1) Can you, truly, truly, not see how this whole idea is hurtful to folks?
2) I truly don't understand why so many people are hung up on the idea that ALL of a given species' identity is wrapped up in a handful of points. Like, all the non_ASI traits of a species are completely pointless. It doesn't matter that elves have Trance, Fey Ancestry, Keen Senses (which is questionable but Perception is already weird), and extended life spans. None of that matters, none of that has anything to do with being an elf. That +2 to Dex, though? THAT is truly the Essence of Elf. That +2 to Dexterity is the absolute core of Elfdom, and without it none shall ever recognize an Elf as an Elf ever again. Thou shalt know an Elf by Dex bonus, and by Dex bonus alone. Woe betide she who chooses to play an Elf to explore elven culture, or the alien mystery of the Trance stat. NAY - it is for Dex alone that one chooses to walk the path of the Elf.
Have I made this ridiculous enough yet?
1) Truly, truly, truly: no.
2) Are you saying that's what I am suggesting? Because I'm not. Obviously a +2 Dex doesn't let you recognize an elf. You're mistaking shawty over there for an elf, but it's a halfling. Or no, wait, she appears to be yellow spotted with black and furry - stupid me, she was a tabaxi all along. At least I noticed no feathers so I didn't have to check if she's aarakocra or kenku. And how red my face would have been if I'd called her a goblin - or worse, a kobold. The shame! Hold up, remind me - can tieflings have fur? Argh, now you have me doubting myself again.
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Colorful speech, wild caricature, and reducto ad absurdum is just how I roll, Thauaeln. Civil discourse died fifteen pages ago - anything that could be accomplished with cool-blooded logic has been accomplished.
My artificer, Starlight Through Driving Rain, is a woman. Does that mean I need to knock four points off her Strength score, a(nother) point off her Wisdom score, take back two (but ONLY two) of those lost points in Charisma, and remove all of her weapon proficiencies in return for the Poisoner feat because women are supposed to be physically weak, prone to flightiness and Valley Girl-ism, somewhat more able/expected to form bonds and be personable People-type people than males, and also abhor direct physical violence in favor of skullduggery and indirect means?
No? That sounds absolutely bugnuts ridiculous?
Awesome! Why are we attaching all that same baggage to species if we aren't going to do it for gender?
I truly don't understand why so many people are hung up on the idea that ALL of a given species' identity is wrapped up in a handful of points. Like, all the non_ASI traits of a species are completely pointless. It doesn't matter that elves have Trance, Fey Ancestry, Keen Senses (which is questionable but Perception is already weird), and extended life spans. None of that matters, none of that has anything to do with being an elf. That +2 to Dex, though? THAT is truly the Essence of Elf. That +2 to Dexterity is the absolute core of Elfdom, and without it none shall ever recognize an Elf as an Elf ever again. Thou shalt know an Elf by Dex bonus, and by Dex bonus alone. Woe betide she who chooses to play an Elf to explore elven culture, or the alien mystery of the Trance stat. NAY - it is for Dex alone that one chooses to walk the path of the Elf.
So the +2 to DEX is preventing you from exploring the finer nuances what it means for an elf to go against their upbringing and their societies culture?
Oh darn, my high elf fighter/eldritch knight noble in heavy armor is only going to start with a standard array of 15 10 14 14 10 12. Want to know the difference between this guy and a variant human? One more point of Strength and minus two points of Dexterity. Looks like a fair trade to me.
Yeah, the fixed stats don't hurt one bit. The early game is balanced around having just a +2 in your primary stat(s). But it's also, honestly negligible to let people swap them. I just happen to also find the swapping around to be less interesting. Nothing ever stopped you from playing the combination you wanted the way you wanted. You might be weaker in one area, but you were always stronger somewhere else. That's another form of diversity, and that isn't a bad thing.
Can you, truly, truly, not see how this whole idea is hurtful to folks?
I cannot speak to what Pangurjan thinks, because I am not them. I can say that their statements really sound like they come from someone who has not experienced the kind of subtle and pervasive discrimination that I'm talking about, which is a nice privilege to have. The problem with privilege is that it affords people the luxury to think things like, "Well it can't be that bad" or "Well it's not quite the exact right move to make and the original problem is not so bad, so why don't we just keep things the way they are?"
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Can you, truly, truly, not see how this whole idea is hurtful to folks?
Truly, truly, truly: no.
I see my deductions were proven while I was typing. This is unsympathetic at best and hurtfully dismissive at worst. Even a person who just simply doesn't understand will, if they are the decent sort, at least take a person at their word when they express that something was hurtful. "I don't see how this could be hurtful therefore it cannot possibly be hurtful" is the reasoning of the immature or the abusive.
I'm no longer going to participate in this thread.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Can you, truly, truly, not see how this whole idea is hurtful to folks?
Truly, truly, truly: no.
I see my deductions were proven while I was typing. This is unsympathetic at best and hurtfully dismissive at worst. Even a person who just simply doesn't understand will, if they are the decent sort, at least take a person at their word when they express that something was hurtful. "I don't see how this could be hurtful therefore it cannot possibly be hurtful" is the reasoning of the immature or the abusive.
I'm no longer going to participate in this thread.
I can, and do, accept it is hurtful to some people. I just don't see how, when my only real issue is fixed racial ability modifiers. More so when the design notes spell out none of this applies to races in general, only to PCs. Society will still expect halflings to be nimble, dextrous beings blessed with good fortune and gnomes to be studious, with a penchant for either mechanical tinkering or chatting up woodland critters. The race descriptions in the PHB are, with a few exceptions, not really discriminatory. They're definitely choc full of preconceived notions, and I understand that can be hurtful. Nothing in this thread meaningfully changes that, however, so I don't understand how it helps.
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The answer is that alone, by itself? It doesn't do much. But it's a start. It's a sign that there may be a sea change in D&D's future where bioessentialism (I'm so glad I learned that word today, it's perfect for discussing this shit) and racism doesn't pervade the entire game.
It's a means of letting a player avoid feeling punished for breaking the expected norm for their species - and yes, it IS punishment, because no matter what nitwits say about "starting with a 15 is perfectly fine," the human brain is wired to perceive "Withholding a Benefit" the same way it perceives "Imposing a Penalty". Some people hate feeling punished, hate having to justify to their table why they're playing a "bad" combination even if the table is on board with the justification. Simply because they have to have that conversation in the first place, and have to justify their choices. So they don't make them. They avoid the pain by playing the "right" combinations, no matter what they might otherwise want to do.
Ophidimancer already explained this, Pang. It's not a deathblow. It's not a total dealbreaker. But it is a pain point, one of many such pain points within the game. For people who aren't "The Majority", everything someone can do to reduce those pain points is a relief.
Imagine for a moment than you're suffering from a bad rash. You've been suffering from that rash for years, as long as you can really remember. Long enough that you've grown accustomed to it, learn methods for coping with it, and can even go days at a time sometimes without thinking about it. Long enough that other people often forget you've got this awful persistent rash at all, because you've become adept at hiding your pain. But it's still there. It still hurts. And some days you can barely get out of bed and face the world because of how sick you are of this damn rash. Then somebody gives you a drop of a new ointment that works. Just a drop, and it only works a little, but it works. For a little bit, you feel a little bit better. You're in a little less pain. You're really hoping this is the start of lessening your burden.
And then somebody else says "Man, that ointment doesn't fix anything. There's not enough of it, it barely even worked, and I think it smells bad. Don't use it anymore."
I dunno about you, but I'd probably come close to punching that guy in the mouth. He's never had to deal with this shit, he hasn't spent every damn day of his life in pain. A lot of folks don't even believe the pain is real - they think you're making it up as a whine for attention and belittle you for trying to fix the pain.
That's why some of us are willing to, as people keep oh-so-cutely putting it, "die on this hill." I know that pain. I feel that rash a little bit in my heart every time somebody calls me "sir". I don't know what specific circumstance Ophidimancer feels his rash in, but I know for damn certain he feels it more often than I do. After all, I get to hide behind this Murican White Boi mask. I may hate the mask, but I can hide behind it, hide my pain, and deal with society on a more-or-less even footing. Ophidimancer doesn't have that option. His rash is out there for the world to see, and pick at, and make worse.
I can understand him feeling some kinda way about that. It's why I'm standing here on this hill next to him. Him and SemanticAvenger and Third and ReshilRE and Coronet and Samedi and occasionally, somehow, Jounichi. And everybody else who's all for this new direction and is willing to stand on this big muddy gore-covered hill to keep it.
Stop trying to take away our ointment, Pang. It's out of the tube now, you don't get to scrape it off our rashes and shove it back in the tube.
(worth typing this out, even if this is just a forum thread on the internet, with a bunch of strangers.)
The comments about gender make for a good metaphor. Imagine you're a game designer.
You come up with a game where you're going to rule that all men characters are good at combat, and all women are good at healing. Today (or even decades ago), people will rightfully call that sexist. It's pretty terrible.
But! you say. You're going to fictionalize genders. In your weird fantasy biology, there's the red gender, that's good at combat, the green gender, that's good at healing, and the blue gender, that's good at solving puzzles. All better, right? Well, it still trades in crappy real-world stereotypes (at least partially). So you change it to red is good at exploring, green is good at fixing, blue is good at puzzles. Better? maybe, but still hella problematic. Because it endorses the idea that gender determines capability. That's gender essentialism.
Why, oh why, would that be ok for race? Or culture, for that matter? Essentialism is a psuedoscience that people tried to use to justify some horrible things in history. It seeps into centuries of literature and other art. That's where Tolkien got it from, where fantasy got it from, where wargaming and D&D and tabletops got it from. (It's "white man's burden" all the way down.)
D&D is essentialist at its core, about many things. Race, alignment, culture, class...all putting people in boxes. And I get it, putting things into classifications like that produces concrete choices in character creation, and helps simplify a complex fictional world. No matter what direction they go in, WOTC isn't likely to change things too much, because their entire brand is built on this. (Hell, there are entire genres of young adult fiction built around rebelling against it...)
But wait! D&D is about species, not race! Well, sorta. Technically, they can (often?) interbreed and stuff. And, importantly, all playable races are people. Also, in some cases (and some settings), the fantasy race concept is a pretty obvious stand-in for real-world race and culture. Scottish dwarves, Finnish elves, Cockney trolls (that's in The Hobbit, btw), that sort of thing. Plus all these historical associations between orcs / other monstrous races and real world stereotypes about "savages" in Africa and such. So, it's not so simple as talking about actual species differentiation.
The answer is that alone, by itself? It doesn't do much. But it's a start. It's a sign that there may be a sea change in D&D's future where bioessentialism (I'm so glad I learned that word today, it's perfect for discussing this shit) and racism doesn't pervade the entire game.
Well, colour me pessimistic then because to me it's more of a bad sign. A sign of the direction of this game taking a turn for the worse specifically when it comes to inclusiveness and openmindedness. It feels like the US military introducing Don't Ask Don't Tell in the early nineties and people claiming (and in some cases even believing) it was progress. It's a shiny veneer that accomplishes nothing meaningful other than maybe make the company look good.
D&D as a game and the D&D community are still more inclusive than most of their counterparts. That's something to be proud of. But empty gestures for appearances' sake not only don't help, they set us back. If WotC wants to show that settings can be free of bigotry and racism, they shouldn't water down those aspects of existing settings but create one where that's actually true. If we don't want to feel like not having the most optimal array of qualities for our character is a step back, we should stop yammering about the difference optimization makes and stop deluding ourselves that getting to play race X but with whatever qualities we want that have nothing to do with race X is meaningful. None of this is progress. In fact, it's an impediment to progress. It's smoke and mirrors and a lot of annoying glitter that goes everywhere and makes 5-year olds think whatever's so pretty and shiny must be the greatest thing ever. It's not an ointment. It's a placebo, a bit of sugar in a pill.
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The answer is that alone, by itself? It doesn't do much. But it's a start. It's a sign that there may be a sea change in D&D's future where bioessentialism (I'm so glad I learned that word today, it's perfect for discussing this shit) and racism doesn't pervade the entire game.
It's a means of letting a player avoid feeling punished for breaking the expected norm for their species - and yes, it IS punishment, because no matter what nitwits say about "starting with a 15 is perfectly fine," the human brain is wired to perceive "Withholding a Benefit" the same way it perceives "Imposing a Penalty". Some people hate feeling punished, hate having to justify to their table why they're playing a "bad" combination even if the table is on board with the justification. Simply because they have to have that conversation in the first place, and have to justify their choices. So they don't make them. They avoid the pain by playing the "right" combinations, no matter what they might otherwise want to do.
Ophidimancer already explained this, Pang. It's not a deathblow. It's not a total dealbreaker. But it is a pain point, one of many such pain points within the game. For people who aren't "The Majority", everything someone can do to reduce those pain points is a relief.
Imagine for a moment than you're suffering from a bad rash. You've been suffering from that rash for years, as long as you can really remember. Long enough that you've grown accustomed to it, learn methods for coping with it, and can even go days at a time sometimes without thinking about it. Long enough that other people often forget you've got this awful persistent rash at all, because you've become adept at hiding your pain. But it's still there. It still hurts. And some days you can barely get out of bed and face the world because of how sick you are of this damn rash. Then somebody gives you a drop of a new ointment that works. Just a drop, and it only works a little, but it works. For a little bit, you feel a little bit better. You're in a little less pain. You're really hoping this is the start of lessening your burden.
And then somebody else says "Man, that ointment doesn't fix anything. There's not enough of it, it barely even worked, and I think it smells bad. Don't use it anymore."
I dunno about you, but I'd probably come close to punching that guy in the mouth. He's never had to deal with this shit, he hasn't spent every damn day of his life in pain. A lot of folks don't even believe the pain is real - they think you're making it up as a whine for attention and belittle you for trying to fix the pain.
That's why some of us are willing to, as people keep oh-so-cutely putting it, "die on this hill." I know that pain. I feel that rash a little bit in my heart every time somebody calls me "sir". I don't know what specific circumstance Ophidimancer feels his rash in, but I know for damn certain he feels it more often than I do. After all, I get to hide behind this Murican White Boi mask. I may hate the mask, but I can hide behind it, hide my pain, and deal with society on a more-or-less even footing. Ophidimancer doesn't have that option. His rash is out there for the world to see, and pick at, and make worse.
I can understand him feeling some kinda way about that. It's why I'm standing here on this hill next to him. Him and SemanticAvenger and Third and ReshilRE and Coronet and Samedi and occasionally, somehow, Jounichi. And everybody else who's all for this new direction and is willing to stand on this big muddy gore-covered hill to keep it.
Stop trying to take away our ointment, Pang. It's out of the tube now, you don't get to scrape it off our rashes and shove it back in the tube.
If I can give a literal non-metaphorical example?
I'm a multiracial person, as such the concept of "half"-races appealed to me when I heard of DND.
A concept where I could really play into the aspect of my life of being from two different groups/cultures.
Then I read the rules and, back then, half-orcs lose 2 intelligence points, and 2 charisma points, only getting 2 strength points in exchange. So I have to literally go "Yeah, one parent race/species is dumber, so I'm dumber than I could be, and I can't be a people person".
I don't think I have to explain how this really, REALLY sent a message that this game was NOT for me, or anyone like me.
Especially when in real life I had blood relatives who absolutely had that "You're lesser than us for not being fully like us" mentality.
Admittedly half-elves didn't have such severe penalties for choosing them, but generally elves are considered the pretty folk and I definitely didn't consider myself that.
Now yeah, not everybody wants to bring aspects of their real life or things into their characters and all, but seriously, the game may as well have had a "Screw you, Samedi of Orleans" written into the rules for how I felt when I read that. "You're mixed, you suck"
Those things can, and did, prevent people from adopting the game because it truly felt like the game itself, rules as written, didn't want you there.
When I saw a dnd playing campaign where someone actually had a charming, smart, half-orc bard? THAT was what made me go "Oh, maybe I should give it another look" and the lack of minuses for playing half-orcs was totally a reason I came to check out the game again.
And now I'm invested enough that I love making characters and changing even minor things to see the effects overall, and I've got literally 500+ characters I've made on this site.
These changes really do make a ton of potential players feel a LOT more welcome, and want to engage with the game more.
Is "But they're different species so they should be different" really worth the aspect of having someone pick up the book and feel like it's "Yeah, you suck for being mixed" and it taking literal decades for them to even think about giving the game a shot again?
I can, and do, accept it is hurtful to some people. I just don't see how,when my only real issue is fixed racial ability modifiers. More so when the design notes spell out none of this applies to races in general, only to PCs.
See, for you to keep saying this after pages of people explaining their pain, and to incist on following it up with why the game clearly states this is not the intention, it speaks to the fact that you do not accept it is hurtful. If you truly accepted it was hurtful to people then you would not need to incessantly scratch at how it is hurtful and dig for reasons why it shouldn't be hurtful. You will never know how. Not unless you are one of those that have been harmed. Take your fellow forum member's words at face value when they talk about bio essentialism in game design being harmful to their lives.
Society will still expect halflings to be nimble, dextrous beings blessed with good fortune and gnomes to be studious, with a penchant for either mechanical tinkering or chatting up woodland critters. The race descriptions in the PHB are, with a few exceptions, not really discriminatory. They're definitely choc full of preconceived notions, and I understand that can be hurtful. Nothing in this thread meaningfully changes that, however, so I don't understand how it helps.
Except the people in this thread that have said bio essentialism has been harmful to them have been vocal that they appreciate these changes as a step in the right direction. Can you trust them?
I don't pay attention to General Discussion as much so this one slipped past me but oh boy what I could get through was...dicey.
At the end of the day, these changes are actively helping people feel more included and safe within their DnD experience. They're working towards undoing a very sinister form of hate, systemic racism, which by its nature is always embedded even further into how we think as a society than we are aware. The value of any step towards the right direction is enormous.
Thank you so much Ophidimancer and Yurei for being so open and honest and sharing yourselves. SemanticAvenger you have said some seriously beautiful and poignant things and hopefully you're not scared off forever because you seem like a really cool person to chat with. I'm missing other names of some really wonderful posters, I'm sorry but that was...a lot. Anyways, to those that were positive and open and caring, thank you.
All of the talk about minmaxing and lore and I don't like this, I don't like that, blah blah blah is just so freaking petty. The way some have insisted on harping on these points is ignorant and hateful. People with real life problems and pain are saying this is helping them. Stop for a second and listen.
Your fellow human is in need on a fundamental level and crying out "this is good" and all some can say is "yeah but I don't like it". Please, for those of you still questioning all of this, take a step back and try to widen your perspective, or at least recognize your privelege.
I'm a multiracial person, as such the concept of "half"-races appealed to me when I heard of DND.
A concept where I could really play into the aspect of my life of being from two different groups/cultures.
Then I read the rules and, back then, half-orcs lose 2 intelligence points, and 2 charisma points, only getting 2 strength points in exchange. So I have to literally go "Yeah, one parent race/species is dumber, so I'm dumber than I could be, and I can't be a people person".
I don't think I have to explain how this really, REALLY sent a message that this game was NOT for me, or anyone like me.
I'm not saying it should be a solution that appeals to you or even a great idea in general, but I've had several players play mixed-race characters without necessarily taking the mechanical traits of the official mixed race. A character with human, dwarven or elven traits can look and act like they have orc or goliath blood as well and explore that duality. Similarly, immigrant characters can revolve around feeling alienated and characters from ethnically mixed marriages can feel torn in two different directions (that's a trope I tend to go for myself). Hybrid race stigma has largely been removed in this edition, which is great, but the mechanical particulars of the few such races we have shouldn't be the sole representation of this character option in the first place.
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Oooh viscosity of thread content increases to near-rock levels! Only joking.
But I agree - there is a level of bioessenialism within the ASIs pre-Tasha, and while Tasha didn’t fix the pain like it should have done for other races, it was that fateful step. The Lineages system is a second step - more of a leap actually, but it still needs to land and be written in a book to make the right sort of impact.
Those who don’t like Tasha’s changes and hate all this aren’t D&D fans. They’re fans of their ideas first and foremost, and everything else comes second.
I disagree with the portrayal of Vistani and the relative lack of changes to them in the latest CoS errata , let alone how CoS portrays mental health in the most absurd and painful of ways. But that does not mean I won’t play CoS - I will, if offered, come bounding in to play it, because I know that, to quote D:Ream, in terms of inclusivity at the moment “Things can only get better.”. That is why the people saying Lineages and the changes to the ASI are “bad” (mostly looking at the racists who most likely are lurking behind this thread’s veils) are not fans of D&D - they are fans of their own interests and won’t hold an open mind. Who knows, you guys, you might find the ASI changes that occur aren’t that bad.. All it is is a small tweak, so everyone who actually likes the game currently can still enjoy it, and people who were feeling marginalized by it also can give it a try.
But Holy Mother of Threads, you had to be a disciple of Lolth about it and be xenophobic and cruel, or possibly only narrow minded - you choose your title, but your words tar you in with the others. You protest, most likely, against Cancel Culture, yet you enact it yourself. Have some shame and follow Eelistrae for a bit, and learn that Lolth’s way isn’t the only way - open your mind, be patient, and be kind for a moment, and see what it does to you. I assure you, after a month of breathing, Zen meditation, and shunning of Lolth, you will start to see the brighter path and you will learn to love again.
Until then, you may leave D&D, or go back to older editions. Maybe it’ll be more fun for you - but you don’t have to create an argument here, because there does not need to be one.
Some of us may be xenophobic, and the others minority populations, but we’re all one people.
It’s not based on our skin, or our native land, it’s based on us and our deeds. Even culture does not necessarily reflect you, unless you follow your culture. But even so, we are all one species, and we all deserve to be heard.
First, don't call anyone nitwits for saying 15 is fine for a starting stat. That's just rude and uncalled for; not to mention ignorant. Some people are okay with playing their characters like that. It's insulting to them, and they're not here to defend themselves. Just because someone chooses not to use the optional rule doesn't mean they are opposed to it. Hell, the rule has only been around for 3 months.
I like making characters while trying to get the most out of their racial proficiencies; even if their stats aren't "optimal". My mountain dwarf storm sorcerer (basically Thor) kicked ass until he was pasted. Everyone thought he was a druid when he first showed up. (Really looking forward to playing a hill dwarf 4E monk with a dwarven thrower, btw.) My wife is currently trying out a half-orc archfey warlock with a spread of 12 14 16 0 12 14. She took Moderately Armored at 4th-level to bring her Dexterity up to 14 and boost her AC over raising Charisma. And my githyanki war mage? Come at me, bro!
Second, and this may just be semantics, but no one is being "punished" for starting with just a 15 in their primary stat because they took the standard array and are playing "sub-optimally". That was their choice to make. You shouldn't go around insulting the intelligence of other players. Any comparative disadvantage would be self-imposed. One of my current players has a V.Human EK, in heavy armor, with 12 Dexterity. They chose to make it that high, despite not needing it for AC. They could have put those 4 points into Intelligence and start with 16 (with the Observant feat), but they didn't. Was it "optimal"? No, but he had the agency to make an informed decision.
I appreciate your passion, Yurei, but your zealousness can easily approach toxic levels. Check yourself.
EDIT
Those who don’t like Tasha’s changes and hate all this aren’t D&D fans. They’re fans of their ideas first and foremost, and everything else comes second.
Don't do this, Yamana_Eajii. You don't get to decide who is and isn't a fan.
I'm a multiracial person, as such the concept of "half"-races appealed to me when I heard of DND.
A concept where I could really play into the aspect of my life of being from two different groups/cultures.
Then I read the rules and, back then, half-orcs lose 2 intelligence points, and 2 charisma points, only getting 2 strength points in exchange. So I have to literally go "Yeah, one parent race/species is dumber, so I'm dumber than I could be, and I can't be a people person".
I don't think I have to explain how this really, REALLY sent a message that this game was NOT for me, or anyone like me.
I'm not saying it should be a solution that appeals to you or even a great idea in general, but I've had several players play mixed-race characters without necessarily taking the mechanical traits of the official mixed race. A character with human, dwarven or elven traits can look and act like they have orc or goliath blood as well and explore that duality. Similarly, immigrant characters can revolve around feeling alienated and characters from ethnically mixed marriages can feel torn in two different directions (that's a trope I tend to go for myself). Hybrid race stigma has largely been removed in this edition, which is great, but the mechanical particulars of the few such races we have shouldn't be the sole representation of this character option in the first place.
I'm ... a bit taken aback at just how insensitive it is to respond to someone who just said, "I was turned off of the game because a very obviously close analog to myself was portrayed in a hurtful manner" by telling them, "maybe you should just ignore that and play another type of character instead."
Sometimes people don't respond well to implicit hints so here's me trying to be explicit. Pangurjan you are saying insensitive and hurtful things. You have said things directly to me that I find upsetting. Please reevaluate how you are choosing to speak to people about what is a sensitive and hurtful issue.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
[REDACTED] Also, you say having low stats isn’t a bad thing. My gosh, do you know how HARD IT IS TO PUNCH even a baby BRONZE DRAGON WYRMLING with a 14 Stength, EVEN WITH A MONK?
If WotC wants to show that settings can be free of bigotry and racism, they shouldn't water down those aspects of existing settings but create one where that's actually true.
I'm not going to touch on everything you've said, because multiple people have done great jobs politely (or at least without drawing blood) illustrating to you multiple times why your responses are hurtful. I second everything they've said. Instead, I want to point out that this has been done. The Wildemount setting, while not developed by WotC has been endorsed by it to the point of publishing it as official content, including approved alternate lore for races with historically negative backgrounds such as drow and orcs, including a different stat block for orcs. And I'm sure there are plenty of third party supplements that do similar. But that still leaves a lot of other races/lineages that are published in other books but present in Wildemount that still would fit into the setting better (or any future similar settings akin to what you want created -- and we know they're working on settings) with adjustments. Yes, we've always been able to do it ourselves without Wizards' input, and we can still do so. Having these rules in place, in writing, for how to make a game more welcoming only increases access to the game, and helps newer players, who aren't used to taking off all the wheels, kicking out the dents, and replacing the engine with a hoverlift a place to start, and something to point back to when someone questions their choices about how they have fun.
Check yourself, Yurei hasn’t posted for about 30 minutes, and everyone deserves a say. Yes, Yurei is strong worded, as am I, but so too are plenty others on this thread. Also, you say having low stats isn’t a bad thing. My gosh, do you know how HARD IT IS TO PUNCH even a baby BRONZE DRAGON WYRMLING with a 14 Stength, EVEN WITH A MONK?
I honestly can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. In any case, I'll repeat myself for you now. You don't get to decide who is and isn't a fan of D&D. Nevermind that calling anyone a fan of a gaming engine a weird turn of phrase.
As it is clear this thread is about to go spiraling into the Abyss, I’m jumping ship. See you in my Homebrew thread, but I’m afraid the “Races” I’m doing will be using the new Lineage system. See you later, folks, and remember to look up at the stars and loose yourself among those vast heavens.
1) Truly, truly, truly: no.
2) Are you saying that's what I am suggesting? Because I'm not. Obviously a +2 Dex doesn't let you recognize an elf. You're mistaking shawty over there for an elf, but it's a halfling. Or no, wait, she appears to be yellow spotted with black and furry - stupid me, she was a tabaxi all along. At least I noticed no feathers so I didn't have to check if she's aarakocra or kenku. And how red my face would have been if I'd called her a goblin - or worse, a kobold. The shame! Hold up, remind me - can tieflings have fur? Argh, now you have me doubting myself again.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Colorful speech, wild caricature, and reducto ad absurdum is just how I roll, Thauaeln. Civil discourse died fifteen pages ago - anything that could be accomplished with cool-blooded logic has been accomplished.
My artificer, Starlight Through Driving Rain, is a woman. Does that mean I need to knock four points off her Strength score, a(nother) point off her Wisdom score, take back two (but ONLY two) of those lost points in Charisma, and remove all of her weapon proficiencies in return for the Poisoner feat because women are supposed to be physically weak, prone to flightiness and Valley Girl-ism, somewhat more able/expected to form bonds and be personable People-type people than males, and also abhor direct physical violence in favor of skullduggery and indirect means?
No? That sounds absolutely bugnuts ridiculous?
Awesome! Why are we attaching all that same baggage to species if we aren't going to do it for gender?
Please do not contact or message me.
Oh darn, my high elf fighter/eldritch knight noble in heavy armor is only going to start with a standard array of 15 10 14 14 10 12. Want to know the difference between this guy and a variant human? One more point of Strength and minus two points of Dexterity. Looks like a fair trade to me.
Yeah, the fixed stats don't hurt one bit. The early game is balanced around having just a +2 in your primary stat(s). But it's also, honestly negligible to let people swap them. I just happen to also find the swapping around to be less interesting. Nothing ever stopped you from playing the combination you wanted the way you wanted. You might be weaker in one area, but you were always stronger somewhere else. That's another form of diversity, and that isn't a bad thing.
I cannot speak to what Pangurjan thinks, because I am not them. I can say that their statements really sound like they come from someone who has not experienced the kind of subtle and pervasive discrimination that I'm talking about, which is a nice privilege to have. The problem with privilege is that it affords people the luxury to think things like, "Well it can't be that bad" or "Well it's not quite the exact right move to make and the original problem is not so bad, so why don't we just keep things the way they are?"
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I see my deductions were proven while I was typing. This is unsympathetic at best and hurtfully dismissive at worst. Even a person who just simply doesn't understand will, if they are the decent sort, at least take a person at their word when they express that something was hurtful. "I don't see how this could be hurtful therefore it cannot possibly be hurtful" is the reasoning of the immature or the abusive.
I'm no longer going to participate in this thread.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I can, and do, accept it is hurtful to some people. I just don't see how, when my only real issue is fixed racial ability modifiers. More so when the design notes spell out none of this applies to races in general, only to PCs. Society will still expect halflings to be nimble, dextrous beings blessed with good fortune and gnomes to be studious, with a penchant for either mechanical tinkering or chatting up woodland critters. The race descriptions in the PHB are, with a few exceptions, not really discriminatory. They're definitely choc full of preconceived notions, and I understand that can be hurtful. Nothing in this thread meaningfully changes that, however, so I don't understand how it helps.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
The answer is that alone, by itself? It doesn't do much. But it's a start. It's a sign that there may be a sea change in D&D's future where bioessentialism (I'm so glad I learned that word today, it's perfect for discussing this shit) and racism doesn't pervade the entire game.
It's a means of letting a player avoid feeling punished for breaking the expected norm for their species - and yes, it IS punishment, because no matter what nitwits say about "starting with a 15 is perfectly fine," the human brain is wired to perceive "Withholding a Benefit" the same way it perceives "Imposing a Penalty". Some people hate feeling punished, hate having to justify to their table why they're playing a "bad" combination even if the table is on board with the justification. Simply because they have to have that conversation in the first place, and have to justify their choices. So they don't make them. They avoid the pain by playing the "right" combinations, no matter what they might otherwise want to do.
Ophidimancer already explained this, Pang. It's not a deathblow. It's not a total dealbreaker. But it is a pain point, one of many such pain points within the game. For people who aren't "The Majority", everything someone can do to reduce those pain points is a relief.
Imagine for a moment than you're suffering from a bad rash. You've been suffering from that rash for years, as long as you can really remember. Long enough that you've grown accustomed to it, learn methods for coping with it, and can even go days at a time sometimes without thinking about it. Long enough that other people often forget you've got this awful persistent rash at all, because you've become adept at hiding your pain. But it's still there. It still hurts. And some days you can barely get out of bed and face the world because of how sick you are of this damn rash. Then somebody gives you a drop of a new ointment that works. Just a drop, and it only works a little, but it works. For a little bit, you feel a little bit better. You're in a little less pain. You're really hoping this is the start of lessening your burden.
And then somebody else says "Man, that ointment doesn't fix anything. There's not enough of it, it barely even worked, and I think it smells bad. Don't use it anymore."
I dunno about you, but I'd probably come close to punching that guy in the mouth. He's never had to deal with this shit, he hasn't spent every damn day of his life in pain. A lot of folks don't even believe the pain is real - they think you're making it up as a whine for attention and belittle you for trying to fix the pain.
That's why some of us are willing to, as people keep oh-so-cutely putting it, "die on this hill." I know that pain. I feel that rash a little bit in my heart every time somebody calls me "sir". I don't know what specific circumstance Ophidimancer feels his rash in, but I know for damn certain he feels it more often than I do. After all, I get to hide behind this Murican White Boi mask. I may hate the mask, but I can hide behind it, hide my pain, and deal with society on a more-or-less even footing. Ophidimancer doesn't have that option. His rash is out there for the world to see, and pick at, and make worse.
I can understand him feeling some kinda way about that. It's why I'm standing here on this hill next to him. Him and SemanticAvenger and Third and ReshilRE and Coronet and Samedi and occasionally, somehow, Jounichi. And everybody else who's all for this new direction and is willing to stand on this big muddy gore-covered hill to keep it.
Stop trying to take away our ointment, Pang. It's out of the tube now, you don't get to scrape it off our rashes and shove it back in the tube.
Please do not contact or message me.
Ok I said I wasn't going to participate in this thread, but then you had to go and write that, Yurei. *fist bump of solidarity*
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
(worth typing this out, even if this is just a forum thread on the internet, with a bunch of strangers.)
The comments about gender make for a good metaphor. Imagine you're a game designer.
You come up with a game where you're going to rule that all men characters are good at combat, and all women are good at healing. Today (or even decades ago), people will rightfully call that sexist. It's pretty terrible.
But! you say. You're going to fictionalize genders. In your weird fantasy biology, there's the red gender, that's good at combat, the green gender, that's good at healing, and the blue gender, that's good at solving puzzles. All better, right? Well, it still trades in crappy real-world stereotypes (at least partially). So you change it to red is good at exploring, green is good at fixing, blue is good at puzzles. Better? maybe, but still hella problematic. Because it endorses the idea that gender determines capability. That's gender essentialism.
Why, oh why, would that be ok for race? Or culture, for that matter? Essentialism is a psuedoscience that people tried to use to justify some horrible things in history. It seeps into centuries of literature and other art. That's where Tolkien got it from, where fantasy got it from, where wargaming and D&D and tabletops got it from. (It's "white man's burden" all the way down.)
D&D is essentialist at its core, about many things. Race, alignment, culture, class...all putting people in boxes. And I get it, putting things into classifications like that produces concrete choices in character creation, and helps simplify a complex fictional world. No matter what direction they go in, WOTC isn't likely to change things too much, because their entire brand is built on this. (Hell, there are entire genres of young adult fiction built around rebelling against it...)
But wait! D&D is about species, not race! Well, sorta. Technically, they can (often?) interbreed and stuff. And, importantly, all playable races are people. Also, in some cases (and some settings), the fantasy race concept is a pretty obvious stand-in for real-world race and culture. Scottish dwarves, Finnish elves, Cockney trolls (that's in The Hobbit, btw), that sort of thing. Plus all these historical associations between orcs / other monstrous races and real world stereotypes about "savages" in Africa and such. So, it's not so simple as talking about actual species differentiation.
Well, colour me pessimistic then because to me it's more of a bad sign. A sign of the direction of this game taking a turn for the worse specifically when it comes to inclusiveness and openmindedness. It feels like the US military introducing Don't Ask Don't Tell in the early nineties and people claiming (and in some cases even believing) it was progress. It's a shiny veneer that accomplishes nothing meaningful other than maybe make the company look good.
D&D as a game and the D&D community are still more inclusive than most of their counterparts. That's something to be proud of. But empty gestures for appearances' sake not only don't help, they set us back. If WotC wants to show that settings can be free of bigotry and racism, they shouldn't water down those aspects of existing settings but create one where that's actually true. If we don't want to feel like not having the most optimal array of qualities for our character is a step back, we should stop yammering about the difference optimization makes and stop deluding ourselves that getting to play race X but with whatever qualities we want that have nothing to do with race X is meaningful. None of this is progress. In fact, it's an impediment to progress. It's smoke and mirrors and a lot of annoying glitter that goes everywhere and makes 5-year olds think whatever's so pretty and shiny must be the greatest thing ever. It's not an ointment. It's a placebo, a bit of sugar in a pill.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
If I can give a literal non-metaphorical example?
I'm a multiracial person, as such the concept of "half"-races appealed to me when I heard of DND.
A concept where I could really play into the aspect of my life of being from two different groups/cultures.
Then I read the rules and, back then, half-orcs lose 2 intelligence points, and 2 charisma points, only getting 2 strength points in exchange.
So I have to literally go "Yeah, one parent race/species is dumber, so I'm dumber than I could be, and I can't be a people person".
I don't think I have to explain how this really, REALLY sent a message that this game was NOT for me, or anyone like me.
Especially when in real life I had blood relatives who absolutely had that "You're lesser than us for not being fully like us" mentality.
Admittedly half-elves didn't have such severe penalties for choosing them, but generally elves are considered the pretty folk and I definitely didn't consider myself that.
Now yeah, not everybody wants to bring aspects of their real life or things into their characters and all, but seriously, the game may as well have had a "Screw you, Samedi of Orleans" written into the rules for how I felt when I read that.
"You're mixed, you suck"
Those things can, and did, prevent people from adopting the game because it truly felt like the game itself, rules as written, didn't want you there.
When I saw a dnd playing campaign where someone actually had a charming, smart, half-orc bard? THAT was what made me go "Oh, maybe I should give it another look" and the lack of minuses for playing half-orcs was totally a reason I came to check out the game again.
And now I'm invested enough that I love making characters and changing even minor things to see the effects overall, and I've got literally 500+ characters I've made on this site.
These changes really do make a ton of potential players feel a LOT more welcome, and want to engage with the game more.
Is "But they're different species so they should be different" really worth the aspect of having someone pick up the book and feel like it's "Yeah, you suck for being mixed" and it taking literal decades for them to even think about giving the game a shot again?
See, for you to keep saying this after pages of people explaining their pain, and to incist on following it up with why the game clearly states this is not the intention, it speaks to the fact that you do not accept it is hurtful. If you truly accepted it was hurtful to people then you would not need to incessantly scratch at how it is hurtful and dig for reasons why it shouldn't be hurtful. You will never know how. Not unless you are one of those that have been harmed. Take your fellow forum member's words at face value when they talk about bio essentialism in game design being harmful to their lives.
Except the people in this thread that have said bio essentialism has been harmful to them have been vocal that they appreciate these changes as a step in the right direction. Can you trust them?
I don't pay attention to General Discussion as much so this one slipped past me but oh boy what I could get through was...dicey.
At the end of the day, these changes are actively helping people feel more included and safe within their DnD experience. They're working towards undoing a very sinister form of hate, systemic racism, which by its nature is always embedded even further into how we think as a society than we are aware. The value of any step towards the right direction is enormous.
Thank you so much Ophidimancer and Yurei for being so open and honest and sharing yourselves. SemanticAvenger you have said some seriously beautiful and poignant things and hopefully you're not scared off forever because you seem like a really cool person to chat with. I'm missing other names of some really wonderful posters, I'm sorry but that was...a lot. Anyways, to those that were positive and open and caring, thank you.
All of the talk about minmaxing and lore and I don't like this, I don't like that, blah blah blah is just so freaking petty. The way some have insisted on harping on these points is ignorant and hateful. People with real life problems and pain are saying this is helping them. Stop for a second and listen.
Your fellow human is in need on a fundamental level and crying out "this is good" and all some can say is "yeah but I don't like it". Please, for those of you still questioning all of this, take a step back and try to widen your perspective, or at least recognize your privelege.
I'm not saying it should be a solution that appeals to you or even a great idea in general, but I've had several players play mixed-race characters without necessarily taking the mechanical traits of the official mixed race. A character with human, dwarven or elven traits can look and act like they have orc or goliath blood as well and explore that duality. Similarly, immigrant characters can revolve around feeling alienated and characters from ethnically mixed marriages can feel torn in two different directions (that's a trope I tend to go for myself). Hybrid race stigma has largely been removed in this edition, which is great, but the mechanical particulars of the few such races we have shouldn't be the sole representation of this character option in the first place.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Oooh viscosity of thread content increases to near-rock levels! Only joking.
But I agree - there is a level of bioessenialism within the ASIs pre-Tasha, and while Tasha didn’t fix the pain like it should have done for other races, it was that fateful step. The Lineages system is a second step - more of a leap actually, but it still needs to land and be written in a book to make the right sort of impact.
Those who don’t like Tasha’s changes and hate all this aren’t D&D fans. They’re fans of their ideas first and foremost, and everything else comes second.
I disagree with the portrayal of Vistani and the relative lack of changes to them in the latest CoS errata , let alone how CoS portrays mental health in the most absurd and painful of ways. But that does not mean I won’t play CoS - I will, if offered, come bounding in to play it, because I know that, to quote D:Ream, in terms of inclusivity at the moment “Things can only get better.”. That is why the people saying Lineages and the changes to the ASI are “bad” (mostly looking at the racists who most likely are lurking behind this thread’s veils) are not fans of D&D - they are fans of their own interests and won’t hold an open mind. Who knows, you guys, you might find the ASI changes that occur aren’t that bad.. All it is is a small tweak, so everyone who actually likes the game currently can still enjoy it, and people who were feeling marginalized by it also can give it a try.
But Holy Mother of Threads, you had to be a disciple of Lolth about it and be xenophobic and cruel, or possibly only narrow minded - you choose your title, but your words tar you in with the others. You protest, most likely, against Cancel Culture, yet you enact it yourself. Have some shame and follow Eelistrae for a bit, and learn that Lolth’s way isn’t the only way - open your mind, be patient, and be kind for a moment, and see what it does to you. I assure you, after a month of breathing, Zen meditation, and shunning of Lolth, you will start to see the brighter path and you will learn to love again.
Until then, you may leave D&D, or go back to older editions. Maybe it’ll be more fun for you - but you don’t have to create an argument here, because there does not need to be one.
Some of us may be xenophobic, and the others minority populations, but we’re all one people.
It’s not based on our skin, or our native land, it’s based on us and our deeds. Even culture does not necessarily reflect you, unless you follow your culture. But even so, we are all one species, and we all deserve to be heard.
Asgard is not a place. It’s a people.
Frequent Eladrin || They/Them, but accept all pronouns
Luz Noceda would like to remind you that you're worth loving!
I have two points to bring up...
First, don't call anyone nitwits for saying 15 is fine for a starting stat. That's just rude and uncalled for; not to mention ignorant. Some people are okay with playing their characters like that. It's insulting to them, and they're not here to defend themselves. Just because someone chooses not to use the optional rule doesn't mean they are opposed to it. Hell, the rule has only been around for 3 months.
I like making characters while trying to get the most out of their racial proficiencies; even if their stats aren't "optimal". My mountain dwarf storm sorcerer (basically Thor) kicked ass until he was pasted. Everyone thought he was a druid when he first showed up. (Really looking forward to playing a hill dwarf 4E monk with a dwarven thrower, btw.) My wife is currently trying out a half-orc archfey warlock with a spread of 12 14 16 0 12 14. She took Moderately Armored at 4th-level to bring her Dexterity up to 14 and boost her AC over raising Charisma. And my githyanki war mage? Come at me, bro!
Second, and this may just be semantics, but no one is being "punished" for starting with just a 15 in their primary stat because they took the standard array and are playing "sub-optimally". That was their choice to make. You shouldn't go around insulting the intelligence of other players. Any comparative disadvantage would be self-imposed. One of my current players has a V.Human EK, in heavy armor, with 12 Dexterity. They chose to make it that high, despite not needing it for AC. They could have put those 4 points into Intelligence and start with 16 (with the Observant feat), but they didn't. Was it "optimal"? No, but he had the agency to make an informed decision.
I appreciate your passion, Yurei, but your zealousness can easily approach toxic levels. Check yourself.
EDIT
I'm ... a bit taken aback at just how insensitive it is to respond to someone who just said, "I was turned off of the game because a very obviously close analog to myself was portrayed in a hurtful manner" by telling them, "maybe you should just ignore that and play another type of character instead."
Sometimes people don't respond well to implicit hints so here's me trying to be explicit. Pangurjan you are saying insensitive and hurtful things. You have said things directly to me that I find upsetting. Please reevaluate how you are choosing to speak to people about what is a sensitive and hurtful issue.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
[REDACTED] Also, you say having low stats isn’t a bad thing. My gosh, do you know how HARD IT IS TO PUNCH even a baby BRONZE DRAGON WYRMLING with a 14 Stength, EVEN WITH A MONK?
Frequent Eladrin || They/Them, but accept all pronouns
Luz Noceda would like to remind you that you're worth loving!
I'm not going to touch on everything you've said, because multiple people have done great jobs politely (or at least without drawing blood) illustrating to you multiple times why your responses are hurtful. I second everything they've said. Instead, I want to point out that this has been done. The Wildemount setting, while not developed by WotC has been endorsed by it to the point of publishing it as official content, including approved alternate lore for races with historically negative backgrounds such as drow and orcs, including a different stat block for orcs. And I'm sure there are plenty of third party supplements that do similar. But that still leaves a lot of other races/lineages that are published in other books but present in Wildemount that still would fit into the setting better (or any future similar settings akin to what you want created -- and we know they're working on settings) with adjustments. Yes, we've always been able to do it ourselves without Wizards' input, and we can still do so. Having these rules in place, in writing, for how to make a game more welcoming only increases access to the game, and helps newer players, who aren't used to taking off all the wheels, kicking out the dents, and replacing the engine with a hoverlift a place to start, and something to point back to when someone questions their choices about how they have fun.
Birgit | Shifter | Sorcerer | Dragonlords
Shayone | Hobgoblin | Sorcerer | Netherdeep
I honestly can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. In any case, I'll repeat myself for you now. You don't get to decide who is and isn't a fan of D&D. Nevermind that calling anyone a fan of a gaming engine a weird turn of phrase.
As it is clear this thread is about to go spiraling into the Abyss, I’m jumping ship. See you in my Homebrew thread, but I’m afraid the “Races” I’m doing will be using the new Lineage system. See you later, folks, and remember to look up at the stars and loose yourself among those vast heavens.
Frequent Eladrin || They/Them, but accept all pronouns
Luz Noceda would like to remind you that you're worth loving!