I see people have brought up bio-essentialism again, and this is why I argue that it is a fantasy game and not an analogue for the real world.
The argument has never been about D&D being an analog for the real world. The argument is that depicting people in certain ways can be hurtful to the readers and players. Your point is null.
Actually many people in these boards have argued that very thing, that we can't have "this sort of thing" in the game because of how it will potentially make people treat people IRL.
However, even if we ignore that, the Bio-Essentialism argument (which is what I was addressing) doesn't work as long as you have any race that has an advantage or disadvantage because of its race.
WotC decoupled ASI and default alignment from race because of the Bio-E argument, but the non-human races still have abilities tied to their race. So either Bio-E is the problem or it isn't. If you take out some bio-essential abilities but not all, then it's just hypocritical.
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"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing) You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
I see people have brought up bio-essentialism again, and this is why I argue that it is a fantasy game and not an analogue for the real world.
The argument has never been about D&D being an analog for the real world. The argument is that depicting people in certain ways can be hurtful to the readers and players. Your point is null.
And we come to my point which you don't agree with. It can also be hurtful to readers and players to say that one parents heritage is just physical appearance while the other is where you get the traits from. That should be avoided. Our two views should not be exclusive. One should not be othered but also half of ones heritage should not be seen as less important. This is taking backgrounds and feats out of it. As long as we have a game with racial traits we have to take that as its own thing.
I see people have brought up bio-essentialism again, and this is why I argue that it is a fantasy game and not an analogue for the real world.
The argument has never been about D&D being an analog for the real world. The argument is that depicting people in certain ways can be hurtful to the readers and players. Your point is null.
Actually many people in these boards have argued that very thing, that we can't have "this sort of thing" in the game because of how it will potentially make people treat people IRL.
Fine, let me amend my statement. My argument has never been that, and my argument here is what is relevant rather than other statements that have been made on these forums in other threads. So I don't see why you're bringing it up here and now. Your argument is still null.
However, even if we ignore that, the Bio-Essentialism argument (which is what I was addressing) doesn't work as long as you have any race that has an advantage or disadvantage because of its race.
WotC decoupled ASI and default alignment from race because of the Bio-E argument, but the non-human races still have abilities tied to their race. So either Bio-E is the problem or it isn't. If you take out some bio-essential abilities but not all, then it's just hypocritical.
No, it's incremental progress is what it is. Come on, this is textbook Nirvana Fallacy, making perfect the enemy of good.
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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!
So, if I want to play a half-elf, I choose an elf, and then its entire background is "has a human parent", huh?
I'd say that is more racist than an alternative.
First off, that's not what I've been saying at all and second, I'm not sure you actually have a good grasp of what is or isn't racist if that's what you think it is.
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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!
I see people have brought up bio-essentialism again, and this is why I argue that it is a fantasy game and not an analogue for the real world.
The argument has never been about D&D being an analog for the real world. The argument is that depicting people in certain ways can be hurtful to the readers and players. Your point is null.
And we come to my point which you don't agree with. It can also be hurtful to readers and players to say that one parents heritage is just physical appearance while the other is where you get the traits from.
I guess it could, but is it so in your experience or the experience of anyone you've talked to? Because in my experience and those of the people I've talked to, the 1DD way of handling multiracial heritage is a relief and feels better.
Our two views should not be exclusive. One should not be othered but also half of ones heritage should not be seen as less important.
And I'm going to repeat that I don't think the way 1DD handles things is minimizing part of a multiracial character's heritage, it's just saying you use a mix of special features, Background, lore, and Feat to represent one's heritage and upbringing in a holistic way.
This is taking backgrounds and feats out of it. As long as we have a game with racial traits we have to take that as its own thing.
Backgrounds, Feats, character history, and race are all part of Character Origin. I don't know why you think taking some of them out and fixating on one of them is giving you any sort of balanced or cohesive view of it. You're hyper focusing on only one part of a character's origins and that's invariably going to lead to a skewed view.
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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!
Just gonna point out that you've been spending your entire time in this thread telling folks like Ophidimancer that they don't have any right, reason, or cause to be offended, excluded, or hurt by the current half-species stat blocks and denigrating anyone who thinks the current halvzies blocks are 'Other'ing.
False. At no point have I suggested that someone didn't have the right to feel the way they do. However, I am allowed to disagree. I am even allowed to disagree vociferously. I am allowed to state that I for one am not offended, because that is a true statement. And I am allowed to state that I don't understand the idea of taking offense at a stat block or whatever else because frankly, I don't. How you choose to feel about that is not something that I have any control over.
To be clear, I acknowledge that you have certain feelings informing your position.
My position compels me to disagree nonetheless.
I'm not emperor of the world, so I would encourage you to not be particularly troubled by this. On the other hand, if there is a coherent counterpoint to be made, then I will of course happily review my position.
To reiterate: let me have my half elf and leave me in peace. By Gary's beard, that's all I want. I'm quite, quite certain that we can have that and also be a force for good at the same time.
I see people have brought up bio-essentialism again, and this is why I argue that it is a fantasy game and not an analogue for the real world.
The argument has never been about D&D being an analog for the real world. The argument is that depicting people in certain ways can be hurtful to the readers and players. Your point is null.
And we come to my point which you don't agree with. It can also be hurtful to readers and players to say that one parents heritage is just physical appearance while the other is where you get the traits from.
I guess it could, but is it so in your experience or the experience of anyone you've talked to? Because in my experience and those of the people I've talked to, the 1DD way of handling multiracial heritage is a relief and feels better.
Our two views should not be exclusive. One should not be othered but also half of ones heritage should not be seen as less important.
And I'm going to repeat that I don't think the way 1DD handles things is minimizing part of a multiracial character's heritage, it's just saying you use a mix of special features, Background, lore, and Feat to represent one's heritage and upbringing in a holistic way.
This is taking backgrounds and feats out of it. As long as we have a game with racial traits we have to take that as its own thing.
Backgrounds, Feats, character history, and race are all part of Character Origin. I don't know why you think taking some of them out and fixating on one of them is giving you any sort of balanced or cohesive view of it. You're hyper focusing on only one part of a character's origins and that's invariably going to lead to a skewed view.
I have covered this, you just don't seem to want to listen. Yes it is my experience and how I feel. You are hyper focused on feats and backgrounds.
Y/N: Are racial features a part of the game? Y/N: Do certain races get traits that others don't and feats and or backgrounds may not cover? Y/N: Does the new rule make you select only the traits of one of your races and tells that select cosmetic features from the other. By cosmetic features I mean ears, eyes, etc.
You say I am hyper focused. I am just talking about the part I have a problem with. Like rice was burnt in your meal and you want me to focus on the fact that the meat and carrots are good and that makes up the whole meal.
If you want me to just tap out and say you're right just say so. I am trying to come to some sort of understanding.
I feel like (and I've said this before) the biggest issue seems to be that some people believe the make-believe worlds of D&D (or other TTRPGs) are an analogue for the real world, and other players don't believe it is an analogue for the real world.
Fine. Keep the half-elves and half-orcs, but let's make sure everybody who wants to be a half-anything-else is denigrated, shunned, and drummed out of the hobby for daring to color outside the lines. Doesn't matter that this makes no god damned sense. Half-elves and half-orcs are utterly invaluable, fundamentally core to the entire D&D experience, but a half-dragonborn is an abomination that should never be permitted in a game, half-halflings are a meme and a joke, and a half-orc/half-elf is Crossing the Streams and liable to destroy D&D as we know it.
Sod it. Do what y'all want. The homebrew tools are there for a god damned reason.
I see people have brought up bio-essentialism again, and this is why I argue that it is a fantasy game and not an analogue for the real world.
The argument has never been about D&D being an analog for the real world. The argument is that depicting people in certain ways can be hurtful to the readers and players. Your point is null.
And we come to my point which you don't agree with. It can also be hurtful to readers and players to say that one parents heritage is just physical appearance while the other is where you get the traits from.
I guess it could, but is it so in your experience or the experience of anyone you've talked to? Because in my experience and those of the people I've talked to, the 1DD way of handling multiracial heritage is a relief and feels better.
Our two views should not be exclusive. One should not be othered but also half of ones heritage should not be seen as less important.
And I'm going to repeat that I don't think the way 1DD handles things is minimizing part of a multiracial character's heritage, it's just saying you use a mix of special features, Background, lore, and Feat to represent one's heritage and upbringing in a holistic way.
This is taking backgrounds and feats out of it. As long as we have a game with racial traits we have to take that as its own thing.
Backgrounds, Feats, character history, and race are all part of Character Origin. I don't know why you think taking some of them out and fixating on one of them is giving you any sort of balanced or cohesive view of it. You're hyper focusing on only one part of a character's origins and that's invariably going to lead to a skewed view.
I have covered this, you just don't seem to want to listen. Yes it is my experience and how I feel.
So for the record you are saying that the way 1DD handles races makes you, personally feel bad? Not like "I'm missing out on utility that I want" bad, but "this makes me feel uncomfortable because of how they are depicting people and what it implies about those kinds of people" way.
Y/N: Are racial features a part of the game? Y/N: Do certain races get traits that others don't and feats and or backgrounds may not cover?
Yes and yes.
Y/N: Does the new rule make you select only the traits of one of your races and tells that select cosmetic features from the other. By cosmetic features I mean ears, eyes, etc.
Nope, because I consider all of the Character Origins to be part of a holistic representation of the character rather than just the special racial abilities.
If you want me to just tap out and say you're right just say so.
Nope I never want this.
I am trying to come to some sort of understanding.
Proper understanding doesn't require us to agree.
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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!
Bioessentialism is a thing when DIFFERENT SPECIES are a thing. If we had different human races having mechanically different characteristics, we'd be having an issue, but, these are fully different species.
If you want to look at bioessentialism, take a look at dwarves being biologically meant to work at a forge. That is the kind of stuff that goes into background.
I'd like to float the idea that maybe nobody here is going to get the definitive final blow. There won't be any single post that everyone can look at and say, "ah, yes. The argument is over."
Or rather, if there is, it won't be for the quality of the argument therein, it'll be because it's a mod having to shut things down for getting too heated.
The person who got the last comment before that happens isn't the winner.
Agreed.
At the end of the day, WotC has already made the call - this is a sweeping decision based on a lot of feedback from players and their own attempts to make the game more inclusive. It already has happened and they are not going back.
To those who do not like it, do not use it. Please feel free to continue playing 5e exactly as it is now. It will always be there for you. Just like 4e players, 3.5e players, and AD&D players, who occupy some dark corner somewhere, you will always have your game exactly how you want to play it. Everyone else gets the new thing.
D&D. Where two straight men can play two dwarven women in a lesbian relationship and no one will bat an eye, but appearently you're 'othered' if you are a half-elf with a distinct entry in the racial book.
This isn't about how your character is made to feel, although that is part of it. It's about how those characters being portrayed in certain ways says stuff about people and how that makes the players feel.
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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!
I have said this before. You don't want to see it. I, and others, both in game and out, do not like putting on part of someone's heritage as just a physical feature and the traits are only from one parent. As for you say nope to the racial feature so you are saying that the RAW for different parents does not say to select the traits of one parent and appearances from another
But I am tapping out It is pointless at this point
HOME. BREW.
No system Wizards can invent, short of a point-builder system a'la GURPS that allows you to assemble your heritage from scratch, is ever going to be sufficient for the sort of fine-grained customization you're asking for. 5e just doesn't support or allow it. And I guarantee you the grognards will never allow a point builder-based species system for 5e. That is an "over my dead body" point for them and it always will be. If you want to mix-and-match and control exactly which features your character gains? Homebrew it. You have to.
Hell. Arora: Age of Desolation is an upcoming third-party supplement that promises a point builder-style system wherein you can mix and match traits from all the game's core species because in Arora the idea of "species" has eroded and everybody's got blood from everybody else. You don't even have to do your own homebrew - wait for Arora to drop, buy that book, then use the homebrew tools to build the character species you assemble from Arora's system. Personally I cannot wait to get that book and take a good meaty look at what they've done, use their systems to build off on my own ideas. Ghostfire does really good work, I can heartily recommend them as a source of high-quality third-party content.
That argument is both disgusting and irrelevant, it's never not been both disgusting and irrelevant, and people who keep pushing that argument do not understand anything.
The statement "It's a fantasy world, LITERALLY ANYTHING that happens in a fantasy world is A-OK because it's not real" is objectively incorrect. here's a test: if a group of players wanted to run a Dark Sun game where every session was them doing nothing but spending four hours merrily purchasing sex slaves, ****** them, eating them alive, and then repeating the process again the next morning all with lovingly detailed narration of the individual horrors committed upon sobbing, brutalized sex slaves, would that be okay? Would that be something you were A-OK with putting into the official D&D books? is that something that deserves its own mechanical structure, its own formalized rules, its own specialized ability che
I mean, FATAL exists. But, more to the point, this is not an argument. No one is arguing that D&D should include a rule that allows a horrific act like what you're describing. But you're using this, very extreme, example as justification for a point that you've NOT proved is happening (has anyone actually said they felt 'othered' besides, possibly, yourself) to remove a race that's been around since 2E appearently, in the name of your own, PERSONAL, moral system which you believe is applicable to all, or even the majority of, cases. It seems pretty clear by the mere fact that this has reached page 9 of posts that not everyone agrees with you. You've yet to actually prove that this can actually even happen. You've insisted it will but you have yet to, well, provide any examples or evidence as to why we should change something that's been around for decades with no issues.
then hey, look at that - "It's just fantasy, it's not real!" is a terrible putrid argument that can be disproven by a third grader with a coloring book and a box of crayons. That argument October favors so highly and trots out in every single one of these threads is strictly and solely an argument of "I want to be allowed to ignore other people's feelings, emotions, experiences and trauma by dismissing them as 'Not Real' so I can continue to play my game the way I feel like playing it because my emotions and desires are real but nobody else's are."
But nobody IS dismissing other people's feelings or trauma! Who is even being traumatized? Are bi-racial people suddenly bursting into flame and recoiling like a demon touching holy water because Half-Elves/Half-orcs are a distinct race with their own racial entry? If anything you seem to be the one dismissing them by assuming all bi-racial people WANT to play a bi-racial character and will refuse if even one or two options are off the table. Not even off the table. If they aren't handled in the manner YOU approve of.
You want your half-elf? Keep it. Nobody's taking it away from you.
You are. I want my half-elf racial entry and would VERY much want at least the half-orc one too.
October wants bioessentialism in his games? He can have it. Nobody's telling him nay. Other people don't want those things, and Wizards has to make books for everybody. Not just for me, not just for Ophidimancer, not just for you, and not just for October. The books are for everybody. And some things don't belong in books everybody has to use.
Wrong. They have to make books for people who want to play D&D. That's not the same group by any means. They don't have to write a book to try and get someone who is so overly sensitive and fussy that having a Half Elf or Half Orc getting their own entry results in them yeeting the copy out. Also, wouldn't your argument ALSO mean they have to make the books for, well, people who outright disagree with your politics? Looking at the buttons in your posts I feel fairly confident in the statement you don't feel D&D should cater to people who disapprove of trans people, for example. Yet by your argument here, they need to factor them in.
I wanted a combination of tiefling and centaur species traits for my character that was both a tiefling and a centaur, so I invented a mingled CenTiefling species to give to that character with the traits that made the most sense for her to have in my brain. Wizards didn't have to tell me to do it. Wizards didn't have to give me official guidelines for doing it.
And I got no problem with Wizards now giving you a generic option since statting every possible combination would be next to impossible (not to mention that adding any one new race would result in an exponential increase since you'd now need half-races with every other race). I just want half-elves and half-orcs to have their own entry.
Hell. Arora: Age of Desolation is an upcoming third-party supplement that promises a point builder-style system wherein you can mix and match traits from all the game's core species because in Arora the idea of "species" has eroded and everybody's got blood from everybody else. You don't even have to do your own homebrew - wait for Arora to drop, buy that book, then use the homebrew tools to build the character species you assemble from Arora's system. Personally I cannot wait to get that book and take a good meaty look at what they've done, use their systems to build off on my own ideas. Ghostfire does really good work, I can heartily recommend them as a source of high-quality third-party content.
Bookmarked and I will be looking into this after work. Thank you for mentioning it.
Fine. Keep the half-elves and half-orcs, but let's make sure everybody who wants to be a half-anything-else is denigrated, shunned, and drummed out of the hobby for daring to color outside the lines. Doesn't matter that this makes no god damned sense.
Since the new rules have yet to be implemented, if there was widespread discontent with some aspect of the game would we not be seeing a corresponding mass exodus of players right now?
By any objective measure, that does not seem to represent the current state of the game whatsoever.
DnD is bringing in more players and is more diverse than it ever has been in its history, and that continues to trend up like daily.
>>Half-elves and half-orcs are utterly invaluable, fundamentally core to the entire D&D experience,
Now you're cooking with crisco.
>>>but a half-dragonborn is an abomination that should never be permitted in a game, half-halflings are a meme and a joke, and a half-orc/half-elf is Crossing the Streams and liable to destroy D&D as we know it.
Again, I'm pretty certain that not a single person in this entire thread has been against the inclusion of other less common half-crosses, or that they should be mechanically inferior.
Again, I'm pretty certain that not a single person in this entire thread has been against the inclusion of other less common half-crosses, or that they should be mechanically inferior.
Yup, I'm completely good with rules that allow any combo you want. WotC tried to give us this with their new proposed multi-racial rules, but failed because they are boring rules.
Let's have a rule system that lets a player (with DM's permission) choose abilities from each parent and mash them together. It's not impossible.
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"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing) You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
Ophidimancer has been stating since the Origins document dropped that he's uncomfortable with half-things being given their own stat block, as if they're not real people but instead this weird extra thing that doesn't merit inclusion in either of their parent cultures. I distinctly recall a tale from the early days of the whole "Tasha's is ruining everything FOREVER!" of a multiracial person who quit playing D&D because the game's depiction of half-orcs was Super Heccin' Sus and it made him feel excluded and unwelcome. You act like nobody real is being hit by this stuff, and yet the examples are there. You're just not seeing as many as you think because the people for whom this is an issue stopped playing D&D and thus don't post on the forums. If the issue is fixed? Maybe they'll come back.
Furthermore, why do half-elves and half-orcs merit their own super special statblocks while everybody else has to content themselves with "a generic option"? Just because they were already there? Nah. Again - you can continue to use the R5e versions even in 1DD. Homebrew has always been an option in a large number of cases.
As for 'catering to transphobics'? There's a difference between trying to stay neutral and actively going out of one's way to put things in books that cause harm to folks. If Wizards started putting actively transphobic speech in their books, I'd be just a mite tweaked off, yes. As would a lot of other people who aren't trans. They haven't done that though. How else would you say they're supposed to 'cater to' transphobic sorts?
And just for the record - "my politics" has nothing to do with my gender. People only tie politics to gender equality when they're looking to make sure nobody has any. I don't particularly appreciate you targeting my gender to try and refute a point that has nothing to do with it, so I kindly ask that you not do so in the future, please.
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Actually many people in these boards have argued that very thing, that we can't have "this sort of thing" in the game because of how it will potentially make people treat people IRL.
However, even if we ignore that, the Bio-Essentialism argument (which is what I was addressing) doesn't work as long as you have any race that has an advantage or disadvantage because of its race.
WotC decoupled ASI and default alignment from race because of the Bio-E argument, but the non-human races still have abilities tied to their race. So either Bio-E is the problem or it isn't. If you take out some bio-essential abilities but not all, then it's just hypocritical.
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing)
You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
And we come to my point which you don't agree with.
It can also be hurtful to readers and players to say that one parents heritage is just physical appearance while the other is where you get the traits from. That should be avoided.
Our two views should not be exclusive. One should not be othered but also half of ones heritage should not be seen as less important.
This is taking backgrounds and feats out of it. As long as we have a game with racial traits we have to take that as its own thing.
Both views are valid
Fine, let me amend my statement. My argument has never been that, and my argument here is what is relevant rather than other statements that have been made on these forums in other threads. So I don't see why you're bringing it up here and now. Your argument is still null.
No, it's incremental progress is what it is. Come on, this is textbook Nirvana Fallacy, making perfect the enemy of good.
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!
First off, that's not what I've been saying at all and second, I'm not sure you actually have a good grasp of what is or isn't racist if that's what you think it is.
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 guess it could, but is it so in your experience or the experience of anyone you've talked to? Because in my experience and those of the people I've talked to, the 1DD way of handling multiracial heritage is a relief and feels better.
And I'm going to repeat that I don't think the way 1DD handles things is minimizing part of a multiracial character's heritage, it's just saying you use a mix of special features, Background, lore, and Feat to represent one's heritage and upbringing in a holistic way.
Backgrounds, Feats, character history, and race are all part of Character Origin. I don't know why you think taking some of them out and fixating on one of them is giving you any sort of balanced or cohesive view of it. You're hyper focusing on only one part of a character's origins and that's invariably going to lead to a skewed view.
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!
False. At no point have I suggested that someone didn't have the right to feel the way they do. However, I am allowed to disagree. I am even allowed to disagree vociferously. I am allowed to state that I for one am not offended, because that is a true statement. And I am allowed to state that I don't understand the idea of taking offense at a stat block or whatever else because frankly, I don't. How you choose to feel about that is not something that I have any control over.
To be clear, I acknowledge that you have certain feelings informing your position.
My position compels me to disagree nonetheless.
I'm not emperor of the world, so I would encourage you to not be particularly troubled by this. On the other hand, if there is a coherent counterpoint to be made, then I will of course happily review my position.
To reiterate: let me have my half elf and leave me in peace. By Gary's beard, that's all I want. I'm quite, quite certain that we can have that and also be a force for good at the same time.
I have covered this, you just don't seem to want to listen.
Yes it is my experience and how I feel.
You are hyper focused on feats and backgrounds.
Y/N: Are racial features a part of the game?
Y/N: Do certain races get traits that others don't and feats and or backgrounds may not cover?
Y/N: Does the new rule make you select only the traits of one of your races and tells that select cosmetic features from the other. By cosmetic features I mean ears, eyes, etc.
You say I am hyper focused. I am just talking about the part I have a problem with. Like rice was burnt in your meal and you want me to focus on the fact that the meat and carrots are good and that makes up the whole meal.
If you want me to just tap out and say you're right just say so. I am trying to come to some sort of understanding.
Perfection.
Sigh.
Why do I even bother?
Fine. Keep the half-elves and half-orcs, but let's make sure everybody who wants to be a half-anything-else is denigrated, shunned, and drummed out of the hobby for daring to color outside the lines. Doesn't matter that this makes no god damned sense. Half-elves and half-orcs are utterly invaluable, fundamentally core to the entire D&D experience, but a half-dragonborn is an abomination that should never be permitted in a game, half-halflings are a meme and a joke, and a half-orc/half-elf is Crossing the Streams and liable to destroy D&D as we know it.
Sod it. Do what y'all want. The homebrew tools are there for a god damned reason.
Please do not contact or message me.
So for the record you are saying that the way 1DD handles races makes you, personally feel bad? Not like "I'm missing out on utility that I want" bad, but "this makes me feel uncomfortable because of how they are depicting people and what it implies about those kinds of people" way.
Yes and yes.
Nope, because I consider all of the Character Origins to be part of a holistic representation of the character rather than just the special racial abilities.
Nope I never want this.
Proper understanding doesn't require us to agree.
Canto alla vita
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Bioessentialism is a thing when DIFFERENT SPECIES are a thing. If we had different human races having mechanically different characteristics, we'd be having an issue, but, these are fully different species.
If you want to look at bioessentialism, take a look at dwarves being biologically meant to work at a forge. That is the kind of stuff that goes into background.
Agreed.
At the end of the day, WotC has already made the call - this is a sweeping decision based on a lot of feedback from players and their own attempts to make the game more inclusive. It already has happened and they are not going back.
To those who do not like it, do not use it. Please feel free to continue playing 5e exactly as it is now. It will always be there for you. Just like 4e players, 3.5e players, and AD&D players, who occupy some dark corner somewhere, you will always have your game exactly how you want to play it. Everyone else gets the new thing.
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This isn't about how your character is made to feel, although that is part of it. It's about how those characters being portrayed in certain ways says stuff about people and how that makes the players feel.
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HOME.
BREW.
No system Wizards can invent, short of a point-builder system a'la GURPS that allows you to assemble your heritage from scratch, is ever going to be sufficient for the sort of fine-grained customization you're asking for. 5e just doesn't support or allow it. And I guarantee you the grognards will never allow a point builder-based species system for 5e. That is an "over my dead body" point for them and it always will be. If you want to mix-and-match and control exactly which features your character gains? Homebrew it. You have to.
Hell. Arora: Age of Desolation is an upcoming third-party supplement that promises a point builder-style system wherein you can mix and match traits from all the game's core species because in Arora the idea of "species" has eroded and everybody's got blood from everybody else. You don't even have to do your own homebrew - wait for Arora to drop, buy that book, then use the homebrew tools to build the character species you assemble from Arora's system. Personally I cannot wait to get that book and take a good meaty look at what they've done, use their systems to build off on my own ideas. Ghostfire does really good work, I can heartily recommend them as a source of high-quality third-party content.
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That argument is both disgusting and irrelevant, it's never not been both disgusting and irrelevant, and people who keep pushing that argument do not understand anything.
The statement "It's a fantasy world, LITERALLY ANYTHING that happens in a fantasy world is A-OK because it's not real" is objectively incorrect. here's a test: if a group of players wanted to run a Dark Sun game where every session was them doing nothing but spending four hours merrily purchasing sex slaves, ****** them, eating them alive, and then repeating the process again the next morning all with lovingly detailed narration of the individual horrors committed upon sobbing, brutalized sex slaves, would that be okay? Would that be something you were A-OK with putting into the official D&D books? is that something that deserves its own mechanical structure, its own formalized rules, its own specialized ability che
I mean, FATAL exists. But, more to the point, this is not an argument. No one is arguing that D&D should include a rule that allows a horrific act like what you're describing. But you're using this, very extreme, example as justification for a point that you've NOT proved is happening (has anyone actually said they felt 'othered' besides, possibly, yourself) to remove a race that's been around since 2E appearently, in the name of your own, PERSONAL, moral system which you believe is applicable to all, or even the majority of, cases. It seems pretty clear by the mere fact that this has reached page 9 of posts that not everyone agrees with you. You've yet to actually prove that this can actually even happen. You've insisted it will but you have yet to, well, provide any examples or evidence as to why we should change something that's been around for decades with no issues.
then hey, look at that - "It's just fantasy, it's not real!" is a terrible putrid argument that can be disproven by a third grader with a coloring book and a box of crayons. That argument October favors so highly and trots out in every single one of these threads is strictly and solely an argument of "I want to be allowed to ignore other people's feelings, emotions, experiences and trauma by dismissing them as 'Not Real' so I can continue to play my game the way I feel like playing it because my emotions and desires are real but nobody else's are."
But nobody IS dismissing other people's feelings or trauma! Who is even being traumatized? Are bi-racial people suddenly bursting into flame and recoiling like a demon touching holy water because Half-Elves/Half-orcs are a distinct race with their own racial entry? If anything you seem to be the one dismissing them by assuming all bi-racial people WANT to play a bi-racial character and will refuse if even one or two options are off the table. Not even off the table. If they aren't handled in the manner YOU approve of.
You want your half-elf? Keep it. Nobody's taking it away from you.
You are. I want my half-elf racial entry and would VERY much want at least the half-orc one too.
October wants bioessentialism in his games? He can have it. Nobody's telling him nay. Other people don't want those things, and Wizards has to make books for everybody. Not just for me, not just for Ophidimancer, not just for you, and not just for October. The books are for everybody. And some things don't belong in books everybody has to use.
Wrong. They have to make books for people who want to play D&D. That's not the same group by any means. They don't have to write a book to try and get someone who is so overly sensitive and fussy that having a Half Elf or Half Orc getting their own entry results in them yeeting the copy out. Also, wouldn't your argument ALSO mean they have to make the books for, well, people who outright disagree with your politics? Looking at the buttons in your posts I feel fairly confident in the statement you don't feel D&D should cater to people who disapprove of trans people, for example. Yet by your argument here, they need to factor them in.
I wanted a combination of tiefling and centaur species traits for my character that was both a tiefling and a centaur, so I invented a mingled CenTiefling species to give to that character with the traits that made the most sense for her to have in my brain. Wizards didn't have to tell me to do it. Wizards didn't have to give me official guidelines for doing it.
And I got no problem with Wizards now giving you a generic option since statting every possible combination would be next to impossible (not to mention that adding any one new race would result in an exponential increase since you'd now need half-races with every other race). I just want half-elves and half-orcs to have their own entry.
Bookmarked and I will be looking into this after work. Thank you for mentioning it.
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Since the new rules have yet to be implemented, if there was widespread discontent with some aspect of the game would we not be seeing a corresponding mass exodus of players right now?
By any objective measure, that does not seem to represent the current state of the game whatsoever.
DnD is bringing in more players and is more diverse than it ever has been in its history, and that continues to trend up like daily.
>>Half-elves and half-orcs are utterly invaluable, fundamentally core to the entire D&D experience,
Now you're cooking with crisco.
>>>but a half-dragonborn is an abomination that should never be permitted in a game, half-halflings are a meme and a joke, and a half-orc/half-elf is Crossing the Streams and liable to destroy D&D as we know it.
Again, I'm pretty certain that not a single person in this entire thread has been against the inclusion of other less common half-crosses, or that they should be mechanically inferior.
>>>Sod it. Do what y'all want.
Words to live by.
Yup, I'm completely good with rules that allow any combo you want. WotC tried to give us this with their new proposed multi-racial rules, but failed because they are boring rules.
Let's have a rule system that lets a player (with DM's permission) choose abilities from each parent and mash them together. It's not impossible.
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing)
You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
I deleted that post for a reason, Snow. But fine.
Ophidimancer has been stating since the Origins document dropped that he's uncomfortable with half-things being given their own stat block, as if they're not real people but instead this weird extra thing that doesn't merit inclusion in either of their parent cultures. I distinctly recall a tale from the early days of the whole "Tasha's is ruining everything FOREVER!" of a multiracial person who quit playing D&D because the game's depiction of half-orcs was Super Heccin' Sus and it made him feel excluded and unwelcome. You act like nobody real is being hit by this stuff, and yet the examples are there. You're just not seeing as many as you think because the people for whom this is an issue stopped playing D&D and thus don't post on the forums. If the issue is fixed? Maybe they'll come back.
Furthermore, why do half-elves and half-orcs merit their own super special statblocks while everybody else has to content themselves with "a generic option"? Just because they were already there? Nah. Again - you can continue to use the R5e versions even in 1DD. Homebrew has always been an option in a large number of cases.
As for 'catering to transphobics'? There's a difference between trying to stay neutral and actively going out of one's way to put things in books that cause harm to folks. If Wizards started putting actively transphobic speech in their books, I'd be just a mite tweaked off, yes. As would a lot of other people who aren't trans. They haven't done that though. How else would you say they're supposed to 'cater to' transphobic sorts?
And just for the record - "my politics" has nothing to do with my gender. People only tie politics to gender equality when they're looking to make sure nobody has any. I don't particularly appreciate you targeting my gender to try and refute a point that has nothing to do with it, so I kindly ask that you not do so in the future, please.
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