I wish you had come to my table, and I would have said: "The -2 to Cha? That's not because your not charismatic, its because the "civilized" races see a monster when they see you. You have to overcome that. In your tribe/group/society you are basically the Wayne Brady of the land." What I hear too though is that you wanted to play a half-Orc bard, and you never got to the point where you gave a DM an opportunity to modify those rules. I'm not blaming you by any measure, i'm just saying my job as a DM is to make sure you are having fun! But if you had said: "Man, it really impacts my gameplay to have that negative impact the mechanics of the game" then I would have happily (after I make you write a good backstory) had you skip the -2. I would have needed to figure out how to make it equivalent for the rest of the players as well, but we would have done it.
OK, 2 things there:
1) Someone who is feeling down that their character is considered to be racially inferior (in this case, uncharismatic) is unlikely to be buoyed by a suggestion that they are not inferior, but the whole world thinks that they are a monster because of their race. Surely, that would just be dumping them back into the middle of the discrimination which they found hurtful.
2) Those who have suffered things like this are often very good at keeping their feelings to themselves, because they have had to. Even in a group of friends, many would either suffer in silence or walk away rather than raise their issue with the group. If, instead, there is a way to remove or reduce that issue codified in the rules, the player will feel better and be more likely to stick around or enjoy themselves.
I just don't want WoTC to remove an option, because I do use that option in a variety of ways, and specifically involving DDB (which is what the ultimate issue is).
I don't think WotC is going to remove the option from existing races. The only way they could is through errata, and this is too big a change for that. It would need a new edition.
For new races, it looks like there is a good chance that floating ASIs will be the norm. However, you will always have the option to either house rule them to be fixed or disallow the new races from your game. Even if DDB don't give a "Static ASI" option for this, is it really that difficult to tell your players that they must put their ASIs on particular stats?
I don't think WotC is going to remove the option from existing races. The only way they could is through errata, and this is too big a change for that. It would need a new edition.
That and WotC has a pathological aversion to retconning damn near anything in the first place. It took them how many years to give Tritons darkvision again?
EDIT: About four years, to give ******* darkvision to Tritons. Yeah.
Someone who is feeling down that their character is considered to be racially inferior (in this case, uncharismatic) is unlikely to be buoyed by a suggestion that they are not inferior, but the whole world thinks that they are a monster because of their race. Surely, that would just be dumping them back into the middle of the discrimination which they found hurtful.
I fear another comment of mine will again be considered offensive, but I'll try once more since the previous thread was locked 3 minutes before I could post a lengthy (and hopefully polite enough) reply:
Would that person have felt as disappointed (which they had every right to be regardless) had the "pretty boy" +2 Cha half-elves instead been described as clever (with a bonus to Int) or sensitive (with a bonus to Wis) or had there been another explicitly hybrid race available with a reputation more in keeping with his own personal image? I get not being happy about feeling forced into a brutish character concept, but it's not like the game suggested being a halfbreed, any halfbreed, is bad and means you're inferior. Dwarves were equally lacking in the interpersonality department, they were just tough rather than strong (and not as dumb, admittedly) for instance.
As several other games do, being of mixed descent can also be represented entirely in background characteristics. A hybrid race with hybrid traits is more explicit, yes, but going by some of the suggestions in this thread it appears those traits should be divorced from race anyway for PCs. It's not hard to play a half-elf using the rules for a human character, or even a half-dwarf half-gnome using the halfling rules if you so choose.
Third edition's inclusion of mixed descent characters was acceptable, going by how immigrants in my groups brought up that and similar themes at any rate, even if explicit representation may have felt (and thus been) lacking.
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I get not being happy about feeling forced into a brutish character concept, but it's not like the game suggested being a halfbreed, any halfbreed, is bad and means you're inferior.
I cannot speak for the person in question. I am fortunate enough to not have suffered these issues myself, and so can only go by what others have told me of their experiences both on here and elsewhere.
However, the issue is not that "being X is bad". The issue is that the profiling/stereotyping of races mirrors essentialism (I think that's the right word) in the real world. Maybe this would not be as much of an issue if the game had initially called this "species" or similar, but the common, everyday usage of the word race tied to these concepts links it to some very nasty concepts.
Even without the negative modifiers, the lack of a bonus can easily be seen as a penalty. If one race gets an intelligence bonus, then other races which don't are "dumber" than that race. This promotes ideas commonly used to keep certain groups down: "My group is more intelligent than yours, but yours is stronger, so you are more suitable for labouring than intellectual pursuits". Even if this is not how it is intended in D&D, someone who has suffered bad experiences from this thinking in the past may very well be reminded of it by the close mirroring in the game and find it painful. The very fact that this is so "core" to the rules and is taken as fact in the D&D "world" is upsetting.
I get not being happy about feeling forced into a brutish character concept, but it's not like the game suggested being a halfbreed, any halfbreed, is bad and means you're inferior.
I cannot speak for the person in question. I am fortunate enough to not have suffered these issues myself, and so can only go by what others have told me of their experiences both on here and elsewhere.
However, the issue is not that "being X is bad". The issue is that the profiling/stereotyping of races mirrors essentialism (I think that's the right word) in the real world. Maybe this would not be as much of an issue if the game had initially called this "species" or similar, but the common, everyday usage of the word race tied to these concepts links it to some very nasty concepts.
Even without the negative modifiers, the lack of a bonus can easily be seen as a penalty. If one race gets an intelligence bonus, then other races which don't are "dumber" than that race. This promotes ideas commonly used to keep certain groups down: "My group is more intelligent than yours, but yours is stronger, so you are more suitable for labouring than intellectual pursuits". Even if this is not how it is intended in D&D, someone who has suffered bad experiences from this thinking in the past may very well be reminded of it by the close mirroring in the game and find it painful. The very fact that this is so "core" to the rules and is taken as fact in the D&D "world" is upsetting.
Can I offer another perspective? Most settings are fairly human-centric. Humans are the dominant species and while the heroes and antagonists of the novels are fairly varied a lot of the movers and shakers in the world, as well as quite a few of the really powerful characters in the background, are human. All the while, right up until 5E's variant human, humans were the middle of the road species in terms of talents. Not the brightest, not the strongest, not the wisest or the toughest; impressive certainly, but by dint of achievement more than natural gifts. That's a message I like, and it's antithetical to those racial prejudices.
Silly question but why would a lack of a plus indicate that characteristic is lacking? No int bonus does not mean any given race is stupid.
Nor does a charisma bonus equate to 'pretty.' Many great leaders, both male leaders and female leaders have clearly had high charismas without being particularly stunning to look at.
I do agree with you though that mixed races are treated pretty well by the system.
Half-Orcs had a -2 to Int in 3E, as well as a -2 to Cha; the only core race with two negatives. Other than that, understanding why someone may have one impression doesn't mean I share it. For me half-elves were the cool kids in school - the ones everyone else looked up to and wanted to hang out with, the ones that could get away with more for no real reason. Definitely not me in high school, and not really something I identified with later on either.
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Silly question but why would a lack of a plus indicate that characteristic is lacking? No int bonus does not mean any given race is stupid.
Reminder that things are relative. Yes not having a plus bonus to INT doesn't mean your stupid, it just means your always going to more stupid than a elf unless you put in extra work and ASIs.
Not getting a particular bonus is in itself essentially a penalty when you easily get that bonus simply by switching to a "better" race for completely free. The difference between a -2 and 0 is the same between a 0 and 2. They are both "penalties" (although the first one more so since the difference between a -2 and 2 is a lot bigger than 0 and 2), a penalty is a disadvantage, doesn't have to be a negative number for it to be a disadvantage.
I cannot speak for the person in question. I am fortunate enough to not have suffered these issues myself, and so can only go by what others have told me of their experiences both on here and elsewhere.
However, the issue is not that "being X is bad". The issue is that the profiling/stereotyping of races mirrors essentialism (I think that's the right word) in the real world. Maybe this would not be as much of an issue if the game had initially called this "species" or similar, but the common, everyday usage of the word race tied to these concepts links it to some very nasty concepts.
It's hurtful to quite a lot of players new and old (as seen in this thread), and thus should be removed of to allow more people to comfortably play whatever character they want. More openness is better.
Edit: I do wish we could come to some sort of compromise, one that isn't as hurtful to those who suffer these issues, but also doesn't push out those who find the racial ASIs work for them.
In most settings, humans are the dominant species due to violently displacing older, established species (usually elves and dwarves) from their long-settled lands through the power of rapid breeding, a willingness to suffer losses well beyond other species' tolerance for casualties, and blatant imperialism. Elves and dwarves are often distrustful of humans because within their own personal overly-long lifetimes, human empires have forcibly evicted them from their ancestral homes and turned those homes into filthy urban warrens packed to bursting with ever-more humans, constantly ******* and making more humans at a rate no other established species can match. The message is not "we got where we were through hard work and dedication!", but "we got where we were through there being too many of us for you other shits to stop us from taking whatever we felt like taking."
Humans are also the dominant species because most setting writers are either lazy or scared and don't want to upset the applecart by telling human players that they are in no way special and don't get to Rule The World just by dint of having the right set of genes.
I hate humanocentric settings where every other species just gets by on whatever meager scraps humanity oh-so-graciously deigns to leave them, all "please sir, may I have another?". Not only do they make no god damned sense, but...well. I believe you're bright enough to be able to see where the corollaries to "we were displaced from our ancestral lands by a more numerous, more ruthless population who didn't really care what happened to us so long as they got new land to screw with" can be drawn without me having to spell them out, hm?
In some fantasy settings, "humans" are basically an analog for "white people" or "colonizers." Complete with "they're the race that's good at leadership and civilization" or "they're the race that you just can't keep down."
Edit: to quote the previous thread, "It's 'white man's burden' all the way down."
"So you said that you shouldn’t have to do it but I should be perfectly happy to live with the same circumstance that you have decided that you’re too good for. That’s the double standard to which I referred. Your double standard."
Let's break this down.
Person One: You can play it how you want, just homebrew it.
Person Two: Well that sucks. It’s not fair.
WotC: Rules are changing to X
Person One: That sucks.
Person Two: You can play it how you want, just homebrew it.
Person One: If it wasn’t fair for you to have to Homebrew it then why is it fair that I have to Homebrew it
Person Two: Because it works the way I want it to now
As a note, Ken: Explicit comparisons to real-world racism or racial justice issues are frowned upon in the forums. The moderation staff tends to quash them, as they have an unfortunate tendency to provoke non-D&D-related firestorms. It can make discussions of the D&D-related firestorms surrounding the issue awkward and annoying, but in the future you'll probably want to try and be a bit more circumspect.
I don't like it, I don't agree with it, but I'm not site staff so my opinion on it doesn't really matter. Hopefully this post in specific will be taken as the friendly caution and Old-*****-Imparting-Info it's intended to be, but...mlem.
"So you said that you shouldn’t have to do it but I should be perfectly happy to live with the same circumstance that you have decided that you’re too good for. That’s the double standard to which I referred. Your double standard."
Let's break this down.
Person One: You can play it how you want, just homebrew it.
Person Two: Well that sucks. It’s not fair.
WotC: Rules are changing to X
Person One: That sucks.
Person Two: You can play it how you want, just homebrew it.
Person One: If it wasn’t fair for you to have to Homebrew it then why is it fair that I have to Homebrew it
Person Two: Because it works the way I want it to now
Person One: DoUbLe StAnDaRds MuCh!!!
Fixed it for you.
So as long as it worked the way you wanted it everything was fine so pot meet kettle.
1) Someone who is feeling down that their character is considered to be racially inferior (in this case, uncharismatic) is unlikely to be buoyed by a suggestion that they are not inferior, but the whole world thinks that they are a monster because of their race. Surely, that would just be dumping them back into the middle of the discrimination which they found hurtful.
Here's what I don't get: Why is the person playing a half-orc if he/she does not want to play a character who will be looked down on, disliked, feared, or what have you? At least in the classical rules for D&D, it is clearly and openly stated up-front that this is the case, and no one is twisting your arm to play the downtrodden species. You chose that. Why did you choose it? You knew going in this was going to be a rough time for the PC, and there are umpteen other races (now) to choose from, many of which do not have this problem. Why didn't you paly an elf or halfling or human instead, if not being discriminated against is so important to you?
If every race were discriminated against in some way by all the other races and we all had to play characters who were the victims of racism, I'd maybe agree with you... Or if the DM kept how the world treats half-orcs a secret from you, and you didn't know until game-play, you'd have a strong point... Or if the DM assigned a player to the half-orc race and that player didn't want to RP the discrimination, again, I'd agree.
But there is nothing in the rules - zero, zilch, zip, nada -- that requires you to play as a given race. If you make the choice, you make it in full knowledge of what RPing that race will entail in this world. Nobody's forcing that person to play a half-orc and in fact there are any number of other races that may give similar or perhaps even better bonuses than a half-orc would for a variety of class selections.
There seems to be this myth among players, and more than a few DMs unfortunately, that a player should be allowed to make up whatever concept he/she wants, no matter what it is, and play it to the fullest of that player's vision, regardless of any other factors. And that is simply not true -- it's never been true, and it will never be true. Even within the rules, there are ways to make a character that will just break a campaign, and the player isn't free to do that just because it's his or her "vision for the character." I'm involved in a thread right now about someone playing a CE/insane goblin character in the middle of an otherwise bog-standard party and it's potentially screwing up the game. Just because that player has what he thinks is a "cool idea" for the psycho goblin doesn't mean he gets to play it in this particular campaign.
So just because you got what you think is this awesome idea for a beautiful and charismatic half-orc bard who is beloved by everyone and lives in a world of sunshine and unicorns where nobody ever discriminates against anyone else based on species, nationality, character class, alignment, etc, doesn't mean that's the campaign the DM wants to run, or the rest of the table wants to experience. And it definitely doesn't mean you get to automatically play that character because that one, and no other, is what you want to play.
I'm not saying DMs should stomp on player ideas... but character creation is not short story authorship. You don't get to just make up whatever you want and the DM has to pretzelize his or her world around your ideas. As a player, you are supposed to digest whatever the DM tells you about his or her world and then try as best you can to fit your character into that world. Not come up with Thor, God of Thunder from Marvel Comics and then demand that somehow, the DM fit your character into a world where there are no gods.
And not come up with Gorgeous George the Loving Half-Orc whose life is all sunshine and unicorns and demand to have that character realized exactly as you envisioned it in a grimdark post-apocalyptic world of chaos, disorder, and everyone hating/being suspicious of everyone else.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Look, there is a way to solve the issue of people having to homebrew, as well as making the game more inclusive and less provocative.
If Wizards just includes an appendix with a list of suggested static ASIs for those who want them, the issue is solved. The content doesn't look like it is promoting essentialism, the main, visible content doesn't mention it at all, but those who want to play the old way can flip to the back of the book and find it without homebrewing it.
"So you said that you shouldn’t have to do it but I should be perfectly happy to live with the same circumstance that you have decided that you’re too good for. That’s the double standard to which I referred. Your double standard."
Let's break this down.
Person One: You can play it how you want, just homebrew it.
Person Two: Well that sucks. It’s not fair.
WotC: Rules are changing to X
Person One: That sucks.
Person Two: You can play it how you want, just homebrew it.
Person One: If it wasn’t fair for you to have to Homebrew it then why is it fair that I have to Homebrew it
Person Two: Because it works the way I want it to now
Person One: DoUbLe StAnDaRds MuCh!!!
Fixed it for you.
So as long as it worked the way you wanted it everything was fine so pot meet kettle.
Not so.
My incredulity is with all of those who have been going on a tirade that it was absolutely unfair that they should ever have had to houserule this stuff and how it was abysmally unfair that anyone ever told them to houserule their changes but that they think it is absolutely fine to tell others to do the exact same thing now that they’ve gotten their way.
If it was unfair for them than it is unfair for us. Telling us it is fair now is the ACME of hypocrisy.
If they said “I know it’s just as unfair for you to have to houserule it as it was for us, that sucks” then it wouldn’t be such a blatantly slap in the face. But the fact that they now tell us to houserule it without the slightest hint of irony is insulting.
1) Someone who is feeling down that their character is considered to be racially inferior (in this case, uncharismatic) is unlikely to be buoyed by a suggestion that they are not inferior, but the whole world thinks that they are a monster because of their race. Surely, that would just be dumping them back into the middle of the discrimination which they found hurtful.
Here's what I don't get: Why is the person playing a half-orc if he/she does not want to play a character who will be looked down on, disliked, feared, or what have you?
This exact question has been answered with a very specific and real example HERE.
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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!
1) Someone who is feeling down that their character is considered to be racially inferior (in this case, uncharismatic) is unlikely to be buoyed by a suggestion that they are not inferior, but the whole world thinks that they are a monster because of their race. Surely, that would just be dumping them back into the middle of the discrimination which they found hurtful.
Here's what I don't get: Why is the person playing a half-orc if he/she does not want to play a character who will be looked down on, disliked, feared, or what have you? At least in the classical rules for D&D, it is clearly and openly stated up-front that this is the case, and no one is twisting your arm to play the downtrodden species. You chose that. Why did you choose it? You knew going in this was going to be a rough time for the PC, and there are umpteen other races (now) to choose from, many of which do not have this problem. Why didn't you paly an elf or halfling or human instead, if not being discriminated against is so important to you?
If every race were discriminated against in some way by all the other races and we all had to play characters who were the victims of racism, I'd maybe agree with you... Or if the DM kept how the world treats half-orcs a secret from you, and you didn't know until game-play, you'd have a strong point... Or if the DM assigned a player to the half-orc race and that player didn't want to RP the discrimination, again, I'd agree.
But there is nothing in the rules - zero, zilch, zip, nada -- that requires you to play as a given race. If you make the choice, you make it in full knowledge of what RPing that race will entail in this world. Nobody's forcing that person to play a half-orc and in fact there are any number of other races that may give similar or perhaps even better bonuses than a half-orc would for a variety of class selections.
There seems to be this myth among players, and more than a few DMs unfortunately, that a player should be allowed to make up whatever concept he/she wants, no matter what it is, and play it to the fullest of that player's vision, regardless of any other factors. And that is simply not true -- it's never been true, and it will never be true. Even within the rules, there are ways to make a character that will just break a campaign, and the player isn't free to do that just because it's his or her "vision for the character." I'm involved in a thread right now about someone playing a CE/insane goblin character in the middle of an otherwise bog-standard party and it's potentially screwing up the game. Just because that player has what he thinks is a "cool idea" for the psycho goblin doesn't mean he gets to play it in this particular campaign.
So just because you got what you think is this awesome idea for a beautiful and charismatic half-orc bard who is beloved by everyone and lives in a world of sunshine and unicorns where nobody ever discriminates against anyone else based on species, nationality, character class, alignment, etc, doesn't mean that's the campaign the DM wants to run, or the rest of the table wants to experience. And it definitely doesn't mean you get to automatically play that character because that one, and no other, is what you want to play.
I'm not saying DMs should stomp on player ideas... but character creation is not short story authorship. You don't get to just make up whatever you want and the DM has to pretzelize his or her world around your ideas. As a player, you are supposed to digest whatever the DM tells you about his or her world and then try as best you can to fit your character into that world. Not come up with Thor, God of Thunder from Marvel Comics and then demand that somehow, the DM fit your character into a world where there are no gods.
And not come up with Gorgeous George the Loving Half-Orc whose life is all sunshine and unicorns and demand to have that character realized exactly as you envisioned it in a grimdark post-apocalyptic world of chaos, disorder, and everyone hating/being suspicious of everyone else.
Bingo Bio.
In my campaign, there are only the PHB species available, with Tieflings considered incredibly rare and viewed with great suspicion, Dragonborn even more so since Dragons have been considered a myth for a thousand years, and Half-Orc's are KOS, given the never ending wars with the Orc's in the North. The other species now found in the other source books simply do not fit in the history and narrative of the continent I have created.
I had a guy in a separate channel call me racist over this. I explained the next time I am in my local pub, I will ask my Tiefling bartender if they consider this racist. Oh wait...they are not real, and it is impossible to be bigoted towards something that is not real, never was, and never will be.
My incredulity is with all of those who have been going on a tirade that it was absolutely unfair that they should ever have had to houserule this stuff and how it was abysmally unfair that anyone ever told them to houserule their changes but that they think it is absolutely fine to tell others to do the exact same thing now that they’ve gotten their way.
If it was unfair for them than it is unfair for us. Telling us it is fair now is the ACME of hypocrisy.
If they said “I know it’s just as unfair for you to have to houserule it as it was for us, that sucks” then it wouldn’t be such a blatantly slap in the face. But the fact that they now tell us to houserule it without the slightest hint of irony is insulting.
And you don't think it is remotely hypocritical or "a slap in the face" for someone to complain that they may have to homebrew some rules for some new content (and only some new content) when they have been telling others that they should just homebrew stuff for all content (not just new content) from the very start of this discussion (and before)?!
My incredulity is with all of those who have been going on a tirade that it was absolutely unfair that they should ever have had to houserule this stuff and how it was abysmally unfair that anyone ever told them to houserule their changes but that they think it is absolutely fine to tell others to do the exact same thing now that they’ve gotten their way.
If it was unfair for them than it is unfair for us. Telling us it is fair now is the ACME of hypocrisy.
If they said “I know it’s just as unfair for you to have to houserule it as it was for us, that sucks” then it wouldn’t be such a blatantly slap in the face. But the fact that they now tell us to houserule it without the slightest hint of irony is insulting.
And you don't think it is remotely hypocritical or "a slap in the face" for someone to complain that they may have to homebrew some rules for some new content (and only some new content) when they have been telling others that they should just homebrew stuff for all content (not just new content) from the very start of this discussion (and before)?!
Up until this last post of your you have been the only one in this thread who seemed to be in favor of all the folks in this debate on both sides, striving for the most equitable arrangement for all. That’s why I have chosen to not rebut any of your statements thus far.
I’m only complaining about it as a counterpoint to those stating they shouldn’t have had to do it before.
I Homebrew everything I can get my hands on if it suits my purposes. That’s not the point. If it was unfair for them before than it is unfair for me now. If it is fair for me now than it was fair for them before.
When they admit that it is just as unfair to tell us to “simply houserule it” as they claim it was unfair for us to say it before then I’ll gladly stop this line of argument. When they admit that it was just as fair to them to have had to houserule these things as they say it is for us to have to do it now then I will gladly stop this line of argument. But as long as they say they were too good to have had to houserule it in the past, but it should be good enough for us then I will continue to point out the hypocrisy. Folks on that side of this debate using the exact same argument that they found so offensive before is horse poopy every inch of the way and I’ll continue to point it out every inch of the way.
The answer, BioWizard, is that there is a difference between the game world being discriminatory against individuals of a given species and the game rules being discriminatory against individuals of a given species.
I love playing tieflings. That species fascinates me endlessly, and I have no issue with DMs who tell me I'll have to overcome Tiffle Hate when I play them. In point of fact, there's been times I wished the DM for certain games would lean harder on the idea, but racism isn't generally a strong theme in our games so c'est la vie.
The issue is when the mechanical game rules themselves tell me that my tiefling is required to be a Fiend-pact warlock, because the bioessential statblocks for PC species in the game mandate that all tieflings be extremely charismatic, moderately intelligent, and absolute moose piss at any sort of physical action or being observant and resistant to mental compulsions. Exempting the legion of variant tiffles out there for now, if it isn't Charisma? Tieflings aren't supposed to be doing it or any good at it.
Yes yes yes yes, I know. "A fifteen is perfectly fine!" "Numbers don't matter, just ROLE PLAY!" "Not getting a bonus isn't the same as getting a penalty!" "You're ugly and I hate you, Yurei!" All the rest of the same stupid arguments that've been shot down a thousand times already. Here's the thing: why is it a requirement that the game mechanically enforce standardized species/class combinations by forcing numbers to align certain ways? Trust me, I'd rather have less dependence on the numbers myself. D&D's insistence on treating raw ability score as the near-sole determinant of a roll's success bothers me to no end, but since that is, in fact, what it does? We're all kind of obligated to work within that framework.
And that framework says my tiefling rogue is absolutely ******* terrible at his job next to the halfling or the high elf, and I should feel bad for making that character. Because the mechanical systems of D&D insist that tieflings be outgoing, cheerful people-persons despite how little ******* sense that makes for all the game worlds where they're ostracized for being fiends in everything but name.
1) Someone who is feeling down that their character is considered to be racially inferior (in this case, uncharismatic) is unlikely to be buoyed by a suggestion that they are not inferior, but the whole world thinks that they are a monster because of their race. Surely, that would just be dumping them back into the middle of the discrimination which they found hurtful.
Here's what I don't get: Why is the person playing a half-orc if he/she does not want to play a character who will be looked down on, disliked, feared, or what have you? At least in the classical rules for D&D, it is clearly and openly stated up-front that this is the case, and no one is twisting your arm to play the downtrodden species. You chose that. Why did you choose it? You knew going in this was going to be a rough time for the PC, and there are umpteen other races (now) to choose from, many of which do not have this problem. Why didn't you paly an elf or halfling or human instead, if not being discriminated against is so important to you?
If every race were discriminated against in some way by all the other races and we all had to play characters who were the victims of racism, I'd maybe agree with you... Or if the DM kept how the world treats half-orcs a secret from you, and you didn't know until game-play, you'd have a strong point... Or if the DM assigned a player to the half-orc race and that player didn't want to RP the discrimination, again, I'd agree.
But there is nothing in the rules - zero, zilch, zip, nada -- that requires you to play as a given race. If you make the choice, you make it in full knowledge of what RPing that race will entail in this world. Nobody's forcing that person to play a half-orc and in fact there are any number of other races that may give similar or perhaps even better bonuses than a half-orc would for a variety of class selections.
There seems to be this myth among players, and more than a few DMs unfortunately, that a player should be allowed to make up whatever concept he/she wants, no matter what it is, and play it to the fullest of that player's vision, regardless of any other factors. And that is simply not true -- it's never been true, and it will never be true. Even within the rules, there are ways to make a character that will just break a campaign, and the player isn't free to do that just because it's his or her "vision for the character." I'm involved in a thread right now about someone playing a CE/insane goblin character in the middle of an otherwise bog-standard party and it's potentially screwing up the game. Just because that player has what he thinks is a "cool idea" for the psycho goblin doesn't mean he gets to play it in this particular campaign.
So just because you got what you think is this awesome idea for a beautiful and charismatic half-orc bard who is beloved by everyone and lives in a world of sunshine and unicorns where nobody ever discriminates against anyone else based on species, nationality, character class, alignment, etc, doesn't mean that's the campaign the DM wants to run, or the rest of the table wants to experience. And it definitely doesn't mean you get to automatically play that character because that one, and no other, is what you want to play.
I'm not saying DMs should stomp on player ideas... but character creation is not short story authorship. You don't get to just make up whatever you want and the DM has to pretzelize his or her world around your ideas. As a player, you are supposed to digest whatever the DM tells you about his or her world and then try as best you can to fit your character into that world. Not come up with Thor, God of Thunder from Marvel Comics and then demand that somehow, the DM fit your character into a world where there are no gods.
And not come up with Gorgeous George the Loving Half-Orc whose life is all sunshine and unicorns and demand to have that character realized exactly as you envisioned it in a grimdark post-apocalyptic world of chaos, disorder, and everyone hating/being suspicious of everyone else.
Bingo Bio.
In my campaign, there are only the PHB species available, with Tieflings considered incredibly rare and viewed with great suspicion, Dragonborn even more so since Dragons have been considered a myth for a thousand years, and Half-Orc's are KOS, given the never ending wars with the Orc's in the North. The other species now found in the other source books simply do not fit in the history and narrative of the continent I have created.
I had a guy in a separate channel call me racist over this. I explained the next time I am in my local pub, I will ask my Tiefling bartender if they consider this racist. Oh wait...they are not real, and it is impossible to be bigoted towards something that is not real, never was, and never will be.
I am not going to call you racist over this.
However, I do have a couple of points:
1) If "Half-Orc's are KOS", then surely they are pretty much banned from being PCs. Otherwise, a party with a Half Orc in it would never be able to go anywhere near civilisation, would be randomly attacked by anyone they passed etc. You have made Half Orcs unplayable as PCs.
2) As long as your table is OK with that setting, fair enough. However, I do not believe that you cannot see how this meshes with real world situations or how it could upset someone who comes from a race which is "rare and viewed with great suspicion" in certain areas in the real world. Denying that it has any parallels in the real world just by saying "but this race is made up" doesn't wash.
Let's say there was a setting such as yours, but the Tieflings were rounded up, put in camps, and herded into magical chambers which "transported them to another plane of existence". When somebody pointed out similarities to fairly recent atrocities, would you just tell them "No, Tieflings don't exist so it is nothing like that"?
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OK, 2 things there:
1) Someone who is feeling down that their character is considered to be racially inferior (in this case, uncharismatic) is unlikely to be buoyed by a suggestion that they are not inferior, but the whole world thinks that they are a monster because of their race. Surely, that would just be dumping them back into the middle of the discrimination which they found hurtful.
2) Those who have suffered things like this are often very good at keeping their feelings to themselves, because they have had to. Even in a group of friends, many would either suffer in silence or walk away rather than raise their issue with the group. If, instead, there is a way to remove or reduce that issue codified in the rules, the player will feel better and be more likely to stick around or enjoy themselves.
I don't think WotC is going to remove the option from existing races. The only way they could is through errata, and this is too big a change for that. It would need a new edition.
For new races, it looks like there is a good chance that floating ASIs will be the norm. However, you will always have the option to either house rule them to be fixed or disallow the new races from your game. Even if DDB don't give a "Static ASI" option for this, is it really that difficult to tell your players that they must put their ASIs on particular stats?
That and WotC has a pathological aversion to retconning damn near anything in the first place. It took them how many years to give Tritons darkvision again?
EDIT: About four years, to give ******* darkvision to Tritons. Yeah.
As several other games do, being of mixed descent can also be represented entirely in background characteristics. A hybrid race with hybrid traits is more explicit, yes, but going by some of the suggestions in this thread it appears those traits should be divorced from race anyway for PCs. It's not hard to play a half-elf using the rules for a human character, or even a half-dwarf half-gnome using the halfling rules if you so choose.
Third edition's inclusion of mixed descent characters was acceptable, going by how immigrants in my groups brought up that and similar themes at any rate, even if explicit representation may have felt (and thus been) lacking.
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I cannot speak for the person in question. I am fortunate enough to not have suffered these issues myself, and so can only go by what others have told me of their experiences both on here and elsewhere.
However, the issue is not that "being X is bad". The issue is that the profiling/stereotyping of races mirrors essentialism (I think that's the right word) in the real world. Maybe this would not be as much of an issue if the game had initially called this "species" or similar, but the common, everyday usage of the word race tied to these concepts links it to some very nasty concepts.
Even without the negative modifiers, the lack of a bonus can easily be seen as a penalty. If one race gets an intelligence bonus, then other races which don't are "dumber" than that race. This promotes ideas commonly used to keep certain groups down: "My group is more intelligent than yours, but yours is stronger, so you are more suitable for labouring than intellectual pursuits". Even if this is not how it is intended in D&D, someone who has suffered bad experiences from this thinking in the past may very well be reminded of it by the close mirroring in the game and find it painful. The very fact that this is so "core" to the rules and is taken as fact in the D&D "world" is upsetting.
Can I offer another perspective? Most settings are fairly human-centric. Humans are the dominant species and while the heroes and antagonists of the novels are fairly varied a lot of the movers and shakers in the world, as well as quite a few of the really powerful characters in the background, are human. All the while, right up until 5E's variant human, humans were the middle of the road species in terms of talents. Not the brightest, not the strongest, not the wisest or the toughest; impressive certainly, but by dint of achievement more than natural gifts. That's a message I like, and it's antithetical to those racial prejudices.
Half-Orcs had a -2 to Int in 3E, as well as a -2 to Cha; the only core race with two negatives. Other than that, understanding why someone may have one impression doesn't mean I share it. For me half-elves were the cool kids in school - the ones everyone else looked up to and wanted to hang out with, the ones that could get away with more for no real reason. Definitely not me in high school, and not really something I identified with later on either.
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Reminder that things are relative. Yes not having a plus bonus to INT doesn't mean your stupid, it just means your always going to more stupid than a elf unless you put in extra work and ASIs.
Not getting a particular bonus is in itself essentially a penalty when you easily get that bonus simply by switching to a "better" race for completely free. The difference between a -2 and 0 is the same between a 0 and 2. They are both "penalties" (although the first one more so since the difference between a -2 and 2 is a lot bigger than 0 and 2), a penalty is a disadvantage, doesn't have to be a negative number for it to be a disadvantage.
Also yeah I double what Urth said,
It's hurtful to quite a lot of players new and old (as seen in this thread), and thus should be removed of to allow more people to comfortably play whatever character they want. More openness is better.
Edit: I do wish we could come to some sort of compromise, one that isn't as hurtful to those who suffer these issues, but also doesn't push out those who find the racial ASIs work for them.
if I edit a message, most of the time it's because of grammar. The rest of the time I'll put "Edit:" at the bottom.
Perspective on your perspective, Pang:
In most settings, humans are the dominant species due to violently displacing older, established species (usually elves and dwarves) from their long-settled lands through the power of rapid breeding, a willingness to suffer losses well beyond other species' tolerance for casualties, and blatant imperialism. Elves and dwarves are often distrustful of humans because within their own personal overly-long lifetimes, human empires have forcibly evicted them from their ancestral homes and turned those homes into filthy urban warrens packed to bursting with ever-more humans, constantly ******* and making more humans at a rate no other established species can match. The message is not "we got where we were through hard work and dedication!", but "we got where we were through there being too many of us for you other shits to stop us from taking whatever we felt like taking."
Humans are also the dominant species because most setting writers are either lazy or scared and don't want to upset the applecart by telling human players that they are in no way special and don't get to Rule The World just by dint of having the right set of genes.
I hate humanocentric settings where every other species just gets by on whatever meager scraps humanity oh-so-graciously deigns to leave them, all "please sir, may I have another?". Not only do they make no god damned sense, but...well. I believe you're bright enough to be able to see where the corollaries to "we were displaced from our ancestral lands by a more numerous, more ruthless population who didn't really care what happened to us so long as they got new land to screw with" can be drawn without me having to spell them out, hm?
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In some fantasy settings, "humans" are basically an analog for "white people" or "colonizers." Complete with "they're the race that's good at leadership and civilization" or "they're the race that you just can't keep down."
Edit: to quote the previous thread, "It's 'white man's burden' all the way down."
Fixed it for you.
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As a note, Ken: Explicit comparisons to real-world racism or racial justice issues are frowned upon in the forums. The moderation staff tends to quash them, as they have an unfortunate tendency to provoke non-D&D-related firestorms. It can make discussions of the D&D-related firestorms surrounding the issue awkward and annoying, but in the future you'll probably want to try and be a bit more circumspect.
I don't like it, I don't agree with it, but I'm not site staff so my opinion on it doesn't really matter. Hopefully this post in specific will be taken as the friendly caution and Old-*****-Imparting-Info it's intended to be, but...mlem.
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So as long as it worked the way you wanted it everything was fine so pot meet kettle.
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Here's what I don't get: Why is the person playing a half-orc if he/she does not want to play a character who will be looked down on, disliked, feared, or what have you? At least in the classical rules for D&D, it is clearly and openly stated up-front that this is the case, and no one is twisting your arm to play the downtrodden species. You chose that. Why did you choose it? You knew going in this was going to be a rough time for the PC, and there are umpteen other races (now) to choose from, many of which do not have this problem. Why didn't you paly an elf or halfling or human instead, if not being discriminated against is so important to you?
If every race were discriminated against in some way by all the other races and we all had to play characters who were the victims of racism, I'd maybe agree with you... Or if the DM kept how the world treats half-orcs a secret from you, and you didn't know until game-play, you'd have a strong point... Or if the DM assigned a player to the half-orc race and that player didn't want to RP the discrimination, again, I'd agree.
But there is nothing in the rules - zero, zilch, zip, nada -- that requires you to play as a given race. If you make the choice, you make it in full knowledge of what RPing that race will entail in this world. Nobody's forcing that person to play a half-orc and in fact there are any number of other races that may give similar or perhaps even better bonuses than a half-orc would for a variety of class selections.
There seems to be this myth among players, and more than a few DMs unfortunately, that a player should be allowed to make up whatever concept he/she wants, no matter what it is, and play it to the fullest of that player's vision, regardless of any other factors. And that is simply not true -- it's never been true, and it will never be true. Even within the rules, there are ways to make a character that will just break a campaign, and the player isn't free to do that just because it's his or her "vision for the character." I'm involved in a thread right now about someone playing a CE/insane goblin character in the middle of an otherwise bog-standard party and it's potentially screwing up the game. Just because that player has what he thinks is a "cool idea" for the psycho goblin doesn't mean he gets to play it in this particular campaign.
So just because you got what you think is this awesome idea for a beautiful and charismatic half-orc bard who is beloved by everyone and lives in a world of sunshine and unicorns where nobody ever discriminates against anyone else based on species, nationality, character class, alignment, etc, doesn't mean that's the campaign the DM wants to run, or the rest of the table wants to experience. And it definitely doesn't mean you get to automatically play that character because that one, and no other, is what you want to play.
I'm not saying DMs should stomp on player ideas... but character creation is not short story authorship. You don't get to just make up whatever you want and the DM has to pretzelize his or her world around your ideas. As a player, you are supposed to digest whatever the DM tells you about his or her world and then try as best you can to fit your character into that world. Not come up with Thor, God of Thunder from Marvel Comics and then demand that somehow, the DM fit your character into a world where there are no gods.
And not come up with Gorgeous George the Loving Half-Orc whose life is all sunshine and unicorns and demand to have that character realized exactly as you envisioned it in a grimdark post-apocalyptic world of chaos, disorder, and everyone hating/being suspicious of everyone else.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Look, there is a way to solve the issue of people having to homebrew, as well as making the game more inclusive and less provocative.
If Wizards just includes an appendix with a list of suggested static ASIs for those who want them, the issue is solved. The content doesn't look like it is promoting essentialism, the main, visible content doesn't mention it at all, but those who want to play the old way can flip to the back of the book and find it without homebrewing it.
Not so.
My incredulity is with all of those who have been going on a tirade that it was absolutely unfair that they should ever have had to houserule this stuff and how it was abysmally unfair that anyone ever told them to houserule their changes but that they think it is absolutely fine to tell others to do the exact same thing now that they’ve gotten their way.
If it was unfair for them than it is unfair for us. Telling us it is fair now is the ACME of hypocrisy.
If they said “I know it’s just as unfair for you to have to houserule it as it was for us, that sucks” then it wouldn’t be such a blatantly slap in the face. But the fact that they now tell us to houserule it without the slightest hint of irony is insulting.
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This exact question has been answered with a very specific and real example HERE.
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!
Bingo Bio.
In my campaign, there are only the PHB species available, with Tieflings considered incredibly rare and viewed with great suspicion, Dragonborn even more so since Dragons have been considered a myth for a thousand years, and Half-Orc's are KOS, given the never ending wars with the Orc's in the North. The other species now found in the other source books simply do not fit in the history and narrative of the continent I have created.
I had a guy in a separate channel call me racist over this. I explained the next time I am in my local pub, I will ask my Tiefling bartender if they consider this racist. Oh wait...they are not real, and it is impossible to be bigoted towards something that is not real, never was, and never will be.
And you don't think it is remotely hypocritical or "a slap in the face" for someone to complain that they may have to homebrew some rules for some new content (and only some new content) when they have been telling others that they should just homebrew stuff for all content (not just new content) from the very start of this discussion (and before)?!
Up until this last post of your you have been the only one in this thread who seemed to be in favor of all the folks in this debate on both sides, striving for the most equitable arrangement for all. That’s why I have chosen to not rebut any of your statements thus far.
I’m only complaining about it as a counterpoint to those stating they shouldn’t have had to do it before.
I Homebrew everything I can get my hands on if it suits my purposes. That’s not the point. If it was unfair for them before than it is unfair for me now. If it is fair for me now than it was fair for them before.
When they admit that it is just as unfair to tell us to “simply houserule it” as they claim it was unfair for us to say it before then I’ll gladly stop this line of argument. When they admit that it was just as fair to them to have had to houserule these things as they say it is for us to have to do it now then I will gladly stop this line of argument. But as long as they say they were too good to have had to houserule it in the past, but it should be good enough for us then I will continue to point out the hypocrisy. Folks on that side of this debate using the exact same argument that they found so offensive before is horse poopy every inch of the way and I’ll continue to point it out every inch of the way.
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The answer, BioWizard, is that there is a difference between the game world being discriminatory against individuals of a given species and the game rules being discriminatory against individuals of a given species.
I love playing tieflings. That species fascinates me endlessly, and I have no issue with DMs who tell me I'll have to overcome Tiffle Hate when I play them. In point of fact, there's been times I wished the DM for certain games would lean harder on the idea, but racism isn't generally a strong theme in our games so c'est la vie.
The issue is when the mechanical game rules themselves tell me that my tiefling is required to be a Fiend-pact warlock, because the bioessential statblocks for PC species in the game mandate that all tieflings be extremely charismatic, moderately intelligent, and absolute moose piss at any sort of physical action or being observant and resistant to mental compulsions. Exempting the legion of variant tiffles out there for now, if it isn't Charisma? Tieflings aren't supposed to be doing it or any good at it.
Yes yes yes yes, I know. "A fifteen is perfectly fine!" "Numbers don't matter, just ROLE PLAY!" "Not getting a bonus isn't the same as getting a penalty!" "You're ugly and I hate you, Yurei!" All the rest of the same stupid arguments that've been shot down a thousand times already. Here's the thing: why is it a requirement that the game mechanically enforce standardized species/class combinations by forcing numbers to align certain ways? Trust me, I'd rather have less dependence on the numbers myself. D&D's insistence on treating raw ability score as the near-sole determinant of a roll's success bothers me to no end, but since that is, in fact, what it does? We're all kind of obligated to work within that framework.
And that framework says my tiefling rogue is absolutely ******* terrible at his job next to the halfling or the high elf, and I should feel bad for making that character. Because the mechanical systems of D&D insist that tieflings be outgoing, cheerful people-persons despite how little ******* sense that makes for all the game worlds where they're ostracized for being fiends in everything but name.
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I am not going to call you racist over this.
However, I do have a couple of points:
1) If "Half-Orc's are KOS", then surely they are pretty much banned from being PCs. Otherwise, a party with a Half Orc in it would never be able to go anywhere near civilisation, would be randomly attacked by anyone they passed etc. You have made Half Orcs unplayable as PCs.
2) As long as your table is OK with that setting, fair enough. However, I do not believe that you cannot see how this meshes with real world situations or how it could upset someone who comes from a race which is "rare and viewed with great suspicion" in certain areas in the real world. Denying that it has any parallels in the real world just by saying "but this race is made up" doesn't wash.
Let's say there was a setting such as yours, but the Tieflings were rounded up, put in camps, and herded into magical chambers which "transported them to another plane of existence". When somebody pointed out similarities to fairly recent atrocities, would you just tell them "No, Tieflings don't exist so it is nothing like that"?