Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 98 - D&D5e and PF2e Ancestries and Races

Episode Date: November 7, 2021

Wizards of the Coast released some radical character creation ideas in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything and Pathfinder 2e drastically changed the way ancestries were treated in the newest edition of its game.  What are those changes?  Are they good for the game?  Tune in and find out.

This week on the Taking20 Podcast. While the free boost isn't as flexible or free-flowing as the rules in Tasha's, it largely accomplishes the same thing, and it's somewhere in the middle between the old ways and then the new ones released in Tasha's. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to episode 98 of the Taking 20 podcast. This week, focusing on new ancestry options, focusing primarily on the 5th edition. This week's sponsor, your nose. During cold season, your nose is so red because it is tired all the time.

After all, it won't stop running. When I started recording just before pandemic took a weapons-grade dump on our lives last year, I didn't know if anyone would be interested in this podcast or if I would get any listeners at all. Now I'm on pace to pass 10,000 downloads by the end of the year. I am honored, humbled, and I want you to know how thankful I am to all of you who listen. And those of you who have told others about this little podcast, you will have my eternal gratitude. With your help, we can keep this podcast going. Speaking of which, we're having another contest for a $50 Amazon.com gift card like we did with episode 75. On November 19th, I will randomly select one entrant thanks to the generator at random.org. To enter, all you have to do is send me an email

to contest at taking20podcast.com and send me an idea for a topic for an episode or an idea on how I can improve or expand the podcast. Send that to me before 12.01 a.m. on the 19th and you'll automatically be entered in the random drawing. I won't sell your contact information or reach out to you for any purpose other than to say that's a great idea or to let you know that you've won. You don't get signed up

for a newsletter or anything else. Again, that's a chance to win a $50 gift card just for sending me an email to contest at taking20podcast.com with either an idea for a topic or a way to improve the podcast. I had 40 or so entries for the last contest, and I'd love to see that number climb. So send your ideas in, and good luck. Fair warning, there are fewer than average number of jokes on this topic. It's difficult to make a joke about ancestry or race without sounding like a bigot, so for those of you who have written in to ask me to cut down on the jokes in episodes, this episode's for you. But fair warning, the next one, I'm poking all kinds of fun at kobolds. So be ready to talk about the only dragons you can safely punt for yardage

next week. This week, a majority of the time will be spent on Wizards of the Coast 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons. The reason will become obvious as we move forward, but for my Pathfinder players, we'll dip our toes in the water of 2E, but we won't be soaking in it. Sorry, my friends. Other episodes will be more for you. Between the release of Tasha's Cauldron of Everything and Pathfinder 2E's handling of Ancestries, we are seeing a distinct change in the way races, ancestries, and species are handled by RPGs. For the purposes of this episode, those three words will be interchangeable. I know there are differences in what the words mean,

and I'm going to try to stick with the word each game system uses as much as possible. 5e says race, and Pathfinder says ancestry. But if I slip up and say the wrong word, please accept my apologies and know that I mean the same thing with a different word. Since Tasha's came out more recently, and since, well, there's a lot more material to cover on the Wizards of the Coast, I want to start my discussion there. Wizards of the Coast provided 5th edition with a lot of new options in Tasha's. A new class in the Artificer, Artificer, Artificer, the Arty class. New subclasses, group patrons, new feats, spells, magic items, magic tattoos. But the biggest change they made

in my mind was their change to Ancestries or Races as they're called in 5e. In previous editions of Dungeons & Dragons, and even in 5th edition prior to the release of Tasha's, your race determined a lot about your character. Gethira Xai always received plus 2 to Wisdom and plus 1 to Intelligence. Gnomes always received plus 2 to Intelligence and plus 1 to either Charisma, Dexterity, or Constitution. Orcs always received a plus 2 to Strength and a plus 1 to Constitution. The reason is that Wizards of the Coast and before that TSR stated that each race valued and encouraged certain activities that

would affect your ability scores, and this was also partially shaped by the environment that they grew up in. Orcs traditionally valued might over everything else, thus the bonus to strength and constitution for orc adventurers. Gnomes were described as curious tinkerers, so Wizards of the Coast's logic was that every gnome would tend towards a slightly higher intelligence. Lastly, the belief was that all Gezirazai spend their time honing their mind to a razor's edge, thus the bonus to intelligence and wisdom. Wizards of the Coast stated that these bonuses existed to reinforce an archetype in the gaming world. But to be frank, it is kind of an antiquated notion that every orc studied war,

every gethira's eye focused on their mental prowess, every gnome was studious about clockwork mechanisms. To use stronger terms than Wizards of the Coast did, these bonuses reinforced stereotypes just as much as they did archetypes. That's why with the release of Tasha's, the pairing of race and ability score bonuses has been removed. As an optional rule,

characters can choose to take the bonuses in other ability scores, not necessarily the ones that are listed in the race description. So you can be that studious orc that takes plus two to intelligence instead of strength. You can be the sturdy gnome that takes a plus two to constitution instead of intelligence.

Or you can be that affable, fun-loving gethrazi that has a plus two to charisma instead of wisdom. In an interview, Wizards of the Coast designer Jeremy Crawford said that he anticipated many groups would switch over to these rules and taches. And it does make sense. So many people for years have wanted to play, I don't know, a half-orc sorcerer, but by doing so, they put themselves behind the power curve of players who select races that grant bonuses that align with the sorcerer's need to have a high charisma, like a tiefling. Divorcing what used to be called racial bonuses from the race that you choose opens up a whole new world of character options. I've done an entire episode discussing the pros and cons

of min-maxing, so I'm not going to repeat all that information here. Suffice it to say that if the DM expects you to min-max your character, it really strictly limited the possible race and class choices you could take. The gaming world was awash with half-orc fighters, goliath barbarians, firbolg druids, and halfling rogues. And that was fine. King Ku paladins, lizardfolk bards, dwarf warlocks were curiosities that characters would simply say, huh, you don't see that every day, before mopping the fucking floor with them because of the power curve. As is said in many rulebooks, characters are heroes, and they're not meant to be like everyone else. Because adventurers break the mold of a typical representative of a group of people,

with the adoption of these rules, your ancestry or race really doesn't matter anymore in 5th edition. It turns the features granted by your birth parents into purely cosmetic choices. With these rules, lizardfolk bards are just as powerful as Changeling ones, your Elven Paladin is just as viable as your Dragonborn one, and that Halfling Barbarian can be just as much of a danger as an Half-Orc one can. The only limitation placed on you in Tasha's is that you can't double up on bonuses to an ability score, and you can't push a score above 20. Besides ability scores, the rules in Tasha's let you change out your starting languages that the character is granted by your choice of race. Perhaps your halfling didn't grow up in a

halfling community. Instead, you were raised by an Azimar family. In that case, it might not make sense for you to automatically gain the halfling language. You don't get languages from your genes. I mean, if you did, I'd be speaking some bastardized version of English, Gaelic, French, and Cherokee. Yep, English and French. I'm pretty sure some of my ancestors freaking hated each other, but that didn't stop them from having sex. Lust overpowers hatred sometimes. Lastly, there's a table given on page 7 of Tasha's

that lets you swap proficiencies with skills, weapons, armor, or tools with other proficiencies. There are limitations to help slow down players who want to cheese the system a little bit. Briefly jumping over to Pathfinder 2nd Edition. They didn't go quite as far as Tasha's did when they released their core rulebook. Earlier editions of Pathfinder were much like the earlier editions of Dungeons & Dragons. Races had ability bonuses and penalties based on the race that you chose. Plus two to strength because you're an orc, etc. They treated race as an important starting point for your character,

having an effect on the way your character interacts with the world and how the world interacts with them. But with the release of 2nd edition, they reduce the number of fixed ability score adjustments based on ancestry and give each character what is termed a free bonus with any ability score they character would want. This is best demonstrated with an example. In Pathfinder 1st edition, all halflings received a plus 2 bonus to dexterity and charisma and a minus 2 penalty to strength. to Strength. In 2nd edition, however, Halflings are still given a minus 2 penalty to Strength due to their smaller size, but they're given plus 2 bonuses to Dexterity, Wisdom, and any one other ability score the player wants. This free boost was given to all Ancestries, and it allows for the flexibility of varied backgrounds. Maybe your Halfling was a distance runner, and you allot that bonus to constitution. Or maybe

your halfling was studious and spent a lot of time in books, so that's a plus two bonus to intelligence. While the free boost isn't as flexible or free-flowing as the rules in Tasha's, it largely accomplishes the same thing, and it's somewhere in the middle between the old ways and then the new ones released in Tasha's. But are these changes a good thing? Let's open up a very uncomfortable door here for a minute. An argument can be made that the way the races and ancestries were handled in Pathfinder 1st edition and Dungeons & Dragons 1st through 5th edition prior to the release of Tasha's feels like it's based on ethnocentrism or stereotyping. Hell, the word race smacks of English colonialism and all of its

negative connotations. Carrying this idea forward, that's why it feels wrong that all elves are portrayed as one way, all dwarves are portrayed as another, and all half-orcs as something else. The problem with these statements being the word all. Every group and every table is different. Some groups will want to stick with the original D&D and Pathfinder rules. They don't view them as racist in any way, and that's okay. The game was originally balanced around those rules, and there's nothing at all wrong with sticking with them. Hell, Matthew Colville, a DM who I greatly respect as an intelligent voice of reason,

treats his races differently in his world, and not for any kind of racist reason. In his world, for example, elves are more akin to aliens in the world than they are humanoids, and they're more than just bonuses and penalties on the page. Elves think differently, act differently, are very different than humans. In one of his episodes, he talks about refusing a player's ancestry choice for his character because the player admitted he chose the ancestry based primarily on the bonuses it gave his character. So Matthew Colville said no. Once more for people in the back, there's nothing wrong with playing Ancestry Rules as is. It's not like having a minus two to intelligence prevents the existence of Orc Wizards, the class that needs a high intelligence to succeed.

If you've listened to other episodes of mine, you know how much I love playing against type. And in my games, I'm not keen on the need for perfect character optimization. Gnome Barbarian or Contemplative Scout in Starfinder can be a ton of fun, even if they're not statistically optimized. I have heard some decry these changes as quote unquote woke, and that they over homogenize the game world, sweeping away the differences in ancestries that makes the game world feel more diverse. But I think the opposite is true. By uncoupling the bonuses given to ancestry chosen, it can make your world much more diverse. Instead

of brutish warlike orcs, maybe there are groups that encourage honing the mind more than the body. Maybe there are halflings who encourage maximizing their physical strength, even if it means they aren't as dexterous as other halfling. Under the previous rules, they would be at a severe disadvantage compared to the other ancestries. If you want to keep aspects of the traditional rules, do so, but drop words like every or all. Not every group of lizardfolk are warlike, but this group is. Not every group of gnomes like to build little clockwork creatures for fun, but this village does. Not every group of drow or drider-kissing, loath-worshipping monsters, but members of this clutch are.

Even if you just replace the word all with most, that gives you flexibility to adopt these rules. Most orcs believe that physical might makes right, but this one is more focused on trade, negotiations, and diplomacy. If you haven't been able to tell by now, I love the changes brought about to races in 2nd Edition and by Tasha's. They give a tremendous amount of flexibility to the types of characters you can play, and I'm all about that. Could you do away with bonuses and penalties to races altogether instead of making them flexible?

Absolutely. But game balance will suffer if you just wipe the slate clean. Humans get ability score bonuses because they don't have dark vision. Allowing races to exchange those bonuses and penalties for others keeps the game balance close. Could these rules changes be exploited by min-maxers? Yeah, also absolutely. But you can balance that as a DM with the amount and types of items that you grant, allowing your campaign to succeed without limiting players to specific ancestry and class combinations. In conclusion, the base rules of Pathfinder 2e and the alternate character creation rules in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything open the floodgates

to the types of characters players will bring to your table. It makes Ancestry choice almost inconsequential and merely an accident of the character's birth. Is it fair for a DM to say, Making Ancestry's cosmetic makes my world feel worse. I don't want to lose the differences between the races in my world. I like my orcs to be raised as fierce tribal warriors. I like all of my tieflings to be beautiful and charming. I want Tabaxi to always be more dexterous than

the average human. If that's the way you want to run your campaign world, then communicate that with your players and please continue to do so. You aren't wrong for playing the game that way. You're not backward because you want the different ancestries to have numerical differences. It's not antiquated to play the original rules as written. But by the same token, there's wisdom in not punishing players who want to play the character of their own design. Dwarven rogues, aasimar druids, or gnome monks. If you're at all curious, give these alternate ancestry and racial rules a shot. You and your players may have fun doing it. Shorter episode this week, so hopefully that gives you guys

five more minutes to do whatever it is you want to do. Next week, we'll be continuing the Monster Series, talking about kobolds, those little dragonettes. Before I go, once again, I want to thank this week's sponsor,

Your Nose. If your nose is depressed, maybe you should stop picking on it. All right, that joke's not my best work. This has been episode 98, all about ancestries. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking 20 Podcast is a Publishing Cube Media Production. Copyright 2021.

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