D&D (2024) How did I miss this about the Half races/ancestries

[Scribe]

US politics is very, very depressing and gross.

The US is also where D&D is primarily being written, so it factors in.

Yeah, really wish US media/politics/attitudes could kind of not be broadcast as if they are the goal/ideal. Its ruining Canadian politics now.

 

[Umbran]

To paraphrase MLK, the moderates can get bent.

Mod Note:
Folks. Politics.

When the basic way you speak about folks is by your assessment of their political leanings, you are turning this into a political discussion, and the red text comes out and nobody ends up happy.

Please find another way to discuss the issues.

 

[Incenjucar]

I am overall in favor of species getting kind of a "three flavors" summary of how their cultures can lean toward good, neutral, or evil, with a neutral perspective of their history as with orcs, and for the PHB to emphasize the good side to encourage heroic characters.

Treat them all equally and let players, DMs, and campaign settings decide on what comes out of it.

 

[Faolyn]

Oh, maybe not nobody. I sort of like the idea of mechanically representing sexual dimorphism in the probability distributions for PC stat distributions. Call me a soft advocate, with the prerequisite of 3d6-in-order stat rolls so that extremely strong women, extremely wise men, extremely nimble dwarves, and extremely hardy elves are rare rather than impossible.

Well, there's three problems with this:

The first I already wrote about. It's a fantasy world. There are going to be "unusually" strong women because of some fantastic element in their background, such as a distant ancestor who was a giant, being blessed by a god of strength, magical accident in youth, ate the berries of the Power Tree, was conceived in a temple to the elephant god, weird random mutation caused by normal DNA in a magical universe, etc. So it's actually more realistic for there to be no cap.

Unless, of course, you're playing D&D in a setting with no magic, no non-human races, no fantastic plants or animals, and no gods. Because there are so many of those D&D settings.

Second, all your examples are already going to be extremely rare because they will be limited to the PCs, and there, maybe even a single PC since it's unlikely that every female PCs will be playing a warrior. So one "extremely strong woman" out of how many millions of women on this planet? Already rare enough without a cap.

Third, women are, realistically, more agile and healthier then men are, so for the sake of "verisimilitude" men would have to have caps on Dex and Con... yet somehow, I don't think most men who advocate for Strength caps for women are going to be happy with those limitations.

So basically, your choice is: make your world incredibly unrealistic for the sake of pure sexism, or don't.

 

[Horwath]

I am overall in favor of species getting kind of a "three flavors" summary of how their cultures can lean toward good, neutral, or evil, with a neutral perspective of their history as with orcs, and for the PHB to emphasize the good side to encourage heroic characters.

Treat them all equally and let players, DMs, and campaign settings decide on what comes out of it.

You need that emphasize in PHB to play that kind of character?

"Guess I played CG Orc barbarian before it was cool"

 

[Incenjucar]

You need that emphasize in PHB to play that kind of character?

"Guess I played CG Orc barbarian before it was cool"

I don't need anything, but I'm a game developer and not a person playing their first RPG who is going through the "the rules are law" stage.

 

[Faolyn]

I think it does. I don't think it is about players feelings their characters can't play enough jerks. I do think it is about an increasingly cautious approach to flavor, and the removal of the things from the game that people like. And eliminating even the mere potential that someone will do something bad with the material.

So, what you're saying is that the PHB needs to spell out every single thing that a person may use to write their character's background, because people are incapable of coming up with these ideas on their own?

 

[Bedrockgames]

So, what you're saying is that the PHB needs to spell out every single thing that a person may use to write their character's background, because people are incapable of coming up with these ideas on their own?

That isn’t what I said. I don’t see how that follows from my post

 

[Faolyn]

That isn’t what I said. I don’t see how that follows from my post

OK then, apologies. Allow me to reread it.

What you're saying is that you don't like them removing things you like, no matter how harmful they may be to others.

 

[Faolyn]

There's no "may not" about it. It's not bad science.

Forgive me for harping on this point, but calling facts (and, for that matter, reality itself) into question is something I've grown quite sick of hearing people do, insofar as contemporary dialogue goes (across society as a whole, rather than just in the tabletop gaming hobby). Hence, I refuse to countenance it here.

It's partially bad science. Women have more endurance and are often healthier, so it doesn't matter if a man can deadlift more if the woman can deadlift less for a lot longer.