Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

[KimCoppolaAficionado]

I just read WotC's new Unearthed Arcana article. What the fuck is this?
View attachment 1918503

I sure am glad I can give my devils class levels to make them more difficult now or slap a different skin over the mechanical skeleton of a monster to juke powergamers- truly, this is the first time anyone has ever thought of this!
EDIT: I would also like to formally apologize to everyone else in this thread for having any faith in WotC. May they choke in their sleep.

 

[Fictional Character]

I would like to claim my winnings on that bet that WotC would try to remove races altogether, because this is clearly where they're going.

Can't wait to see their explanation as to how being a tough ol' bastard (CON bonus) is a cultural thing.

A culture of alcoholism.

 

[Adamska]

I just read WotC's new Unearthed Arcana article. What the fuck is this?
View attachment 1918503

Oh hey, I was right; kiss modifiers that make sense and gives interesting choices goodbye; make them all as bland as the fucking half-elf.

And I'm just going to customize by not using 5e with this sort of horseshit.

It's their own damn fault for being the racists, since I'm not the ones who made Orcs into black people. I'm the one who made them and Half-Orcs into Italians, which in lore was because the idea of fairly dim but cultured artists and military engineers was both fun and a subversion of them being a horde.

 

[ZMOT]

In the right kind of group with some general rules, Kender could work in a group and be a fun addition, but that means every player enters a gentlemen's agreement to not go overboard with the zany "lol I borrowed your stuff and I don't fear anything, so allow me to piss off these guys for no reason" shit.
But how often is that going to happen? Not nearly as much as some asshole rolling up a Kender to be a nuisance on the table.

assholes are gonna asshole no matter what. imo you can't blame kenders just because they make it easier (but also easier to spot). like everything else it depends on the people what goes on at your table.

"DMs are empowered to customize..."

The fuck? Since when did the DM need permission for that?

keeping people out of your games and having fun without them is nazi.
wait till the DM accountability council hears of that!

the fact that they can't properly subvert it because everyone can do whatever they want and don't even need to buy their official books is the kind of butthurt that burns eternal.

 

[BlazikenLover]

Tbh the virtue signaling is only going to get worse and won't stop until
A) They stop getting caught into retarded controversies (twatter wanting to cancel mearls, treating that black employee like shit, pissing off the dragonlance authors)
B) Their sales plummet

I don't see B happening since consoomers love to gobble shit (as long as ecelebs tell them it is trendy and popular). Maybe when critical role and the like stop being produced, D&D (and ttrpgs in general) will go back to being unpopular and WOTC may try to get some goodwill back.

Personally I liked 5e, first played it 6 years ago and found it enjoyable and would wait eagerly for new content: volo's guide to monsters is one of my favourite books, since before it all we had was the monster manual and tome of beasts (whose balance was wonky). The big sections describing the ecology, lore, lairs and behaviors of a few species was really neat and made it so the book wasn't just a collection of statblocks and short descriptions, besides it gave us a lot of great races I personally enjoy playing (goliath, kobolds, hobgoblins, etc).
No other book came close to it, I liked xanathar's for the optional rules (which now I realize we never used, god it seems nobody can come up with decent crafting rules) and I ended up largely ignoring mordekaisen's tome of foes.
Looking back on Tasha's I feel a stronger dislike towards the looser stats on race, some generic or rules lite systems always rubbed me the wrong way since two characters of different races would feel VERY similar. To be able to change your stat bonuses and other features to this degree takes away a lot from the race's identity. I get that if you wanna play a rogue dwarf it sucks not to have a dex bonus, yet many players don't seem to consider it a tradeoff and just wanna be optimized.
"I have less dex but i could use heavier armor if needed"
Instead we get
"BIGGER NUMBER ON MY MAIN STAT"

I guess I can't blame them enterily, it takes a good DM to make those "odd" class/race combos shine. A bland dm will just throw monsters at you or run railroaded encounters with no thinking outside the box therefore bigger number will be more useful.

 

[Flaming Insignias]

Tbh the virtue signaling is only going to get worse and won't stop until
A) They stop getting caught into retarded controversies (twatter wanting to cancel mearls, treating that black employee like shit, pissing off the dragonlance authors)
B) Their sales plummet

I don't see B happening since consoomers love to gobble shit (as long as ecelebs tell them it is trendy and popular). Maybe when critical role and the like stop being produced, D&D (and ttrpgs in general) will go back to being unpopular and WOTC may try to get some goodwill back.

Personally I liked 5e, first played it 6 years ago and found it enjoyable and would wait eagerly for new content: volo's guide to monsters is one of my favourite books, since before it all we had was the monster manual and tome of beasts (whose balance was wonky). The big sections describing the ecology, lore, lairs and behaviors of a few species was really neat and made it so the book wasn't just a collection of statblocks and short descriptions, besides it gave us a lot of great races I personally enjoy playing (goliath, kobolds, hobgoblins, etc).
No other book came close to it, I liked xanathar's for the optional rules (which now I realize we never used, god it seems nobody can come up with decent crafting rules) and I ended up largely ignoring mordekaisen's tome of foes.
Looking back on Tasha's I feel a stronger dislike towards the looser stats on race, some generic or rules lite systems always rubbed me the wrong way since two characters of different races would feel VERY similar. To be able to change your stat bonuses and other features to this degree takes away a lot from the race's identity. I get that if you wanna play a rogue dwarf it sucks not to have a dex bonus, yet many players don't seem to consider it a tradeoff and just wanna be optimized.
"I have less dex but i could use heavier armor if needed"
Instead we get
"BIGGER NUMBER ON MY MAIN STAT"

I guess I can't blame them enterily, it takes a good DM to make those "odd" class/race combos shine. A bland dm will just throw monsters at you or run railroaded encounters with no thinking outside the box therefore bigger number will be more useful.

Now, I honestly believe that it wouldn't be too ridiculous to potentially swap out certain "cultural" race traits like equipment proficiencies, but swapping around racial stat bonuses is absolutely ludicrous. It'd be like complaining that certain animals are stronger or faster or smarter than others, and thus they all have to be equalized. Those stat bonuses represent the biological traits of that race (species would be more accurate) and wanting otherwise would be like demanding that your pocket poodle be as strong as a mastiff.

 

[Adamska]

Now, I honestly believe that it wouldn't be too ridiculous to potentially swap out certain "cultural" race traits like equipment proficiencies, but swapping around racial stat bonuses is absolutely ludicrous. It'd be like complaining that certain animals are stronger or faster or smarter than others, and thus they all have to be equalized. Those stat bonuses represent the biological traits of that race (species would be more accurate) and wanting otherwise would be like demanding that your pocket poodle be as strong as a mastiff.

But you don't get it, the Orcs are black people because by the idiots' own logic they see both as violent and stupid savages that murder and rape. They're just too deluded and stupid to understand what they're saying with that shit.

But yeah, for some reason a lot of shit is surviving purely for political reasons and getting money from the companies that technically own them. It's a lich that refuses to die and won't until the economy melts down.

 

[Jet Fuel Johnny]

Dicksucker's Guide to Mounts

The hamster is widely viewed as an animal too small and weak to carry a fully armored human. However, we at Wizards of the Coast want to ensure that all mounts are available to all players. With that in mind, all species bonuses and penalties are hereby negated and all animals are considered the same for stats (Which shall all be put in 18's if they are friendly or allied to the player and to 3 if an enemy to avoid power creep in foes) no matter what their size or appearance.

We at Wizards of the Coast of course know that some racists and bigots will alter these stats or ignore this rule change. Please report all wrongthink DMing on our handy report page on the Wizards of the Coast internet site.

More than a few years ago when the SJW corruption started, I fucking TOLD everyone that these people wouldn't be satisfied until it was the Game of Big Gray Blobs and everything was the same.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

The DM then explained to me that a previous player (not there anymore lol) had played a kender, which I never heard of before, and explained what a kender was. It was then that I knew that despite his autism he was justified in flipping out and being suspicious of all small people.

Little treacheries amongst the players are sometimes okay. Stuff like the group's social character agreeing with a quest giver to a quest for 100gp per group member in private and then him telling the group everyone will get 90gp and pocketing the difference. Small conflicts can be okay. Stealing from group members or betraying them is an absolute no-go.

To me, it's an unspoken rule - indeed, a rule that simply just goes without even saying - that you don't betray your group in a truly major way or steal their shit. I had a handful of situations where a character was acting in a way that was blatantly not in-line with what the group tried to achieve and in one case it culminated in him selling out the group, almost leading to a TPK and he only got away with it, cause the moment we realized to what lengths the player would go, he was already out of our reach and we didn't kill him before, cause we didn't want to be the ones to break the unspoken rule... and to some degree, we didn't expect him to pull off such a dick move until he actually did. Thankfully it was just a oneshot, but the rest of the group (GM included) pretty much decided that this player is now a FFA buffet when it comes to selling him out whenever convenient or funny. If he's got such little qualms about doing it himself, no one of us is going to hold back in the future either.

Another instance has happened rather recently and affects my DnD games to this day...

Spoiler: Storytime

About a year ago, in a different group I had another such instance that was just a major fuck-up on the GMs part.
Someone wanted to test out DnD and joined our running game with a guest-character. Since we were deep inside a dungeon at the moment, he played a Drow that we met down there. Usually, I wouldn't trust a Drow (especially since there's an ongoing plotline about Drow being involved in a massive zombie-apocalypse type attack on a city), but since it was a new guy testing out the game, what can you do? You don't want to ruin their fun and he helped us in the dungeon a lot, so everything's fine, right?
Ultimately, with his support we managed to bring down a powerful monster guarding a room that was blocking our way, too.

While we were all mending our wounds, we realized the Drow was gone, so turns out, the room with the monster also leads to some unholy Drow shrine and the guy was there, doing some evil ritual. We didn't make it in time to interrupt it and due to the fight earlier, we were all just hanging on by a thread, but we still managed to scare him off, but it could have very easily been a TPK (and the guest player also gloated about how we let our guard down and that he toyed around with the idea of killing us to ensure his success). It takes a special kind of dumb to tell someone how silly it was to trust him, when the only other option would have been to not allow the guest player to participate in the game. It takes a special kind of dumb for a GM to set up a game session like that.

Lessons learned:
1) Never trust a new character - this came at the expense of a new player that joined later, which sucks, but if this is how it has to be, not my fucking fault. I treated that new character as expendable and only now slowly warm up to the idea that I might trust him. Paranoia is such a great foundation for party coherence, right?

2) All Drow are backstabbing cunts. Not particularyl new information, but this now will also apply to player characters, no matter what beneficial things they do, I will never trust them even just for a second. Given that the aforementioned zombie-apocalypse plotline went into the direction that it might be a frame job and the Drow are actually innocent, I take special glee in twisting every bit of new evidence of their innocence into just a dastardly attempt at subterfuge by the cunning and scheming Drow. Much to the GMs dismay. The GM fucked us over unfairly with that stupid situation, so I'll now use that situation as a crowbar to derail his plot when I feel like it.

I just read WotC's new Unearthed Arcana article. What the fuck is this?
View attachment 1918503

If it stays like this, it's not too bad. The idea to make cultural bonuses more open to customization is technically a good thing, but it does kind of wash out the differences between certain races, since culture is mixed into their background to a huge degree. Overall, it seems like the first step towards making races more bland and watering them down until you end up with a system where you just pick a body-type, skincolor(s) and then slap whatever modifier you want on that thing.

I don't see B happening since consoomers love to gobble shit (as long as ecelebs tell them it is trendy and popular). Maybe when critical role and the like stop being produced, D&D (and ttrpgs in general) will go back to being unpopular and WOTC may try to get some goodwill back.

The growing market for DnD means that the market is going to grow, no matter how many grognards abondon ship. Once the fad dies down, the easily manipulated e-celeb-fans will move on and WOTC can only hope that by then, the grognards still give enough of a shit to give them another chance. Maybe it actually manages to stay relevant on a high level (DnD is in a unique position of being the Lingua Franca of RPGs after all), but in either way, the grognards will have to accept that the DnD they fell in love with is gone.

 

[Judge Dredd]

How official is Unearthed Arcana?

It seems like an odd decision because I was expecting them to pull this in Tasha's, but they didn't. SJWs on Twitter ree'd of course, but if WotC were going to go all in, put it in a major release like Tasha's or 6e, not UA where it can (and will) be ignored by the normies who only hopped on the fad.

Now it's going to be treated as optional, and if 6e is worse than 5e, people will go back to using 5e again.

I'm sure it's been said, but social justice doesn't work in RPGs because it's easy for the DM to edit it out. The players will never encounter it unless the DM brings it to the table.

f it stays like this, it's not too bad. The idea to make cultural bonuses more open to customization is technically a good thing, but it does kind of wash out the differences between certain races, since culture is mixed into their background to a huge degree.

I don't mean to keep sucking Eberron cock, but Eberron already did this. Starting languages and cultural bonuses were based on where you grew up, not race or class. This makes sense in that setting where the different races are interacting constantly. A nomadic tribal halfling is going to be very different from one that was from the lower city crime families.

The difference is they didn't wank themselves off about how progressive this was. It was just an option that made sense for the setting.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

I don't mean to keep sucking Eberron cock, but Eberron already did this. Starting languages and cultural bonuses were based on where you grew up, not race or class. This makes sense in that setting where the different races are interacting constantly. A nomadic tribal halfling is going to be very different from one that was from the lower city crime families.

The difference is they didn't wank themselves off about how progressive this was. It was just an option that made sense for the setting.

The German RPG system "The Dark Eye" also does it in a same way. You have different races with specific bonuses, but you also have a shitton of cultures littered over the map, oftentimes overlapping, so you can choose from a wide variety. It makes the world a lot more believable and still retains a feeling of coherent cultural spheres, since it imposes limits on combinations (these can be ignored, but it's highly recommended to talk with the GM before doing so - so technically, you can play as a human that grew up amongst dwarves or an orc with an elven culture... though you won't be happy doing that).

 

[Adamska]

How official is Unearthed Arcana?

It's SRD, meaning it's pretty high up on officialness. It's mainly a playtester's area where variant rules are often created from when they play around with the system. The DnD sanity system, honor, and a variety of other things came from this area.

So it's in a way more of a dick punch because it is more likely to be updated than if it was in Tasha's, because splats only rarely get add ons and it's usually based on how popular and used those splat book items are.

It's also more of a dick punch because it looks like they're going to force that shitty variant rule down your throat for every new splatbook on from this point for any races they choose to introduce, so yeah.

I was originally going to say you could ignore it, but nope, they're going to force it down your throat based on that walking pile of shit's smugtyping in said article. It's pretty retarded too, since Unearthed Arcana, while sometimes creating new rules, is mainly there to bring out variants that DON'T change play. So 5e may get a shitty late period.

Hilariously the opposite of 3.x.

 

[Corn Flakes]

How official is Unearthed Arcana?

It doesn't matter how official Unearthed Arcana is.

They just used the article to announce the change. Every future D&D book is going to be embracing the Age of the Blob. So if you ever wondered what your favorite as-of-yet-not-updated-for-5e race's stat bonuses and cultural traits are... well, fuck you.

 

[Judge Dredd]

It doesn't matter how official Unearthed Arcana is.

I'm the filthy casual of the thread. I'm only one step above the "I love critical roll! Let's play D and D like in Stranger Things!" crowd. I've only heard of UA in passing and referenced on internet. I know Ranger was revised to change Favoured Enemy into something useful, and I had to tell one of my players about it because they didn't know. There are rules people ignore for not being "official" enough. It's why I asked.

And even if it is top level most official. Then it's entirely possible that anything going forward will be written off as not worth bothering with. There are already shit tier books/rules that people ignore. It sucks, but as I said, grognards hate 5e, fans can easily edit rules or change to a different game, that leaves only casuals who are buying because it's [Brand] that [e-celeb] uses.

 

[ZMOT]

Tbh the virtue signaling is only going to get worse and won't stop until
A) They stop getting caught into retarded controversies (twatter wanting to cancel mearls, treating that black employee like shit, pissing off the dragonlance authors)
B) Their sales plummet

I was about to go into into that with a wall of text, but ultimately: who cares?
I mean who plays vanilla DND and strictly adheres to whatever wotc shits out? not the grogs that moved on (or stayed on their old edition) when 3/4/5 came out, and normalfags don't care about the the roleplay aspect, they want to have a fun time like they saw on critical role, when joining an improv workshop would be a much better choice for that (and they don't have to deal with all the nerdshit like math and dice this way).

at some point the fad will pass like @RomanesEuntDomus said and when the smoke clears we gonna have to wait and see who's left.
although a small good thing is that companies can more easily put out "5e compatible without mentioning dnd" material because there are simply more people picking stuff up for it right now. not many people would back a kickstarter for some translated french rpg and it's own system, but with the 5e moniker it's suddenly very neat for people who otherwise wouldn't care about it. sure, they still play 5e in the end, but when they already look outside the wotc stuff there's a good chance they'll got with another system too at some point. least more likely than the "official wotc RAW only" crowd.

So 5e may get a shitty late period.

>trusting the company that already pulled an essentials once and euthanized a whole edition this way

 

[40 Year Old Boomer]

I'm the filthy casual of the thread. I'm only one step above the "I love critical roll! Let's play D and D like in Stranger Things!" crowd. I've only heard of UA in passing and referenced on internet. I know Ranger was revised to change Favoured Enemy into something useful, and I had to tell one of my players about it because they didn't know. There are rules people ignore for not being "official" enough. It's why I asked.

And even if it is top level most official. Then it's entirely possible that anything going forward will be written off as not worth bothering with. There are already shit tier books/rules that people ignore. It sucks, but as I said, grognards hate 5e, fans can easily edit rules or change to a different game, that leaves only casuals who are buying because it's [Brand] that [e-celeb] uses.

Just check out 5etools and play around with the filters to see what's there. There's not a whole terrible lot that didn't make it into an official rule in some form or another (Brute Fighter and Pyromancer sorcerer are my faves).

 

[Adamska]

I'm the filthy casual of the thread. I'm only one step above the "I love critical roll! Let's play D and D like in Stranger Things!" crowd. I've only heard of UA in passing and referenced on internet. I know Ranger was revised to change Favoured Enemy into something useful, and I had to tell one of my players about it because they didn't know. There are rules people ignore for not being "official" enough. It's why I asked.

And even if it is top level most official. Then it's entirely possible that anything going forward will be written off as not worth bothering with. There are already shit tier books/rules that people ignore. It sucks, but as I said, grognards hate 5e, fans can easily edit rules or change to a different game, that leaves only casuals who are buying because it's [Brand] that [e-celeb] uses.

It's best described as the testing lab; it's pretty close to official, but it's main role is to test out new systems and ideas and see how they work. If it works, they can make variant rules or even splatbooks with the new shit. But at its heart it's just a test zone; the base mechanics aren't supposed to really change because otherwise you get a really shitty set up.

So they're actually being really fucking retarded by doing this. Not that it matters, because it's not like I intend to use any future splats. Hell, their idiocy made me lose interest in playing it ever again and I did play in a few games and even ran an experimental campaign in it.

I'm not backing people that hate fantasy.

 

[Gingervitis]

Just check out 5etools and play around with the filters to see what's there. There's not a whole terrible lot that didn't make it into an official rule in some form or another (Brute Fighter and Pyromancer sorcerer are my faves).

I’m still salty that the love cleric was not only not brought to Tasha’s, but was memoryholed out of existance and replaced with a shitty Unity Cleric. Not because it was overpowered, but because charm spells are literally date rape, apparently.

 

[Anonymus Fluhre]

I'm the filthy casual of the thread. I'm only one step above the "I love critical roll! Let's play D and D like in Stranger Things!" crowd. I've only heard of UA in passing and referenced on internet. I know Ranger was revised to change Favoured Enemy into something useful, and I had to tell one of my players about it because they didn't know. There are rules people ignore for not being "official" enough. It's why I asked.

And even if it is top level most official. Then it's entirely possible that anything going forward will be written off as not worth bothering with. There are already shit tier books/rules that people ignore. It sucks, but as I said, grognards hate 5e, fans can easily edit rules or change to a different game, that leaves only casuals who are buying because it's [Brand] that [e-celeb] uses.

That's basically what happened with Pathfinder when they introduced the Shifters class in Ultimate Wilderness. The class was useless Most of the book wasn't really worth using except for the archtypes, and the information on familiars. Shortly after that we got Pathfinder 2nd Edition that long time fans hate yet the people who watch youtube celebs play RPG's love.

While some people out there may think E-Celebs could ruin RPG's going forward, I believe that we'll see higher quality books come out from smaller studios wanting to fill in a niche left by the "popular" games. Similar to how Paizo filled in the 3.5 niche when 3.5 died to give way to 4th Edition.

 

[IAmNotAlpharius]

I'm the filthy casual of the thread. I'm only one step above the "I love critical roll! Let's play D and D like in Stranger Things!" crowd. I've only heard of UA in passing and referenced on internet. I know Ranger was revised to change Favoured Enemy into something useful, and I had to tell one of my players about it because they didn't know. There are rules people ignore for not being "official" enough. It's why I asked.

And even if it is top level most official. Then it's entirely possible that anything going forward will be written off as not worth bothering with. There are already shit tier books/rules that people ignore. It sucks, but as I said, grognards hate 5e, fans can easily edit rules or change to a different game, that leaves only casuals who are buying because it's [Brand] that [e-celeb] uses.

There’s nothing wrong with being a casual if you’re honest about it. Imo the issue is when someone claims to not be a casual and then they shit everything up like they own the place.

I would like to claim my winnings on that bet that WotC would try to remove races altogether, because this is clearly where they're going.

Can't wait to see their explanation as to how being a tough ol' bastard (CON bonus) is a cultural thing.

I don’t mind the idea of cultural bonuses affecting Intelligence, Charisma, or Wisdom but imo race should affect Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution.