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By deciding how many, and what kind of, and the difficulty of, obstacles exist between the PCs and their goal, you become a participant. This becomes most obvious when the PCs present a new goal, for which the GM has not previously prepped, but is true in general.

Not just "if you want to..." It is, "if the differences between humans and non-humans are too small, you don't really need the non-humans." You know how everyone complains that non-humans just seem like humans in costumes? Well, that means your non-humans are not distinctive enough. Right...

With all respect, when the opposition and the referee are the same person, "fairness" should not have been on the list of qualities you expect from the game.

If you get loose with the word "optimal", I guess. But more typically, there's only one absolute best, really optimal build per type.

With respect, as the Firebird notes, more options available does not necessarily equate to more options used. More options means more opportunities for finding synchronicity that creates optimal builds.

There's no basis for which combat encounter should be difficult, and which shouldn't, either. That's, in most common playstyles, still in the GM's purview. Yes. The point is that this is a dial the GM can turn. You were talking about grounding in the fiction. Being plausibly effective is...

The complaint wasn't about just one player, though. It is about how all of one character type always ends up using the same build. "Yeah, yeah. Barbarian, 20-strength, GWM. Sure, whatever..."

It is a measure of difficulty. The wider the gap between needed success and failures, the more likely failure is. Another factor is how many PCs are involved. If the number of successes you need is lower than the number of PCs, for example, then not everyone is going to be able to be...

Because, as noted: always having the same combinations gets repetitive and boring.

Mod Note: Folks, I am going to have to ask you to dial it back some. This is about a subclass. Like it, or don't, as you will. But get in each other's faces over it, and that's a problem. So, like, chill, okay? Thanks.

Mod Note: Hey there. The frequency with which your posts in this thread, and elsewhere, have been against people is becoming a little hard to ignore. Maybe think about that before posting replies going forward, hm? Thanks.

Fair. I was addressing more the general approach to species that we want to have some superior trait, rather than your specific needs.

Well, much like Tolkien orcs, Klingons were not originally a simulation. But, they did serve a different rhetorical purpose. Tolkien orcs were an expression of the effects of Evil. D&D orcs were a monster-unit for PCs to kill. Trek Klingons were originally vaguely Soviet-analog antagonists for...

Or, you can imagine a design in which for those characters, acquiring a featured stat is cheaper for them than for others - like saving a point or two in point-buy D&D character generation - it would thus encouraged, but not forced.

Your ability to educate the world is limited. Your ability to educate yourself is in your own hands. Um... the US had a racism problem looong before WWII, and continuing after. And, I think we need to note: racist tropes are a bit more than just about stats. They are about societal...

Hm. I wonder how much of that can be attributed to still being so near the wargame root - these were "monster units", and thus not give a whole lot of deep consideration. See above - a common argument is the idea that you need "just evil" for purposes of having stuff you can kill without much...

So, there's a nice example from a commonly known fiction we can look to: Klingons. At one point (I think it might have been in ST: ENT, but i might be wrong on that), Trek makes it clear that all the Klingon obsession with combat and glory is cultural. A Klingon scientist (!) notes to a...

So, this touches on an important point: the difference between "broad average" for a people, and how you depict individuals. There is a difference between a GM saying, "In this world, Dwarves are often tougher and stronger than humans, and their culture values those traits" and "In this world...

Well, fetishizing, and attributing superior physical attributes to "less civilized" people, are also forms of racism. I don't think the goal here should be finding a formulaic way to avoid racist tropes. The best way to avoid racist tropes is to educate yourself on them, or collaborate with...

You can have different species. But you can't just say, "it is the same old racist-orc, and we are calling it a species" and get away with it. You actually have to do the work to create species that aren't rehashes of current racist tropes.