Jester Canuck said:
Only if it's genetic and hereditary. Depending on how it's written, human subraces could be implied to be based on where the person was raised.
Dude, it's called a "subrace." The word specifies a genetic, hereditary component, simply by the word. And it mechanically includes things like ability score adjustments and special abilities that are inherently part of your character. AND, it works against the archetype of humans as uniquely versatile. Your origin as a country bumpkin would be welded into your character from birth. Not cool.
Jester Canuck said:
And it's not about which is better, as neither is (or, rather, they're better at different things). One side might very well say: "The reason we live in cities and you live in the backwoods is because we're better suited to it than you!" And the other side would reply "No the reason you can't live in the woods is because you're too soft. You need stone walls and cleared plains to feel safe."
I'll take missing the point for 900, Alex.
The idea isn't that it's wrong because one is better than the other. It is wrong because it
narrowly defines people. It stereotypes people. Human beings. Which is BAD, even if you're intending it to limit to only imaginary gumdrop magic land and people who never actually existed or could ever exist in a game that only some dorks on the internet play.
It doesn't really matter what in-world explanation you use. The
unfortunate Implications would be there either way. You can't avoid them. You call a game mechanic a "sub-race" and you divide humans according to it, you have a corporate entity in WotC saying, "Oh, isn't it fun to pretend that all humans are inherently dividable into little camps based on their level of wealth?"
It's not cool. It's a bit genre-appropriate, but (and I'm sure this won't come as a shock to anyone) this genre can be
insanely bigoted. D&D does not need to truck in that as a matter of default gameplay. And WotC would be well advised to steer entirely clear of it themselves.
Jester Canuck said:
Except you can... every human is as tough as as dwarf, gaining the same bonus to Con.
Right, but we're not saying a CERTAIN KIND OF PERSON is a given way.
Jester Canuck said:
Will people get offended? Yes. But as demonstrated by this thread, many people don't even want any culture in races. And even the implication dwarves are stouter or elves are more agile is seen as this suggestion that they're being forced into certain roles, that they're only good at certain things and not others. I think many people would be happy if race was just a cosmetic thing. Which is pushing the silly end of the PC spectrum.
It's not really a slippery slope kind of thing.
Sub-races are inappropriate for humans.
We can still make up all the imaginary fart sprites we want and define them as however smelly we want to define them as, because they are imaginary and so whatever.
Not so for humans. "Rural" and "Urban" humans actually exist. And they are not defined by what they are.
The only little wiggle room I can see here is if D&D wanted to delve into things like Neandertals or possibly with fantasic human mutants, in which case we fall into imaginary fart sprite territory again and get to define them however we want. But normal humans should not have "sub-races," because normal humans in the real world do not have "sub-races." We have differences, we have culture, we have divisions, we have wars, but we are all human beings in the end, and D&D needs to reflect that.
