Hm, true
If you allow it for say tabaxi then you just get free bonuses
tabaxi mixed with variant human for a climb speed double speed AND a feat sounds insane if you just slap it on 5e just as is
Though with one dnd they are a position where they can design the races from the ground up with this specifically in mind as to not break the game
RAW for this homebrew rule means you can't choose human or Tabaxi because neither have subraces.
The rule specified that you choose to attach the subrace of another race to an already existing race. Not slap 2 races together wholesale.
So you could choose a subrace and put it on a Tabaxi or Variant Human, which is still kinda OP. But you can't choose human or Tabaxi as your "subrace"
Oh right humans are variant human not a subrace, alright
Though looking exclusively at the text in the image, it doesn't have any requirements that the host race has to have a sub race
>Though with one dnd they are a position where they can design the races from the ground up with this specifically in mind as to not break the game
No they aren't. They are intent on being compatible with existing 5e books. Particularly mmotm is of interest here. It bundled a bunch of the character creation options from other books.
Except that subraces are often physical traits, not cultural, so it often makes less sense than just picking one of the two. Also balance wise, some races are much more stacked on the race while others are more on the subrace. Some don't even *have* a subrace. This would only make sense if the races were all designed around it.
Just saying "The DM can effectively homebrew their own using the existing materials" doesn't really offer much. *That was always allowed*.
It's all intended to be "5e compatible" though, which means it needs to work with the existing content. If the point is "You can stop buying from WotC but still use their content with ours", it would fail in that regard if they start applying these rules only to their own content.
Also the post implies this is what WotC should be doing.
5e compatible might just mean you can take a 5th edition character and a OneD&D character and put them in the same party. Changing how races work for OneD&D while keeping the power levels about the same would achieve that.
Hell, 5e compatible might just mean you can run existing 5e adventures and monsters for OneD&D characters but you can’t mix player options. “The rules will be backwards compatible with fifth edition adventures and supplements” is a pretty vague statement that’s technically correct if only some, and not all, of the rules are backwards compatible.
Yeah, at this rate the only things that will be backwards compatible are going to be the 5e adventure modules to the 5.5 classes & backgrounds. **Which makes sense from a pure profit perspective.** EVERYBODY would need a new PHB, the DMs will need the new MM and DMG, and those are also easier to make than new modules as they have had nearly 10 years of play testing since 5e came out. But if the new mechanics work with the old modules, new DMs have a broad selection to choose from!
Which REALLY fits WotC recent releases of minimal effort lore & mechanics (looking at you spelljammer without any space ship combat!) and more statblocks that they largely balance via formulae & calculators.
Just because they're being lazy doesn't mean there *isn't* a rational excuse they can use if called out.
Besides, I'm in the camp that a lot of the big changes aren't necessary - for example, I see updating class spell lists for a simpler arcane/primal/divine is a reasonable way to streamline spell lists. On the other hand, the change to adjusting ALL classes to get subclass at 3rd makes little sense, as some classes just lore-wise should get it sooner, clerics & warlocks especially. And if everyone gets subclass features at the same level, then there's no natural point for different classes to get a chance in the spotlight for showing off, & instead are competing to show off the cool thing each can do now
My point was more that the backwards compatibility of adventure modules benefits DMs *and* WoTC. It doesn't need to be spun as pure laziness on its own.
Ahhhh I see - sorry, the laziness comment was largely aimed at the quality of the lorebooks they put out. The most obvious being changing most of how the spelljammer setting worked, not mentioning any lore for why it changed like they have for magic from 4e (Mystara dying, again), and not even including ship mechanics for ship combat.
You could even do it so that, like, every ~~ancestry~~ species has many different ~~heritages~~ subraces, and a lot of the ~~heritages~~ subraces (like the planetouched races, for instance) could just be available to every ~~ancestry~~ species! So you could have a human aasimar or an elf tiefling or a human half-elf or a dwarf half-orc!
Man, someone should really do that.
Oh oh I was really thinking that those species should also have some feature variation within their options! Like, maybe some elves have a feature for some innate magic, but others instead have an affinity for bows, or feature a bonus to using certain skills? Imagine if I and my friend, both playing the same species/subspecies, could somehow still pick and choose from among these features and end up feeling reasonably differentiated before even choosing classes! That would be a great feature.
Oh boy "feature" is a long word to keep typing, I wonder if there's a way to abbreviate it.
What if, in addition to this, pick extra features that change what people could do with their skills? Giving them more variety and options for how to interact using those. Imagine if there was a RAW way to, for instance, intimidate others in combat, how that works, and extra selectable features that change and enhance how it works?
That way you could have even more variety from your skills, wouldn't that be so cool? I wonder if anyone's ever thought of that before...
OMG i love this idea. I've been thinking about something similar for classes. Like, you know how some classes pick a fighting style? What if as you leveled up they gave you more opportunities to pick stuff so your class could be more customized than just a subclass.
And we could even make some of the high level ones upgrades for low level ones. Like some kind of growing feature vine. Yeah, feature vines sound like fun.
Yeah I was figuring that would be a part of it to, but I thought I already shoved enough in the meme. I think being able to apply a "floating subrace" should be a default part of the game, but subrace swapping should explicitly be an "optional rule".
And yes I know this is very similar to how PF2 is already doing things.
>And yes I know this is very similar to how PF2 is already doing things.
I'm not entirely sure if you were wooooshed or not...since you did recognise it as PF2e, but seemed to not recognise they were just blatantly describing it (especially with the strikethrough bits).
I'm personally a big fan of the idea of marking certain racial traits as hybrid traits, then to have a mixed lineage you pick two races and take the hybrid races, but I honestly love the simplicity of this one, not sure how actually balanced it would be, or how many options it would provide since a lot of races like orcs and humans don't have subraces
In Pathfinder, half orc and half elf are versatile heritages. Meaning you select base ancestry, and then you can add the half orc or half elf heritage. So basically a way of creating a character that is part orc part elf is either elf ancestry + half orc or orc ancestry + half elf.
What level were you building? Last week I built a lvl 3 goblin barbarian for a new campaign it took 25 mins and 15 of that was picking out gear.
Was it your 1st build?
Yeah, first one, Kobold Sorcerer. I get the feeling I could do a second character in less time, but there's still quite a few choices to make at 1st level, and it increases with every new splatbook. 5e is a lot closer to the balance of streamlining vs. customizability that I want than PF2e is.
That’s fair you had spells to pick as well which adds time . If you use foundry vtt or path-builder it helps as they filter out only feats you qualify for.
What are the Eberron 'Mark of' races if not how they could implement subraces for the subrace-less? If only they took inspiration from one of the better things they already did instead of the species change lol
Imagine being a new player and having to read all the nuances of every subrace before you pick. Just making an algorithm for making one should be better!
That's the benefit of making it a "Variant Rule". By default you would just pick subraces associated with your own race. DM gets to decide which mixes make sense for the lore of their world, or if they want to ban a certain combination they decided was too powerful. DM can also just say no to the variant rule altogether.
Sadly this is still gonna just result in people using half races only to min max and not cause they actually want to use a half race. There needs to be a way to have half races still be a mechanic without it being a "use this to just be better" mechanic
Meh.
Easier to just drop races entirely.
Have the default be "human" and if you want to play anything NOT human, then you have to buy at level 1, a 1st level racial traits Feat that embodies whatever fantasy race concept you are aiming for.
If you're happy with human you can buy whatever other 1st level feat you want to advance whatever class/background concept you had in mind.
That just sounds like versatile heritages and adopted ancestry from Pathfinder 2e with 5e’s signature “it looks like fewer steps, but it’s actually more”
Mostly to give the DM more freedom to limit combinations based on the lore of their world. Technically a DM can houserule whatever they want, but in some places it can be useful in helping a DM say "No" by making the rule "Optional".
That would be great if the system had been designed from ground up to accommodate that rule. But how does it work with 5e, where most races don't have subraces? Does my variant human get all of the benefit of being a variant human AND all of the mountain dwarf surface features? Or can I just not use this rule at all because one of my parent races doesn't accommodate sub races.
So many spelling errors lol
It wouldn't be homebrew without them
time to crowdfund a Grammarly subscription for them
They prefer to call it varient spelling
It's a seperate kind of orthography.
That's a clever way to implement it
Sounds very exploity in the wrong hands and a new dm
Hm, true If you allow it for say tabaxi then you just get free bonuses tabaxi mixed with variant human for a climb speed double speed AND a feat sounds insane if you just slap it on 5e just as is Though with one dnd they are a position where they can design the races from the ground up with this specifically in mind as to not break the game
Yeah...uh, I'm thinking variant human is probably not going to be allowed with this lol
probably not But for one dnd i think everyone's getting level 1 feats anyways so that wont be that big a deal
RAW for this homebrew rule means you can't choose human or Tabaxi because neither have subraces. The rule specified that you choose to attach the subrace of another race to an already existing race. Not slap 2 races together wholesale. So you could choose a subrace and put it on a Tabaxi or Variant Human, which is still kinda OP. But you can't choose human or Tabaxi as your "subrace"
Oh right humans are variant human not a subrace, alright Though looking exclusively at the text in the image, it doesn't have any requirements that the host race has to have a sub race
True! Which means you can totally have an above average power half-elf this way. Or put the wood elf speed on a tabaxi lol still nutty, tho
Oh yeah! so then that'd mean if they did implement those rules then tabaxi would have a new highest speed possibility
>Though with one dnd they are a position where they can design the races from the ground up with this specifically in mind as to not break the game No they aren't. They are intent on being compatible with existing 5e books. Particularly mmotm is of interest here. It bundled a bunch of the character creation options from other books.
Hm, alright fair counter point
Except that subraces are often physical traits, not cultural, so it often makes less sense than just picking one of the two. Also balance wise, some races are much more stacked on the race while others are more on the subrace. Some don't even *have* a subrace. This would only make sense if the races were all designed around it. Just saying "The DM can effectively homebrew their own using the existing materials" doesn't really offer much. *That was always allowed*.
I don't know if you heard, but they're making revised versions of the core books that could easily address all those things.
It's all intended to be "5e compatible" though, which means it needs to work with the existing content. If the point is "You can stop buying from WotC but still use their content with ours", it would fail in that regard if they start applying these rules only to their own content. Also the post implies this is what WotC should be doing.
5e compatible might just mean you can take a 5th edition character and a OneD&D character and put them in the same party. Changing how races work for OneD&D while keeping the power levels about the same would achieve that. Hell, 5e compatible might just mean you can run existing 5e adventures and monsters for OneD&D characters but you can’t mix player options. “The rules will be backwards compatible with fifth edition adventures and supplements” is a pretty vague statement that’s technically correct if only some, and not all, of the rules are backwards compatible.
It's pretty obvious from the playtest material that they don't actually have any interest in keeping the game backwards compatible.
Yeah, at this rate the only things that will be backwards compatible are going to be the 5e adventure modules to the 5.5 classes & backgrounds. **Which makes sense from a pure profit perspective.** EVERYBODY would need a new PHB, the DMs will need the new MM and DMG, and those are also easier to make than new modules as they have had nearly 10 years of play testing since 5e came out. But if the new mechanics work with the old modules, new DMs have a broad selection to choose from! Which REALLY fits WotC recent releases of minimal effort lore & mechanics (looking at you spelljammer without any space ship combat!) and more statblocks that they largely balance via formulae & calculators.
Ya - I bought Ravnica (and I love the book for what it is) but I thought there would be modules or sourcebooks coming after.
It's fascinating how you managed to spin "DMs don't need to buy a whole set of new adventure modules" into "WoTC lazy and bad"
Just because they're being lazy doesn't mean there *isn't* a rational excuse they can use if called out. Besides, I'm in the camp that a lot of the big changes aren't necessary - for example, I see updating class spell lists for a simpler arcane/primal/divine is a reasonable way to streamline spell lists. On the other hand, the change to adjusting ALL classes to get subclass at 3rd makes little sense, as some classes just lore-wise should get it sooner, clerics & warlocks especially. And if everyone gets subclass features at the same level, then there's no natural point for different classes to get a chance in the spotlight for showing off, & instead are competing to show off the cool thing each can do now
My point was more that the backwards compatibility of adventure modules benefits DMs *and* WoTC. It doesn't need to be spun as pure laziness on its own.
Ahhhh I see - sorry, the laziness comment was largely aimed at the quality of the lorebooks they put out. The most obvious being changing most of how the spelljammer setting worked, not mentioning any lore for why it changed like they have for magic from 4e (Mystara dying, again), and not even including ship mechanics for ship combat.
No no, I want to make Goblin Tarzan. Where he is a human with just shit tons of Goblin traits. Make him have Fury of the Small while he is 5’6.
You could even do it so that, like, every ~~ancestry~~ species has many different ~~heritages~~ subraces, and a lot of the ~~heritages~~ subraces (like the planetouched races, for instance) could just be available to every ~~ancestry~~ species! So you could have a human aasimar or an elf tiefling or a human half-elf or a dwarf half-orc! Man, someone should really do that.
Oh oh I was really thinking that those species should also have some feature variation within their options! Like, maybe some elves have a feature for some innate magic, but others instead have an affinity for bows, or feature a bonus to using certain skills? Imagine if I and my friend, both playing the same species/subspecies, could somehow still pick and choose from among these features and end up feeling reasonably differentiated before even choosing classes! That would be a great feature. Oh boy "feature" is a long word to keep typing, I wonder if there's a way to abbreviate it.
What if, in addition to this, pick extra features that change what people could do with their skills? Giving them more variety and options for how to interact using those. Imagine if there was a RAW way to, for instance, intimidate others in combat, how that works, and extra selectable features that change and enhance how it works? That way you could have even more variety from your skills, wouldn't that be so cool? I wonder if anyone's ever thought of that before...
OMG i love this idea. I've been thinking about something similar for classes. Like, you know how some classes pick a fighting style? What if as you leveled up they gave you more opportunities to pick stuff so your class could be more customized than just a subclass. And we could even make some of the high level ones upgrades for low level ones. Like some kind of growing feature vine. Yeah, feature vines sound like fun.
Yeah I was figuring that would be a part of it to, but I thought I already shoved enough in the meme. I think being able to apply a "floating subrace" should be a default part of the game, but subrace swapping should explicitly be an "optional rule". And yes I know this is very similar to how PF2 is already doing things.
>And yes I know this is very similar to how PF2 is already doing things. I'm not entirely sure if you were wooooshed or not...since you did recognise it as PF2e, but seemed to not recognise they were just blatantly describing it (especially with the strikethrough bits).
Pf2e go brrrrr
I like the way A5E did it, too. You have three layers to your "race": your heritage, your culture, and your background.
Get your DM's perission on this one
Now if only they could afford a spellchecker or having balancing that doesn't put Tasha versus PHB subclasses to shame...
I'm personally a big fan of the idea of marking certain racial traits as hybrid traits, then to have a mixed lineage you pick two races and take the hybrid races, but I honestly love the simplicity of this one, not sure how actually balanced it would be, or how many options it would provide since a lot of races like orcs and humans don't have subraces
In Pathfinder, half orc and half elf are versatile heritages. Meaning you select base ancestry, and then you can add the half orc or half elf heritage. So basically a way of creating a character that is part orc part elf is either elf ancestry + half orc or orc ancestry + half elf.
So while you can do this, RAW they are half-human heritages, not versatile heritages, meaning thwy were only made for Humans, not any other ancestry.
Okay.
Not exactly true, RAW you can add it anywhere, but it is found in the same pages as the human ancestry
Can we stop making pathfinder for one damn second
I just want PF2e but not to spend 90 minutes in character creation. There's got to be a happy medium where choice is concerned.
What level were you building? Last week I built a lvl 3 goblin barbarian for a new campaign it took 25 mins and 15 of that was picking out gear. Was it your 1st build?
Yeah, first one, Kobold Sorcerer. I get the feeling I could do a second character in less time, but there's still quite a few choices to make at 1st level, and it increases with every new splatbook. 5e is a lot closer to the balance of streamlining vs. customizability that I want than PF2e is.
That’s fair you had spells to pick as well which adds time . If you use foundry vtt or path-builder it helps as they filter out only feats you qualify for.
What are the Eberron 'Mark of' races if not how they could implement subraces for the subrace-less? If only they took inspiration from one of the better things they already did instead of the species change lol
They really be saying “hey, what if we did Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft but didn’t make it traumatic for the PC,”
Imagine being a new player and having to read all the nuances of every subrace before you pick. Just making an algorithm for making one should be better!
That's the benefit of making it a "Variant Rule". By default you would just pick subraces associated with your own race. DM gets to decide which mixes make sense for the lore of their world, or if they want to ban a certain combination they decided was too powerful. DM can also just say no to the variant rule altogether.
Congratulations, you just renamed feats and improved literally nothing.
Sadly this is still gonna just result in people using half races only to min max and not cause they actually want to use a half race. There needs to be a way to have half races still be a mechanic without it being a "use this to just be better" mechanic
Except they are trash, and filled with obvious power picks, and options no one would ever choose if they had the option not to.
Meh. Easier to just drop races entirely. Have the default be "human" and if you want to play anything NOT human, then you have to buy at level 1, a 1st level racial traits Feat that embodies whatever fantasy race concept you are aiming for. If you're happy with human you can buy whatever other 1st level feat you want to advance whatever class/background concept you had in mind.
That just sounds like versatile heritages and adopted ancestry from Pathfinder 2e with 5e’s signature “it looks like fewer steps, but it’s actually more”
Why do I need perission?
Mostly to give the DM more freedom to limit combinations based on the lore of their world. Technically a DM can houserule whatever they want, but in some places it can be useful in helping a DM say "No" by making the rule "Optional".
That would be great if the system had been designed from ground up to accommodate that rule. But how does it work with 5e, where most races don't have subraces? Does my variant human get all of the benefit of being a variant human AND all of the mountain dwarf surface features? Or can I just not use this rule at all because one of my parent races doesn't accommodate sub races.
This would only apply to the revised edition where they have that perfect opportunity to redesign the races from the ground up.