D&D 5E Are proficiency swaps too strong for some races?

ScuroNotte

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You can swap out armor or a weapon for a weapon or tool. In the example, an elf can swap a long sword for a tool as per page 8. So if a player playing an Elf martial character who already gains martial weapons through the class, can swap the 4 weapons (longsword, shortsword, shortbow, longbow) for 4 tools. Or a martial Mountain Dwarf character can exchange 4 weapons and 2 armor proficiencies for 6 tools.
Or am I over reacting.
 

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Hmm. Yeah, if it's a one for one for each weapon proficiency, that's too much for me. I'd go with treating all weapon proficiencies or all armor proficiencies as worth a single swap if you're converting to tools. So you could trade those 4 weapons for 4 different weapons or a single tool, and you could trade that armor for two weapons or a single tool.

With that restriction it would still be a beneficial trade regardless of whether you are (as I prefer) letting them trade out proficiencies that are redundant with class features (mountain dwarf fighter), or (which I'm not so keen on) that aren't useful for your class (weapons on most mountain dwarf wizards).

Being able to pick up a ton of extra tool proficiencies like that is kind of absurd to me. I'm a dwarf fighter and I get vehicles (land) and an extra one of those dwarfy artisan tools listed in the race entry: awesome--I want the game to work like that. I'm a dwarf fighter, and I also am trained in all 4 of the dwarfy artisan tool proficiencies plus thieves' tools, navigator's tools, and viol (and that's before the 2 background freebies): kinda ridiculous. I'm a dwarf sorcerer and I start the game with 9 tool proficiencies (8 of them chosen from the entire list): actual problem.
 


It doesn't break anything but now every Elf martial PC will have 4 extra tool proficiencies!
Let's be real. Are non-martial Wood Elves all that likely to use those weapons either? Any full-caster is going to have ranged options far superior to the shortbow and longbow, and is unlikely to want to use both shortswords and longswords. That's two to three tool proficiencies right there, which could easily be thieves' tools, disguise kit, and herbalism kit--aka all the tools that have real, serious uses. Compare this to the Dragonborn--is this really balanced, when you're getting the equivalent of a free feat (3 tool proficiencies) on top of all the other benefits a Wood Elf gets (darkvision, Perception prof, charm resistance/immunity to magical sleep, shorter long rests, speed boost, hiding in natural surroundings)?
 

Let's be real. Are non-martial Wood Elves all that likely to use those weapons either? Any full-caster is going to have ranged options far superior to the shortbow and longbow, and is unlikely to want to use both shortswords and longswords. That's two to three tool proficiencies right there, which could easily be thieves' tools, disguise kit, and herbalism kit--aka all the tools that have real, serious uses. Compare this to the Dragonborn--is this really balanced, when you're getting the equivalent of a free feat (3 tool proficiencies) on top of all the other benefits a Wood Elf gets (darkvision, Perception prof, charm resistance/immunity to magical sleep, shorter long rests, speed boost, hiding in natural surroundings)?

But like I said, it doesnt break anything does it? Or if it does, then your game is a lot more fragile than mine!

I do agree it's silly though. If a Player tried it on me, I likely wouldn't be playing with that player.

I'd likely let them swap all weapon proficiencies for a single tool (not thieves tools).
 

It’s tools... they’re barely useful, I’m not sure what makes it broken??
Creative tool use is an easy way to get Advantage, which is mostly a positive and thus not really an issue. It only becomes an issue when a player is fishing too hard to use their tools. But that's a player expectation issue, and not a too-many tools issue.
 

is this really balanced, when you're getting the equivalent of a free feat (3 tool proficiencies) on top of all the other benefits a Wood Elf gets (darkvision, Perception prof, charm resistance/immunity to magical sleep, shorter long rests, speed boost, hiding in natural surroundings)?
To be fair, it’s not like you’re getting Sharpshooter on top of all that stuff. There may technically be a Feat that gives you 3 tool proficiencies, but that Feat isn’t worth the ASI you pay for it.
 

To be fair, it’s not like you’re getting Sharpshooter on top of all that stuff. There may technically be a Feat that gives you 3 tool proficiencies, but that Feat isn’t worth the ASI you pay for it.
Getting the equivalent of a weak feat on top of all the great benefits a Wood Elf normally gets is still getting a clear benefit. Sure, it's not as intensely potent as "get for free your choice of the best feats in the game," but it's something as opposed to the nothing that Dragonborn get. The list of Dragonborn racial features quite literally starts and stops at "breath weapon and resistance." And you cannot tell me that "resistance to one element of choice and a terribly-scaling breath weapon 1/rest" is equivalent to the pile of things elves get AND an admittedly mediocre feat used to its maximum benefit (thieves tools, disguise kit, and herbalism kit DO actually have practical uses, after all). For God's sake, at least Tieflings got darkvision.

(The irony, of course, is that the devs massively over-valued spell-equivalents on racial features and under-valued passive always-on benefits, and did exactly the reverse with passive always-on class benefits vs. spell-slot-based abilities. The breath weapon is a 1/rest poor man's burning hands, just with the possibility of other elements besides fire, while the elemental resistance would be much better than protection from energy....it just doesn't let you pick which element, which makes it nowhere near as good. Meanwhile, it literally takes 7+ typical-length combats--as in, 28 rounds of combat or more per day, with at least two short rests along the way--for the Champion to actually keep up with Battlemaster damage, to say nothing of a judicious Paladin's Divine Smite damage.)
 
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Getting the equivalent of a weak feat on top of all the great benefits a Wood Elf normally gets is still getting a clear benefit. Sure, it's not as intensely potent as "get for free your choice of the best feats in the game," but it's something as opposed to the nothing that Dragonborn get. The list of Dragonborn racial features quite literally starts and stops at "breath weapon and resistance." And you cannot tell me that "resistance to one element of choice and a terribly-scaling breath weapon 1/rest" is equivalent to the pile of things elves get AND an admittedly mediocre feat used to its maximum benefit (thieves tools, disguise kit, and herbalism kit DO actually have practical uses, after all). For God's sake, at least Tieflings got darkvision.

Dragonborn stink mechanically. These rules just make them worse.

Elves and Dwarves are just better now.
 

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