It isnt. Just give me the 'typical' without the wishy-washy humming and hawing over what it could be because we dont want to offend anyone.
You know, nobody is actually
offended by alignments. Annoyed that alignments are used primarily as a shortcut to saying what monsters can be killed while not having any true justification for it, and bothered that sometimes, the terms used to describe the evil races has disturbing similarities to real world racism (such as the "domesticated" orcs in Volo's). But
offended? No.
And the next question is, why do you need to know what the "typical" whatever is prone to attacking or not? If you have an adventure in the snowy mountains and you want to have some monsters attack, and you like the idea of the yeti's paralyzing gaze and fear of fire, use them! You don't need the book's permission to have them attack. You just need to know that this one particular yeti or group of yeti will attack. You don't even need to make a reason for the attack, if you don't want to. This one group of yeti just attacked.
But when you decide that the typical whatever will attack, then yes, you need to have a very good reason for that.
Pretty much, since there is an expectation that individuals can differ from the 'typical' that is representative of the whole.
So... what are humans typically like?
Ehh...kind of. I dont know that we need to get into this without going off the rails. Biology absolutely has a hand in psychological issues, but are we going to really say that someone is cheerful and outgoing simply due to biology? I dont think I buy that one.
You may want to read up on this sort of stuff. It's pretty fascinating. Humans are controlled a
lot more by their biology than many people want to think.
Heck, you don't even have to look at humans. Look at cats and dogs. Purebred animals have so many behavioral traits that are linked to their breed, which yes, can include general disposition. We had a cat that we found as an young adult stray, a big fluffy gray cat with furry pantaloons, who always used to follow us around when we went from room to room. We liked to joke that she was using us to check for land mines. Purely by luck, we discovered that she had all the traits of a non-show quality nebelung, which at that point was a very new breed (coincidentally, we had named her Nebula, because she was a cloud of dust). One of the breed's traits is following their favorite humans around from room to room. We think that she had been thrown out for not being show quality--either that, or it's because she ate furniture.
Sure thing, and Richard (yikes, not a fan of his story) if he had continued (and had not absorbed any trauma as a child to his body...) could lift FAR FAR more as an adult. Yes, biologically distinct entities can have different attributes, thats what a +2 to Str is for after all.
Sure. But an adult halfling with adult musculature and an adult skeletal system--
which is going to be different than that of a human because they are different species--could also, potentially, lift quite a lot as well.
(And yes, that poor kid.)
No, because (a) racial ASI isn't being used anymore, especially since there are far more flavorful ways to indicate racial traits than a dull stat bonus, and (b) still would indicate "the norm", so a creature could be radically different from that.
I dont agree with that. While the planes could/will (interpretation's depending on Good/Evil/Planar Influence) it doesnt have to be that way.
Sure. Now you just have to ignore 40+ years of canon lore to rewrite it in a way that you prefer.
