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You could either go the prereq route or recalculate the math of any applicable spells to incorporate bonuses.

Completely disagree (obviously). First off, trying to use animal ability scores as a basis for determining human(or demihuman) ability scores seems like a mistake right off the bat. Monsters, NPCs and PCs are all handled differently for a reason. Apes have an intelligence of 6 as a way of...

If I'm rolling stats (which I am if I have a choice), I roll, then come up with an idea based on that. Otherwise, CRB for me.

So here's a screwy idea to break up caster supremacy a bit. Instead of class based caster stats, why not make it spell based instead. You could still have a SAD caster, but they'd be more limited in optimal spell selection, or you could have a MAD caster who has a broader arrangement of spell...

Okay, then let me reword the problem so as to be a bit less vulnerable to pedantry-as-argument. You are equating Forrest Gump, a character noted for having a significantly impaired reasoning process, with an intelligence ability score of the smallest functional penalty represented in the...

You did. You used him as a description for someone with an 8 intelligence. At a -1 penalty, that's slightly below average, just like a 12 is slightly above average.

Yeah, this is kind of my whole problem with that whole take. It gives a wide range of divergence between "normal, everyday guy" and "the mysteries of the universe unravel before my gaze!" but then tries to fit the span of "barely functions without assistance" to "needs to watch the movie twice...

3d6 down the line is my preferred method. I also dislike post-creation ASIs in general, so if it's not obvious, I'm less a fan of the way WotC treats ability scores than I am TSR. An 8 intelligence gives you a -1. If Forrest Gump is an 8, then Sherlock Holmes is a 12.

3E, in my opinion, was an edition that, errata aside, got worse and worse as it grew. When it first came out, feats and skills were a reasonable evolution of 2E's non-weapon proficiencies, the combat resolution mechanic was a logical change from THAC0, and prestige classes were a tool for the...

I can appreciate some nods to realism in world building. But really, it's less appreciated because it's real, and more because it means the GM is putting some thought into the world. It tends to go less well in the game mechanics.

I'm all for more traits. 100%. But if your trait is just "ability score bonus, but worse," then it's not better than just having the ability score bonus. This is, I think, mostly a strawman argument. At the very least, most of the people on the fixed ASI side I've seen in this thread have...

Those changes are fine for a table specific house rule and for use with monsters, but it's way too fiddly to work for a published work that is meant to be used by players (in general, I'd say fiddly and quirky exceptions like that work far better for monster design than character design). They...

Small comment on that part: it's not a measure of accuracy because you aren't rolling to see if you make physical contact; you're rolling to see if you do damage to the hit point pool, which is a weird abstraction that isn't strictly a measure of physical health. There are edge cases you could...

It's more the specific choice to give the ability to lift without combat benefits specifically to the anthropomorphic cow that's the issue. Instead of the stereotype of "minotaur makes good fighter," you get the far worse stereotype of "cow man makes a good pack mule."

"Soul cage" is evocative much in the same way "blood blocker" would as a replacement for "bandage." It's the equivalent of running into an NPC names "Bob the Elf." It may be easy to understand, but that doesn't make it good nomenclature given the nature and setting of what it's describing...

Arnold isn't literally a walking cow.

So your solution to ASI enforced stereotypes is to make the minotaur into a beast of burden?

It's still the best one. And as I mentioned before, you don't have to just pick one way of making races different from each other. In fact, you shouldn't.

It doesn't. Minotaurs aren't strong if an unaugmented halfling has the exact same potential. Now, you could go further and argue about gradients of strength, but D&D isn't quite granular enough to mess with that within the scope of playable races. There are other ways to approach the issue...

Except it doesn't have to be either/or. You can have a minotaur with horns, a charge attack, and increased strength. You can have elves that have magic affinity and a bonus to dexterity. And so on. Adding more points of distinction seems better to me than replacing one with another.