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In Eberron: Rising from the Last War, the changeling race says the following (p. 18):

Ability Score Improvement. Your Charisma score increases by 2. In addition, one ability score of your choice increases by 1.

Can you choose Charisma again for your additional +1, for a total of +3 to Charisma? It seems a bit cheeky to me, since no other race can have a +3 at character creation, but on the other hand, the two sentences do seem to be rather deliberately disjointed. It's not like the wording of the half-elf's ability score improvement, as this Q&A explains, so does that mean that gaining a +3 to Charisma is a legitimate choice?

Obviously this is assuming that a DM doesn't insist otherwise, and we are also assuming that this won't allow an ability score to go above 20.

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2 Answers 2

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Yes

+3 to Charisma is a legitimate choice and also slightly better than adding the +1 to a different stat most of the time. It's also not a typo but intentional, as evidenced by Crawford agreeing that's what the rules say:

Q: Is it intentional that Changelings can put their floating +1 in charisma giving them a +3 to charisma ASI? — ProfNesbitt, Nov 21 2019

A: A changeling sure can. — Jeremy Crawford, Nov 21 2019

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    \$\begingroup\$ I would argue that Crawford didn't confirmed that it was intentional, only that the RAW supports this interpretation. \$\endgroup\$
    – Freefly
    Commented Jul 3, 2020 at 12:47
  • \$\begingroup\$ @AlexMillette You would be absolutely correct about that, but Crawford's answers and what is taken from them are often at odds in this manner and I'm trying not to draw attention to it because it makes people upset and isn't really relevant to this question. Furthermore, Crawford's claims as to what the rules are, as written, correspond much better to a model of what the developers might have wanted the rules to be, than the actuality of the text. \$\endgroup\$
    – Please stop being evil
    Commented Jul 3, 2020 at 15:42
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    \$\begingroup\$ Crawford's claim that this is RAW is, in fact, evidence that it is intended and, I think, it's better evidence that it is intentional than that it is the RAW, though in this case it happens to be RAW as well. That's why I used such careful language around what the quote shows: I say it evidences that this is intentional, not that he says it's intentional, nor that it "proves" that or anything like that. \$\endgroup\$
    – Please stop being evil
    Commented Jul 3, 2020 at 15:44
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    \$\begingroup\$ @HellSaint The question starts "Is it intentional" and the answer is affirmative. So I would say that tweet is very strong evidence that it is intentional \$\endgroup\$
    – Caleth
    Commented Aug 4, 2020 at 15:11
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    \$\begingroup\$ Note that this has been changed to no longer work, as of the 2020 errata to E:RftLW: "Changeling Traits (p. 18). In Ability Score Increase, “one ability score of your choice” has been changed to “one other ability score of your choice.”" The trait now reads: "Your Charisma score increases by 2. In addition, one other ability score of your choice increases by 1." This change makes it so Charisma can't be chosen for the +1. \$\endgroup\$
    – V2Blast
    Commented Dec 9, 2020 at 3:43
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Not anymore, as of the 2020 errata

As noted in Please stop being evil's answer, this was previously allowed by the rules, and even confirmed by rules designer Jeremy Crawford as a valid reading of the rules in an unofficial tweet from November 2019.

However, this was been changed to no longer work, as of the November 2020 errata for Eberron: Rising from the Last War. The relevant line of the errata PDF reads:

Changeling Traits (p. 18). In Ability Score Increase, “one ability score of your choice” has been changed to “one other ability score of your choice.”

The changeling's Ability Score Increase trait now reads, in full (E:RftLW, p. 18; emphasis mine):

Your Charisma score increases by 2. In addition, one other ability score of your choice increases by 1.

The addition of the word "other" here makes it so that Charisma can't be chosen for the +1 anymore; the changeling now gets +2 to Charisma and +1 to a different ability score (+3 to Charisma isn't a valid option anymore).

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