not the goal. It's always a stupid policy. EMULATION is the proper goal. If there's nothing that makes a non-human species different from a human except the most shallow element of physical appearance, the choice being made there is meaningless, they're just humans playing pretend. An elf is not always more nimble than a human. If they get a +1 to DEX it means they are ON AVERAGE more nimble than a human. But unless a halfling has human-length legs (or some kind of weird inhuman legs), how are they going to run faster than humans who are double their span? And the "roleplay in your games" argument is specious, because the rules in Nu-D&D make it very clear that there is nothing inherent about race that makes elves different from humans. There's only the claim of "background", which is a bit like suggesting that if a crocodile is raised among human children it will have all the same abilities as a human. The difference becomes arbitrary, and what it turns out in both the writing of D&D books and in most 5e actual plays is that everyone just acts and behaves like humans from Seattle circa 2024. It is the left that injected politics in the game. My argument is not a political argument, it is an argument for actual diversity in the setting, and asking people like you to stop confusing demihumans with non-white humans and making rule determinations meant to create some kind of imaginary social justice in fairyland.
Why does this have to affect the RPG Pundit for him to opine? Doesn't affect your 2e game either, but you are writing a really long screed and then, hilariously, accusing others of ranting. If you want left-liberal Marxist RPGs you have lots of choice. Enjoy. And allow others to criticise. Don't waste your life trying to be superior than thou, and lecture other people online. Get. A. Life.
By bio-essentialism, do you mean biology? The goal, as you should know, is not realism, it's heroic fiction. If you want instant kills from bow shots, go play Rolemaster, or modify the rules. Opposing the politicisation of D&D is not injecting your own politics.
@@Norvik_-ug3ge nah, it goes both ways no matter how much you all want to stick your fingers in your ears. The person who made the video clearly wants a ruleset that validates his personal political beliefs and his worldview, and he clearly isn't against airing out all this dirty laundry of his on RUclips. Either way he lacks imagination if his idea of fantasy requires all Elves to have the same advantages and disadvantages no matter who they are or where they came from or which setting the DM uses/homwbrews.
@@Norvik_-ug3ge hey he's the one that took the time to record and edit a nearly 30-minutte video. Only took me a few minutes to type. No sweat off my back. This can go both ways, why does anyone say anything in response to anyone? You're talking to me but you don't have to, I'm responding even though I don't have to, etc. It's worthless and vapid of you to try to make "urr but you responded" a point
What’s comical is that you make that remark while asserting an unfavorable opinion backed by no substance. Congrats on living as an oblivious self cancellation
Your takes are far more "L" than his. Especially your recent argumentum ad populum trying to defend your precious Fatt Coville. If you wanna argue from subscriber count, well, you have ONE subscriber and Pundit has almost 8k. So while Fatt Coville might be 10x as good as Pundit by your stupid logic, Pundit is 8000x better than you by your own stupid logic. You probably look like a soy freak also.
THis echoes what I've been saying. D&D used to be humancentric and demi-humans were exotic. Now they're all the same, so everyone will play their blue-haired, side-shaved, spectacle wearing half-dragonborn half-tiefling Portland barrista.
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And Vegan
Barista is an OP class. You'd be lucky to have one in your party
@LordOz3 You forgot to add the wheelchair and the Summon Manager cantrip.
And when they do play them, they role-play them just like humans 🤔
Something I implemented in my latest campaign was humans get a 10% xp bonus. All but one player chose human. Mission accomplished.
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So only one player cares about roleplay. The rest wanna "win".
@@yurisc4633 classic false dichotomy of "if you make good choices, you don't care about roleplay". way to prove the video right. simply picking a non-human race isn't "roleplay" anymore than having a nose is "roleplay". roleplay is a completely different thing than wearing a costume.
@@AndyReichert0 the point is that they only chose human to win, not because they want to roleplay humans, classic min-maxer player.
@@yurisc4633 ahhhh, sneaky. going from saying they like winning but not roleplay to just saying that they like winning. as if it's good to like winning or to make good choices. moving the goalpost is a classic anti-min-maxer.
I call it "anime fantasy" . Everything and everyone has to be just human enough to want to sleep with the main character.
I'm not sure anime is to blame in this case. San Francisco is probably more to blame than Tokyo.
@@RPGPundit nah all those San Francisco people are watching and copying anime. There are very very few anime that have fantasy races hating each other. If they do it's the bare minimum "demons vs angels" even though they all look human. Anime and Japanese game is where we got the rainbow hair. Japanese media I believe made our modern media leftists
It's more accurate to call it "mainstream fantasy". If you want some interesting stats, look up what the most commonly selected races in RPGs and MMOs are. If I remember correctly, there's a good interview with one of the original WoW devs at Blizzard talking about this.
The TLDR is that your average consumer will - more often than not - gravitate towards attractive human characters. Your average consumer - again, more often than not - has a difficult time identifying with non-human characters because they have more interest in self inserting or experiencing a power fantasy than playing a role or looking at something that it's conventionally attractive.
Every medium does this because it's the marketable thing. If you want meaningful depth and variety you're probably not going to find it in mass marketed material that's specifically been watered down to appeal to the widest number of people.
I'd prefer the martials be anime i.e. pull off sick moves as a fighter to counter the wizard.
To avoid "bio-essentialism" WotC removed racial perks like weapon profiencies (elves were good with longswords and bows, for example) but that bit them in the ass because the giff (hippo humanoids from Spelljammer) were militaristic and were trained with firearms so they handwaved it that the giffs' god blessed them to be naturally gifted with firearms. What a bunch of hypocrites! (no pun intended).
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The pub may not be intended, but it is welcome
A god making you better than other races by fiat hardly seems more progressive than a biological or cultural advantage, but what do I know. I studied engineering, not basket weaving.
I for one cannot wait until there is just one race called "gray goo" where everyone is exactly the same.
@@MarshallMiller157 Next monsters. They all look different, same stats. Anything else would be bio-determinist.
Oozes are going to be the dominant monster all across 6e xD
D&D Harrison Bergeron Edition: everyone is made equal by punishing any perceived advantage.
Precisely. It's what Kamala wants too!
Sounds like something heels up Harris would be for...
In a way that would be a cool idea, where each stat has its disadvantage and each PC is weighed down by something e.g. ugly masks for charisma, near constant stream of noise for intelligence, constant dripping of poison or alcohol or cold water for constitution, etc.
LITERALLY a skin suit.
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In fantasy games, I usually don’t allow for non-human PC’s until there’s a clear culture and history established for the other potential player races. This allows some degree of exploration in a new setting as well.
As for the projection of woke emancipation theory, what can you expect from people who see skin color but can’t see history, culture, or tradition?
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"When /everybody/ is special, /nobody/ is special." - Syndrome (Buddy Pine)
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It used be interesting to RP an non human, like "I live for a millennia, how does that influence how I think?" for elves, or "I don't feel mammalian emotions, how does that change my attitude toward death?" for lizardfolk. If done right, it could be a lot of fun and interesting to put yourself in a different frame of mind. But I agree, if everyone is just the same with a different paintjob, what's the point? This I why for my homebrew Pathfinder game I have variant human ancestries (Leng touched, Tcho Tcho, and Ghoul) with distinct differences from Vanilla humans.
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Halflings can be hardy like dwarves now, despite being half the size.
A human can be as smart as an elf, despite elves having hundreds of years to learn.
But they don't care. These people don't even make an attempt to role play. They always try to insert themselves.
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The original point of non-human PCs have racial ability score bonuses was that only humans had no level cap for classes in AD&D (the exception was the Thief class). I roll my eyes every time someone screams "bio-essentialism!" when the idea of D&D races/species have better ability scores than others - species are built different. Humans are well rounded, while elves are more nimble and dwarves are built tougher. This isn't racist but evolutionary (despite D&D being actually more creationist). Just look at how different the great cats are specialized - cheetahs are faster than lions, tigers can swim, cougars live in mountainous areas, etc.
The wokeists scream for diversity but then wants everyone to be the same to the point we should just play grey vague humanoids...
Bio essentialism is real though: ruclips.net/video/DeArcRyOc0k/видео.html
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@@RPGPundit I will :)
And Jaguars are units that can rip apart crocodilians in the water. I've also made similar examples towards some of these wokies; however, they can't wrap their head around biology and anatomy (while they're also trying to make cats and dogs vegan).
@crankysmurf "Bio-Essentialism?" Is that yet another addition to the loony-lexicon to proudly stand with "Cis-Gendered", "Black-Coded","I identify as...",and "My pronouns are..."?
Therapist: "RPG Jordan Peterson isn't real, RPG Jordan Peterson cannot hurt you."
RPG Jordan Peterson:
LOL
I was teaching a high school group to play using an ORS system. I skipped the race section and none of them seemed to miss it. Only later did I point out that we hadn't incorporated the different races into character generation. Only 1 in 5 felt the need to ret-con that she was anything other than human.
Compare this to another group of students with whom I did go through the races as we were playing a more modern system. Only 1 in 5 choose human... Cuz it's cozplay to them.
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"It's racist to have races be monoculture!" Noone except Tolkien has the time to make hundreds, if not thousands, of different cultures for each playable race! There are over 7000 languages and dialects and almost as many distinct cultures in the real world. The reason we give non-human species/aliens/races mono-cultures is for ease of use on the high level - Star Trek and Star Wars did this: Vulcans are cold and logical while Klingons love to fight - but once you get to explore individuals you can find the exception.
This is what happens when wokeists only see skin colour and live in metropolitan American "melting pot" cities with no homogenous groups like in most countries.
With all the racemixing in those cities they essentially are homogenous. They just don't have any culture to go with it, except for corporate brand loyalty. That's the point of it all.
Racist means nothing anymore within modern western culture, it a rhetorical mechanism used by westerners to ‘justify’ headhunting other westerners.
The rest of you should wake up and realize you’re well into being warred upon by these people
Since ADND there were three kinds of dwarf, more than five kinds of elf, two kinds of halfling, and two or three kinds of gnome. But "monoculture"!
@@dereklong801 They argue that culture shouldn't tied to race/species. Now they say that a dwarf who grew up amongst the elves shouldn't have dwarven racial traits (like knowing stone crafting) because they didn't grow up that.
To me as someone who's ethnic Chinese who grew up most of my life in Canada this is a tad racist because these wokeist want to erace cultures by saying that there shouldn't be homogeny of a group and thus no unified culture - I shouldn't recognized my Chinese culture and heritage because I didn't grow up in China. Everything to them should be like the "melting pot" of metro American cities (which still do have ethnic areas...).
One of the things that makes D&D work is the simplicity of choosing Class or Class+Race. There is also something about having these things come packaged with abilities. It gives them mechanical weight, makes them an interesting choice in play. I saw the changes to race and it doesn't really make much sense to me in terms of keeping the feel of D&D
It means that race is no more important than selecting your PC's hair color or eye color. It is entirely aesthetic.
@@RPGPundit I agree. Which just makes being a dwarf or elf fairly meaningless in my view
Men need to start telling women they identify as 6 ft 8 millionaires. It's only fair
LOL
RPGPundit: _Humans are the best race_
Me: THAT'S GOING IN THE BOOK OF GRUDGES!📜🖍😫
As someone who is clearly a Dwarf with gigantism we are obviously the superior race.😌
LOL
I t hink the best real life comparison to a Halflings would be certain Pygmy populations, who are not disabled nor children, but their small size has certainly made them vulnerable, as today they are frequently targeted for mutilation, slavery, and killings.
Good example.
WotC design philosophy since 5E seems to be "every PC is same, with buffs" and "balance" means "my buffs equal your buffs or its not fair". Which just means everyone plays the same character with flavor added for free.
It's very unfortunate.
What I've done making my own system, every Race option has what I call an Ability Scaffold, where each Ability Score gets a value between 1-6, with a maximum total value of 21, to determine their starting Ability Scores with an additional 3d6 roll (no rerolls), but it also determines their Ability Maximum by adding 18 to the Scaffold value. Humans are different: they only get 3 in every Scaffold, but they get a unique bonus: every Race Level they take (maximum of 10 Race Levels for any Race) increases one of their Ability Scores and Maximums by +1. Humans start out slightly weaker than other races on average, but with time and effort, they can ascend further than anyone else in their favored Ability. Humans also gain an additional Perk (what D&D calls Feats), an additional Skill, and some reliability abilities to make them as versatile as possible.
I want every Race to feel completely different to play, and so far, it's worked well with my groups.
This is an extension of the culture of everybody gets a medal. Your 3.9 GPA masters degree in aerospace engineering from Purdue shouldn’t make it easier for you to get a high-paying position at SpaceX. In fact, if you’re a white male, then it should be easier for the black woman who, with a stellar 2.3 GPA, barely earned a third-rate mechanical engineering bachelors from DeVry U.
This is why you don't let Filthy Casuals in.
I said that back in 2014 and 2015. No one listened. A bunch of fauxbertarian losers refused to fend off the freaks flooding the hobby and pretending the issue was with you for being "triggered." Likely were all tumblrite SJW shills, or just stupid imbeciles that would deny disaster until it was right on top of them.
These aren't casuals, they're activists. "casuals" implies people curious to play the game. If the activists didn't think they could push their ideology in the hobby, they wouldn't be interested in the game at all.
@@RPGPundit
Casuals are also Normies who open up the Gates of Rome.
@@RPGPunditAgreed 100%. As a DM, I’ve had many casual players who weren’t as deep into table top gaming as us diehards but they still played, went along with us and had fun.
You’re 100% right when you said the other people are activists.
Lo, "Physical Congress"! I adore your euphemisms!
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I've seen people who want to play a skeleton and I questioned why would someone play a skeleton, which most townsfolk would be scared of. Someone took offense, saying that it was basically as racist as people not allowing orcs, goblins, and hobgoblins as playable races since they've been traditionally deemed as "monsters." Sigh.
A human skeleton is something only seen in association with human demise, it is literally a glaring symbol of human death.
Resistance to slashing and piercing damage. AND complete immunity from arteriosclerosis. Duh!
In world of the Last Sun there are "transparent mutants, who are basically transparent in everything except bones, so they look like skeletons. Every other humanoid race hates them. They're not evil, its just the visceral instinct that makes everyone hate them.
@@RPGPundit They sound like Nehwonese Ghouls.
I like the idea of a undead creature desperate to fix his regrets so he can finally rest
I have seen players do humans wrong as well. It is the old Meisner vs Stanislavski argument, or how one should portray authentically one thing. Should we delve inside to our comprehension of a thing or be present at the table and act upon the moment?
So far I found no satisfactory answers that pleases me.
The catwalk of gaming. A alternative to engagement.
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I have a discrimination chart made up for business dealings. Most merchants will not deal with an Ork for any amount of gold.
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This is what frustrates me. Fantasy is, at its core, a symbolic and moral genre; it's a critique of human nature. The fact that broader society can't understand it and has to have an autistic degree of literalism doesn't speak well of the state of our society.
This is why I don't allow watering down of racial differences in my D&D games. If anything I make the various races FAR more differenet biologically and culturally from any of the human cultures in the setting, and insist my players stay in character.
I like how Shadowrun 5e dealth with their race, called Metatype. In Shadowrun 5e they have this grid/table where you had to choose from A to E (A,b,c,d,e) and A was the best and allow the player to choose stronger race like an Elf or Troll. Depending on the race, like Ork or Troll for example had higher potential in Strength than Humans, Ork started at 3 and could raise up 8 in strength, while the Troll started at 5 and could raise to 10. I truly believe that the way DND and Pathfinder 2e are handling race/ancestry is the wrong way to go.
All this deracination of the fantasy races really makes me want to work on the setting idea I've had kicking around for awhile that consciously *doubles down* on the concept of racial monocultures. All the demihumans have their instinctual cultural affinities, and feel a natural kinship with others of their kind. Humans find this strange and disturbing, an uncanny kind of Stepford Wives vibe to the way every elf, dwarf, etc. falls right in line with their race's cultural norms. And demihumans in turn find *humans* strange and disturbing, because you never know what to expect from a human and they're always bickering amongst themselves over cultural and ideological differences they keep inventing.
I think that's a fair way of approaching it. Humans are not bound to one way of thinking or being the way non-humans are.
I've said the same things before; however, idiots refuse to accept biology over woke ideology.
Your race gives you innate bonuses, because of how your race was created or had evolved (depending on the setting) (example: a Tabaxi)
Your rolled stats are a combination of your specific genetics (example: said-Tabaxi has more DEX than most Tabaxi, due to both parents being Olympic-level sprinters)
AND your personal training and experiences (example: said-Tabaxi wants to try to be physically stronger than his Leonin best friend, so he has more STR than most Tabaxi).
Tasha's Cauldron of Everything was a powergamer's paradise and a wokie's wet dream. No race has an identity, and races are allowed to have no context for their traits.
To put in a weapons analogy: a Human is like a sword. It can't chop as well as an axe nor pierce as well as a spear nor bludgeon as well as a warhammer. However, it has the ability to do all three, yet the others can do at most two. Every race is a sword now, giving them nothing to stand out.
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@@RPGPundit Can you give a real response, instead of a copy-paste call to brigade? >.>
@@ShinAk1raSama I didn't see any questions in that post that I needed to respond to, only a repetition and deliberation of what I had already argued in my video. If I missed something let me know.
In pre-2024 D&D Tieflings literally have "virtue" names that you can use to reflect the archetypal personality of the N/PC albeit it might sometimes have an ironic aspect to it. I understand that, in the 2024 edition, cultural names related to races/species no longer exist either.
The revolution must touch every aspect of life.
My favorite race are soydwarves from underbucks
A lot of modern game designers are terrified of saying your characters have penalties, limitations and weaknesses that have mechanical consequence. So many two handed sword swinging Halfling Barbarian Wizard heroes raging their way to Comic Con.
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I really think there should be a balance. Naturally you don’t want races to feel constraining to the point where humans are the only ones with variety, but exploring what ways the culture of a people would differ based on distinct biological differences is an interesting subject of fantasy.
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Space Bear seems like adorable fun.
He's a very popular NPC, though he hasn't been seen in the campaign for a few years now.
Kids used to freely customizing their avatars may prefer it that way, but once again this is a deal breaker for me. Playable non-human races must come with hardcoded powers and limitations.
Btw I'm off next week for a short trip to Southern Poland, never been there. Are there quintessential "Baptism of Fire" spots I should visit in Krakow or around?
Well, if you like the outdoors and hiking, the Eagle's Nest Trail (Szlak Orlich Gniazd), which I talk about in BoF, is supposed to be really nice.
This is as bad as I thought it would be. It’s going to fail hard and fast.
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Let it. At the end of the day, it's the customer not buying the product that will decide the fate of D&D; not a bunch of non-fan, "Didn't Earn Its" with well past exaggerated opinions of their importance.
This has been a major complaint about modern D&D and a major reason why I struggled with BG3. Elves and Dwarves in the Forgotten Realms have very distinctive appearances but the game just gives them human ethnic traits which not only devalues what makes humans unique but also just turns those races just slightly odd-looking humans.
What needs to be done to make a race made physically of gray goo to be interesting?
I made the suggestion that there should be just a grey vaguely humanoid playable race and someone was offended by this...
@@crankysmurfThey hate when you take an endpoint position for their ideology, and make them look absurd doing so.
@@crankysmurfSo what happened?
@@MatthewCenance They just said they were offended (not that I cared because being not offended isn't a constitutional right).
Make them humans that got transformed or cursed into goo. Way easier and less dumb than to say that somehow theyre not unholy monsters like slime orcs.
Random rolls for background events. I love diced character history. We all need more tables to throw dice against. For many years I used the Paul Jacquays "Heroes for..." series (Tomorrow, Modern and Fantasy). Good old AD&D 1e Oriental Adventures had a pretty neat family background/inheritance system for that setting.
Well, you'd probably love my books then...
@@RPGPundit I have pdf copies I brought from drivethru of most of them.
Thanks!
One of the weirdest discussions regarding those "problematic" stat modifiers for races was in some reddit thread where someone unironically wondered if the orcs' -4 INT meant they're all mentally disabled in some way.
LOL
It's like when people buy skins for their characters in fortnite or similar games; it doesn't add anything to your game, it's just cool to show something that others don't have.
It's something that teenagers tend to like and be willing to spend money on, so wotc is just marketing the product the target market they want to sell to.
I'd like to know why the hate so much their old and (once) loyal customers, and decided to get rid of them.. Gen x is the target market with more spending potential and has shown over the years to be willing to buy new products and remain loyal to the brand, they have proved this many times in the past 30 years; but no, f°°k the gen x, we want gen z even though we have no idea if they will spend money on our products.
I think this is poor marketing,.
But ... but ... mah new sensibilities?
@@sand5857 what about them?
Q : Ignoring your no’s and forcing themselves on you anyway, western progressives or “struggle-snuggler” ?
A : Yes
Note : Anyone that does not see you as entitled to a choice (regarding yourself) when that choice conflicts with their will regarding you, is dangerous to anyone not them.
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pundit is right on the money, as always. thanks for the video, and thanks for hiding the cat. dogs 4 lyfe.
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Nice video. Hum, about the differences between the race and what Dnd 2024 is doing is slowly happening in Pathfinder as well, but my sentiment about it was well of course as you pointed out there is a lot of wokeness to go around but also, there seem to be a wave of DM who actually hates to DM, they hate having to think, to come up with stuff, they hate having to make decision. And they are basically saying well; I don't know how to make an encounter and when my player do something I cannot react, the game is bad, I need to ban half the spell from the book.
DM are calling for spell to be ban left and right. IN pathfinder there are couple ancestry(the next name for races) because races is problematic anyways...or heritage that have the power to fly in the lore, but apparently Most GM/DM in 2024 have no idea that a game master can create literally any encounter that exist. Most of them will tell you, there is absolutely nothing a DM can do against a level 1 player with the ability to fly. Apparently its one of the most broken thing you could ever have.
And what I was going to add to that is that specifically in Pathfinder, the concensus seem to be that removing difference between ancestry/race is better for balance and remove the idea that one person can be more knowledgeable about the game and create an OP build, while someone else in the party is just average.
I find that Balance is a bit overrate in that circumstance. If all players are having fun, who care if one of the player has a more optimize build.
But I almost never try to optimize my character, or rarely so I have trouble relating to their issue on this.
I always thought the racial level restrictions were pretty dumb, but I did enjoy some of the unique abilities. Humans getting extra feats in modern editions seems like a better tradeoff there.
Are you familiar with the 13th Age ruleset? How do you feel about their replacing skills with backgrounds? I like that, too, and it makes adding racial bonuses to certain activities a bit easier and more thematic.
I'm not specifically familiar with the 13th Age rules.
@@RPGPundit It's worth picking up the core rulebook and giving it a look over. The core mechanics are basically 4th Ed. D&D, but with some changes on top you might find interesting. Or not. I dunno! But worth a look.
I'm not a fan of 4e at all. I predicted its total failure, and helped create the winning formula that replaced it.
There are a lot of OSR adjacent individuals who make similar arguments, " the 100 level elf." Leveling is a result of population density. There can be no LeBron James without people to train LeBron James and the infrastructure necessary to free up people to devote themselves to such tasks full time. Demihumans would never have the necessary infrastructure to produce a 20th level character like Lebron.. or who's a Canadian example? Justin Trudeau! Elves would never have the infrastructure and population to produce a 36th level character like Justin Trudeau
Well you know, WoTC’s favorite word is “problematic”. I see them use that all the time.
Yup.
Just bought your Silk Road products!
Thank you very much, I really appreciate it!
I have a world where nearly every race has ties to humanity either by originating as human and evolving due to the plane of existence they found themselves in or their distant relatives through the common ancestors in Giants. However, all the races still have their downfalls and benefits I don't understand making everything so bland
Not just the races but the game mechanics are more bland. In 2E the Stone Shape spell Wizard 5th Lv Cleric 3rd Lv. 5E 4th Lv for all.
@@nickerson1971 dah faq? The same spell is different levels depending on class?
@@alexboggs6416 Why wouldn't there be differences to classes involving both magic and skills? Makes a players choices in character creation more important... as it is, it's just cosplay like the video says.
@@nickerson1971 hold up now, I didn't say there shouldn't be differences in classes and skills. It just threw me off to hear the same spell had different costs depending on the class. That I don't understand. Why would it call on more power to perform the same spell if two people know it? Like a Sorcerer casting fireball as a level 1 spell but a wizard casts it at 3. It would take the same amount of power and skill to do the same spell regardless of class if they have access to it.
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Considering some folks think it's okay to play a wheelchair-bound PC in a dungeon crawl (something no wheelchair-bound player I've played with will do), this honestly doesn't surprise me.
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I hear ya. In all the years I’ve played table top gaming, I’ve seen several players in wheel chairs, and 100% of them played normal PCs like everyone else and had fun.
I’ve also seen white players play dark skinned PCs and I’ve seen black players play pale skinned PCs.
I do enjoy playing non-human races - but I make an effort to make them, you know, non-human. And it goes beyond looking funny.
An interesting exercise - I don't remember who, exactly, I heard this from - was to make everyone play a Male Human Paladin from the same religious order. How do the players differentiate themselves from one another? Personality and history. All the other options have been stripped away.
I like the idea of culture, background, class, and race giving skills… but I don’t like the idea of race being minimized.
Honestly I much prefer the way the various races are handled in the Palladium Rifts megaverse a lot better than anything AD&D has done since 3e. I think we need to recognize the other races have advantages and disadvantages and big difference in their culture as opposed to the humans. This is one of the reasons I really don't like 5e. Hasbro and WotC pretty much ruined a decent roleplay game system with their constant reinventing rules and fixing what was not broken about AD&D
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When I saw the new info I said basically the same thing. Why not just do away with races (or "species") completely and let the players make characters that look like anything they can imagine. Then they can choose from a table of special abilities for their 1 "special trick" that each race gets. As an optional rule the DM could also require them to roll on the "Flaws" table.
Sadly, this seems to be the direction they are going :-/
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Honestly I always thought that Level Limits was a terrible way to try and balance the races. It's a bizarre mechanic that's simultaneously ham-fisted and moronic. I got rid of it in my games, and charged long-lived races a XP penalty that made it more expensive to level up if your race lives a long time (+5% for every century they lived after the first). Thus an Elf who lives 500 years can still reach level 20, but it's 20% more expensive to do so.
How many 500 year long campaigns are you running?
I would love the new sensibilities to check the old Stormbringer game... were your origins and "race" give you complete unvalanced characteristics, skills & income. BAM ... MINDBLOW
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How many times have you made this video?
This is a continuation of a process of deconstruction that the Woke people at WotC have been pushing for a while now. So there has been a string of videos related to this topic, as they implement and then brag about each step or reducing the PC races to meaninglessness.
It's the woke idea that race is a social construct rather than a biological reality, taken to an extreme with demi-humans, a different species. But they didn't have the nuts to just remove ability score bonuses, so they brought them back in with 'Heritage' and 'Background'.
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The purpose for demi-humans is verisimillitude to the notion of an alternate humanoid cousin races who survive and thrive in different circumstances with alternate powers, often with enhanced longevity better than humans, and the high plausibility they do in fact exist and inhabitated the earth at one time in ancient past (if not still hidden). I'm of the school of thought that Elves and orcs crossbreed with humans but not with gnomes, halflings, and dwarves, but some dwarfism afflicted or midget afflicted humans are transmuted from 1 a modern dimension to become the healthy gnome, halfling, and dwarf prototypes in the Fantasy world.
So its Lankmar now. Cool i guess?
Regardless of race, the characters are always gonna be interpreted as "humans" since the players are humans, RARELY a player role-plays as anything other than a human, regardless of racial bonus, penalties and biology.
That's partly why I don't plan to have campaigns with any non-human races, unless it's a gonzo world partially inspired in One Piece...
Never really liked the demi-human class limitations, it all seemed thrown together for 'balance'. Tolkien's elves were not equal to humans, they were massively superior.
They removed the gendered factions in z here 5e B4 The Lost City
Added a black woman as a worrier Maden
Add an Elf leader to Mages faction and did not give the cyinadicans a sunlight weekeness
(Luckly Goodman games for all their faults did not mess with that their OAR book)
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Humans are mechanically unique. These modern characters are slime people, who are infinitely mutable.
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I wouldn't mind so much if it's imaginative, but it's hard enough to get them invested when they either run away from actual roleplaying, hide from combat unless they have backup despite the fact most of their opposition was wiped out by a rival who flew off with an unknown magical treasure they didn't even blink at!
It needed work, but was better than the other game given that DM decided to jump settings instead of actually use his game's setting properly!
Sorry can't see any reason to bother with the new phb hope their new dmg is better.
It won't be. It will be awful.
The DMG will be bad.
This doesn't align very well with Jeremy Crawford's "We want an elf to be the 'elfiest' elf" approach to race.
Yeah, but that was always bull.
Ah yes, because every character can use breath weapons or tremorsense.
Like I don't get this logic. The actual abilities and spells your Species (also a better term cause race should apply to "sub-races") reflects what you are than a small state boost.
Also yeah, what you trained to do before becoming an adventure should define your stats and skills more dramatically than what you are.
So much of what defines a Species is still in-tact.
Yeah they are trying to free players up to do what they want, because yes the newer market doesn't want to be forced to pick certain things for optimization. D&D 5E isn't even that tactical to begin with. I know I don't want to feel like an inferior spellcaster just because I wanted to be an Orc-Wizard.
But alot of those limitations still exist, halflings can't use heavy weapons even if they have the strength for it etc.
By the same logic as the malleability of bonuses, and the removing of all disadvantages, why would a breath weapon be racially specific? If you think that halflings can't use a breath weapon, you're a white supremacist!
Missing Meatball ❤
Just posted a community post with her latest political protest.
Its turned into mideval Star Wars.
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This post makes me think of two astronaughts on the moon, where one is discovering a secret and the other is behind him with a gun pointed at the first Astronaught saying "it always was". Outside of really rare out there races like Shardminds who actual felt Alien, most were just humans with a magical theme and super human powers. The closest to alien now is Dragonborn.
It used to be that elves were not just hipsters, tieflings were not just the LGBT rainbow community of Faerun, and orcs weren't mexican.
If you genuinely think it's always been that way.memejpg then you clearly are new to the hobby, or have not read any material lol.
Nyxads are fast, quick, smart and perceptive. they lack strength and durability. they make damned good rogues and damned good multiclass rogues. but then, no matter what class you play as a nyxad, you are going to use your fast movement, swift reflexes, potent perception and high intelligence to your advantage and probably aren't going to pick a class or build that favors strength, constitution, or any armor that restricts movement. and in fact, you probably don't want a weapon you can't conceal or at least deceive about. this is going to inherently push you towards unarmored dagger builds and push you towards quiet weapons like the bow even if your class isn't rogue. because even in OSR without finesse, enemy AC and HP totals were low enough that most enemies could be one shot from full HP by an average strength halfling wizard with a dagger. this turned fights from HP slogs to fishing for morale rolls. which was good. the reason i liked OSR wasn't the lower PC power level relative to the enemy or the lethality. it was that henchmen armies and multiple PCs per player gave a player a means to participate when thier main PC was sleeped or charmed
So D&D now denies genetics and supports Lysenkoism?
Essentially yes. You shouldn't be surprised, these people are Stalinists at heart.
+1
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guess this is a slow news day
Making it so that D&D creatures that had penalties in sunlight now don't is not really minor news in terms of the game. If you are complaining that I'm not talking about the Olympics or US politics, I think you have the wrong channel.
First view and first comment!
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Getting rid of species advantages and disadvantages is silly. Whining about it for thirty minutes is sad.
it seems to me you wouldn't even be playing this new edition anyway so I don't see how their changes and choices affect you. Just go play 1e or something where female characters have arbitrary limitations put on them. If you think the game needs to be realistic by imposing stuff like this, be logically consistent - e.g. strictly enforce all encumbrance rules. Make sure encumbrance is checked every time a player picks up or drops an item. Don't forget to remove class limits if you want realism too; it makes no sense for a dwarf to stop getting better at combat just because he's hit an arbitrary level. Heck, 1e and 2e books both admitted that level caps were an arbitrary shoehorn to balance demi-humans compared to humans. Oh and if you're keen on your bio-essentialism, always roll on a chart to see where an arrow hits a player because bows are immensely more lethal in real life than in D&D. Backstabs should typically be an auto-kill too. You should probably also create a table to roll on every time someone hits with a sword or axe to see whether they chop a limb or the opponent dies from blood loss. Realism is the goal here right? Or do you pick and choose your game preferences based on your political beliefs?
Do you easily accept D&D's written explanations (at least since 1e) that adventurers by definition are an exception to the rules and stereotypes of the societies they come from, but can't accept that sometimes these exceptions might mean an elf isn't always inherently more nimble? OR, is it too hard to conceive that maybe all Elves *are* more nimble, but not always nimbler enough to warrant a statistical advantage? And why are the demi-humans all just "humans in cosplay" to you now - do you not roleplay in your games? Being an elf is immensely different than being a dwarf if you're actually roleplaying, benefits/consequences/etc. Is your imagination limited?
Well anyway. My advice is, if you truly want politics out of the game, that means you also shouldn't inject *your* politics into the game either. It goes both ways. Going on a political tyrade against edition changes because it contradicts your political worldview puts you in the same category as any writer who shoehorns their own politics into whatever game system they're writing.
Regardless. D&D as a system, no matter which edition, has far greater problems than whether choosing Elf or Dwarf changes your ability scores. What you choose to rant on says more about you than it does about the new D&D. And for the record, I'm not stanning for the new edition, I plan to stick to 2e which I've been playing since the early 90's. I just think it's silly for a person to rail this hard against a system they don't even have to play.
Well, in the first place, "realism" is not the goal. It's always a stupid policy. EMULATION is the proper goal. If there's nothing that makes a non-human species different from a human except the most shallow element of physical appearance, the choice being made there is meaningless, they're just humans playing pretend.
An elf is not always more nimble than a human. If they get a +1 to DEX it means they are ON AVERAGE more nimble than a human. But unless a halfling has human-length legs (or some kind of weird inhuman legs), how are they going to run faster than humans who are double their span?
And the "roleplay in your games" argument is specious, because the rules in Nu-D&D make it very clear that there is nothing inherent about race that makes elves different from humans. There's only the claim of "background", which is a bit like suggesting that if a crocodile is raised among human children it will have all the same abilities as a human.
The difference becomes arbitrary, and what it turns out in both the writing of D&D books and in most 5e actual plays is that everyone just acts and behaves like humans from Seattle circa 2024.
It is the left that injected politics in the game. My argument is not a political argument, it is an argument for actual diversity in the setting, and asking people like you to stop confusing demihumans with non-white humans and making rule determinations meant to create some kind of imaginary social justice in fairyland.
Why does this have to affect the RPG Pundit for him to opine? Doesn't affect your 2e game either, but you are writing a really long screed and then, hilariously, accusing others of ranting. If you want left-liberal Marxist RPGs you have lots of choice. Enjoy. And allow others to criticise. Don't waste your life trying to be superior than thou, and lecture other people online. Get. A. Life.
By bio-essentialism, do you mean biology? The goal, as you should know, is not realism, it's heroic fiction. If you want instant kills from bow shots, go play Rolemaster, or modify the rules. Opposing the politicisation of D&D is not injecting your own politics.
@@Norvik_-ug3ge nah, it goes both ways no matter how much you all want to stick your fingers in your ears. The person who made the video clearly wants a ruleset that validates his personal political beliefs and his worldview, and he clearly isn't against airing out all this dirty laundry of his on RUclips.
Either way he lacks imagination if his idea of fantasy requires all Elves to have the same advantages and disadvantages no matter who they are or where they came from or which setting the DM uses/homwbrews.
@@Norvik_-ug3ge hey he's the one that took the time to record and edit a nearly 30-minutte video. Only took me a few minutes to type. No sweat off my back. This can go both ways, why does anyone say anything in response to anyone? You're talking to me but you don't have to, I'm responding even though I don't have to, etc. It's worthless and vapid of you to try to make "urr but you responded" a point
L takes
What’s comical is that you make that remark while asserting an unfavorable opinion backed by no substance.
Congrats on living as an oblivious self cancellation
Your takes are far more "L" than his. Especially your recent argumentum ad populum trying to defend your precious Fatt Coville. If you wanna argue from subscriber count, well, you have ONE subscriber and Pundit has almost 8k. So while Fatt Coville might be 10x as good as Pundit by your stupid logic, Pundit is 8000x better than you by your own stupid logic. You probably look like a soy freak also.