Wizards of the Coast just recently announced the newest official supplement for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. The book already promises to bring plenty of new tools and options to the table for players and Dungeon Masters alike, but perhaps one of the most significant changes this book will bring are to the facet of character races.
For a long while now, players have been looking for ways to circumvent the character race system, hoping it could be more inclusive and less restrictive. Given how it currently holds certain races to some dangerous stereotypes (such as orcs having low intelligence and tending towards evil alignments), it could use a bit of an update. Luckily, Tasha's Cauldron of Everything seems like it will present players with the answer to this conundrum in the form of new character lineage and origin options.
The specifics behind this new mechanic aren't completely clear yet, especially in terms of balancing, but the core idea seems to be that players will essentially be able to swap around traits to more accurately build the characters they want to play based on backstory rather than race. In a recent press event, lead rules developer Jeremy Crawford said, "This new rule will give players tools in the game to take some of the traits in your character's race and modify those traits so that you can better reflect the story you have in mind for your character. It's a template for creating lineage for your character that is totally disconnected from any of the races in the game."
In every regard, this is excellent news. For pretty much all of 5th Edition's life span, it's been difficult to pull off certain character builds without feeling like players would be penalized for them. For example, as fun as it might sound to play a minotaur wizard, there's no incentive to do so, because minotaurs have absolutely no traits that behoove the wizard class. Everything about minotaurs screams, "Play a martial class." The new mechanics being introduced in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything will likely remedy this kind of problem, allowing players to build out-of-the-box characters like these more easily.
As well, Wizards are certainly making good on their promise to the community to do better at handling inclusivity and representation in their game. For a long time, each race featured in D&D has pretty much followed one stereotype or another, and Wizards didn't really do much to change that. Of course, players and DMs were more than able to change these things on their own, but the lack of any official changes or updates from Wizards was somewhat disheartening, so it's nice to see them finally taking some steps to address the matter.
The new character lineage feature seeks to remedy the problem of stereotypical races. So, if a player wants to write a high elf who lives in poverty and isn't great with swordsmanship, they can do so. If a player wants to build a dwarf who stinks at smithing but is great when it comes to alchemy or gardening, that'll certainly be doable. Not that players couldn't do these things before, it's just that now they'll be able to properly build the play style of the character to fit the backstory better.
What makes all of this even better is that it's all pretty much optional. After all, D&D rules aren't exactly rules so much as they are guidelines. So, if players are comfortable playing the vanilla version of 5th Edition, they can continue to do so. These new options are meant to expand the choices players have organically while also moving towards a more inclusive experience overall.
With this new supplement, it seems like Wizards are taking some solid steps in the right direction. It should be fun to read the full list of options once players can get their hands on Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, which is set to release on November 17.