This is true. However, to me it seems that some people have hijacked and very important concern over social issues and representation to push their specific preferences about game design minutiae. To me this is both disingenuous and trivialises actual issues of representation.
I think this is a projection of concerns you have, rather than real thing. I'm sure there's a bit of that in the mix, but you've made no clear case that it's the main thrust here.
It could. Then again, I don't remember seeing much complaints about Vulcans generally being smarter than humans. And come to think of it, whilst a lot of people don't like gnomes, it is not because them being depicted smart is problematic.
You seem to be resorting to a lot of "whataboutery", and the trouble is, you can't do that and also say "different editions are different" and so on. You need to pick one. It's also not clear Vulcans are "smarter" than humans. They constantly, like absolutely constantly get outsmarted by humans. It's more like, Vulcans think they're smarter than humans, which isn't the same thing.
Re: gnomes, yeah, I agree, it's the negative stuff and limits that tend to the problem with mental stats. Especially when combined with races which D&D has a history of combining with unfortunate racial stereotypes. But not just those - really generally having a lot of fixed mental stat mods doesn't feel great.
Sure. And that is perfectly fair point and I understand it. I just dislike people conflating such game design considerations with social justice issues. And I think that classes effectively dictating your ability scores is an issues even outside this species matter.
Okay, but it's literally you who is conflating them, and then claiming others are - that's projection. You haven't made any clear case that others are "conflating" them. You'd need to actually argue that specifically and explain the mechanisms, rather than making the assumption it's "obvious".
As for "outside this matter", no, that's an irrational and illogical claim. D&D has been far more consistent on stats mattering to classes than to races having consistent stats or stats meaning consistent things. That's not likely to change any time soon. And in D&D, the main place you get stat modifiers from is race.
If that wasn't the case, if race was just one of many stat modifiers, I don't think the discussion would be as centered on it, though I do think we'd see a lot of the same changes to verbiage and probably a move away from physical mental stat mods at the least.
But if ability scores do not represent what it says in the tin, why even have them?
What does it say on the tin? Every edition has different things written on the tin. And why not complain about 3E, which is where this issue originates?
Why we have ability sore called 'strength' is it doesn't measure how strong the creature is?
This is a funny argument, because virtually every RPG with this kind of stats is susceptible to it, and certainly every edition of D&D is. Wisdom is easily the worst stat in D&D by this standard, because it's pretty much never measured Wisdom.
If ability scores are nothing but level and class dependent expected bonuses, then get rid of them and bake math into classes.
Sacred cows is why. That's really the only major reason.
Perhaps. So why not apply this logic to everything? Why classes have specific weapon proficiencies, spell lists etc? Why people cannot just 'self limit' and not choose healing spells on their wizard etc?
We could! The main reason D&D doesn't is because D&D likes balance. Allowing the ASI flexibility doesn't significantly impact balance. In fact, it impacts balance LESS than fixed ASIs, because you can actually more easily predict the stat values of characters of a specific class. So I think that's a pretty clear answer, and you probably need to accept that.
This makes sense only if we abandon the idea that stats actually measure something concrete. And I don't want to do that.
That idea was abandoned in, at latest, 3E. You're basically pulling a dead horse through the streets at this point. And I would argue with some stats, it's never meant anything concrete (esp. Wisdom again).
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