I ran an introductory game recently for some friends, using
A Most Potent Brew, which I think is the best 1st level introductory adventure out there for 5th Ed.
https://winghornpress.com/adventures/a-most-potent-brew/But what I wanted to talk about was character creation. I created some pre-gens using the new rules in
Tasha's Cauldron of Everything that are supposed to prelude the rules changes in 6th Ed.
"Customizing your Origin" gave me the most pause for thought.
https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MHKE_UkxTHnGshAUhSZBasically, you choose how to allocate your race's ability score increases.
So a mountain dwarf would usually get +2 Con, +2 Str but you can now choose +2 Dex, +2 Int and play a wizard, for example.
A lot of commentators have said this prevents power-gaming but you can probably see from my example above it doesn't. Mountain dwarf gets +2, +2 ability score increases (half-elf gets +2, +1, +1). That's better than any other race's +2, +1.
It also means if you want to play a fighter, say, and want a stout halfling's brilliant racial traits, you now can and have a +2 Str, +1 Con too.
Does this make the rule change bad?? I was definitely against it initially and said so here on DreamLyrics, but I think I'm converted. Mountain dwarves and half-elves are an anomaly, yes, but easily fixed in the future. What changed my mind was not having to worry about ability score increases at all, full stop. Want to play a half-orc? Go ahead and pick a class, it will work with half-orc just fine. It's liberating.
It also buffs every race to be a little more comparable to variant human, which is good for variety.
Importantly, this rule applies to player characters only. Half-orcs are still generally stronger than halflings, for example. It's player characters that are exceptional.
The rule change also allows you to swap out racial weapon and skill proficiencies but I didn't get much mileage out of this. You could swap your half-orc wizard's Intimidation skill to Arcana, for example, but characters generally get four skills and four is generally enough to encapsulate your concept. It's minor but means if you don't want your half-orc to be menacing they don't have to be.
Finally, if you've used the rules to create a high elf fighter, elf weapon training won't be completely wasted because you can change the proficiencies to tools instead.
Next up I worked with "Optional Class Features".
https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MMBqdmAen3dxArbklgiThese are new class features for each class that you can swap out with those in the PHB.
It's a mixed bag here, plenty of the new class features are underwhelming. But ranger is where it got most interesting for me.
Many players currently use the official "Revised Ranger", an alternative released as Unearthed Arcana by Wizards.
https://media.wizards.com/2016/dnd/downloads/UA_RevisedRanger.pdfRevised Ranger is still a good option but it only works properly with the subclasses in the UA document and doesn't work well with multiclassing either.
The new ranger class features in
Tasha's fix that very elegantly, whilst also dramatically improving the ranger class. I would now heartily recommend using
Tasha's ranger instead of the Revised Ranger. It's simpler and interacts with the rest of D&D better.
Note there aren't any new class features that improve monk very much but
Tasha's does contain an optional rule allowing you to change subclass. So if you're stuck as a four elements monk you could ask to change to ascendant dragon, for example, and not suck so badly whilst retaining most of your flavour.
I hope you found that little commentary interesting. Any of you guys have an opinion on the above?
![[Linked Image from i.ibb.co]](https://i.ibb.co/3hN6B7v/fishing.png)
![[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]](https://i.imgur.com/12vH33S.gif)
