Why interview solely the grognards? Even OSE options like Shadowdark have adopted terms like ancestry over race. It sorta feels like this article is trying to create an issue where none exists.
Changing race to species has not been a concern for myself, my players, or those I know. We're more concerned with improving the mechanics and speed of gameplay, balancing martials and casters, improvements to the core books, backgrounds, bastions, and impactful changes.
We want more variety at the table, not just everyone choosing the same optimized builds from RPGBOT. I think Crawford in the article puts it well: “People really wanted to be able to mix and match their species choice with their character-class choice. They didn’t want choosing a dwarf to make them a lesser wizard.”
I find this mystifying. I think of "choosing a dwarf makes you a lesser wizard" as being a pretty core part of D&D. Have they released specifics on this? If race/species is going to become purely cosmetic, have they explained what will replace it, mechanically?
That's kind of the problem with it was it was mechanically implementing something that was more setting/background cosmetics specific in the first place. Not all settings think dwarves should have a harder time becoming a wizard. Forgotten Realms, the modern "default" for D&D thinks anyone can do anything if they want, classes are just "jobs" available to anyone. Those settings that do care, including throwback settings, generally make it a story telling device about why things are the way they are ("dwarves are closer to the earth and have a hard time learning illusions") and the hardships exceptions face ("it took a lot more work and they lost access to some of their home community") and making it a mechanical disadvantage doesn't do anything more interesting than the storytelling tools already inherent in the setting.
The problem is that some racial bonuses are things that can be plausibly explained away by background (stat bonuses, mental abilities, humans getting a feat) but a lot aren't (aarakocra flight, dragonborn breath weapons, halflings being able to hide more easily), and they're all balanced against each other. Does an aarakocra raised by humans get human bonuses, and still get to fly? Does a human raised by aarakocra lose their human bonuses but grow wings?
That's almost exactly the split they made actually, with things like feats and flight still species based, but statu bonuses and backgrounds (with maybe some small exceptions) not being species based.
They did some work to balance it, but really species have never been the biggest balance issue, it's always been class stuff, or magical vs. martial issues, or the fact that ranger is thematically cool if you like LOTR, but sucks mechanically compared to other classes.
These changes were a part of the 2024 edition of the Player's Handbook (PHB) and Dungeon Master's Guide (DMG), both now published, with more of it to come in other updated books. (Or "5.2E" if you prefer the simple decimal point of the 2024 updated Systems Reference Document [SRD] over "5E (2024)".)
You're conflating physical properties with other abilities/characteristics. Does a dwarf have a physical limitation preventing them from wielding magic? This is the argument.
I don't see anything innately wrong with a human who can breathe fire, or has wings, or a dwarf with four arms, so long as you're willing to RP it. It does seem silly to say that no, it's actually against the rules, your dwarf can't learn magic.
There are different versions of D&D. At least in some versions, you have some control over assigning some of the stats, and so you could assign some of them as you wish if you want better bonuses for magic.
It shouldn't limit you from using magic, and it doesn't, and that is good.
But, sometimes you will want to do things other than just casting spells (especially if you have run out of spells or if there is anti-magic preventing casting spells), so you can decide if you want to be good at one thing, or good at other things too but perhaps not as much.
That's actually a really good question. It's certainly one of the key debated questions at the heart of what WotC is doing here (and as others point out, somewhat lagging the rest of the TTRPG industry, many of which got bored of "races" in the D&D mechanical sense a long time, in one way or another).
Are they archetypes for builds? Why are they archetypes for builds? Is it problematic if they are archetypes for builds? Are they just flavor for settings and character backgrounds and other storytelling needs? Should they be? Why have "races" at all and not just "backgrounds"?
> I think of "choosing a dwarf makes you a lesser wizard" as being a pretty core part of D&D.
I agree that you should be able to make suboptimal choices if you wish, but I think that shouldn't be the issue.
Your character will be more than just a dwarf and a wizard (otherwise the game will be too simple), in addition to those things, so if a dwarf will be more likely to have an advantage at something else that is independent of classes, then you can have that, and still be a wizard, even if a "greater wizard" lacks what your character will have.
(There might also be the possibility, that if dwarf wizards are not very common (for whatever reason; there are many possibilities, depending on the story), then someone might not expect you to be a wizard so might be possible for some surprise if you are disguised by mundane means.)
The frustrating thing here is that the people in the article are complaining that Wizards isn't 'leaving it up to the DM', but that's one of the main things that WotC always drives home - and still is. If you want to fill your world with racist, ableist, sexist asshats and tell your players that their orc character is going to be inherently stupider than other races because they're inherently (genetically?) inferior, you still can.
What they're really saying, as always, is 'why does inclusivity have to be opt-out instead of opt-in?'
Because it's a fantasy game and all humans are equal in it already? This feels a lot like simply corporate virtue signalling (all while exporting US culture wars)
Suggesting that grizzy bears as a category are bigger and stronger than humans isn't controversial, Neither is a hulking half orc, until now apparently?
Racial stat bonuses were never a thing anyone cared about. It’s the easiest thing in the world to change if a DM’s setting called for really smart orcs, or strong lumbering elves.
Spending so much time thinking about the political implications of racial bonuses in a game where the DM gets final say anyway is just some sort of advertising.
We’re talking about it on the front page of HN after all.
> If you want to fill your world with racist, ableist, sexist asshats and tell your players that their orc character is going to be inherently stupider than other races because they're inherently (genetically?) inferior, you still can.
Maybe people are angry over all this judgmental crap? Orcs are so dumb that they weren't a PC class before, you just fought them as monsters, its like saying its racism to call bears dumber than humans.
If you judge people like this, expect them to judge you back and call you names as well.
> What they're really saying, as always, is 'why does inclusivity have to be opt-out instead of opt-in?'
The game is still not inclusive, the people who wanna play as a bugbear or a mindflayer still have to do opt-in etc. There will always be monsters that the players cannot play unless you change the entire game to the core.
There is no reason Orcs should be a player race, them doing that is just because they see Orcs as black people, so who is the racist here?
While technically, the player race is "half orcs", in practice I haven't seen virtually anyone differentiate between the two. It's just "the stats for players who want to be orc" and "the stats for orcs as enemies".
It's quite common for people to play as races like bugbears or mindflayers. It's more a limitation of being able to create player stats for every humanoid monster.
I've never seen a critic of how D&D handles race argue that orcs are meant to represent black people. I think you might be reading into things.
The change is a good one, and there's still abilities that differentiate species, so dwarves still have toughness, and a bunch of other abilities.
Previously a Dwarven wizard was just a really bad choice, and you'd be noticeably less powerful than say an Elven wizard so no-one ever played one.
Now an Elven Wizard for instance has a few bits and pieces that might make them a bit better, but still leave a Dwarven Wizard as a viable choice.
This makes the game far more interesting in every way: players have more interesting builds, more character choices, and can play whatever combinations that they want.
I'm kind of surprised that optimized builds even exist, at least outside competitive games.
Back in the day when I was playing tabletop RPGs, the standard GM approach was that meaningful advantages must be balanced with meaningful disadvantages. Encounters where the characters had to face their weaknesses were supposed to be common. It didn't really matter if your characters were optimized as not.
Character builds as a concept were just some video game nonsense that had no place in actual role-playing games. At least among the people I used to play with.
It depends on the complexity of your campaign. Back in the day when I played D&D, we had a DM who would throw together typical hack-and-slash-and-loot campaigns, in which you wanted to maximize your STR, CON, DEX, and INT( if you were a magic-using class ). Nobody wanted to assign points to anything else, as they would be a waste.
It takes a good DM to balance a campaign, especially for years. And I suspect most DMs are pretty bad (I'm guessing, haven't played in over a decade now).
This is a valid point and it's honestly one of the things that I really enjoy about the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. One of the main character's best weapons is charisma. Multiple different types of spells or abilities are modified by secondary stats, like charisma with charm or illusion spells.
I haven't played D&D in, like 30 years, but I don't ever remember those types of game mechanics being involved. If they are now it would make for some great potential combinations. If a dwarf gets -1 INT and +1 CON, but certain types of spells use CON as a modifier then it creates an interesting combination.
I've been playing Grim Dawn recently, and feeling the tension between optimizing and exploring, between pre-built and puzzled out.
If you can manage to forget about the answer key lurking on every forum, the core experience of finding synergy, figuring out a build, balancing resistances is surprisingly fun.
> Why interview solely the grognards?
And, I know it's a rhetorical question, but the answer is:
> So the article can serve double duty as a Nat Geo-style jungle expedition, providing glimpses of unwashed tribespeople to intrigued middle Americans.
> Changing race to species has not been a concern for myself, my players, or those I know.
Largely the same, I acknowledge it's not being done for me and definitely doesn't impact me. Shrug (or eyeroll if so inclined) and move on.
> “People really wanted to be able to mix and match their species choice with their character-class choice. They didn’t want choosing a dwarf to make them a lesser wizard.”
Ok, but IMO nobody has more fun by doing 13 damage a round instead of 10. The consequence of chasing optimality is it simply leads a DM to tune encounters appropriately.
> We want more variety at the table, not just everyone choosing the same optimized builds from RPGBOT.
So instead everyone is using the same optimised builds but with more species variety? Does that really improve the state of games in your experience?
I sort of want disparate builds, playing to aptitudes. Balancing spell lists and feats etc to make lots of viable builds is a hard problem to solve though (I've not played the 2024 rules so have no idea how well they've done?).
I think the main thing, stat-wise, that leads to un-fun is when there's imbalance within a party. It's dull to play a power fantasy game where the other players are significantly more powerful than you. Balance is the main concern.
Now, a good DM can house-rule around a lot of these things, but designing rules for balance is quite hard, as is learning new rules, which is why these systems are a thing in the first place, so ideally the rules should by default allow this kind of creativity and flexibility without creating large power imbalances, both between players and between players and monsters (also something that's more difficult than it looks, hence things like challenge ratings and pre-built adventures).
(I'd argue the fairly high variance of D&D combat also causes problems here, both for fun and balance, because it's no fun when a powerful character completely bricks in a fight against a lesser opponent because of cursed dice, and it also makes it harder for the DM to get useful feedback to balance encounters)
On one hand many people don't want to be dead weight when the dice start rolling. On the other hand it can be more fun to be the Half-Ork Wizard with 7 INT trying to role play a big dumb guy who's only love is setting things on fire with his mind and getting paid for it.
There's the age old role play vs. roll play argument. With a good DM it shouldn't matter but if you're running some prebuilt campaign then it might lead to unexpected struggles.
> On the other hand it can be more fun to be the Half-Ork Wizard with 7 INT trying to role play a big dumb guy who's only love is setting things on fire with his mind and getting paid for it.
At 7 int are you smart enough to even have learnt to cast cantrips?
I do think that there is a difference between playing a suboptimal combination and dumping your classes primary stats such that you're largely incapable of doing things...
There's a line between suboptimal and non-viable.
For example, a fighter which maxed charisma with appropriate feats for being admired/respected etc. Just a super stand up lovely guy. Super personable, gorgeous smile, good form, rarely seen him fight I admit - but he looks the part! But I do put some points in Str (Dex if finesse) and Con. Otherwise you probably can't actually be a fighter, you won't match the class descriptor (imo)
> Who is it being done “for” if not for the people who play this game?
Many changes to media franchises and games are being made in an effort to attract a new audience, or with the belief that it increases appeal to the "modern audience". Emphasis because this is the buzzword phrase that gets used quite a lot to justify changes that are generating some amount of controversy or negative attention. The problem is that "modern audiences" may not actually exist
Not all changes are for the players. The changes to remove perceived racial biases may improve inclusion for some minority of players. It may be a serious issue for those players, the game designers, or some executive. Just like real world changes to improve inclusivity, most are unaffected and simply move on.
For the changes people care about, Wizards of the Coast (WotC) publishes "Unearthed Arcana" or pre-release versions of content (e.g., bastions, the Monk class, a new Druid subclass). People will playtest the new content and WotC surveys players to get feedback. Based on the feedback, they may make additional changes or even scrap some things entirely.
> The changes to remove perceived racial biases may improve inclusion for some minority of players
Everyone is represented by the same race by the rules, just like the left wants, humans are just one race all with the same abilities. Even all genders have the same stats, so dungeons and dragons was the progressive utopia from the start where every human has no biological differences stat wise.
The only ones who see an issue are those who thinks that black people are orcs, but black people aren't orcs black people are humans just like white people.
Changing race to species has not been a concern for myself, my players, or those I know. We're more concerned with improving the mechanics and speed of gameplay, balancing martials and casters, improvements to the core books, backgrounds, bastions, and impactful changes.
We want more variety at the table, not just everyone choosing the same optimized builds from RPGBOT. I think Crawford in the article puts it well: “People really wanted to be able to mix and match their species choice with their character-class choice. They didn’t want choosing a dwarf to make them a lesser wizard.”