(Incidentally, I like to refer to the "So and so's" books simply by their "authors," which makes me feel like I'm some academic in a D&D world talking about some very obvious and important text where all you'd need to know is the author's name to identify it, e.g. "Volo's.")
In Tasha's we're going to be getting new rules for customizing Racial traits. I'm fairly sure that this is going to leave things like a Dragonborn's breath weapon in place, given that this is a defining physiological feature of their species. But the obvious thing to change is how ability scores are affected by racial choice.
I think the initial motivation for this change is one born of a greater awareness of how subtly our culture reinforces racist notions. While originally created to be disposable bad guys by Tolkien (as a Catholic, he struggled with the idea of a people who were inherently evil, which is why he made his Orcs corrupted Elves... which kind of sort of solved that issue, but also sort of opened some new cans of worms) over time, across the fantasy genre, Orcs have become a much more complex and broad group of people. And while they often do play an antagonistic role in fantasy stories, more and more storytellers are looking to explore them as having the nuances and complexities of a real group of people.
In Volo's Guide to Monsters, there were a few "monstrous races" in addition to options like Aasimar and Kenku, which included Orcs. Half-Orcs had existed in the PHB, but full Orcs were oddly mechanically different from them, built more on the conventions of how Orcs work in the Monster Manual.
And unlike other playable races, Orcs had a -2 to Intelligence.
Now...
The notion that any particular ethnic group is inherently less intelligent has been used throughout the ages as an excuse to put such people on a lower rung of society. (And the socioeconomic hardship from being on that lower rung tends to make things like getting a good education a lot harder, reinforcing the stereotype.) Races in fantasy are certainly more distinct from one another than ethnicities in the real world, but the idea of a group of humanoid people who are all dumb, violent brutes certainly rings a few unsettling bells given the way that real-world ethnic stereotypes portray certain groups of people.
Having the game mechanics double-down and actually reinforce that notion is even more problematic.
So it was quite welcome when the Orcs in the Eberron book were not penalized in terms of Intelligence, and their story portrays them in a far more nuanced and humane light.
Still, even "positive" racial stereotypes - like saying a particular ethnicity is smarter than most - plays into this same issue. The fact that Gnomes are just plane smarter than anyone else in the PHB carries with it some problematic associations as well.
But believe it or not, I'm not actually making this as my main argument against the way races currently work. While I think reexamining our culture's treatment of race is important - acknowledging both its artificiality as well as the damage it has done to our society despite this fact - I actually think this makes the most sense from a gameplay perspective.
In D&D, you generally want whatever your main ability score modifier is to start at +3. Sure, you can get along with a +2, but to actually max it out before you're in the high levels, you'll want to start at at least +3. And to do that, unless you're rolling your stats and get relatively lucky, you're going to need to pick a race that can boost that ability score by at least a bit. Taking the standard array or using Point Buy means you can, at max, have a score of 15 for that best stat. To get it to +3, you need at least one more.
As such, picking a race that doesn't boost that stat essentially signs you up to somewhat handicap your character.
Now, I know that a lot of players feel like this isn't such a big deal - you can play an underpowered character and still have fun. And I don't disagree with that.
But I also know that a lot of players would prefer to be able to choose a race that speaks to them while still making a "good" decision in terms of gameplay mechanics.
My hope is that we could see a rather simple system: you get 3 points to assign to any ability scores instead of the usual racial bonuses. You can put two of them into one score and 1 into another, or put 1 into each of three scores. That would be in line with the vast majority of existing racial ability score bonuses.
The massive benefit here is that there wouldn't be any "bad" choices for race - and you could instead build your character the way you see fit. I love the idea of an Orc who's a thoughtful, somewhat scrawny wizard, or a charming, deft Dwarven rogue. If I ever follow through on replacing my Eldritch Knight Dragonborn with a Wizard, I could use such rules to reroll the same individual (DM permitting, of course.)
Having really gotten my start in race/class styles of RPGs with WoW, I can tell you that it's really great to be able to pick combinations based on your own character concepts.
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