New Character Origins: OneD&D, 5.5 New DnD, D&D.2024

now when it comes to language we often use the same word to refer to different things for example we use the word race when we're talking about the human race a group of humans a species on the planet and we also use the word race to distinguish different ethnicities and heritages among that human race and I don't think I need to explain all the history in fact some terrible history associated with the concept of race so Dungeons and Dragons now uses the word speak species instead of race when building your character and I think overall this is a good decision however somehow that still manages to upset some people another thing that surprised me is how many people were bothered by the fact that ability scores have been moved from species to background in the new Dungeons and Dragons your background will determine your starting ability bonuses and I'm going to address that by the end of this video and it's a pretty short video so hang with me in the mean time let's go and take a look at what the design team has to say about the new Origins chapter from the player's handbook so when you're making your character now you will first choose your class the most important choice you make for your character and then you will flesh out your character's origin and so it's when you start pondering those questions that you turn toward the character Origins chapter and you will essentially be going back in time in your character's backstory so again you start with your class then you'll Ponder well what was my character's background and then you keep going back in time in your character's origin to your birth and that's when you then Ponder your character's species and your species choice and your background Choice together combine to give you a number of critical game capabilities that will really help flesh out your character so the new version of D and D uses the term origin to refer to both your species and your background and backgrounds like they used to provide proficiency bonuses and starting equipment but now they also provide ability score bonuses and a new feat the Feats have been divided up into origin Feats Feats and epic Feats so origin Feats are a group of Feats that you can take at first level so you don't get access to all the Feats at first level for two reasons one is game balance because we know some Feats are probably going to be a little more powerful than others so those are reserved for once you're higher level the other thing is ease of use for new players you don't want to give new players an overwhelming Choice with so many Feats to choose from because this Edition is going to have 75 different Feats that's more than both the player's handbook and xanathar's put together if I remember incorrectly those two things in particular the ability score adjustments that backgrounds bring as well as the feet mean your background will have an effect on your character for your entire career and that was something that was not necess necessarily the case in 2014 backgrounds except for perhaps the proficiencies you got right you would still enjoy those throughout your career but now there are more parts of your character that are forever affected by your character's background we did this because we want backgrounds to interlock with as many appropriate classes as possible previously when we previewed this approach to backgrounds of them providing ability score adjustments one of the downsides of the the play test version is it kind of hard locked the backgrounds to specific classes yeah and we did not want to proceed with that because in some ways that was recreating the exact problem that we were getting away from from 2014 species because in 2014 these ability score adjustments existed inside the playable species and one of the reasons we moved it out of there is we didn't like how that drove certain species to be combined with certain classes we wanted people to feel more free to mix and match so backgrounds now give you three different ability scores that you can improve so you have the choice of putting a plus two in one ability score and a plus one in another or a plus one in all three of the options provided by your background so for example the acolyte provides bonuses to intelligence wisdom and Charisma while the guide provides bonuses to dexterity Constitution and wisdom this way if you were building a druid for example and you took the guide background you could put a plus two two in your wisdom and a plus one in your Constitution or if you were making a ranger you could put a plus one in all three or if you were making a rogue you could put the plus two in dexterity and the plus one in Constitution it's up to you to decide how to distribute those three points which I think overall is not bad game design me personally I would just do away with ability score bonuses all together don't attach them to species don't attach them to backgrounds and just increase the overall all stat array or Point by options at the beginning so you just customize your ability scores how you want and then there's the whole other half of your origin your species right and we've we've got a lot of new things in species we've we've got and we've got new additions so the orc has joined goliaths have joined and the Alamar the Alamar goliaths are very Goliath because now they're tied to Giants not surprisingly if if you have the background background being a cloud Giant in your heritage then you can kind of you know Misty step away teleport away because you're more of a trickster but it's all based off like Hill giant storm Stone all of it has different uh abilities that you can choose from and that is a part of the theme that we had with the species which was to really lean into the fantasy of each one so this is the pain point I was referring to at the beginning a number of people don't like the idea of removing ability scores away from from species because they say it makes the species less unique and I would agree with you if we were talking about an osr version of the game but we're talking about fifth edition fifth edition assigns so many abilities to species and the new version of the game is going to increase that even more you just heard Todd Kendrick RVE about the Goliath and azamar is also added to the core species the azamar now gets to choose their Celestial ability every time they use it instead of locking in that choice at character creation the Orcs adrenaline ability now refreshes on both a short rest and a long rest and Orcs get greater dark vision as well as dwarves get greater dark vision and dwarves get a limited use Tremor sense dragon born's breath weapon now counts as an attack and not an action so once you get multi-attack you can use your breath weapon as one of your attacks instead of your entire action also dragon born get wings at higher levels and remember remember the Goliath we talked about earlier once they get to higher levels they can increase their size like a giant even halflings and humans have gotten upgrades they haven't told us what the halflings upgrade is yet but humans get to choose an extra origin feat I say that to share all the cool things that we know so far about the new game but I also share it to make the point that I don't think Forgotten Realms has water down the species that much for me removing ability scores from species doesn't really change change the fantasy of these different species Dragon borns still breathe fire teelings still have magic there are differences between the species based on all their abilities and the new version of DnD is dialing that up a few notches now I might agree with you if you argue that forgotten realm setting has these homogeneous city states where multiple species all live together in these big Urban environments and I could see how that would kind of water down the distinctions between the species but that's a setting issue that's not a game mechanic issue I feel like the game mechanics are strong enough and they do represent the different qualities of these different species without needing ability scores attached to them we have a rule in the character creation chapter on how to use backgrounds or species from other books that don't appear in this book uh so any any species or background that appears in this book that also appeared in an earlier book The version in the new players handbook is now the canonical version but if there's say a species or background in an older book that is not in the new players handbook and you would still like to use it you can and again the character creation chapter provides guidance on how you can do that so what Jeremy Crawford means there is that this the species in the new players handbook are the go-to version of that species that's what you should be using moving forward if you're playing the 2024 Edition however you can incorporate other species that aren't represented in the new players handbook you can take those old species and rework them by this new rule that he was just talking about the other thing is in the dungeon Masters Guide there's going to be a customized background option to teach dungeon Masters how to make their own backgrounds so if there are any backgrounds that are not included in the new version of The Players handbook you can create those as well overall I think they're doing a good job with a new version of d and d and I'm excited to see more as we get more videos over the course of the next few days thanks again for visiting the dire den and I'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: Dire Den

Views: 2,187

Keywords: Dungeons and Dragons, Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, DND, 5e, DND 5e, D&D 5e, Playtest, New, OneD&D, OneDnD, DnD2024, 5.5, Character Origins, Ability Scores, Species, Race, Backgrounds

Id: HHR0sbPV6uU

Length: 9min 39sec (579 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 19 2024