Cutting the Cruft from D&D Races, Part 2

Previously: Cutting the Cruft from D&D Races, Part 1   

So what does this mean for our PHB ancestries? 

We revise as follows. A few general principles.

 

“Feather” or flavor-first features may still exist, but they are more like the lore of the ancestry, rather than mechanically defined game objects. The DM can grant advantage to a dwarf when making an Intelligence (Investigation) ability check when they examine stonework; this can be handled within the DM’s standard adjudication of the information/action exchange between player and DM, rather than requiring a mechanical component for the player to activate it. The gnome does not need four paragraphs (including AC and duration) detailing their tinkered devices. The DM can simply adjudicate those situations reasonably when the subject comes up.

We’ll cut proficiencies from ancestries entirely. There are plenty of proficiencies in the backgrounds and classes. We don’t need them here, with the possible exception of humans.

Dump native spellcasting across the board. There’s no shortage of spellcasting classes in 5E for characters who want it, and the game impact of these abilities is not worth the cruft they generate.

While I have made some attempt to roughly balance these ancestries against each other, I consider balance in TTRPGs to be at best a laudable (but rarely) achieved ideal, and at worst a distracting shibboleth. This is a subject for another post, but I mention it here by way of being clear about my priorities. 

Humans

No change. Humans in a fantasy setting are a baseline for understanding the other stranger, more exotic creatures in the world, and most games need them. In our new system, with just four topline race categories instead of the base game’s nine, there’s more room to play up different human ethnic groups and cultures, if that’s part of a given campaign’s focus.

Mechanics: If a campaign is using feats, use the Variant Human Traits rules. If it isn’t, humans still need a mechanical hook (5E’s default approach gives them slightly better stats across the board, but that isn’t relevant with the decoupling of race from ability score, and isn’t compelling in a game focused on group play with heavy specialization). DMs should consider giving humans something equivalent to the Skilled feat, even if feats aren’t otherwise in use.

Elves 

No drastic changes. The post-Tolkien elves familiar to fantasy gaming are emblematic of the genre and not going anywhere. The subraces can stay the same, although if a DM wanted to simply cut the drow rather than deal with their baggage, this would be a good place to do it. Half-elves fit here if they need to be retained, but I submit that they aren’t conceptually interesting enough to bother with, and raise more questions than they’re worth. Their focus on versatility and flexibility should be the domain of humans.

Homebrewing DMs should consider adding other elf types liberally here. My game has moon elves, sun elves, river elves, and so on. With ancestries balanced closer to backgrounds, it’s much easier to homebrew and tailor them without breaking anything.

Mechanics: Cut Darkvision. It’s too common in D&D, and (non-drow) elves have a weak claim to it. Trance has some interesting corner-case implications, but infrequently affects the average 5E game, and I would cut it or treat it as flavor. Keen Senses is the kind of skill-oriented feature that we can leave to classes and backgrounds.

Fey Ancestry becomes the characteristic trait of high elves. The high elf’s existing traits of Elf Weapon Training, Cantrip, and Extra Language are great examples of the finicky, fussy, too-rarely-invoked abilities characters get for race selection. Cut this cruft out.

Fleet of Foot becomes the wood elf’s characteristic trait. Mask of the Wild is flavorful, but is a good example of a context-dependent ability that is just too easy for the player to forget about.

If retained, drow can keep Superior Darkvision, which stands out more after other elves lose Darkvision. I’d cut the rest, including Sunlight Sensitivity as part of a general move away from “negative” ancestry characteristics, although this would be another case to keep the flavor while dumping the mechanic. 

The Small Folk

A big taxonomic change. Dwarves, gnomes, and halflings all land here. My hot take is that none of the PHB subraces for these three creature types are particularly interesting or distinctive. Even without delving into their subraces, halflings and gnomes famously have trouble distinguishing themselves from each other as the “small mischievous ones.” 

Knocking them down to sub-ancestries of the same parent category gives them more room to claim distinct identities. In keeping with 5E’s move away from negative race characteristics, drop the reduced movement speeds. They make intuitive sense, but they rarely create interesting gameplay.

Mechanics: Dwarves retain Darkvision and Dwarven Resilience. With fewer races receiving the former, seeing in the dark becomes a big differentiator for dwarves. I like the flavor of Stonecunning, but it’s another ability that comes up too rarely to feature in ancestry selection. Move the mechanical heft of Stonecunning and Tool Proficiency into the character’s choice of background instead.

Gnomes keep the powerful Gnome Cunning feature. Their flavor abilities like Speak with Small Beasts and Tinker can stay as flavor, but there’s no need to weigh them mechanically. Artificer's Lore, like Stonecunning, should be reflected in background selection or through the DM granting advantage in relevant situations.

Halflings keep Halfling Nimbleness and Naturally Stealthy to reflect the core hobbit halfling identity.

Wild-Blooded

Dragonborn and tieflings. A few generations back, something powerful and strange climbed into your bloodline, and now here you are. This is admittedly a bit of a catch-all compared to the previous entries, but I don’t think it’s a stretch.

Half-orcs would also end up here, but as with half-elves, I would drop them entirely rather than waste time trying to answer all the cosmological and taxonomical questions their existence raises. Consider replacing them with something like goliaths; giant-blooded humanoids are a better parallel to the dragon-blooded and fiend-blooded creatures already included in this category. 

Mechanics: Dragonborn keep Breath Weapon and Damage Resistance. As the mechanically weakest ancestry in the PHB, they lose the least in this revision. I’d trim down the list of dragon types given how mechanically repetitive some of them are, but your mileage may vary, depending on the dragon lore in your campaign.

Tieflings keep Darkvision and Hellish Resistance, but dump the crufty spellcasting abilities.

Closing Thoughts

With this revision, we can rewrite Chapter 1 of the PHB. Move step 1 to Step 3. The guide to new players now goes Class -> Ability Scores -> Ancestry & Background. This focuses the character’s attention on the mechanisms they’ll use most in play, particularly as their character grows and advances. 

Cutting the Cruft from D&D Races, Part 1

D&D 5E’s character creation process is the biggest obstacle to new players getting into the game. Chapter 2: Races in the Player's Handbook (PHB) is the worst culprit, on a time-invested-to-gameplay-payoff ratio basis. I’m using the terms ancestry, “race,” species, creature, and humanoid interchangeably in this series of posts. I favor ancestry, but a deeper consideration of these terms would be a post of its own, for another time.

Eliminating ancestries entirely, or employing a “race as class” system (as in B/X D&D and other RPGs) are both viable options to fixing this issue. But for sake of discussion, I’m going to attempt to navigate a middle road – can we fix ancestry selection by streamlining it and making them more like another character creation component?

Detach Ancestries from Ability Scores

In the 5E PHB, as in most of the game’s previous editions, the biggest mechanical impact of ancestry is a starting adjustment to ability scores, frequently a +2 to one ability score at the race level and a +1 to another at the subrace level. The typical player will choose a class first, then work backward to a shortlist of ancestries that would provide relevant bonuses for their class.

Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything decouples the ability scores from ancestries, and encourages further customization of other ancestry features. While this is an alternate rule, I expect that Wizards of the Coast will further mainstream it in the anticipated “5.5E” revision of the core rules, expected in the next few years. The following approach assumes separating ability scores from ancestries is standard and permanent, which makes them much easier to hack.

Balance Ancestries Closer to Backgrounds

My operating theory here is that 5E players' self-image of their characters is 90% class, and 10% ancestry. As characters go on adventures, very few get “more elvish” or “more dwarvish,” while the game’s advancement system certainly facilitates feeling “more roguish” or “more monkish.” 

This is part of the reason that players often forget about useful (but infrequently triggered) abilities like the halfling’s Lucky feature or the half-orc’s Relentless Endurance trait. The character’s ancestry is not part of the player’s primary gameplay, the way their class abilities are – so of course they are forgotten.

The rules of D&D (or any game) need to reflect how players actually play that game, not some abstracted system that they engage with at character creation and forget about afterward.

As written, ancestries are too mechanically complex by half. They should be balanced more like 5E’s backgrounds – a starting point for a character, which becomes less mechanically relevant as they go on adventures; advance in their class; and acquire tangible in-game commodities like wealth and magic items.

Backgrounds are 5E’s least-appreciated character creation design element. They provide a few proficiencies, one crunchy feature, and the rest is flavor. Four simple sentences detailing bonds, flaws, ideals, and traits are more than enough for a new character needs to have a compelling launchpad for gameplay. Ancestries should tack closer to this model.

Next: Cutting the Cruft from D&D Races, Part 2