ALL RACES HAVE THE SAME ATTRIBUTES

[friendly player 1]

WTF? WHY DID THEY CHANGE THIS.

Edit:
Some in the discussion are obvious trolls lol, but it's BASED ON DND TO MAKE BUILDS THAT DIFFERENT RACES HAVE DIFFERENT STRENGHTS. NOOB ♥♥♥♥ DEVS
But I will leave positive review

Edit2: I also wanna ask you all, you think its nice that a gnome have the same strength as a half-orc?

Edit3: People disagreeing for no reason radicalise me, stop doing it.

Edit4: finally a normal person came along with a couple of others who have DnD experience and answered calmly and gave a nuanced picture. Thank you

Edit5: in the selected answer I give larian studios the benefit of the doubt, but a lot of criticism in this thread also talks about why it is ok to be suspicious to this change as it is not rational to all players.

[atm]

Originally posted by EternalFun:

Originally posted by California is a 3rd World Hell!:

Yes

Because saying that another race is somehow different, is racism in 2023.
Feelings > Science.
Believe the lie, or you will be punished.

I think DnD doesn't want to be complicit in spreading the notion that your capacities and traits are hard-coded by your race, because that's one thing in fantasy and another thing in real life. Even if you want to say 'in the DnD world, all orcs are always stronger than all elves', whether or not you are intending to, you're kind of providing a 'safe space' for people who would like to view the human world in the same terms.

Then there's the fact that if I want to make a spellcaster, it's kind of crappy to penalise me for being say a half-elf vs being a full elf. Who's to say my half-elf isn't just brimming with magic and intelligence, as much as the most magicky elf that was ever born? Larian says I get to decide, and why the heck not. If you want to make all your casters elves and all your barbarians orcs, I'd say you were a bit boring, but don't let me stop you. I don't like the way others are telling me I shouldn't even be allowed to make my elf strong or my orc smart.

[Vex Werewolf]

Explain to me why it matters.

Protip: you can't

[atm]

I would also put out there, that strength isn't just necessarily a pure hard-coded physical attribute of your character.
Maybe your elf is 'strong' because he knows how to leverege his weight in ways that are effective. Maybe he can beat an orc in an arm-wrestle because he's not only got some decent muscles, but he has good technique for applying that strength.
Strength is just a stand-in for physical power, and could easily be taken as 'I know how to make use of my physical power' as it is to mean 'I have big muscles'.
It's not that dumb to think that a smaller or slimmer character could have good physical power because of the interaction of their skill and physical attributes.

[GrandMajora]

Originally posted by atm:

Originally posted by EternalFun:

Because saying that another race is somehow different, is racism in 2023.
Feelings > Science.
Believe the lie, or you will be punished.

I think DnD doesn't want to be complicit in spreading the notion that your capacities and traits are hard-coded by your race, because that's one thing in fantasy and another thing in real life.

The problem is that only an abject moron is claiming that the fantasy races exist in real life, though.

Gnomes are not pointy eared humans afflicted with dwarfism. They are magical creatures that hail from a different plane of existence (Feywild), and have no common ancestor to humans which they might claim to descend from.

Saying that they have inherent, biological differences from humans is not racist, it is a perfectly logical assessment!

--------------

The same also holds true for all the other races in the game, who have an established creator god that brought them into the existence. Elves were formed out of the blood of Corellon Larethian. Orcs were formed out of the blood of Gruumsh.

Moradin carved his Dwarves from stone, while Garl Glittergold fashioned his Gnomes from precious gems.

The luck of the Halflings is supernatural in nature, because their entire race is blessed by Yondalla herself.

[Asuet]

This discussion is just silly. If you want to keep the racial modifiers as they were before Tashas then just assign the modifiers as they were back then in your game. It's not taking anything away from your charactercreation. But people who like the way Tashas changed things can also enjoy it.

[Stygian Ikazuchi]

Originally posted by Methos:

I dont mind it's +2 +1 but i WOULD like to have an option to play Human with +1 in all stats like DND 5e and EA.

you may be interested in this: https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/578

[Lord_Reavous]

Remember in D&D tabletop when you rolled for stats, LOL. I mean it's come a long way in the name of having a fun experience without "hassle."

My favorite character was a Forest Gnome Ranger in 3.5e. Using the size advantage to offset my low STR and favor on my small stature for AC bonuses stacked on DEX.

Sometimes you need to play to your strengths and think outside the box. Yeah in IWD I made the generic Half-Orc Barbarian for my mainline melee, but you only ever need a single power-optimized character in most games. Here, even in Balanced I don't think you need such characters at all.

It's supposed to be a roleplay game. So if your character is low INT they shouldn't be smart and get themselves into trouble. And that can actually create a lot of fun in tabletop. Especially with the right DM. On PC you lose a lot of that emergent storytelling.

I do miss the bonuses and maluses from tabletop, but I can understand why Larian went this route--maybe they should've had a separate mode like Tactician that used those rules. I'm guessing that'd mess with a lot of code and encounters though.

[Vindred]

...I can understand why Larian went this route...

Are you sure you understand?[www.polygon.com]

Like, positive?

Because people will wade into the discussion with their theories and they don't seem to know what's going on...[www.denofgeek.com]

[Vindred]

What if we found out they flattened the attribute scores in service to numerology?

What if they did multiple interviews and they kept telling the news outlets,
"We started paying really careful attention to the exact sequence in which these attribute scores occur, and if you have particular combinations of certain races in your party, these particular sequences are going to start putting out some super bad mojo. Like, there are old character sheets out there that are stranded in Bad Vibes City, New Jersey, man. We're going to have to eliminate all the ability differences to get that positive energy flowing. You're welcome."

Would you expect the changes predicated upon that reasoning to be smart? Well lucky for us, they didn't do it because of that. However, unlucky for us, the actual reason they did it is because half-orcs having +2 strength is racist against black people. Well hey, I'm not the one who said it-- wizards of the coast said it, to polygon and kotaku and everyone else who would print it, so it's not like I'm quoting some some arcane source nobody knows about or taking someone out of context.

The fact that nobody wants to contend with it is expected, since what the hell is there to say? It's ridiculous on its face. I mean, if half-orcs are black people then just what the hell is Wyll? A white man?

Maybe they stumbled into a change that's good for D&D by aiming at that, and fine, that bears discussing. But it annoys me when people predicate the discussion on the assumption that this was in any way done for the game. No, it wasn't done for the game. It was done to fite wacism, and that's in print.

[Caridor]

Originally posted by Draken:

Originally posted by Caridor:

Ok, you're just being silly now. How in the hell can you argue with a straight face that having a musclular barbarian being restricted to only races with the right strength and con bonuses is more creative, that having the freedom of the many races to pick from?

Go on, this should be good. It's a DC 30 mental acrobatics check, by the way.

Um, a Barbarian was never restricted to the races with the right strength and con bonuses.

If you want to make the best Barbarian? Yes.
But if you want to make a creative and unique Barbarian? No one ever prevented you from making a Halfling Barbarian in 3.5.
Yeah sure, it wouldn't be able to put as much attribute points in strength as a Half Orc one, but I am pretty sure you would be able to make a viable build.

And it's not as if the removal of the racial stat bonus really changes that. You still have the racial traits that make some races better at certain jobs than others.

You would have to make all races completely cosmetic only. And at that point, why have any set races at all?

Ooh and with your dice roll of 19 + your charisma mod of -5 and the circumstance bonus of deliberately refusing to engage with the question in good faith of -5000, that's a fail on the DC.

You argument requires people are punished because they want to run a charactar of a specific flavour which no DM worth their salt has ever thought was a good idea because it universally lessens player enjoyment.

[atm]

I'm kind of perplexed by the people claiming the 'woke' crowd see orcs as 'black people and are therefore racist'. Here's how I see it.

What us 'woke' folks do know is that actual racists (which are sadly all too common these days) see race as defining or limiting your potential and capabilities. (And before I get flamed for this: TOO MANY Americans think that the reason black people don't get hired is because they are just worse than white people at a given job, and scream 'diversity hire!' whenever they see a black person get a job or role. Implicit in this is that black people are just naturally worse at stuff than white people, and that them not getting hired is in fact natural. And you can't say they recognise that there are socio-cultural issues at play either, because if they did they would be trying to help mitigate them, which they are not. So yeah, we're talking pure 'your race is just worse, accept it' racism here.)

A game system in which that world view is laid out in exquisite mathematical detail is therefore kind of problematic - not because we don't think people can't tell the difference between fantasy races and human races (although there are plenty of games that do have human subraces with different stats), but because the idea that human-like characters are limited by their inborn racial characteristics plays into what real-world racists believe about humans. I do not fault a game system from deciding to distance itself from that.

But even from a roleplaying point of view, there is no reason why any race shoudln't be able to have almost any stats. You could play an extreme outlier. You could play someone of one race who was raised in a society of another. It's not like being the one intelligent orc or ripped halfling is really going to break the world.

[Draken]

Originally posted by Caridor:

Ooh and with your dice roll of 19 + your charisma mod of -5 and the circumstance bonus of deliberately refusing to engage with the question in good faith of -5000, that's a fail on the DC.

You argument requires people are punished because they want to run a charactar of a specific flavour which no DM worth their salt has ever thought was a good idea because it universally lessens player enjoyment.

I am sorry, but I do not get your argument here.
You asked people to explain why restricting a Barbarian to only str and con races was more creative than to give people the freedom to freely choose the race was more creative.
Yes, I did not directly answer that question, because I didn't think that the premise you set up was correct.
Barbarians are not restricted to only str and con based races. You can choose other races, you will just not have a barbarian optimized for con and str.
This is not a punishment, but a result of your choices during character building.
Just like you can absolutely try to make a melee wizard. But it will not be as effective in a straight up fight as a melee fighter. You can't cast spells in armor you aren't proficient in or get a second attack at level 5. That is not a restriction that the DM puts on you, but a result of your own creative decisions.
Let's say you remove all stat and trait differences from races to allow every race to have the same performance as a Barbarian. Now what exactly does the choice of a race do? Nothing. Instead of having different race/class combinations that can lead to different type of Barbarian builds, you only have one default Barbarian build left. Yes, technically you have more "valid" Barbarian/race combinations, but they are not real choices with consequences, as they are mechanically exactly the same.

[Draken]

Originally posted by atm:

A game system in which that world view is laid out in exquisite mathematical detail is therefore kind of problematic - not because we don't think people can't tell the difference between fantasy races and human races (although there are plenty of games that do have human subraces with different stats), but because the idea that human-like characters are limited by their inborn racial characteristics plays into what real-world racists believe about humans. I do not fault a game system from deciding to distance itself from that.

But even from a roleplaying point of view, there is no reason why any race shoudln't be able to have almost any stats. You could play an extreme outlier. You could play someone of one race who was raised in a society of another. It's not like being the one intelligent orc or ripped halfling is really going to break the world.

The game needs to abstract the world. Numerical attributes are a good tool for that.

As to the stats themself, they simulate that the average member of one race has certain advantages/disadvantages thanks to their body plan compared to members of other races. The average Orc is stronger than the average Elf. If both Elf and Orc do the same training, the Orc will get a better result than an Elf. The situations is reversed with dexterous activities like juggling.

You are playing as an adventurer and having 17 in an attribute at level 1 is already an extreme outliner. It's just that the extreme outliner in strength of an Orc is stronger than the extreme outliner in strength for an Elf.

There are very smart Orcs and very strong Halflings, but they are still a bit behind the extreme outliners of races that don't get a malus in those stats.

It's a game system that lets you give your races meaningful distinctions that are easy to grasp.

[GamingWithSilvertail]

Racials promote meta's. For coop, I dont think this should ever be a thing.

[Draken]

Originally posted by GamingWithSilvertail:

Racials promote meta's. For coop, I dont think this should ever be a thing.

Even without stat differences, there is still going to be a meta as long as racial traits exist.

And even if you would remove those, you would still have players that prefer the most powerful classes as meta.

To remove meta, you would have to remove all choice from a game.