Design Note: Changes to Racial Traits
In 2020, the book Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything introduced the option to customize several of your character’s racial traits, specifically the Ability Score Increase trait, the Language trait, and traits that give
skill, armor, weapon, or tool proficiencies.
Following in that book’s footsteps, the race options in this article and in future D&D books lack the Ability Score Increase trait, the Language trait, the Alignment trait, and any other trait that is purely cultural.
Racial traits henceforth reflect only the physical or magical realities of being a player character who’s a member of
a particular lineage.
Such traits include things like darkvision, a breath weapon (as in the dragonborn), or
innate magical ability (as in the forest gnome). Such traits don’t include cultural characteristics, like language or training with a weapon or a tool, and the traits also
don’t include an alignment suggestion, since alignment is a choice for each individual, not a characteristic shared by a lineage.
Finally, going forward, the term “race” in D&D refers only to the suite of game features used by player characters. Said features don’t have any bearing on monsters and NPCs who are members of the same species or lineage, since monsters and NPCs in D&D don’t rely on race or class to function.
Moreover, DMs are empowered to customize the features of the creatures in their game as they wish.
