Are you sure it's just a month needed to grieve over your namesake being discarded off the side of the road? In all seriousness, take as much time as you need/want, your videos are great!
I don't really agree with completely scrubbing all the negative traits from all the ancestries. I get where they're coming from, though, there's fun to be had breaking from the expected norms and making a halfling barbarian or an orc wizard. I don't even really care about axing negative stat penalties, a simple +1, -1 change doesn't make a character more interesting to play... the problem is that sunlight sensitivity *does* make a character more interesting to play as you have to find creative ways to get around their weaknesses. If more of these features were like that, a challenge to be overcome, they could really create a huge difference from character to character... and learning to exist despite your disadvantages is a strong character arc.
I'm still sore about negative stat penalties to races even if they don't feel all that different. They give the races additional flavor beyond being essentially funny-looking humans. EDIT: also, i'd argue the fun in breaking expected norms is partially because there used to be reasons they *were* the norm, and breaking them served to spice things up. In modern D&D, where starting ability score increases can be swapped however the player wants, an orc wizard is no more special than a human fighter.
@@Vooman I'd argue that "no bonus" is the new penalty. Every ancestry has a sort of "baseline" competence, but some excel at specific things. A halfling Dex fighter will always be better than a halfling Strength fighter assuming equal stat rolls, but you aren't penalized for going halfling strength fighter... you can still assign an 18 to strength as a halfling. I personally don't think a universal +1 or -1 to a specific kind of roll really makes any given ancestry feel more unique. You can match that as a +2/+1 human as it stands. What makes each ancestry truly unique are the unique advantages and disadvantages that go beyond stats. Halfling's ability to slip through an enemy's space will always be more interesting than +2 dex.
@@kevingriffith6011 of course, but a -1 to CHR for dwarves tells you in 6 characters what a lore dump would take two paragraphs to explain. I don't at all think unique racial features should be removed, I don't think anyone here would argue that.
@@Vooman This exactly. Actually what I find really annoying about some of the new races is that Their super powerful, and have no downsides. Plasmoids for example. It’s be interesting if they suffered from an increased armor cost cause they can’t keep a human form. And have to have custom made water proof armor and clothing to allow them to take one. It’d also make players more hesitant to ditch their gear by squeezing through jail cells and the like.
I think they need to go the other way, every race has a selection of negative flaws and players can pick one or more. Then give DMs the strong suggestion that there could be ways to negate or modify a flaw within the campaign setting. Which is just a way of saying I want a Kobold who wears sunglasses at night.
A kobold with a familiar can perceive through its senses. Keep your little bat buddy in your pocket all the time and use its 60' blindsight. Now, if your DM lets you add the new Inkling Mascot from Strixhaven to your list of familiars available through Find Familiar (as my DM has)... THEN you have a pitch black ooze which can change its shape into sunglasses or a blindfold and grants 60' blindsight❗ In our upcoming campaign, I'm playing a UA hadozee (glider monkey) wizard who wears sunglasses and rides on a dog for a mount. Those sunglasses are his inkling.
Same, having flaws isn't a bad thing. Just so long as there are enough in given bonuses to make up for it. I'd even take a stat decrease, just give me something.
@BlackMage I don't see your point... If humans were so appealing because they didn't have score penalties, then no one will pick races WITH score penalties. That's not what we want. People should play the race that they want without feeling bad about it. (even if it doesn't make the race much worse, people still might not pick the race because of it :/)
Similarly how you love Kobolds, I am highly disheartened they got rid of what made Kenku so unique, their curse. I can't claim I'm a minmaxer, but I love using gimped builds in a way that makes them fantastic, and I will always love my plagirizism Forge Cleric Kenku. Literally making weapons off different cultures he's seen and mimicking them (No creativity portion of the curse). That, and it makes my near 8 page document of phrases I've heard throughout the campaign, null.
Especially since Kenku's have no racial stereotypes associated with them. Like, I understand trying to destigmatize the racist stuff attached to Orcs, Goblins, and Kobolds, but Kenku are pure fantasy with no real life parallels involved in their origin. The curse is what makes Kenkus Kenkus!
@@sjhsoccer Indeed. I love seeing so many people's different versions of the curse. Some people attribute it to the Raven Queen, some Yan-C-Bin. It's such a cool lore point. It just feels sad they are removing it. Doubt they will replace it with anything cool. Like, what would you even do with kenku at that point rather than genericsize them as simple thieves. My DM had a whole subplot of them starting a civil revolution against the Raven Queen in hopes of freeing their curse. Was a lot of fun.
@@sjhsoccer goblins and kobolds have no stigma attached to them and orc parallels are flimsy at best. If someone sees a dumb brutish orc and sees a black person that's on them. Hell, the closest influence tolkien had was the Mongols. He designed them after nazi officers mainly, but also officers on both sides of the war. They were made as a reflection of the horrors of war, not to represent any real life cultural group.
@@TheRavenofSin The Orcish parallels to Mongols were very intentional. They were intentional when Tolkien wrote them in and the negative stereotypes of savages were eventuated with the way they were described in D&D. Goblins and Kobolds were both designed with a heavy emphasis on physical and behavioral characteristics associated with Jewish stereotype, more so for goblins. The creators may not have intentionally done this, but it's clear the pop culture traits they ascribed to them were based in anti-Semitic imagery and many Jews have difficulty not clearly seeing that in the way they're still portrayed today. And I mean, yeah, a minus to specifically charisma makes that pretty clear.
In my worldbuilding, I had made a Noble Kobold variant and kept the original as a Feral variant. Both were created by the Dragons in the ancient past; kobolds were craftsmen and workers, with Dragonborn as the warrior/priest caste. After the fall of the Dragon empire, some went underground and became the Feral, others stayed close to the few pockets of imperial power and were more civilized, never developing sunlight sensitivity. I feel like something along those lines would be a really easy way to allow both to coexist.
Considering in the same book they are removing the Kenku copy speech limit as well as making Lizard folk smarter and less savage survivalists focused it is clear that any racial feature that negatively effects play is set for the chopping block. In fact at this rate I am surprised that Centaur's still have their climbing impairment as they are just about the only race to still have a draw back.
I dunno, man; if a player at any of my tables was actively trying to roleplay a Kenku's speech patterns, 9/10 times I'd politely ask them to stop and just convey to us out of character in English what they're trying to get across. Difficulty in communication isn't something that I think is fun or interesting to engage with.
It really sucks. I played a lizardfolk fighter *explicitly* because I liked the flavor of being a survivalist who makes all his own weapons/ammo. Now that's going to be gone. Why? Reasons, I guess. Now if you want to do the same you'd have to multiclass or take a feat/background giving you access to a tool kit and pray to Pelor that your DM will let you craft your own equipment... but it will never be the same.
@@ilovethelegend Yeah. Therein lies the problem. WOTC is focused on making the game fun for the widest audience and they do that through *positive* design. If people want to penalize their players' choices, they are more than welcome to at their table. Rule Zero applies. They just won't be formally or officially endorsed by WOTC to do it.
@@Schmeethe88 How dare you not enjoy the blandification of all races in dnd! Clearly the new stuff is better, because subtraction is too hard for new players to figure out! /s
By Punpun, gator just standing there in awe for that whole bit and him just being surprised by Wizards at the beginning. Dang even gator realizes this be bullshit. Amazing video as always!
My problem with this Kobold and the Volo's one is that neither has anything to do with traps. How hard would it be to give a "Trap expert: You have advantage on all checks to find, set, or disarm traps." Kobolds' whole thing is traps. In the new version it's because they want to cut all cultural identity, which is lame. Culture is what makes Dwarves interesting rather than just short stocky humans with strong livers. The Volo's monster races were explicitly made to capture the monster manual feel first, be functional second. See: Yuan-Ti. (Goblinoids seem to be the exception being built as actual functional races) It was less "Here's a normal playable race" and more "Here's a race template for DMs to put on NPCs, and maybe let players be with permission."
@@agilemind6241 I'm gonna have to say PF2 handled it right. (And not just because they ditched the loaded term "Race") because it handles that aspect quite well.
@@gabrielrussell5531 Or you could just make an interesting character with unique roleplaying characteristics... Almost all of my favorite characters that I have seen in my games don't follow the guideline set by the races... that's what makes characters fun to create
I would love a kobold racial ability where you could create simple traps. Make it equivalent to cantrips in strength and it would be really fun and flavored!
It made me so sad to see they didn't seem to consider community feedback relative to their kobold changes. I've been unhappy with a lot of their new race mechanics - they seem to be emphasizing additional spellcasting features because people like to cast spells, and leaving other races in the dust.
The spells give them a concise and reusable way of documenting a magical effect. You can add your own flavor of how the race is innately able to produce it. Aarocokra flaps its wings to cast Gust of Wind, Yuan-ti spits for Poison Spray. They do take care to specify that you don’t need the material component of a legume seed to cast Gust of Wind for example so it is more unique than casting the spell.
I love the way you handled this video. You explained your point of view without being mellow dramatic or aggressive. I wish more people could approach situations like this.
I can see why they'd want to remove Pack Tactics as a player option. 5E is a fairly simple simple at it's core, having stepped away from circumstance bonuses and the like. Advantage is how players interact with the math (outside of bless-esque effects) behind the system. Making strong tactical plays, setting up combinations, creating advantageous circumstances, these are all fueled by the desire to get that extra d20 into your hand. And Pack Tactics doesn't really fit into that paradigm. It takes away those meaningful moments of tactical shenanigans for something that many players will do naturally; ganging up on the same person. Nobody's ever said, "Yo, you remember that time Scrumble walked up next to Berffle and attacked WITH ADVANTAGE?!" For how powerful the effect is, the mundaneness of gaining the benefit kind of hurts one of the pillars of mechanical and narrative interaction. While Sunlight Sensitivity is very balancing in a mechanical sense, it also negates any other form of advantage and disadvantage. A Kobold with Pack Tactics in the sun might as well be doing 360 noscope headshots while poisoned and suffering 4 levels of exhaustion because it doesn't matter (which is partially a problem of Adv/Dis not being cumulative, but PT/SS interaction is still something that was designed after the game was already established). Moving to the newer version of Draconic Roar is more narratively interesting in that it's something you actively use rather than a passive bonus, and it creates a moment of team interaction that is effectively a rallying cry, calling one's allies to charge into the fray. So from a game design standpoint, I truly think the new Kobold is better because of the way it interacts with the game as a system, as as a way of facilitating narrative. That said. OG Kobold is fine. We've had it for a long time, and while it facilitates some builds, none of them are crazy amazing OP BS. 5E is amazingly resilient to truly broken builds. I think these two can co-exist, but as they transition toward 6E, I don't expect to see OG Kobold being used in the design space. Something you see a lot with newer race options isn't so much the removal of negatives as a shift toward making your race an *active* part of your character rather than just a set of passive bonuses. Races like my personal favorite: Goblin, have components that are an active part of your experience. "Because I'm a goblin, I can slip under the giant's club and GTFO without taking an attack of opportunity." "As the rogue's blade finds purchase, the Goliath looks down, more annoyed than hurt." "The villain laughs as the ground cracks, an endless chasm forming between him and the party, but they forgot one thing.... BUNNY!" And I think these active abilities are key in making your race feel unique and satisfying moreso than the passive bonuses like Poison Resistance or perception proficiency. I do disagree with removing certain negatives, because I think they can be flavorful, but if they go away entirely in 6E, I think that's still fine.
I agree about Pack Tactics. It's a GREAT ability for monsters because it's fairly easy to manage (unless you're talking really big hordes of foes, then it is a PITA). The DM shouldn't have to run complicated buff chains to make monsters feel threatening. Penalties have to bite a lot harder than benefits in general. Given how easy it is for the kobold to gain advantage in melee, much of the time even in sunlight, the kobold is simply attacking... at parity with everyone else. It also doesn't stack with anything, meaning that buff builds don't really help either.
I didn't like any of the kobold options so I made a homebrew version that removes the grovel ability (either all races should be able to do that or none, because nothing about kobolds logically makes grovelling more effective) and adds some mobility options instead (situational, many of them rely on not carrying much weight, one relies on having your hands free so you can run on all fours). Didn't touch Pack Tactics because I didn't realize quite how strong it really is, and also because I just don't like being at the mercy of the dice as much. Might have to adjust things a little, like make a lesser version of Pack Tactics or something. I dunno, I just really like the idea of kobolds being instinctually good at team work in a fight, because that's actually a believable thing to be genetic in nature, unlike _grovelling._
@@electronsympathy Yeah but I don't like that either because it has similar issues, and also it leans too hard into the dragon heritage for just a regular kobold for my tastes.
I feel that this is an overall negative direction for the game to move. By trying to remove negative associations tied to certain fantasy races, it reinforces the idea that the differences between a dwarf and halfling are parallel to differences between real people of different ethnic backgrounds. It also leads to dwarves and elves and halflings all collapsing into just being vaguely humanoid things rather than having any actual reason to exist narrative-wise. If all these fantasy peoples are basically humans, why not just run a setting with just humans?
THANK YOU, i've been telling people of this problem all over It is specially bad when you consider some racial profficiencies that are obviously biological can now be exchanged (like perception for elves or tabaxi)
Alternatively, they could make those groups more exotic and alien. I do make dwarves literally rocks precisely because I feel normal dwarves are too similar to humans not to be considered human (in roll, not mechanically).
I have your back. I've been saying; since I bought the 5e PHB; that WotC is catering to; and trying to placate; a handful of people who shouldn't be playing D&D, if they're coming from a place where everything is a metaphor for reality, and they want to blame magical math rocks used to improvise a fairy tale about Dwarves and Elves and Gnomes and Halflings and Dragons, for the guy who makes their job a hostile work environment. I've been playing this game on & off since 1980, when all of the races' attributes were set using humans as the baseline. Hardier than a human? +1 to CON. But even your females have beards? -1 to CHA. And even then; and maybe we were outliers as 12 year-old paragons of virtue (unlikely); we didn't read any real world connotations into it. We'd all read Tolkein, and got that the basis of D&D was that everyone was different, had different strengths and weaknesses, and it was our job to pull together, use everyone's strengths, and be the plucky band of little guys who beat the giants and dragons. I get that everyone doesn't get a fair shake in the real world. I really, really do. But WotC doesn't need to take it on themselves to act as though that's party the fault of D&D.
Honestly - and I’m not being sarcastic here - I think the removal of negative traits is kind of a problem when you think of it in terms of differently abled people. The problem is that it’s tied to this idea of race - which is a problem - but sometimes there really are people with different abilities and disabilities. Maybe D&D needs to bite the bullet and go with more of a disad/kit system where you select sets of physical or cultural advantages and disadvantages without always tying them directly to some kind of genetic determinism. Maybe some humans learn pack tactics and hate sunlight. Maybe they’re part kobold, maybe not. I dunno.
I feel like they should've made two subraces for the kobolds, the more draconic lineage, and the underground lineage. The new kobold could be one subrace and old kobold could be the other, so that both are seen by dms as equally balanced and playable.
subraces do not really exist anymore, for things like Sea Elves they are just presented as different Lineages entirely with a small note mentioning that they are still treated as elves / dwarves / etc for the purpose of being targeted by spells and other effects
Really hoping they don't do the replacement. I despise the blanket removal of Sunlight sensitivity. It strips so much flavour from Duergar alone, let alone the other races. The pre-MotM races are always going to be on my table.
I think sunlight sensitivity is just written in a way that's too crippling when it is actually kept track of consistently. As someone who has played drow characters a few times, never being able to get advantage outdoors during the day is horrendous in many types of campaigns.
@@SodaPopBarbecue Care to explain how are dwarves antisemetic? Most dwarf lore is a straight rip off from tolkien lore which is the farthest you can be from antisemetic and tolkien dwarfs are heavily inspired by norse mythology who never interacted with jews. It seems like you are just projecting your views into a fantasy race that was never meant to be interpreted that way.
@@SodaPopBarbecue "If I am to understand… …that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject-which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride." This is what Tolkien said to literal Nazis when they asked if he was Jewish. He was not antisemitic. Nothing about the dwarf connect them to Jewish people other than jews being stereotyped as short and greedy. Clearly if a fictional race shares two traits with the stereotype of one race, then it must be an allegory for that race and definitely not the several myths that the fantasy race was based on. Also, you say this like dwarves are meant to dehumanize Jews, yet most people love Dwarves because of how awesome they are so how does that dehumanize Jews?
@@SodaPopBarbecue Ohh i see so you are just insane. Gygax dwarves are just tolkien dwarves for dummies. Tolkien dwarves are definitely not anti-Semitic, I believe tolkien agreed that dwarves shared some traits with jews but this was mostly referring to khuzdul rather than the race as a whole. You just saw short and likes gold and immediately associated them with semitic people while ignoring all the positive traits associated with dwarves or how their culture severely differentiates the dwarves from most semitic people.
I been playing D&D 30yrs now through the ups and downs. I hope this pans out for the community in the long run. House rules always win out but I would prefer that the company sees they community push back and takes note. Fingers Krossed.
Now, in Fizban's, the redone Dragonborn has a blurb about it being a variant before it gets into the stats. I WOULD hold out hope if it weren't for the fact that several of the included races in this new book are exactly the same as the old ones, so it's really hard to say if they're just variants.
When playing in a game I DM, I leave anything open, even untapped/broken/forgotten UA. You wanna play the "old" Kobold in my campaign, sure! Wanna play a UA subclass that sounded fun, let's do it! I don't care what you want to play as long as you're having fun. I can work around it!
When you try to appeal to everyone you appeal to no one. It becomes watered down, forgettable, and then you die. Your identity is what keeps you alive... and DnD is having a Paper Mario crisis.
no, Paper Mario has a different issue in that the developers have stated that they'd rather try new gimmiks each game than go back to the old stuff that they know works. It's now basically a game that the developers are basically making for themselves and themselves only.
I'll miss Sunlight Sensitivity. It's one of the very few race features that actually changes how you play. And what if it's a negative? It's a roleplaying game. If you want to play a role of a kobold, you need to embrace all features - both positive and negative. "But I don't want to be handicapped when no one else is!" - don't play Kobold then. It's not a race for you. Now WotC is on the path to making every race basically the same. Racial Stats, gone, Allegiance, gone, now goes Sunlight Sensitivity. The worst thing about this is that I know we won't get anything interesting like this in the future, and that really sucks. Hell, some people are talking about removing attributes at all, can you imagine that?
They already removed attribute bonuses, now everyone gets +2 +1/ +1 +1 +1, everyone is now a gray blob, thanks Twitter, you are ruining another good thing, we should jump ship to Pathfinder, their race system is better anyway, you can get a bônus to whatever to reflect the choices of your character, but there are still natural bonuses and deficits, like a orc gaining strength.
I get where the 5e design team was coming from with sunlight sensitivity but A: Kobolds having sunlight sensitivity is new to 5e, it's not even a legacy feature like it is for drow B: Kobolds explicitly live in tropical environments, are warm blooded and spend less time underground than dwarves C: Sunlight sensitivity is WAY too punishing in 5e compared to previous editions, it is an effective *-5* compared to earlier edition -1s
@@finderfinder4290 I think Sunlight Sensitivity is also seriously annoying for the DM, especially when it's full disadvantage. It might be cool for some groups, but I think it's likely to be widely ignored, worked around, etc., or often feel very punitive when it shows up. I'd be all for doing something like making saves versus light spells or the like harder (think the opposite of Charm resistance for Fey Blooded) but the full on disad for sunlight, no thanks. I am not a fan of Darkvision, either, which I frequently find irritating to apply fairly, not to say the fact that many races seem to be missing it for no good reason (e.g., Minotaurs! Dragonborn!) or have it for no good reason (many of the surface-dwelling races).
@@crimfan I've not played in games with sunlight sensitive characters, so grain of salt here. I like the idea of negative traits (when thought out properly), because it allows you to give those characters powerful positive traits (and let's be real, pack tactics is mechanically very strong). Removing negative traits means the positive traits have to be toned down and can lead to 'samey' feeling characters mechanically. (Wotc also seem to not think flight is powerful as its becoming more common, soon it'll be like darkvision and half the playable races will have it). (Not a fan of some of the changes, can you tell...)
@@jiminkpen9750 I don’t mind negative traits and agree that they can help differentiate characters, but too strong positive or too strong negative can, IMO, invite nerfing or ignoring. This is especially true when the benefit is as essentially valuable as Pack Tactics and as situational as Sunlight Sensitivity, which is one of those traits that is just either “meh, who cares?”-say in a game with very rare outdoor encounters-or totally debilitating, depending on the game.
I mean, the change will effect officially licensed games, yes. But like, I've never cared to bother with the 'update' regarding Healing Spirit and still use it as it was originally created in Xanathar's for the game I DM; I've worked out my own house rules with my players regarding possible exploits around it. They can make official changes and effect the official gameplay, which is limited to Adventurer Leagues and such, but there's nothing stopping you from using whatever rules you want in your own games eventually. I know you mention this so I'm sounding redundant here. My point more is that once I have a rule book or a few to work off of and options I like in expansions, I don't personally give a damn what WoTC releases as official.
Ehhh, I don't think it wouldn't be unwise for DMs to allow either of Kobolds. The old kobold would be for people who like the Pack Tactics and Sunlight Sensitivity part, while the new kobold would be allowed for people who don't want to go with that line. But I heavily disagree with Kobold being a well designed ancestry, in fact, I would say that they are one of the worst designs WotC has done back in the day. Sunlight Sensitivity is a nice limit for their powers, and it allows a lot of thinking outside of the box when it matters. But in a system where most fights are either indoors, on dungeons or in the night, Kobolds would have a very easy way to always keep on advantage with Pack Tactics, even easier than flanking (which is an optional rule that quickly is being replaced with a +2 to hit instead of full advantage). Compared that with the other ancestries that have Sunlight Sensitivity, Drows and Duregars, the kobold was able to be considered a really powerful race even with the disadvantage of Sunlight Sensitivity because of how powerful Pack Tactics is as an ability, and that is compared to abilities that are on the upper tier of power like Faerie Fire and Darkness for Drows and Resiliance, Enlarge/Reduce and Invisibility from Duergars. The fact that, wven with such a heavy toll on their backs, a Kobold can still be insanely broken on a table with the right optimization due to just one ability makes it, in my opinion, a bad design. I will agree on one thing with you however: Even thought I think the new Kobold is well designed, they feel... homogeneous. As much as I complain about design, the old kobold was something unique. On the 30% of situations where Sunlight sensitivity come up, it is a blast to see DM and player working together to see how he's going to handle things, how to avoid the problem and let Kobold run loose. But without sunlight sensitivity, as much of a quality of life it is, it makes the ancestry feel very similar to other ancestries. While it is cool to see Kobolds having the three options, it's a fact that other ancestries have the same options fixed on them. And that is something from Monsters of the Multiverse that makes me worried about the state of 5e in general: ancestries with so flavorful disadvantages being shafted over a straightfoward way of thinking. Kenkus got the same treatment, with an amazing ability to pop advantage on any skill you have before you roll, but the loss of Speech Impediment makes the Kenku just a normal ancestry for skill monkeys, just a stat in the middle of the rest. I will allow both kobolds on my games, as well as Kenkus, Genasi, Gnomes and Aasimars. But that's my table, not the design direction of 5e.
I kinda feel like it is a question of what balance even is. Like drow a Duggar could be argued to be unnecessarily weak races since they get one of the few racial abilities that actually penalize you as compared to the kobold who is arguably better balanced by making it a tradeoff for the fantastic pack tactics ability.
Why allow both? I don't get it... I'm a 3.5 DM and if one of my players approached me saying "I want to play a dwarf, but instead of the dwarf racials I want to be proficient with elven weapons, be able to detect secret doors, replace sleep for ancient meditation, have a +2 against enchantment, etc etc" I would say to them "you want to play an elf, not a dwarf. We can talk about it, but if appearance is all you're after, you don't need to be a dwarf at all"... For me, this new kobold is just a smol dragonborn but worse, it's just "a skin" not a race...
@@LokiTheAnsuz The example you gave is fairly different than what I purpose. In your example, your player asked to be a Dwarf with the Elf statistics. On this, both are named Kobold, no mattering how "the new one is just a reskin". And since the system calls it kobold, then if a player wants to play a Kobold, then he can choose between the two options. It's similar to how Dragonborns and Orcs from Wildemount or Eberron have different ancestry abilities, and I let the player choose between one of them.
It's fascinating to see the discourse that is currently taking place. Some of the critiques are really good, like yes, if you look at the flavor of kobolds, the new one stresses the draconic connection but lessens the collective and underground portions of the race. It makes sense in terms of balance, because the kobold was one of THE min-maxer/optimization races and I thus get that rebalancing it was necessary. Still, the rework could've gone better. Meanwhile certain complaints are just dumb tbh. The limitation to speech for kenku can still be achieved through flavor and that limitation was literally a 5e addition to the race, and removing it from the race means that DMs can now decide to have it in there or not (if they are aware and let's be real here, the 5e kenku is iconic enough that people won't forget that aspect of it). Ability score increases and suggested alignments being gone is no deal whatsoever. In fact the one argument people bring up, that being different physical strength levels, is already implemented. Both the Powerful Build feature (and its variants) and the DMG rule on monster damage (Creating a Monster - Step 11. Damage - "A creature has disadvantage on attack rolls with a weapon that is sized for a larger attacker. You can rule that a weapon sized for an attacker two or more sizes larger is too big for the creature to use at all.") cover that really well. No need to pidgeonhole races into certain classes by assigning mandatory ASIs and suggested alignment didn't kill character alignment! I do find some of the small changes from the leaks to be weird, though it's mostly the implications of how subraces seem to go the way of the dodo and how that affects races like duergar and the various types of elves long-term, as well as the specifics of the Earth Genasi and to a lesser extent the kobold (again, s. above) and lizardfolk (rip Cunning Artisan, I hope DMs will use that feature as a reference for doing survival crafting in the future), but over all it does 1) improve balance (I swear DnD players only seem to care about balance when a subclass they like is too weak when compared to other subclasses of that class...) and 2) it does remove a certain amount of bad taste...
I agree. The new kobold has more "negative" than the old one. I can't believe they're printing it in the same book as the Genasi rework. The new kobold feels like old genasi: a few unimpactful features that sort of satisfy the flavor of the race, but are balanced in a vacuum.
kobolds we're my first introduction to dnd and instantly fell in love with the character as I felt unique and powerful in my own ways where as the paladins or orcs we're constantly stomping o my opponent I was chilling with pact tactics making sure they couldnt be contained by helping to take out whoever they were fighting. if not for pack tactics my first session of combat in dnd would've ended in a tpk as the party was ambushed and our only healer had 2 hp.
I think some races need negatives. The UA plasmoid race can literally fit through any opening it pleases. Of course, I can always say “oh man, sorry dude, that hole .9 inches, not a full one. Can’t fit through”. But I feel like it’d be easy to make them unable to go through without removing their current equipment, or my idea: temperature sensitivity. My idea is that in certain extreme temperatures, the plasmoid begins to break down, since from my understanding, they’re just big cells. If a room is too hot, their insides begin to burn, dealing 1d4 damage at the end of their turn. In cold, their bodies begin to freeze up, making them gain disadvantage on every dexterity roll. Things like that make players think about how to deal with those disadvantages. If it’s too hot, cast a spell, or maybe even drink some water. If it’s too cold, make a fire, cast a spell, or find
Honestly, Pack Tactics is just a really good ability. It's free advantage as long as there's literally any frontliner in the party, which is damn near all the time because D&D is built around having a party. It's arguably not even balanced by Sunlight Sensitivity, seeing as how NPC Kobolds are notorious for picking their own fights, and PC Kobolds are likely only fighting indoors, underground, or at night, and any number of (dis)advantage cancel out to a straight roll. It's slightly more "fair" as an enemy NPC because fighting several isn't terribly out of the player's favor. Kobolds have low HP so they need traps and Pack Tactics to have a chance to even do damage at all before they get deleted by Fireball or a Fighter-dip's Action Surge. When it comes with all the survivability of a PC, all of the armor, spellcasting, positional strategies, what-have-you, Pack Tactics gets a lot more mileage because the Kobold can stay alive long enough to keep gaining Advantage from it from any range. Adding a racial + to godstat DEX and darkvision, the only thing keeping it back is being Small, which basically only means they can't Grapple Large creatures or use Heavy weapons. Now, as for Draconic Cry, it's literally just Grovel, Cower, and Beg with a different name that uses a Bonus Action instead of an Action. More of WotC paying lip-service to not making PCs have downsides, even ones that are just flavor. I'm also noticing that the traits end at K, which means there's a non-zero chance that Pact Tactics or Sunlight Sensitivity could be on the next page. Not likely, but possible.
I'll be honest, I like the new kobold, my favorite cantrip isn't really accessible to my favorite classes (Ray of frost) and still being small is awesome for beastmaster. I do not like the idea of it being the "new" kobold. It should be a variant that exists beside the original kobold, like surface kobold and underdark kobold or something
I play a Kobold moon druid. Your senses become that of the beast you shape shifted into, yet still retain mental statistics and features. That means pact tactics without sunlight sensitivity!
Volo's Kobold will always have a place at my table. I look forward to seeing people play with Mort's Kobold. And maybe I'll be lucky enough to host a table with both types
My first thought is that I kinda think Pack Tactics just shouldn't be a player character feature. That's a lot of free advantage mostly for just existing. Unlimited abilities with a geometrical trigger rather than resource requirement are just really hard to balance around. It's similar to what I don't like about Gloom Stalkers, but that's got a different dimension to it. Gloom Stalker gets unlimited free advantage, if it's dark and enemies are using darkvision. But if it gets out of hand, the DM has an easy option of having bright light. But then that's really unfun for the gloom stalker, who can't use what they built their character to do. When WotC made the ability based on something other than a resource, I think it just made things awkward. I like them getting out of negative traits, but I guess I'm just curmudgeonly. I half think all the player race flying speeds should be overland flight.
Thanks for rephrasing the counter position is such an understanding way! A lot of the discourse around the recent direction has been really negative and seen through rose colored glasses.
I mean, they didn't errata the PHB Dragonborn when Wildemount and even Fizban's got released. It'd be pretty absurd to totally change Dragonborn and have them, a PHB 1.0 race, still exist simultaneously but Kobolds, an optional monster sourcebook race, be replaced entirely
… and they did it. They replaced the old Kobold entirely. It’s no longer available on DNDBeyond and no longer Adventure League legal. RIP Pack Tactics.
I'm not happy with them removing negative traits. I love making characters that differ from the norm, especially in ways that make them less optimal than the standard choices, then explore ways of making it work, having them overcome those hurdles, and giving them a backstory that justifies it.
Well at least on a stats perspective every race gets whatever stat bonuses they want now so it's not like you couldn't play a melee kobold for the 10ft cry but yeah new kobold is just worse in every way.
I personally like negative traits for races in 5e. I think a better solution for wanting to get rid of them is, as you said, make so there is a variant that keeps the old as an option. I like it because its rare. At this point I could safely say that playing an elf, dwarf, gnome, halfling, and tiefling all feel interchangeable to me (by no means a bad thing) with stuff that is powerful, but feels more like something that I use as a feat. I find the human variant with its immediate choice of a feat, the kobold/drow with a requirement to play with the sun in mind, and lower int orc (before rework) made so it felt like if you picked an int based class you had to work against something you had been born with. I never had an issue with the removal of the aliment requirements for certain races, largely because I disagreed with them being there in the first place (it makes no sense in lore, biologically, or socially take your pick for why in Forgotten Realms). I don't want to go back to the days of 3.5 where the negatives with several of the playable races got so extreme that you got forced into playing them a way you may not want to. I mostly just want at least a few options that give the players the opportunity to maybe play something that you need to think about how you are doing something. One of my favorite content peaces that came out when I actually read it was the rules for disabilities. It opened a whole world of characters with amazing character concepts and mechanics as new options provided in system. For more raw speculation: I think this happened to the kobold because a lot of people want to play one, but then get scared off by having a drawback. Its kinda like why everyone says ranger is weak without playing one. Ranger has a higher learning curve and requires in system knowledge, especially for the beast master (the one everyone who thinks about playing a ranger in a non mechanical way wants to play). Without that system knowledge its easy to end up playing something that is much weaker then what the game allows you to pull off.
honestly I think that wizards should've made it do -1s from races are a thing you can choose to have and in exchange you can put a +1 on one of two stats so orcs could have a -1 to intelligence in exchange for +1 strength or constitution; or just not have the -1 and kobolds -1 to stremgth in exchange for +1 to intelligence or dexterity, or not and so on
I still have my classic Kobold Raknak Farseeker (Battle Smith) worked around the Sunlight Sensitivity by strapping welding goggles to the little guy. Also made sense with his class and when I found out how busted it was to ride the Steel Defender, I became incredibly infuriating for my DM to deal with. The -2 to Str didn't even phase me because I relied on my Int anyway for my attacks and I hit like a truck.
I’d say my opinion for a change would be this: Pack tactics: kobold lore has been industrialist Kobbo, working as if a hive mind to any outsider, since the classical era. This makes sense for them. Sunlight sensitivity: they were BUILT for the caves, where sunlight is nonexistent. This makes sense for them. Darkvision II: the one part of their lore that has stayed around since they were devised is that they are and are for the caves, where light is a valuable resource. Being able to see in obscene darkness not only makes sense, but justifies the origin of their sunlight sensitivity. They are not only comfortable in caverns, but even more so than above ground. Removed grovel, cower, beg, replaced with tunnelborn: as an action, you can use mould earth or stoneshape once per short or long rest. You also gain proficiency with masonry equipment, or expertise if proficiency is already available due to class or background. This is my weakest argument, but I find it fitting. 2:48 I… may have convinced my most recent party’s DM that it lasts a minute…at a range of 30’… with 15 party members… it was a very broken support and much appreciated by anyone who might have miffed during that time. Overall, it’s first use had turned 10 misses to hits. If it lasted longer, I would respectfully disagree, but as it is, GCB or draconic cry* is less powerful than an offensive play. Especially when pack tactics is in play.
Spicy Hot Take: WoTC has basically stopped caring about any 'mechanical' aspects of D&D since the success of Critical Role and other channels like them. At this point, they are banking on the free publicity from these shows for book sales, and don't give a rat's ass about maintaining the 'game' aspect of the ttRPG. So long as the theater nerd "roleplaying" crowd is sated with the content that's published, WoTC will gladly let the mechanics languish and depreciate in result. They don't care about D&D as a game anymore, only as an improv theater opportunity to stream online and promote overpriced books.
I'm torn between the fact that I'm almost the exact person this comment is criticizing and the fact that my favorite kind of characters to play are completely nonmagical humans, the most mechanically-spurned (and most looked-down-upon by the 'theater nerds') character type in the entire game. Ima just leave my response as a lukewarm 'yep'.
@@Vooman I don't hate the player if that's your play-style. I'm a big fan of improv in theater and comedy, tbh. But I hate the company itself for selling out to the "lowest common detonator" when it comes to marketing and maintaining a product. My criticism is more about the company itself, rather than how people 'play the game'. And yes, homebrew exists. But relying so much on homebrew to fill in the mechanical deficits of 5e adds to the burden of work for DM's to maintain, plus it has the disadvantage (no pun intended) of it not being universal with other tables that might not want to adopt said solutions. It just feels scummy for WoTC to print $50 books with the bare minimum of content in terms of mechanics and story, and you're left with having to jury rig said content into a campaign anyway.
@@Magus_Union Yeah, I know what you mean. The biggest tragedy is that even 3.5e takes coaxing to get others to play anymore if we ever wanted to try something different or become the "embrace tradition" meme, let alone entirely different rulesets.
I heavily disagree that this is a good direction for the company to lure in new players like this. The people they are now trying catering to are not the ones, who will ever play this game, because they hate racial differences, weaknesses etc. Those people literally dont care about this game. Character flaws and strenghts are what makes roleplaying interesting and unique. I want to be someone that im not, in a world that is different from reality. I want different fantasy races to matter (fk variant human and custom lineage, this stuff aint rolling at my table). Being able to cherry pick everything is boring. A memorable high moment is just satisfying when there are meaningful low-moments and actual threats in play as well.
@@12halo3 One does not have to care to know. And one doesn't have to know to attack. I Don't know you, and I could easily call you stupid. I won't, that's just an example.
Being that the new stats for the kobold is in the Multiverse book, I just think of them as a different version of the Kobold race stated in Volo. That's just means that now there are two different races of Kobold. Same thing with the Kenku as they may have come from a universe where they weren't cursed with the speech impediment. Nerd Immersion stated that that might be good for players who have difficulty using used phrases that the Kenku would've used otherwise. Other than that, the Flight curse is still active.
You need a design which captures the essence of the race. For kobolds that is working stronger in groups and being tricksy rather than powerful. I feel the old mechanics did this rather better than the new ones. Pack tactics could have been reined in by making it a thing they could activate for a period of time (maybe an hour, maybe 10 minutes) PB times per long rest,. Remove sunlight sensitivity and renamed grovel,cower and beg as destracting cunning. The result would still be a kobold not some crazy roaring beast with a tail attack like the UA thing.
Removing the - to stats was a good move imo, as I feel like that deviated too much from core of 5e race design, but this change seems... excessive and unnecessary. The attribute penalty kinda shoehorned the race in specific roles, which I don't like in regards to 5e, but Sunlight Sensitivity and Pack Tactics affects every role, which can open up new and interesting play styles. It just adds to the experience rather than subtract from it, even if Sunlight Sensitivity in technically a negative trait.
My first Character (well... close enough, the first died fast) was a Kobold. Sunlight sensitivity almost never came into play because 1 I was a Moon Druid so I was almost never in kobold form and 2. Its called DUNGEON and Dragon not SUNNY PLAIN and Dragon. Loved all of the abilities the kobold came with, let's hope the errata never comes up
Advantage on an attack is the equivalent to a +5 for purposes of hitting and it nearly doubles your chance to crit. Pack tactics is such a strong mechanic that moderately experienced DMs know to go easy on encounters involving creatures with it otherwise a TPK is going to happen. Kobold was so over-tuned that it caught the attention of optimizers such as yourself. I don't think that this is what races are supposed to be. And don't get me wrong, Kobold wasn't probably the most game breaking race. The flying races, and races that give armor proficiencies, and of course halfling luck can also heavily mess with balance. But again, your race choice should be flavorful, it should make one character feel different than another even if they are the same class. But, it shouldn't give you a substantial advantage over another race selection. It should be an aspect that helps a player write their backstory and feel unique and give fuel to the DM to shape the story around that character. But picking a certain race shouldn't feel like a powerplay. Personally, I think they need to take a hard look at all the "optimal" race choices and really give them the kobold treatment. Restrict flight from flying races. Nerf the shield spell to make armor proficiencies less powerful on classes that have access to it. Limit the uses of halfling luck. On the other end, they also need to take a look at races that don't add flavor or excitement to characters... There are several of them where the race basically reads, "They are different looking humanoids and here is a bad attempt at making them special." Gith are different looking humanoids that can cast a bad spell once a day. Vedalken are different looking humanoids that are marginally better at one specific skill than the average person, but still way worse at that thing than the rogue or bard.
Quick note, Advantage is closer to +3 (slightly higher but let's not get into decimals). The +5 that the rules give for passive checks that would otherwise have advantage is because WotC is bad at math and can't figure out medians.
@@renatocorvaro6924 The value changes based on how likely or unlikely you are to succeed. At around a 50% success rate (DC11 with no bonuses), it is worth +5. You're right that the value drops as you go either way (towards 5% or 95%). But with most optimized builds going for sharpshooter or great weapon master, your hit chance is probably not getting too much higher than 60% or so, so the value of advantage is going to be high at tier 1 and remain high at higher tiers.
BTW, the math on this is super easy. If you need an 11 to hit. Numbers 1-10 miss (50%). With a +5, now only the numbers 1-5 miss (25% of the numbers or 75% chance to hit). Rolling two dice, with 50% chance to hit and keeping the better is the same as flipping two coins. There are 3 outcomes. 25% both go unfavorable. 50% that one is favorable and the other is not. 25% that both are favorable. Again, 25% chance to miss. Advantage is thus exactly statistically equivalent to a +5 when there is a 50% chance to hit.
With ret-coning orcs to just not have the negative... I can see that working, despite there now being 3 versions of orcs. (I like to think of them as variants) With Kobolds having a straight up trade off, I feel at the very least both should be valid variants. Restricted in Adventures League for formalities, perhaps, (much like the artificer) but both still valid materials. If an errata is made, just the removal of the negatives of the original without updating it to just being only one kind of Kobold. I think that would be the most practical call.
The only thing that needed a change was the Grovel Cower Beg. If they kept the Kobold how it was and just changed the GCB to Draconic Cry (which just makes it a bonus action instead of an action), then it would’ve been totally fine.
Honestly I hope they don’t remove pack tactics or sunlight sensitivity. I like being a Kobold and having to work around those. I literally have a parasol on mine and (once working with the dm) got to use guiding bolt without disadvantage by standing in the shadow behind our Goliath
I played a Kobold Barbarian Druid, yep Bear Totem Warrior and Moon Druid. I loved it. I do honestly see why they remove the negative ability scores and sunlight sensitivity. It's just easier for new play to remove them. Sadly no sunlight sensitivity equals no pack tactics.
I still think pact tactics was only taken away cuz it was too hard to balance in some settings. I can see it being a nightmare and lead to combats being limited in the dark resulting it to being nearly impossible to balance. either combats happen at night or in buildings and cave then you have a character that basically gets advantage on every attack. or you have battles that fight outside in the day and have the creative ways to bypass the daylight sensitivity. I think it really messes with some of the balance and can destroy some creative ideas that wizards would have had to make with pact tactics in mind. otherwise it could lead to a situation where min-maxers had kobolds everywhere. and when you enter modules that take place entirely off of the surface like "into the Abyss" then you dont have to be creative even and every encounter gave you advantage on every attack at all times. sadly, I think the removal of the ability was needed but I think having pact tactics only working one attack per turn rather than every attack fixes the issue. I do agree tho that the features should really be better than what they are no to compensate
I can't believe the changes to racial ability scores have poisoned the well for so many people. Penalties were dumb, especially the ones that said orcs are default dumber than everyone else full stop. It didn't mean orc wizards were rare, it meant that I never saw anyone play an orc wizard. I know, surprising that nobody wanted to pick a class just to be worse at it than if they had picked literally any other race. I personally think the kobold changes are kind of boring. I get the whole making them more dragonlike, whatever, but they never struck me as inherently brave when the monster versions are always hiding in wait for their traps to mess up a party so they can swoop in for the finishing blow. Pack tactics is super busted, don't get me wrong, but if you're playing a kobold and you've got a clever work around for the sunlight sensitivity go for it. I don't really care about balance as a dm so long as it never feels like one player is doing all of the work all of the time.
Kobolds had no identity besides pack tactics, now they have flavor which was drastically missing. TBH in my games sunlight sensitivity was so much not an issue to get around and avoid (unless the dm strictly wanted to punish you) that it was for most encounters irrelevant. Having it printed only served to scare those who never played kobolds before.
Here is the way I see it, if your a kobold in the sun you just need to attack the same target as the your front line which you should be doing already, and allowing you to get a neutral roll. However, if you aren't in the sun your, and do the same thing you always have advantage on every attack roll which is really really powerful. Additionally, if your are in the sun without an ally for some reason there are various spells, and abilities which will allow you to bypass the sunlight sensitivity including darkness, name any summoning spells, familiar help actions, and so much more. Realistically, as a kolbold character you should never be attacking at disadvantage, but be getting attacks at advantage extremely often.
I do have a flavor argument against that kobold. It's way too draconic, kobolds are miner monsters, and they should feel like underground mischeavous creatures who make traps. I get why they were made draconic in worlds where goblins are a thing, but my kobolds aren't even reptilian (I decided to give them more mammalian features to diferenciate from goblins). So how do I introduce such a dragon-based kobold as the stats for the ones in my world? Not only that but fans of kobolds in other media now don't have an equivalent in D&D. Al least not at first glance and new players are usually not as aware that flavor is free. I predict that almost no one will play this version of the kobold, as they are too similar to dragonborn and the new dragonborn are good so why play this instead? Since it lacks the subterranean, mining, underdog and trap thing that make kobolds, well, kobolds it's basically a small-sized dragonborn so I assume that from now on (if the old kobold is removed) PC kobolds are likely to not be mechanically kobolds since there is a huge disconect between mechanics and flavor.
I forget when kobolds became little draconic guys, but they're not in the original game, or weren't supposed to be. They were the least members of the Goblin Great Chain of Being, even below goblins in power. I don't have a 1E Monster Manual to look at the picture, though, so maybe it was concept art that did it.
@@crimfan I think they became draconic in thrid edition because they were too similar to goblins. I don't know the exact thing because I'm not too familiar with the old edition kobolds. I do know that kobolds originated as myth among miners in low oxygen enviroment which hallucinated and saw small men (sometimes with animalistic or strange feathures) to which they blamed accident in mines. Hence the traps and mining enfasis in all kind of kobolds outside D&D5e. I personally love this and would like something akin to a less reptilian kobold (the reptilian part is a cool kirk to have in specific worlds to give it a spin, but should not be mandatory at all).
the cool thing about playing a game like dnd is your can just...keep pack tactics if your group wants too. kinda amazing, table top games. it's almost like, uh, it takes place in your head and everything is subject to change by the DM. that way you can have fun and not dedicate so much energy and effort into being slighted or offended by such a small thing you can 100% control
I don’t think the removal of Sunlight Sensitivity has anything to do with politics- I’d be surprised to learn there was any sort of racial stereotype regarding nightvision, unlike with orcs and goblins where the history is long and ugly. A lot of times, these sorts of moves that could be seen as “political” are really just better for the game overall, such as allowing races to allocate their stats anywhere; the best part about 5e is that features intended for one use can be applied very effectively for other uses (as your channel often highlights), and that sort of thing just gives players more of that. I have to imagine that the Kobold change comes more from a shift in design philosophy. Someone down in the comments mentioned that Pack Tactics and Sunlight Sensitivity undermines the use of advantage and disadvantage in more “conventional” battle strategy, and I feel like that’s closer to the real cause of this. A desire to streamline racial features somewhat could also be a driving factor; you sometimes see complaints thrown around about level-based racial features bogging down the game mechanically, and I feel that from a design perspective that isn’t that much more “orthodox” than PT/SS. 5e in general is pretty streamlined as is. I personally feel that weird races that change the fundamental nature of the game are a good thing and should be encouraged. But those sorts of races are inherently risky from a design and balance standpoint, so a move away from them is also understandable. That sort of thing is probably best reserved for the realm of homebrew anyway, in the same sort of design space as Large races… but also, having a book or something set aside for “restricted” content like that, would be really cool as long as it were labeled accordingly. Put a warning on the front page saying, “this isn’t legal for Adventurer’s League! Yadda yadda!” Something like that.
Kobolds seem like WotC's dirty little secret that you can actually play the squirmy, cowardly, yapping dragon Jawas players historically have only turned into exp juice. The reason we play kobolds is that the unorthodox mechanics of the race pair well with the odd pick, and separates kobolds from goblins, halflings, and gnomes very distinctly, that experienced players can grab and use. Side note: Kobolds really did get shortchanged in Fizban's Dragon book not being able to have a dragon turn you into one, I feel like if dragonborn is on the table for a wyrmling to turn you into, they can do a kobold.
I was wondering what Takahata and his buddies were talking about when I watched their Oops all Kobolds video this morning. So I’m guessing pack tactics is officially gone since I just made a kobold yesterday and it wasn’t listed in my abilities or anything
The “other side” does not have a stronger argument, they have power. That’s the problem. A minority of players actually support these types of changes, yet they are the ones who somehow get to decide for everyone.
I think the developers should fully lean in to one of two design ethos: 1. Customise your character as you like, so x number of stats and pick your positive/negative traits from a list (ie 4 positive traits and one negative, or 3 positive traits for example) 2. Actually stick to the playable races having meaningful traits based on their physicality/mentality/setting/etc. Ie fixed stat bonuses/set minimums&maximums, specific traits. And if you wanted characters to feel unique let them pick a bonus traits from a list as appropriate.
Althought I can understand the desire to reach as many people as possible with your game product as a developer, I can't help but feel Wizard's of the Coast are moving towards removing a lot of classic Dnd flavour from dnd. The Errata removing monster lore, making dnd races more cookie cutter and less unique, possibly doing away with alignment. I think these things will be bad for the game over time, many will ask what is the point of playing X when it is no different than Y, and want their characters to be more mechanically unique. Even the ones scared by sunlight sensitivity will after playing enough games look for ways to make their characters more unique. The Removal of any "problematic" lore will make any adventure turn into a staturday morning cartoon show, and a boring one at that since people usually remember the cartoons which respected the view enough to tackle such issues with some class. As for Alginment, if they get rid of that too ontop of anymore creature lore, we might as well call 5e GURPS, cause it is just a generic base roleplaying system for people to use only for rules for their games, and not something for helping craft stories.
One thing that annoyed me in particular about wizards statement regarding the changes was the idea that they were doing in part because they know players like subverting expectations.... except, how can you subvert expectations when you take all the expectations out of the lore?
The lore is still there, is just that mechanics are not tied into it. In the recent alignment errata, for example, it still says that most Drow cities worship Lolth and that Lolth is evil, it's just not a racial feature because Drow can come from communities that don't worship Lolth (like those devoted to Eilistraee) or worlds where Lolth doesn't even exist. Same for any other cultural feature really. They are being removed not because lore itself is being removed, but simply to allow players and tables to come up with their own flavor for PCs. Stonecunning makes sense for Dwarves that were born and raised in a stereotypical dwarven city but may not make sense for a Dwarf pirate or a Dwarf ranger that lives alone in a snowy forest or an urchin Dwarf that didn't have access to dwarven education, and so on. Even sunlight sensitivity kinda falls into this category, as PCs may now come up with a background where they simply weren't born in the Underdark or have been adventuring above ground for enough time to have grown accostumed to sunlight by now. And to kind of reinforce my point, enemy creatures in the Monsters of the Multiverse book still have sunlight sensitivity, because the lore is still there. It also opens more possibilities for worldbuilding for DMs too, as you can now use the races in other contexts or flat out change their lore entirely more easily. I know some of these changes really benefit my HB world. That's not to say I agree with EVERY change they made. I personally believe cultural features should still be available, but be optional and/or tied to background. Something like choosing a place of origin at character creation and getting an appropiate cultural feature could be really cool. Still, I personally think the reasoning behind the changes is solid.
hot take: alignment is a bad system anyway because a well written character isnt always easily definined by law/chaos and good/evil and different people would interpret what it means anyway.
@@RockyTorres43 My issue about lore isn't meant to be about the Drow changes, honestly they way they handled it was lazy, but I am pretty sure there was always messages about not having to play a drow that worships Lolth. Stuff about deleting lore mostly has to do the errata removing lore from Monster statblocks. Althought given how they seemingly want to get rid of a lot of negative traits from races, I honestly wouldn't be too surprised if they eventually try something like making gnomes be able to count as Medium sized to avoid the negative penalties of playing a small sized creature. Cause in the never ending quest to make everything more homogeneous, the flavour that makes them unique tends to be lost.
@@kuroshinigami9143 Alignment is critical for Dnd history and cosmology. Is it needed for every game, no, but getting rid of it is removing A MASSIVE AMOUNT CLASSIC LORE, which if Wizard's of the Coast keeps doing Dnd will have none. Also for player characters, alginments are about tendencies, they are not absolutes. Meaning an Evil character can do a selfless action once and a while, but when they die they still likely go to one of the negative planes. Now which one would be determined based off facotrs like to they follow a code or laws, did they constantly try to rebel from any authority or where they insane. Getting rid of alignment would fuck over the Dnd afterlife system.
Ngl pack tactics shouldn't be a player feature, even with sunlight sensitivity it feels like a cheap way to almost guarantee if your DM isn't a dick that you are rolling at advantage most of the time. This isn't necessarily the most powerful, but is kind of poor design, as I think in reality- sunlight sensitivity is in general as well Given for a new DM it requires an active amount of additional labour to prevent a player from being mechanically gimped, but for the kobold when you do that labour, or as many dm's I know- tend to not make sunlight sensitivity trigger in big fights or bosses or etc. You end up with advantage if you have a single melee. That is to me at least, a feature that excasserbates the issues in sunlight sensitivity, either making it a full millstone or literally irrelevant. I'm glad it's gone, but tbh the new one suffers from being a C tier design over and F tier one so like, still not a great improvement
I like draconic cry. It's definitely worse than pack tactics, but gaining advantage on attack rolls for you and your allies a couple times a day is really nice. Besides, I'd much rather write "Draconic Cry" on a character sheet than "Grovel, Cower, and Beg". The former makes my character seem kinda badass, while the latter tells me I need to add "is a coward" to their list of flaws.
Not necessarily a coward they can just be putting up an act as a form of deception, I think of the old saying "appear weak when you are strong and appear strong when you are weak" And its a pretty good tactic, false surrender is a war crime for a reason.
@@hopeforescape884 Okay, but then that implies that your Kobold has a level of deviousness that you might not want them to have. What if I want to play Kobold the Shounen Anime Protagonist? G-C-B doesn't allow for that, but because of the way Draconic cry is worded, it allows for any or all of those without having to squint or alter anything.
In my eyes, playing Kobold is like picking the Deprived in Dark Souls. It's obviously not the best choice, but it can also still be played in a way that's fun and effective
what was also pretty telling about the fate of legacy races is that WotC had all of their distributors discontinue sales of Volo's and MtoF the day MotM officially released, Making it so you cannot get those books firsthand anymore. This definitely puts the content in those books in the "this is not official anymore" pile. it's not even an errata. in card games this would be the equivalent of those races being taken out of rotation.
I'll be gone for a month. I'll be retaking the exam and upgrading the channel again. I really need to write more scripts and record more music.
Are you sure it's just a month needed to grieve over your namesake being discarded off the side of the road?
In all seriousness, take as much time as you need/want, your videos are great!
i wish you success
Good luck on the exam, and on figuring out a new name for the channel. In 10 years, nobody will remember what your current name means. 😢
Good luck!
I deleted your Pack Tactics, and all you got in return is this lousy shirt.
I don't really agree with completely scrubbing all the negative traits from all the ancestries. I get where they're coming from, though, there's fun to be had breaking from the expected norms and making a halfling barbarian or an orc wizard. I don't even really care about axing negative stat penalties, a simple +1, -1 change doesn't make a character more interesting to play... the problem is that sunlight sensitivity *does* make a character more interesting to play as you have to find creative ways to get around their weaknesses. If more of these features were like that, a challenge to be overcome, they could really create a huge difference from character to character... and learning to exist despite your disadvantages is a strong character arc.
I'm still sore about negative stat penalties to races even if they don't feel all that different. They give the races additional flavor beyond being essentially funny-looking humans.
EDIT: also, i'd argue the fun in breaking expected norms is partially because there used to be reasons they *were* the norm, and breaking them served to spice things up. In modern D&D, where starting ability score increases can be swapped however the player wants, an orc wizard is no more special than a human fighter.
@@Vooman As much as I dislike the recent changes, I do think differentiating races should be left to the racial qualities instead of the stats
@@Vooman I'd argue that "no bonus" is the new penalty. Every ancestry has a sort of "baseline" competence, but some excel at specific things. A halfling Dex fighter will always be better than a halfling Strength fighter assuming equal stat rolls, but you aren't penalized for going halfling strength fighter... you can still assign an 18 to strength as a halfling.
I personally don't think a universal +1 or -1 to a specific kind of roll really makes any given ancestry feel more unique. You can match that as a +2/+1 human as it stands. What makes each ancestry truly unique are the unique advantages and disadvantages that go beyond stats. Halfling's ability to slip through an enemy's space will always be more interesting than +2 dex.
@@kevingriffith6011 of course, but a -1 to CHR for dwarves tells you in 6 characters what a lore dump would take two paragraphs to explain. I don't at all think unique racial features should be removed, I don't think anyone here would argue that.
@@Vooman This exactly. Actually what I find really annoying about some of the new races is that Their super powerful, and have no downsides.
Plasmoids for example. It’s be interesting if they suffered from an increased armor cost cause they can’t keep a human form. And have to have custom made water proof armor and clothing to allow them to take one. It’d also make players more hesitant to ditch their gear by squeezing through jail cells and the like.
I think they need to go the other way, every race has a selection of negative flaws and players can pick one or more. Then give DMs the strong suggestion that there could be ways to negate or modify a flaw within the campaign setting.
Which is just a way of saying I want a Kobold who wears sunglasses at night.
"My darkvision is augmented."
@@Vooman Hahaha, now a whole bunch of people will need to install Deus Ex!
A kobold with a familiar can perceive through its senses. Keep your little bat buddy in your pocket all the time and use its 60' blindsight.
Now, if your DM lets you add the new Inkling Mascot from Strixhaven to your list of familiars available through Find Familiar (as my DM has)...
THEN you have a pitch black ooze which can change its shape into sunglasses or a blindfold and grants 60' blindsight❗
In our upcoming campaign, I'm playing a UA hadozee (glider monkey) wizard who wears sunglasses and rides on a dog for a mount. Those sunglasses are his inkling.
Same, having flaws isn't a bad thing. Just so long as there are enough in given bonuses to make up for it. I'd even take a stat decrease, just give me something.
@BlackMage I don't see your point... If humans were so appealing because they didn't have score penalties, then no one will pick races WITH score penalties. That's not what we want. People should play the race that they want without feeling bad about it. (even if it doesn't make the race much worse, people still might not pick the race because of it :/)
Similarly how you love Kobolds, I am highly disheartened they got rid of what made Kenku so unique, their curse. I can't claim I'm a minmaxer, but I love using gimped builds in a way that makes them fantastic, and I will always love my plagirizism Forge Cleric Kenku. Literally making weapons off different cultures he's seen and mimicking them (No creativity portion of the curse). That, and it makes my near 8 page document of phrases I've heard throughout the campaign, null.
Especially since Kenku's have no racial stereotypes associated with them. Like, I understand trying to destigmatize the racist stuff attached to Orcs, Goblins, and Kobolds, but Kenku are pure fantasy with no real life parallels involved in their origin. The curse is what makes Kenkus Kenkus!
I absolutely agree.
@@sjhsoccer Indeed. I love seeing so many people's different versions of the curse. Some people attribute it to the Raven Queen, some Yan-C-Bin. It's such a cool lore point. It just feels sad they are removing it. Doubt they will replace it with anything cool. Like, what would you even do with kenku at that point rather than genericsize them as simple thieves. My DM had a whole subplot of them starting a civil revolution against the Raven Queen in hopes of freeing their curse. Was a lot of fun.
@@sjhsoccer goblins and kobolds have no stigma attached to them and orc parallels are flimsy at best. If someone sees a dumb brutish orc and sees a black person that's on them. Hell, the closest influence tolkien had was the Mongols. He designed them after nazi officers mainly, but also officers on both sides of the war. They were made as a reflection of the horrors of war, not to represent any real life cultural group.
@@TheRavenofSin The Orcish parallels to Mongols were very intentional. They were intentional when Tolkien wrote them in and the negative stereotypes of savages were eventuated with the way they were described in D&D.
Goblins and Kobolds were both designed with a heavy emphasis on physical and behavioral characteristics associated with Jewish stereotype, more so for goblins. The creators may not have intentionally done this, but it's clear the pop culture traits they ascribed to them were based in anti-Semitic imagery and many Jews have difficulty not clearly seeing that in the way they're still portrayed today. And I mean, yeah, a minus to specifically charisma makes that pretty clear.
In my worldbuilding, I had made a Noble Kobold variant and kept the original as a Feral variant. Both were created by the Dragons in the ancient past; kobolds were craftsmen and workers, with Dragonborn as the warrior/priest caste. After the fall of the Dragon empire, some went underground and became the Feral, others stayed close to the few pockets of imperial power and were more civilized, never developing sunlight sensitivity.
I feel like something along those lines would be a really easy way to allow both to coexist.
Considering in the same book they are removing the Kenku copy speech limit as well as making Lizard folk smarter and less savage survivalists focused it is clear that any racial feature that negatively effects play is set for the chopping block. In fact at this rate I am surprised that Centaur's still have their climbing impairment as they are just about the only race to still have a draw back.
Right, those negatives set races apart. A race who is adapted to do one thing, will probably have a draw back due to that adaptation.
I dunno, man; if a player at any of my tables was actively trying to roleplay a Kenku's speech patterns, 9/10 times I'd politely ask them to stop and just convey to us out of character in English what they're trying to get across. Difficulty in communication isn't something that I think is fun or interesting to engage with.
It really sucks. I played a lizardfolk fighter *explicitly* because I liked the flavor of being a survivalist who makes all his own weapons/ammo. Now that's going to be gone. Why? Reasons, I guess. Now if you want to do the same you'd have to multiclass or take a feat/background giving you access to a tool kit and pray to Pelor that your DM will let you craft your own equipment... but it will never be the same.
@@ilovethelegend Yeah. Therein lies the problem. WOTC is focused on making the game fun for the widest audience and they do that through *positive* design.
If people want to penalize their players' choices, they are more than welcome to at their table. Rule Zero applies. They just won't be formally or officially endorsed by WOTC to do it.
@@Schmeethe88 How dare you not enjoy the blandification of all races in dnd! Clearly the new stuff is better, because subtraction is too hard for new players to figure out! /s
By Punpun, gator just standing there in awe for that whole bit and him just being surprised by Wizards at the beginning. Dang even gator realizes this be bullshit. Amazing video as always!
My problem with this Kobold and the Volo's one is that neither has anything to do with traps. How hard would it be to give a "Trap expert: You have advantage on all checks to find, set, or disarm traps." Kobolds' whole thing is traps. In the new version it's because they want to cut all cultural identity, which is lame. Culture is what makes Dwarves interesting rather than just short stocky humans with strong livers.
The Volo's monster races were explicitly made to capture the monster manual feel first, be functional second. See: Yuan-Ti. (Goblinoids seem to be the exception being built as actual functional races) It was less "Here's a normal playable race" and more "Here's a race template for DMs to put on NPCs, and maybe let players be with permission."
>Culture is what makes Dwarves interesting rather than just short stocky humans with strong livers.
[slaps table] *THANK YOU*
@@agilemind6241 I'm gonna have to say PF2 handled it right. (And not just because they ditched the loaded term "Race") because it handles that aspect quite well.
@@agilemind6241 Tasha's gave us a great framework for exceptions. Post-Tasha's content said "Exceptions exist so everyone must be bland!"
@@gabrielrussell5531 Or you could just make an interesting character with unique roleplaying characteristics... Almost all of my favorite characters that I have seen in my games don't follow the guideline set by the races... that's what makes characters fun to create
I would love a kobold racial ability where you could create simple traps. Make it equivalent to cantrips in strength and it would be really fun and flavored!
It made me so sad to see they didn't seem to consider community feedback relative to their kobold changes. I've been unhappy with a lot of their new race mechanics - they seem to be emphasizing additional spellcasting features because people like to cast spells, and leaving other races in the dust.
The spells give them a concise and reusable way of documenting a magical effect. You can add your own flavor of how the race is innately able to produce it. Aarocokra flaps its wings to cast Gust of Wind, Yuan-ti spits for Poison Spray. They do take care to specify that you don’t need the material component of a legume seed to cast Gust of Wind for example so it is more unique than casting the spell.
Solid take on the leaks, good video!
The reward for bypassing negatives was relatable for me as a Kenku player. Having weaknesses to overcome gives the game an extra dimension.
Removing pack tactics from kobolds is the same thing as removing flying speed from Aarakocra
It's like removing Fey Ancestry from Elves and Half-Elves
No, with flying speed on aaracokras, it's something that just shouldn't exist. Natural flight at level 1 is broken.
Or removing Feline Agility from Tabaxis!
@@ArvelDreth Great feature? Yes. Broken? Not if you have even a half decent DM.
I have an ingenious counter to Aarocokra. I call them buildings.
I love the way you handled this video. You explained your point of view without being mellow dramatic or aggressive. I wish more people could approach situations like this.
I can see why they'd want to remove Pack Tactics as a player option. 5E is a fairly simple simple at it's core, having stepped away from circumstance bonuses and the like. Advantage is how players interact with the math (outside of bless-esque effects) behind the system. Making strong tactical plays, setting up combinations, creating advantageous circumstances, these are all fueled by the desire to get that extra d20 into your hand. And Pack Tactics doesn't really fit into that paradigm. It takes away those meaningful moments of tactical shenanigans for something that many players will do naturally; ganging up on the same person. Nobody's ever said, "Yo, you remember that time Scrumble walked up next to Berffle and attacked WITH ADVANTAGE?!" For how powerful the effect is, the mundaneness of gaining the benefit kind of hurts one of the pillars of mechanical and narrative interaction. While Sunlight Sensitivity is very balancing in a mechanical sense, it also negates any other form of advantage and disadvantage. A Kobold with Pack Tactics in the sun might as well be doing 360 noscope headshots while poisoned and suffering 4 levels of exhaustion because it doesn't matter (which is partially a problem of Adv/Dis not being cumulative, but PT/SS interaction is still something that was designed after the game was already established). Moving to the newer version of Draconic Roar is more narratively interesting in that it's something you actively use rather than a passive bonus, and it creates a moment of team interaction that is effectively a rallying cry, calling one's allies to charge into the fray. So from a game design standpoint, I truly think the new Kobold is better because of the way it interacts with the game as a system, as as a way of facilitating narrative.
That said. OG Kobold is fine. We've had it for a long time, and while it facilitates some builds, none of them are crazy amazing OP BS. 5E is amazingly resilient to truly broken builds.
I think these two can co-exist, but as they transition toward 6E, I don't expect to see OG Kobold being used in the design space. Something you see a lot with newer race options isn't so much the removal of negatives as a shift toward making your race an *active* part of your character rather than just a set of passive bonuses. Races like my personal favorite: Goblin, have components that are an active part of your experience. "Because I'm a goblin, I can slip under the giant's club and GTFO without taking an attack of opportunity." "As the rogue's blade finds purchase, the Goliath looks down, more annoyed than hurt." "The villain laughs as the ground cracks, an endless chasm forming between him and the party, but they forgot one thing.... BUNNY!" And I think these active abilities are key in making your race feel unique and satisfying moreso than the passive bonuses like Poison Resistance or perception proficiency. I do disagree with removing certain negatives, because I think they can be flavorful, but if they go away entirely in 6E, I think that's still fine.
I agree about Pack Tactics. It's a GREAT ability for monsters because it's fairly easy to manage (unless you're talking really big hordes of foes, then it is a PITA). The DM shouldn't have to run complicated buff chains to make monsters feel threatening.
Penalties have to bite a lot harder than benefits in general. Given how easy it is for the kobold to gain advantage in melee, much of the time even in sunlight, the kobold is simply attacking... at parity with everyone else. It also doesn't stack with anything, meaning that buff builds don't really help either.
I didn't like any of the kobold options so I made a homebrew version that removes the grovel ability (either all races should be able to do that or none, because nothing about kobolds logically makes grovelling more effective) and adds some mobility options instead (situational, many of them rely on not carrying much weight, one relies on having your hands free so you can run on all fours). Didn't touch Pack Tactics because I didn't realize quite how strong it really is, and also because I just don't like being at the mercy of the dice as much. Might have to adjust things a little, like make a lesser version of Pack Tactics or something. I dunno, I just really like the idea of kobolds being instinctually good at team work in a fight, because that's actually a believable thing to be genetic in nature, unlike _grovelling._
@@theuncalledfor Well, they did change the name of Grovel to Draconic Roar for the new version of Kobold, but it has the same effect.
@@electronsympathy
Yeah but I don't like that either because it has similar issues, and also it leans too hard into the dragon heritage for just a regular kobold for my tastes.
I feel that this is an overall negative direction for the game to move. By trying to remove negative associations tied to certain fantasy races, it reinforces the idea that the differences between a dwarf and halfling are parallel to differences between real people of different ethnic backgrounds. It also leads to dwarves and elves and halflings all collapsing into just being vaguely humanoid things rather than having any actual reason to exist narrative-wise. If all these fantasy peoples are basically humans, why not just run a setting with just humans?
Lifespan, mainly. But even that's flimsy
THANK YOU, i've been telling people of this problem all over
It is specially bad when you consider some racial profficiencies that are obviously biological can now be exchanged (like perception for elves or tabaxi)
Alternatively, they could make those groups more exotic and alien. I do make dwarves literally rocks precisely because I feel normal dwarves are too similar to humans not to be considered human (in roll, not mechanically).
I have your back. I've been saying; since I bought the 5e PHB; that WotC is catering to; and trying to placate; a handful of people who shouldn't be playing D&D, if they're coming from a place where everything is a metaphor for reality, and they want to blame magical math rocks used to improvise a fairy tale about Dwarves and Elves and Gnomes and Halflings and Dragons, for the guy who makes their job a hostile work environment.
I've been playing this game on & off since 1980, when all of the races' attributes were set using humans as the baseline. Hardier than a human? +1 to CON. But even your females have beards? -1 to CHA. And even then; and maybe we were outliers as 12 year-old paragons of virtue (unlikely); we didn't read any real world connotations into it. We'd all read Tolkein, and got that the basis of D&D was that everyone was different, had different strengths and weaknesses, and it was our job to pull together, use everyone's strengths, and be the plucky band of little guys who beat the giants and dragons.
I get that everyone doesn't get a fair shake in the real world. I really, really do. But WotC doesn't need to take it on themselves to act as though that's party the fault of D&D.
Honestly - and I’m not being sarcastic here - I think the removal of negative traits is kind of a problem when you think of it in terms of differently abled people. The problem is that it’s tied to this idea of race - which is a problem - but sometimes there really are people with different abilities and disabilities. Maybe D&D needs to bite the bullet and go with more of a disad/kit system where you select sets of physical or cultural advantages and disadvantages without always tying them directly to some kind of genetic determinism. Maybe some humans learn pack tactics and hate sunlight. Maybe they’re part kobold, maybe not. I dunno.
I feel like they should've made two subraces for the kobolds, the more draconic lineage, and the underground lineage. The new kobold could be one subrace and old kobold could be the other, so that both are seen by dms as equally balanced and playable.
subraces do not really exist anymore, for things like Sea Elves they are just presented as different Lineages entirely with a small note mentioning that they are still treated as elves / dwarves / etc for the purpose of being targeted by spells and other effects
Really hoping they don't do the replacement. I despise the blanket removal of Sunlight sensitivity. It strips so much flavour from Duergar alone, let alone the other races. The pre-MotM races are always going to be on my table.
I think sunlight sensitivity is just written in a way that's too crippling when it is actually kept track of consistently. As someone who has played drow characters a few times, never being able to get advantage outdoors during the day is horrendous in many types of campaigns.
@@ArvelDreth I had a dm that kept track of the sun so we just chose to travel at night and the problem solved itself.
@@SodaPopBarbecue Care to explain how are dwarves antisemetic? Most dwarf lore is a straight rip off from tolkien lore which is the farthest you can be from antisemetic and tolkien dwarfs are heavily inspired by norse mythology who never interacted with jews. It seems like you are just projecting your views into a fantasy race that was never meant to be interpreted that way.
@@SodaPopBarbecue "If I am to understand…
…that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people.
My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject-which should be sufficient.
I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army.
I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride."
This is what Tolkien said to literal Nazis when they asked if he was Jewish. He was not antisemitic. Nothing about the dwarf connect them to Jewish people other than jews being stereotyped as short and greedy. Clearly if a fictional race shares two traits with the stereotype of one race, then it must be an allegory for that race and definitely not the several myths that the fantasy race was based on. Also, you say this like dwarves are meant to dehumanize Jews, yet most people love Dwarves because of how awesome they are so how does that dehumanize Jews?
@@SodaPopBarbecue Ohh i see so you are just insane. Gygax dwarves are just tolkien dwarves for dummies. Tolkien dwarves are definitely not anti-Semitic, I believe tolkien agreed that dwarves shared some traits with jews but this was mostly referring to khuzdul rather than the race as a whole. You just saw short and likes gold and immediately associated them with semitic people while ignoring all the positive traits associated with dwarves or how their culture severely differentiates the dwarves from most semitic people.
I been playing D&D 30yrs now through the ups and downs. I hope this pans out for the community in the long run. House rules always win out but I would prefer that the company sees they community push back and takes note. Fingers Krossed.
Now, in Fizban's, the redone Dragonborn has a blurb about it being a variant before it gets into the stats. I WOULD hold out hope if it weren't for the fact that several of the included races in this new book are exactly the same as the old ones, so it's really hard to say if they're just variants.
When playing in a game I DM, I leave anything open, even untapped/broken/forgotten UA. You wanna play the "old" Kobold in my campaign, sure! Wanna play a UA subclass that sounded fun, let's do it! I don't care what you want to play as long as you're having fun. I can work around it!
When you try to appeal to everyone you appeal to no one.
It becomes watered down, forgettable, and then you die.
Your identity is what keeps you alive... and DnD is having a Paper Mario crisis.
Who are they even trying to appeal to here?!? Who asked for this?
no, Paper Mario has a different issue in that the developers have stated that they'd rather try new gimmiks each game than go back to the old stuff that they know works. It's now basically a game that the developers are basically making for themselves and themselves only.
I'll miss Sunlight Sensitivity. It's one of the very few race features that actually changes how you play. And what if it's a negative? It's a roleplaying game. If you want to play a role of a kobold, you need to embrace all features - both positive and negative. "But I don't want to be handicapped when no one else is!" - don't play Kobold then. It's not a race for you.
Now WotC is on the path to making every race basically the same. Racial Stats, gone, Allegiance, gone, now goes Sunlight Sensitivity. The worst thing about this is that I know we won't get anything interesting like this in the future, and that really sucks. Hell, some people are talking about removing attributes at all, can you imagine that?
They already removed attribute bonuses, now everyone gets +2 +1/ +1 +1 +1, everyone is now a gray blob, thanks Twitter, you are ruining another good thing, we should jump ship to Pathfinder, their race system is better anyway, you can get a bônus to whatever to reflect the choices of your character, but there are still natural bonuses and deficits, like a orc gaining strength.
I get where the 5e design team was coming from with sunlight sensitivity but
A: Kobolds having sunlight sensitivity is new to 5e, it's not even a legacy feature like it is for drow
B: Kobolds explicitly live in tropical environments, are warm blooded and spend less time underground than dwarves
C: Sunlight sensitivity is WAY too punishing in 5e compared to previous editions, it is an effective *-5* compared to earlier edition -1s
@@finderfinder4290 I think Sunlight Sensitivity is also seriously annoying for the DM, especially when it's full disadvantage. It might be cool for some groups, but I think it's likely to be widely ignored, worked around, etc., or often feel very punitive when it shows up. I'd be all for doing something like making saves versus light spells or the like harder (think the opposite of Charm resistance for Fey Blooded) but the full on disad for sunlight, no thanks.
I am not a fan of Darkvision, either, which I frequently find irritating to apply fairly, not to say the fact that many races seem to be missing it for no good reason (e.g., Minotaurs! Dragonborn!) or have it for no good reason (many of the surface-dwelling races).
@@crimfan I've not played in games with sunlight sensitive characters, so grain of salt here.
I like the idea of negative traits (when thought out properly), because it allows you to give those characters powerful positive traits (and let's be real, pack tactics is mechanically very strong).
Removing negative traits means the positive traits have to be toned down and can lead to 'samey' feeling characters mechanically. (Wotc also seem to not think flight is powerful as its becoming more common, soon it'll be like darkvision and half the playable races will have it).
(Not a fan of some of the changes, can you tell...)
@@jiminkpen9750 I don’t mind negative traits and agree that they can help differentiate characters, but too strong positive or too strong negative can, IMO, invite nerfing or ignoring. This is especially true when the benefit is as essentially valuable as Pack Tactics and as situational as Sunlight Sensitivity, which is one of those traits that is just either “meh, who cares?”-say in a game with very rare outdoor encounters-or totally debilitating, depending on the game.
I mean, the change will effect officially licensed games, yes. But like, I've never cared to bother with the 'update' regarding Healing Spirit and still use it as it was originally created in Xanathar's for the game I DM; I've worked out my own house rules with my players regarding possible exploits around it. They can make official changes and effect the official gameplay, which is limited to Adventurer Leagues and such, but there's nothing stopping you from using whatever rules you want in your own games eventually. I know you mention this so I'm sounding redundant here. My point more is that once I have a rule book or a few to work off of and options I like in expansions, I don't personally give a damn what WoTC releases as official.
Ehhh, I don't think it wouldn't be unwise for DMs to allow either of Kobolds. The old kobold would be for people who like the Pack Tactics and Sunlight Sensitivity part, while the new kobold would be allowed for people who don't want to go with that line.
But I heavily disagree with Kobold being a well designed ancestry, in fact, I would say that they are one of the worst designs WotC has done back in the day. Sunlight Sensitivity is a nice limit for their powers, and it allows a lot of thinking outside of the box when it matters. But in a system where most fights are either indoors, on dungeons or in the night, Kobolds would have a very easy way to always keep on advantage with Pack Tactics, even easier than flanking (which is an optional rule that quickly is being replaced with a +2 to hit instead of full advantage). Compared that with the other ancestries that have Sunlight Sensitivity, Drows and Duregars, the kobold was able to be considered a really powerful race even with the disadvantage of Sunlight Sensitivity because of how powerful Pack Tactics is as an ability, and that is compared to abilities that are on the upper tier of power like Faerie Fire and Darkness for Drows and Resiliance, Enlarge/Reduce and Invisibility from Duergars. The fact that, wven with such a heavy toll on their backs, a Kobold can still be insanely broken on a table with the right optimization due to just one ability makes it, in my opinion, a bad design.
I will agree on one thing with you however: Even thought I think the new Kobold is well designed, they feel... homogeneous. As much as I complain about design, the old kobold was something unique. On the 30% of situations where Sunlight sensitivity come up, it is a blast to see DM and player working together to see how he's going to handle things, how to avoid the problem and let Kobold run loose. But without sunlight sensitivity, as much of a quality of life it is, it makes the ancestry feel very similar to other ancestries. While it is cool to see Kobolds having the three options, it's a fact that other ancestries have the same options fixed on them. And that is something from Monsters of the Multiverse that makes me worried about the state of 5e in general: ancestries with so flavorful disadvantages being shafted over a straightfoward way of thinking. Kenkus got the same treatment, with an amazing ability to pop advantage on any skill you have before you roll, but the loss of Speech Impediment makes the Kenku just a normal ancestry for skill monkeys, just a stat in the middle of the rest.
I will allow both kobolds on my games, as well as Kenkus, Genasi, Gnomes and Aasimars. But that's my table, not the design direction of 5e.
I kinda feel like it is a question of what balance even is. Like drow a Duggar could be argued to be unnecessarily weak races since they get one of the few racial abilities that actually penalize you as compared to the kobold who is arguably better balanced by making it a tradeoff for the fantastic pack tactics ability.
Man that triple negative was confusing to read. So you're saying that it would be UNWISE for DM's to allow both?
@@majickman I meant it would be fine for both. Sorry about that.
Why allow both? I don't get it... I'm a 3.5 DM and if one of my players approached me saying "I want to play a dwarf, but instead of the dwarf racials I want to be proficient with elven weapons, be able to detect secret doors, replace sleep for ancient meditation, have a +2 against enchantment, etc etc" I would say to them "you want to play an elf, not a dwarf. We can talk about it, but if appearance is all you're after, you don't need to be a dwarf at all"... For me, this new kobold is just a smol dragonborn but worse, it's just "a skin" not a race...
@@LokiTheAnsuz The example you gave is fairly different than what I purpose. In your example, your player asked to be a Dwarf with the Elf statistics. On this, both are named Kobold, no mattering how "the new one is just a reskin". And since the system calls it kobold, then if a player wants to play a Kobold, then he can choose between the two options. It's similar to how Dragonborns and Orcs from Wildemount or Eberron have different ancestry abilities, and I let the player choose between one of them.
It's fascinating to see the discourse that is currently taking place. Some of the critiques are really good, like yes, if you look at the flavor of kobolds, the new one stresses the draconic connection but lessens the collective and underground portions of the race. It makes sense in terms of balance, because the kobold was one of THE min-maxer/optimization races and I thus get that rebalancing it was necessary. Still, the rework could've gone better.
Meanwhile certain complaints are just dumb tbh. The limitation to speech for kenku can still be achieved through flavor and that limitation was literally a 5e addition to the race, and removing it from the race means that DMs can now decide to have it in there or not (if they are aware and let's be real here, the 5e kenku is iconic enough that people won't forget that aspect of it).
Ability score increases and suggested alignments being gone is no deal whatsoever. In fact the one argument people bring up, that being different physical strength levels, is already implemented. Both the Powerful Build feature (and its variants) and the DMG rule on monster damage (Creating a Monster - Step 11. Damage - "A creature has disadvantage on attack rolls with a weapon that is sized for a larger attacker. You can rule that a weapon sized for an attacker two or more sizes larger is too big for the creature to use at all.") cover that really well. No need to pidgeonhole races into certain classes by assigning mandatory ASIs and suggested alignment didn't kill character alignment!
I do find some of the small changes from the leaks to be weird, though it's mostly the implications of how subraces seem to go the way of the dodo and how that affects races like duergar and the various types of elves long-term, as well as the specifics of the Earth Genasi and to a lesser extent the kobold (again, s. above) and lizardfolk (rip Cunning Artisan, I hope DMs will use that feature as a reference for doing survival crafting in the future), but over all it does 1) improve balance (I swear DnD players only seem to care about balance when a subclass they like is too weak when compared to other subclasses of that class...) and 2) it does remove a certain amount of bad taste...
I agree. The new kobold has more "negative" than the old one. I can't believe they're printing it in the same book as the Genasi rework. The new kobold feels like old genasi: a few unimpactful features that sort of satisfy the flavor of the race, but are balanced in a vacuum.
kobolds we're my first introduction to dnd and instantly fell in love with the character as I felt unique and powerful in my own ways where as the paladins or orcs we're constantly stomping o my opponent I was chilling with pact tactics making sure they couldnt be contained by helping to take out whoever they were fighting. if not for pack tactics my first session of combat in dnd would've ended in a tpk as the party was ambushed and our only healer had 2 hp.
I just want the Urd back! (Winged Kobold)
"Are you going to die?" Oh lord if WotC tries to errata you out of existence I promise to defend you
I'd love to have both options for a variety of Kobolds.
Constraints breed creativity.
I think some races need negatives. The UA plasmoid race can literally fit through any opening it pleases. Of course, I can always say “oh man, sorry dude, that hole .9 inches, not a full one. Can’t fit through”. But I feel like it’d be easy to make them unable to go through without removing their current equipment, or my idea: temperature sensitivity. My idea is that in certain extreme temperatures, the plasmoid begins to break down, since from my understanding, they’re just big cells. If a room is too hot, their insides begin to burn, dealing 1d4 damage at the end of their turn. In cold, their bodies begin to freeze up, making them gain disadvantage on every dexterity roll. Things like that make players think about how to deal with those disadvantages. If it’s too hot, cast a spell, or maybe even drink some water. If it’s too cold, make a fire, cast a spell, or find
Honestly, Pack Tactics is just a really good ability. It's free advantage as long as there's literally any frontliner in the party, which is damn near all the time because D&D is built around having a party. It's arguably not even balanced by Sunlight Sensitivity, seeing as how NPC Kobolds are notorious for picking their own fights, and PC Kobolds are likely only fighting indoors, underground, or at night, and any number of (dis)advantage cancel out to a straight roll. It's slightly more "fair" as an enemy NPC because fighting several isn't terribly out of the player's favor. Kobolds have low HP so they need traps and Pack Tactics to have a chance to even do damage at all before they get deleted by Fireball or a Fighter-dip's Action Surge. When it comes with all the survivability of a PC, all of the armor, spellcasting, positional strategies, what-have-you, Pack Tactics gets a lot more mileage because the Kobold can stay alive long enough to keep gaining Advantage from it from any range. Adding a racial + to godstat DEX and darkvision, the only thing keeping it back is being Small, which basically only means they can't Grapple Large creatures or use Heavy weapons.
Now, as for Draconic Cry, it's literally just Grovel, Cower, and Beg with a different name that uses a Bonus Action instead of an Action. More of WotC paying lip-service to not making PCs have downsides, even ones that are just flavor. I'm also noticing that the traits end at K, which means there's a non-zero chance that Pact Tactics or Sunlight Sensitivity could be on the next page. Not likely, but possible.
I'll be honest, I like the new kobold, my favorite cantrip isn't really accessible to my favorite classes (Ray of frost) and still being small is awesome for beastmaster. I do not like the idea of it being the "new" kobold. It should be a variant that exists beside the original kobold, like surface kobold and underdark kobold or something
You know I don’t always agree with you, but your points are well-argued, and I asked a similar thing in UA. Fingers crossed for variance!
I play a Kobold moon druid. Your senses become that of the beast you shape shifted into, yet still retain mental statistics and features. That means pact tactics without sunlight sensitivity!
Volo's Kobold will always have a place at my table. I look forward to seeing people play with Mort's Kobold. And maybe I'll be lucky enough to host a table with both types
Leave it to wizards to actively make their games worse lmao
I don’t think this change was prompted by a change in game design philosophy
My first thought is that I kinda think Pack Tactics just shouldn't be a player character feature. That's a lot of free advantage mostly for just existing. Unlimited abilities with a geometrical trigger rather than resource requirement are just really hard to balance around.
It's similar to what I don't like about Gloom Stalkers, but that's got a different dimension to it. Gloom Stalker gets unlimited free advantage, if it's dark and enemies are using darkvision. But if it gets out of hand, the DM has an easy option of having bright light. But then that's really unfun for the gloom stalker, who can't use what they built their character to do. When WotC made the ability based on something other than a resource, I think it just made things awkward.
I like them getting out of negative traits, but I guess I'm just curmudgeonly. I half think all the player race flying speeds should be overland flight.
Yeah pack tactics has always been kinda bs haha
Good luck on your exam! I don't think I ever heard what exam it is but if you're taking s month off I can only assume it's a big, important test.
Thanks for rephrasing the counter position is such an understanding way! A lot of the discourse around the recent direction has been really negative and seen through rose colored glasses.
This video is very cool! Thank you for voicing your thoughts and good luck on the exam!
I mean, they didn't errata the PHB Dragonborn when Wildemount and even Fizban's got released. It'd be pretty absurd to totally change Dragonborn and have them, a PHB 1.0 race, still exist simultaneously but Kobolds, an optional monster sourcebook race, be replaced entirely
… and they did it. They replaced the old Kobold entirely. It’s no longer available on DNDBeyond and no longer Adventure League legal. RIP Pack Tactics.
I'm not happy with them removing negative traits. I love making characters that differ from the norm, especially in ways that make them less optimal than the standard choices, then explore ways of making it work, having them overcome those hurdles, and giving them a backstory that justifies it.
Well at least on a stats perspective every race gets whatever stat bonuses they want now so it's not like you couldn't play a melee kobold for the 10ft cry but yeah new kobold is just worse in every way.
I personally like negative traits for races in 5e. I think a better solution for wanting to get rid of them is, as you said, make so there is a variant that keeps the old as an option.
I like it because its rare. At this point I could safely say that playing an elf, dwarf, gnome, halfling, and tiefling all feel interchangeable to me (by no means a bad thing) with stuff that is powerful, but feels more like something that I use as a feat. I find the human variant with its immediate choice of a feat, the kobold/drow with a requirement to play with the sun in mind, and lower int orc (before rework) made so it felt like if you picked an int based class you had to work against something you had been born with. I never had an issue with the removal of the aliment requirements for certain races, largely because I disagreed with them being there in the first place (it makes no sense in lore, biologically, or socially take your pick for why in Forgotten Realms).
I don't want to go back to the days of 3.5 where the negatives with several of the playable races got so extreme that you got forced into playing them a way you may not want to. I mostly just want at least a few options that give the players the opportunity to maybe play something that you need to think about how you are doing something. One of my favorite content peaces that came out when I actually read it was the rules for disabilities. It opened a whole world of characters with amazing character concepts and mechanics as new options provided in system.
For more raw speculation:
I think this happened to the kobold because a lot of people want to play one, but then get scared off by having a drawback. Its kinda like why everyone says ranger is weak without playing one. Ranger has a higher learning curve and requires in system knowledge, especially for the beast master (the one everyone who thinks about playing a ranger in a non mechanical way wants to play). Without that system knowledge its easy to end up playing something that is much weaker then what the game allows you to pull off.
I have no idea why but Contrarian Gator is always super entertaining.
Sorry if you're having trouble with that exam. I wish you luck on your new attempt.
honestly I think that wizards should've made it do -1s from races are a thing you can choose to have and in exchange you can put a +1 on one of two stats
so orcs could have a -1 to intelligence in exchange for +1 strength or constitution; or just not have the -1
and kobolds -1 to stremgth in exchange for +1 to intelligence or dexterity, or not
and so on
I still have my classic Kobold Raknak Farseeker (Battle Smith) worked around the Sunlight Sensitivity by strapping welding goggles to the little guy. Also made sense with his class and when I found out how busted it was to ride the Steel Defender, I became incredibly infuriating for my DM to deal with. The -2 to Str didn't even phase me because I relied on my Int anyway for my attacks and I hit like a truck.
I’d say my opinion for a change would be this:
Pack tactics: kobold lore has been industrialist Kobbo, working as if a hive mind to any outsider, since the classical era. This makes sense for them.
Sunlight sensitivity: they were BUILT for the caves, where sunlight is nonexistent. This makes sense for them.
Darkvision II: the one part of their lore that has stayed around since they were devised is that they are and are for the caves, where light is a valuable resource. Being able to see in obscene darkness not only makes sense, but justifies the origin of their sunlight sensitivity. They are not only comfortable in caverns, but even more so than above ground.
Removed grovel, cower, beg, replaced with tunnelborn: as an action, you can use mould earth or stoneshape once per short or long rest. You also gain proficiency with masonry equipment, or expertise if proficiency is already available due to class or background. This is my weakest argument, but I find it fitting.
2:48 I… may have convinced my most recent party’s DM that it lasts a minute…at a range of 30’… with 15 party members… it was a very broken support and much appreciated by anyone who might have miffed during that time. Overall, it’s first use had turned 10 misses to hits. If it lasted longer, I would respectfully disagree, but as it is, GCB or draconic cry* is less powerful than an offensive play. Especially when pack tactics is in play.
Communist kobolds? What?
@@bloodyhell8201 was curious to see how long before someone caught it
Turns out not very
I am so sad that this is the last video before going on a break. My Kobold the companions will be safe at our table regardless of what the book says
Spicy Hot Take: WoTC has basically stopped caring about any 'mechanical' aspects of D&D since the success of Critical Role and other channels like them. At this point, they are banking on the free publicity from these shows for book sales, and don't give a rat's ass about maintaining the 'game' aspect of the ttRPG. So long as the theater nerd "roleplaying" crowd is sated with the content that's published, WoTC will gladly let the mechanics languish and depreciate in result. They don't care about D&D as a game anymore, only as an improv theater opportunity to stream online and promote overpriced books.
I'm torn between the fact that I'm almost the exact person this comment is criticizing and the fact that my favorite kind of characters to play are completely nonmagical humans, the most mechanically-spurned (and most looked-down-upon by the 'theater nerds') character type in the entire game.
Ima just leave my response as a lukewarm 'yep'.
@@Vooman I don't hate the player if that's your play-style. I'm a big fan of improv in theater and comedy, tbh. But I hate the company itself for selling out to the "lowest common detonator" when it comes to marketing and maintaining a product. My criticism is more about the company itself, rather than how people 'play the game'.
And yes, homebrew exists. But relying so much on homebrew to fill in the mechanical deficits of 5e adds to the burden of work for DM's to maintain, plus it has the disadvantage (no pun intended) of it not being universal with other tables that might not want to adopt said solutions. It just feels scummy for WoTC to print $50 books with the bare minimum of content in terms of mechanics and story, and you're left with having to jury rig said content into a campaign anyway.
@@Magus_Union Yeah, I know what you mean. The biggest tragedy is that even 3.5e takes coaxing to get others to play anymore if we ever wanted to try something different or become the "embrace tradition" meme, let alone entirely different rulesets.
Good luck on your exam!
I IMMEDIATELY thought of this channel when I saw the leak. Poor PT!!!
Hmmm i wonder what PACK TACTICS thinks of the new kobold that doesnt have PACK TACTICS? Good video brotha.
I heavily disagree that this is a good direction for the company to lure in new players like this. The people they are now trying catering to are not the ones, who will ever play this game, because they hate racial differences, weaknesses etc. Those people literally dont care about this game. Character flaws and strenghts are what makes roleplaying interesting and unique. I want to be someone that im not, in a world that is different from reality. I want different fantasy races to matter (fk variant human and custom lineage, this stuff aint rolling at my table). Being able to cherry pick everything is boring. A memorable high moment is just satisfying when there are meaningful low-moments and actual threats in play as well.
if they dont care about the game than how do they know about any of this?
@@12halo3
One does not have to care to know.
And one doesn't have to know to attack.
I Don't know you, and I could easily call you stupid.
I won't, that's just an example.
@@12halo3 Stan: you don’t know anything about Christianity!
Cartman: I know enough to exploit it.
GL on the exam!
Being that the new stats for the kobold is in the Multiverse book, I just think of them as a different version of the Kobold race stated in Volo. That's just means that now there are two different races of Kobold. Same thing with the Kenku as they may have come from a universe where they weren't cursed with the speech impediment. Nerd Immersion stated that that might be good for players who have difficulty using used phrases that the Kenku would've used otherwise. Other than that, the Flight curse is still active.
You need a design which captures the essence of the race. For kobolds that is working stronger in groups and being tricksy rather than powerful. I feel the old mechanics did this rather better than the new ones. Pack tactics could have been reined in by making it a thing they could activate for a period of time (maybe an hour, maybe 10 minutes) PB times per long rest,. Remove sunlight sensitivity and renamed grovel,cower and beg as destracting cunning. The result would still be a kobold not some crazy roaring beast with a tail attack like the UA thing.
Removing the - to stats was a good move imo, as I feel like that deviated too much from core of 5e race design, but this change seems... excessive and unnecessary.
The attribute penalty kinda shoehorned the race in specific roles, which I don't like in regards to 5e, but Sunlight Sensitivity and Pack Tactics affects every role, which can open up new and interesting play styles. It just adds to the experience rather than subtract from it, even if Sunlight Sensitivity in technically a negative trait.
My first Character (well... close enough, the first died fast) was a Kobold. Sunlight sensitivity almost never came into play because 1 I was a Moon Druid so I was almost never in kobold form and 2. Its called DUNGEON and Dragon not SUNNY PLAIN and Dragon. Loved all of the abilities the kobold came with, let's hope the errata never comes up
Solid insight, thanks for the hard work👌
Good luck on the test, man. I know how stressful it can be to re take.
Advantage on an attack is the equivalent to a +5 for purposes of hitting and it nearly doubles your chance to crit. Pack tactics is such a strong mechanic that moderately experienced DMs know to go easy on encounters involving creatures with it otherwise a TPK is going to happen. Kobold was so over-tuned that it caught the attention of optimizers such as yourself. I don't think that this is what races are supposed to be. And don't get me wrong, Kobold wasn't probably the most game breaking race. The flying races, and races that give armor proficiencies, and of course halfling luck can also heavily mess with balance.
But again, your race choice should be flavorful, it should make one character feel different than another even if they are the same class. But, it shouldn't give you a substantial advantage over another race selection. It should be an aspect that helps a player write their backstory and feel unique and give fuel to the DM to shape the story around that character. But picking a certain race shouldn't feel like a powerplay.
Personally, I think they need to take a hard look at all the "optimal" race choices and really give them the kobold treatment. Restrict flight from flying races. Nerf the shield spell to make armor proficiencies less powerful on classes that have access to it. Limit the uses of halfling luck.
On the other end, they also need to take a look at races that don't add flavor or excitement to characters... There are several of them where the race basically reads, "They are different looking humanoids and here is a bad attempt at making them special." Gith are different looking humanoids that can cast a bad spell once a day. Vedalken are different looking humanoids that are marginally better at one specific skill than the average person, but still way worse at that thing than the rogue or bard.
Quick note, Advantage is closer to +3 (slightly higher but let's not get into decimals). The +5 that the rules give for passive checks that would otherwise have advantage is because WotC is bad at math and can't figure out medians.
@@renatocorvaro6924 The value changes based on how likely or unlikely you are to succeed. At around a 50% success rate (DC11 with no bonuses), it is worth +5. You're right that the value drops as you go either way (towards 5% or 95%). But with most optimized builds going for sharpshooter or great weapon master, your hit chance is probably not getting too much higher than 60% or so, so the value of advantage is going to be high at tier 1 and remain high at higher tiers.
BTW, the math on this is super easy. If you need an 11 to hit. Numbers 1-10 miss (50%). With a +5, now only the numbers 1-5 miss (25% of the numbers or 75% chance to hit). Rolling two dice, with 50% chance to hit and keeping the better is the same as flipping two coins. There are 3 outcomes. 25% both go unfavorable. 50% that one is favorable and the other is not. 25% that both are favorable. Again, 25% chance to miss. Advantage is thus exactly statistically equivalent to a +5 when there is a 50% chance to hit.
Good luck with the exams!!
With ret-coning orcs to just not have the negative... I can see that working, despite there now being 3 versions of orcs. (I like to think of them as variants)
With Kobolds having a straight up trade off, I feel at the very least both should be valid variants. Restricted in Adventures League for formalities, perhaps, (much like the artificer) but both still valid materials. If an errata is made, just the removal of the negatives of the original without updating it to just being only one kind of Kobold.
I think that would be the most practical call.
Time to play a CR 1/4 kobold inventor expert using the sidekick rules.
The only thing that needed a change was the Grovel Cower Beg. If they kept the Kobold how it was and just changed the GCB to Draconic Cry (which just makes it a bonus action instead of an action), then it would’ve been totally fine.
Honestly I hope they don’t remove pack tactics or sunlight sensitivity. I like being a Kobold and having to work around those. I literally have a parasol on mine and (once working with the dm) got to use guiding bolt without disadvantage by standing in the shadow behind our Goliath
Great job on the video for such a sad topic for all kobold players.
apolgy for bad common
Where were you when pack tactics die?
i was at house eating dorito when message spell ring
"kobold is kill"
"no"
I played a Kobold Barbarian Druid, yep Bear Totem Warrior and Moon Druid. I loved it. I do honestly see why they remove the negative ability scores and sunlight sensitivity. It's just easier for new play to remove them. Sadly no sunlight sensitivity equals no pack tactics.
I still think pact tactics was only taken away cuz it was too hard to balance in some settings. I can see it being a nightmare and lead to combats being limited in the dark resulting it to being nearly impossible to balance. either combats happen at night or in buildings and cave then you have a character that basically gets advantage on every attack. or you have battles that fight outside in the day and have the creative ways to bypass the daylight sensitivity. I think it really messes with some of the balance and can destroy some creative ideas that wizards would have had to make with pact tactics in mind. otherwise it could lead to a situation where min-maxers had kobolds everywhere. and when you enter modules that take place entirely off of the surface like "into the Abyss" then you dont have to be creative even and every encounter gave you advantage on every attack at all times. sadly, I think the removal of the ability was needed but I think having pact tactics only working one attack per turn rather than every attack fixes the issue.
I do agree tho that the features should really be better than what they are no to compensate
I can't believe the changes to racial ability scores have poisoned the well for so many people. Penalties were dumb, especially the ones that said orcs are default dumber than everyone else full stop. It didn't mean orc wizards were rare, it meant that I never saw anyone play an orc wizard. I know, surprising that nobody wanted to pick a class just to be worse at it than if they had picked literally any other race.
I personally think the kobold changes are kind of boring. I get the whole making them more dragonlike, whatever, but they never struck me as inherently brave when the monster versions are always hiding in wait for their traps to mess up a party so they can swoop in for the finishing blow. Pack tactics is super busted, don't get me wrong, but if you're playing a kobold and you've got a clever work around for the sunlight sensitivity go for it. I don't really care about balance as a dm so long as it never feels like one player is doing all of the work all of the time.
Kobolds had no identity besides pack tactics, now they have flavor which was drastically missing. TBH in my games sunlight sensitivity was so much not an issue to get around and avoid (unless the dm strictly wanted to punish you) that it was for most encounters irrelevant. Having it printed only served to scare those who never played kobolds before.
I just don't understand why in a game built on bounded accuracy that they would have so few negative modifiers. We need more -1s, tbh.
Here is the way I see it, if your a kobold in the sun you just need to attack the same target as the your front line which you should be doing already, and allowing you to get a neutral roll. However, if you aren't in the sun your, and do the same thing you always have advantage on every attack roll which is really really powerful. Additionally, if your are in the sun without an ally for some reason there are various spells, and abilities which will allow you to bypass the sunlight sensitivity including darkness, name any summoning spells, familiar help actions, and so much more. Realistically, as a kolbold character you should never be attacking at disadvantage, but be getting attacks at advantage extremely often.
I do have a flavor argument against that kobold. It's way too draconic, kobolds are miner monsters, and they should feel like underground mischeavous creatures who make traps. I get why they were made draconic in worlds where goblins are a thing, but my kobolds aren't even reptilian (I decided to give them more mammalian features to diferenciate from goblins). So how do I introduce such a dragon-based kobold as the stats for the ones in my world?
Not only that but fans of kobolds in other media now don't have an equivalent in D&D. Al least not at first glance and new players are usually not as aware that flavor is free.
I predict that almost no one will play this version of the kobold, as they are too similar to dragonborn and the new dragonborn are good so why play this instead? Since it lacks the subterranean, mining, underdog and trap thing that make kobolds, well, kobolds it's basically a small-sized dragonborn so I assume that from now on (if the old kobold is removed) PC kobolds are likely to not be mechanically kobolds since there is a huge disconect between mechanics and flavor.
I forget when kobolds became little draconic guys, but they're not in the original game, or weren't supposed to be. They were the least members of the Goblin Great Chain of Being, even below goblins in power.
I don't have a 1E Monster Manual to look at the picture, though, so maybe it was concept art that did it.
@@crimfan I think they became draconic in thrid edition because they were too similar to goblins. I don't know the exact thing because I'm not too familiar with the old edition kobolds. I do know that kobolds originated as myth among miners in low oxygen enviroment which hallucinated and saw small men (sometimes with animalistic or strange feathures) to which they blamed accident in mines. Hence the traps and mining enfasis in all kind of kobolds outside D&D5e. I personally love this and would like something akin to a less reptilian kobold (the reptilian part is a cool kirk to have in specific worlds to give it a spin, but should not be mandatory at all).
I am looking forward to your new channel name; "Draconic Cry" :,,)
I have to admit I'm really excited to run samurai kobolds.
There are races in 5E with subraces. Kobolds can be one of them. Subrace 1 - Old'bold. Subrace 2 - New'bold.
the cool thing about playing a game like dnd is your can just...keep pack tactics if your group wants too. kinda amazing, table top games. it's almost like, uh, it takes place in your head and everything is subject to change by the DM. that way you can have fun and not dedicate so much energy and effort into being slighted or offended by such a small thing you can 100% control
I don’t think the removal of Sunlight Sensitivity has anything to do with politics- I’d be surprised to learn there was any sort of racial stereotype regarding nightvision, unlike with orcs and goblins where the history is long and ugly. A lot of times, these sorts of moves that could be seen as “political” are really just better for the game overall, such as allowing races to allocate their stats anywhere; the best part about 5e is that features intended for one use can be applied very effectively for other uses (as your channel often highlights), and that sort of thing just gives players more of that.
I have to imagine that the Kobold change comes more from a shift in design philosophy. Someone down in the comments mentioned that Pack Tactics and Sunlight Sensitivity undermines the use of advantage and disadvantage in more “conventional” battle strategy, and I feel like that’s closer to the real cause of this. A desire to streamline racial features somewhat could also be a driving factor; you sometimes see complaints thrown around about level-based racial features bogging down the game mechanically, and I feel that from a design perspective that isn’t that much more “orthodox” than PT/SS. 5e in general is pretty streamlined as is.
I personally feel that weird races that change the fundamental nature of the game are a good thing and should be encouraged. But those sorts of races are inherently risky from a design and balance standpoint, so a move away from them is also understandable. That sort of thing is probably best reserved for the realm of homebrew anyway, in the same sort of design space as Large races… but also, having a book or something set aside for “restricted” content like that, would be really cool as long as it were labeled accordingly. Put a warning on the front page saying, “this isn’t legal for Adventurer’s League! Yadda yadda!” Something like that.
Kobolds seem like WotC's dirty little secret that you can actually play the squirmy, cowardly, yapping dragon Jawas players historically have only turned into exp juice. The reason we play kobolds is that the unorthodox mechanics of the race pair well with the odd pick, and separates kobolds from goblins, halflings, and gnomes very distinctly, that experienced players can grab and use.
Side note: Kobolds really did get shortchanged in Fizban's Dragon book not being able to have a dragon turn you into one, I feel like if dragonborn is on the table for a wyrmling to turn you into, they can do a kobold.
Pack Tactics is must have for Kobolds.
I was wondering what Takahata and his buddies were talking about when I watched their Oops all Kobolds video this morning. So I’m guessing pack tactics is officially gone since I just made a kobold yesterday and it wasn’t listed in my abilities or anything
The “other side” does not have a stronger argument, they have power. That’s the problem. A minority of players actually support these types of changes, yet they are the ones who somehow get to decide for everyone.
I think the developers should fully lean in to one of two design ethos:
1. Customise your character as you like, so x number of stats and pick your positive/negative traits from a list (ie 4 positive traits and one negative, or 3 positive traits for example)
2. Actually stick to the playable races having meaningful traits based on their physicality/mentality/setting/etc. Ie fixed stat bonuses/set minimums&maximums, specific traits. And if you wanted characters to feel unique let them pick a bonus traits from a list as appropriate.
I played a kobold rogue in the rime of the frost maiden, where the sun is basically nonexistent
Althought I can understand the desire to reach as many people as possible with your game product as a developer, I can't help but feel Wizard's of the Coast are moving towards removing a lot of classic Dnd flavour from dnd.
The Errata removing monster lore, making dnd races more cookie cutter and less unique, possibly doing away with alignment.
I think these things will be bad for the game over time, many will ask what is the point of playing X when it is no different than Y, and want their characters to be more mechanically unique. Even the ones scared by sunlight sensitivity will after playing enough games look for ways to make their characters more unique.
The Removal of any "problematic" lore will make any adventure turn into a staturday morning cartoon show, and a boring one at that since people usually remember the cartoons which respected the view enough to tackle such issues with some class.
As for Alginment, if they get rid of that too ontop of anymore creature lore, we might as well call 5e GURPS, cause it is just a generic base roleplaying system for people to use only for rules for their games, and not something for helping craft stories.
One thing that annoyed me in particular about wizards statement regarding the changes was the idea that they were doing in part because they know players like subverting expectations.... except, how can you subvert expectations when you take all the expectations out of the lore?
The lore is still there, is just that mechanics are not tied into it. In the recent alignment errata, for example, it still says that most Drow cities worship Lolth and that Lolth is evil, it's just not a racial feature because Drow can come from communities that don't worship Lolth (like those devoted to Eilistraee) or worlds where Lolth doesn't even exist.
Same for any other cultural feature really. They are being removed not because lore itself is being removed, but simply to allow players and tables to come up with their own flavor for PCs. Stonecunning makes sense for Dwarves that were born and raised in a stereotypical dwarven city but may not make sense for a Dwarf pirate or a Dwarf ranger that lives alone in a snowy forest or an urchin Dwarf that didn't have access to dwarven education, and so on. Even sunlight sensitivity kinda falls into this category, as PCs may now come up with a background where they simply weren't born in the Underdark or have been adventuring above ground for enough time to have grown accostumed to sunlight by now. And to kind of reinforce my point, enemy creatures in the Monsters of the Multiverse book still have sunlight sensitivity, because the lore is still there.
It also opens more possibilities for worldbuilding for DMs too, as you can now use the races in other contexts or flat out change their lore entirely more easily. I know some of these changes really benefit my HB world.
That's not to say I agree with EVERY change they made. I personally believe cultural features should still be available, but be optional and/or tied to background. Something like choosing a place of origin at character creation and getting an appropiate cultural feature could be really cool. Still, I personally think the reasoning behind the changes is solid.
hot take: alignment is a bad system anyway because a well written character isnt always easily definined by law/chaos and good/evil and different people would interpret what it means anyway.
@@RockyTorres43 My issue about lore isn't meant to be about the Drow changes, honestly they way they handled it was lazy, but I am pretty sure there was always messages about not having to play a drow that worships Lolth.
Stuff about deleting lore mostly has to do the errata removing lore from Monster statblocks.
Althought given how they seemingly want to get rid of a lot of negative traits from races, I honestly wouldn't be too surprised if they eventually try something like making gnomes be able to count as Medium sized to avoid the negative penalties of playing a small sized creature. Cause in the never ending quest to make everything more homogeneous, the flavour that makes them unique tends to be lost.
@@kuroshinigami9143 Alignment is critical for Dnd history and cosmology. Is it needed for every game, no, but getting rid of it is removing A MASSIVE AMOUNT CLASSIC LORE, which if Wizard's of the Coast keeps doing Dnd will have none.
Also for player characters, alginments are about tendencies, they are not absolutes. Meaning an Evil character can do a selfless action once and a while, but when they die they still likely go to one of the negative planes. Now which one would be determined based off facotrs like to they follow a code or laws, did they constantly try to rebel from any authority or where they insane.
Getting rid of alignment would fuck over the Dnd afterlife system.
I'm sorry Kobold :(
saw this and wondered when you’d do a video on this
Ngl pack tactics shouldn't be a player feature, even with sunlight sensitivity it feels like a cheap way to almost guarantee if your DM isn't a dick that you are rolling at advantage most of the time. This isn't necessarily the most powerful, but is kind of poor design, as I think in reality- sunlight sensitivity is in general as well
Given for a new DM it requires an active amount of additional labour to prevent a player from being mechanically gimped, but for the kobold when you do that labour, or as many dm's I know- tend to not make sunlight sensitivity trigger in big fights or bosses or etc. You end up with advantage if you have a single melee. That is to me at least, a feature that excasserbates the issues in sunlight sensitivity, either making it a full millstone or literally irrelevant.
I'm glad it's gone, but tbh the new one suffers from being a C tier design over and F tier one so like, still not a great improvement
I knew you would make this video after i saw the leak.
I like draconic cry. It's definitely worse than pack tactics, but gaining advantage on attack rolls for you and your allies a couple times a day is really nice. Besides, I'd much rather write "Draconic Cry" on a character sheet than "Grovel, Cower, and Beg". The former makes my character seem kinda badass, while the latter tells me I need to add "is a coward" to their list of flaws.
Not necessarily a coward they can just be putting up an act as a form of deception, I think of the old saying "appear weak when you are strong and appear strong when you are weak"
And its a pretty good tactic, false surrender is a war crime for a reason.
@@hopeforescape884 Okay, but then that implies that your Kobold has a level of deviousness that you might not want them to have. What if I want to play Kobold the Shounen Anime Protagonist? G-C-B doesn't allow for that, but because of the way Draconic cry is worded, it allows for any or all of those without having to squint or alter anything.
Variant kobold lets go
In my eyes, playing Kobold is like picking the Deprived in Dark Souls. It's obviously not the best choice, but it can also still be played in a way that's fun and effective
what was also pretty telling about the fate of legacy races is that WotC had all of their distributors discontinue sales of Volo's and MtoF the day MotM officially released, Making it so you cannot get those books firsthand anymore. This definitely puts the content in those books in the "this is not official anymore" pile.
it's not even an errata. in card games this would be the equivalent of those races being taken out of rotation.
where are my pack tactics, jeremy?
Kobolds in game looks fierce and brutal , Kobolda in Packtactic channels looks like drunk happy go lucky professor