No, race is a lot more than just social construct. For example, your health could be strongly effected by racial predispositions. Some of us are more likely to become diabetic if we don't watch our complex carbs, others are more prone to develop food allergies that could lead to colitis or other inflammatory ailments. Some of us, I've discovered, are more attractive to mosquitos.
Health can be affected by your
genetics, which is not the same thing as
race.
This is interesting reading on the topic, or
here if you lean more academic about it.
Hemlock said:
One fun thing to do with variant humans is to assign each feat to a race in-game. You could say that Cimmerians are Tough while Hyperboreans are Magic Initiates and Machakans are slender and Mobile and Valerians are famous for being Heavy Armor Masters. It makes more sense to me than "I'm human so I randomly develop favorable traits at first level," plus it allows people to visually identify some of your capabilities. I don't always do it when I make a variant human, but I do it sometimes.
Fantasy ain't reality, but stuff like this is close enough to actually problematic things that it runs a significant risk of nuking my make believe elf fun times pretty hard. It's one of the reasons I've got troubles with enjoying
The Elder Scrolls series, and why I'm always a little nervous around stuff that takes a big inspiration from REH's work. When you deal with humans, it's too easy to (even accidentally) move from archetype to stereotype, and it takes a very careful and clever hand to avoid that, ESPECIALLY when working with fantasy versions of real-world cultures, so it's not something I generally touch with a 10-foot pole. Even when you deal with
non-humans, it can be a challenge (Here's a trick: look at 2e-era gnomes through the eyes of an anti-semite, and do your best not to wince! Little wrinkled people who love gems and have long noses and specialize in trickery, lies and deceit...).
Which is part of why I'd prefer the mechanics divorced from biology. I don't want to truck in Granddad Lovecraft's Thanksgiving Rants, but I like the idea of belonging to a fantasy culture or inhuman heroic group. I think there are ways to get at fantasy culture or fantasy species that don't rely so much on defining what you
are, at a biological level, and I'd prefer something like expanded backgrounds or better affiliation rules to designate that over "race."
Like, being a dwarf or a Cimmerian might define some of the things you learned early on in life, some of your friends and allies, maybe what you can initially do, but it's an additive thing that doesn't define what you are (like with ability scores). I mean sure, maybe my Cimmerian warlock isn't getting a lot of mileage out of that Athletics proficiency, but you just don't get to be 13 in Cimmeria without getting in a few brawls, and this is something that gives you an edge when you're compared to a pampered Hyperborean warlock. That, and all your barbarian friends, and your ability to use a sword without getting winded. That makes you "tough," but it's what you know and what you can do, not what you ARE, physically.
The more inhuman fantasy races have a little more leeway there, of course. A centaur or a four-armed gorilla-person should probably define what you are physically more than being a dwarf (ie, "a short, round, human") does.
