D&D General Race Has No Mechanics. What do you play?

[Lanefan]

The lore doesn't have to match the character generation mechanics. You can have a setting where the typical dwarf is a master of stone and the typical elf a woodland expert, all reflected in NPC stats and abilities. But player characters are all exceptional individuals with the blank-slate potential to be whoever the player wants.

I come at this - and always will - on the non-negotiable assumption that PC and NPC members of a given species are indistinguishable.

 

[Reynard]

I come at this - and always will - on the non-negotiable assumption that PC and NPC members of a given species are indistinguishable.

That doesn't mean that there are no dwarf NPCs that choose a strange (for dwarves) profession,like sailor for example. So if an.NPC dwarf can be an odd duck, so can a PC dwarf.

Unless of course your races are just stereotypes and every dwarf is an indistinguishable axe wielding, beer swilling, rock hugging grump. But that would be a weird world, indeed.

 

[Lanefan]

That doesn't mean that there are no dwarf NPCs that choose a strange (for dwarves) profession,like sailor for example. So if an.NPC dwarf can be an odd duck, so can a PC dwarf.

Unless of course your races are just stereotypes and every dwarf is an indistinguishable axe wielding, beer swilling, rock hugging grump. But that would be a weird world, indeed.

They're all beer-swilling, but that's because they're being played by a beer-swilling DM.

But if most typical Dwarves are stone masters that tells me that stone-mastery is deeply-enough ingrained in the culture that Dwarven children are raised learning about it; whether they like it or not it's a baked-in part of their background.

And one subtle mechanical difference that your idea would erase (thus encouraging Dwarven sailors, perhaps) is that Dwarves and Gnomes are dense enough to naturally sink in water rather than float like we real people do.

 

[TwoSix]

I come at this - and always will - on the non-negotiable assumption that PC and NPC members of a given species are indistinguishable.

I hold a similar, but distinct, position that every character, PC and NPC, is ultimately unique. Racial traits might be shared by a majority of the population of a species, but there are always lot and lots of exceptions. Being a member of a race or species is ultimately a tag in the fiction, not a specific mechanic. (Although some mechanics might depend on the character having that fictional tag, like a magic item only usable by dwarves.)

 

[DEFCON 1]

Absolutely I would play in a campaign like this. After all, most of the species mechanics are so lame anyways they might as well not even exist. When you can recreate so many so-called 'species features' just by taking specific class mechanics and feats that duplicate the mechanics... just how meaningful are those species features after all?

As far as what I'd play... some species that I'd like to try for the narrative implications would be dragonborn, shifters, and dwarves if the campaign was to spend a lot of time underground in Dwarven citadels and the like.

 

[Micah Sweet]

EDIT FOR CLARITY: The supposition here is that the raves still have lore and in-fiction impacts related to the setting, which you can either define as your preferred setting, or default to whatever bits are to be found in the core books. Dwarves are dour, elves are aloof, etc...

Hypothetical sitation: you are joining a new campaign in which all other factors are positive (you know the GM and group, it's in a setting you like, whatever) but there is one hitch: race/heritage/species is cosmetic only.

So, assuming it is a very open setting in which pretty much any reasonable humanoid species is available, but none of them have any mechanical effects (including size, vision and movement types; everyone, including humans, are basically human mechanically). What species do you pick for your character?

Would race being cosmetic only be a turn off for you?

I'd play Human. Without mechanics, there's no reason not to use whatever culture I want.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So there is no value to the lore and other non mechanical aspects of that choice?

You can have whatever lore you want and still play human. And if the lore should have mechanical weight and doesn't...then the setting makes no sense, so some lore just isn't going to work under these conditions.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Roleplaying, I presume.

But you can any culture you want with human. Plus a lot of cultural aspects wouldn't make any sense if the mechanical side was irrelevant.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The lore doesn't have to match the character generation mechanics. You can have a setting where the typical dwarf is a master of stone and the typical elf a woodland expert, all reflected in NPC stats and abilities. But player characters are all exceptional individuals with the blank-slate potential to be whoever the player wants.

Which would make species mean even less.

 

[Reynard]

You can have whatever lore you want and still play human. And if the lore should have mechanical weight and doesn't...then the setting makes no sense, so some lore just isn't going to work under these conditions.

You seem to be leaving out the most obvious element, which is setting specific lore for a given race that informs playing those characters. They are still fantasy races in a fantasy world, with fantastical histories and fantastical places and other setting elements tied to them.