Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Remathilis" data-source="post: 9799592" data-attributes="member: 7635">Well yes, biology shouldn't have any affect on what kind of person you are. Your intelligence, aptitudes, interests, gender role, or culture is not a factor of biology. The same is, in theory, true of other sapient beings. So? There is nothing in the lore of that says that they have any differences in intellectual capacity or development. Its not like dwarves cannot understand the concept or love or elves reproduce by budding. Most of your Tolkien-based races are basically humans already, and I don't see too much going on with dragonborn or tieflings to make them utterly alien. We have no idea what another species of sentient life would be like.  We infer everything based on how a human would work with some twist. If we ever meet aliens from another world, we can determine what a truly alien mindset is. Until then, they are ALL humans in funny hats. We cannot know if a mushroom feels pain, a tree understands love, or if the dog actually understand what death is. We can only know the limits of consciousness based on the framework of human capability. The notion of a sentient species that is unrelated to primate evolution can only be inferred by what we know of human capability. We cannot know what a dwarf would actually be like, so we give them a bunch of stereotypical traits a human could have and call that their species traits. There is nothing inherently dwarven about a dwarf: I can play a human who works mines, swings an axe, is grumpy and loves gold and ale and is played 100% like I would play a dwarf but has the stats of a human. And guess what? That human is 100% within the parameters of a real human. Because people like wearing funny hats. D&D wouldn't create 500 different unique species and subspecies if there wasn't enjoyment from it. And 99% of them are played like humans in funny hats. As are every sci-fi and fantasy race you've ever seen, read, or played. Its all cosplay because we cannot understand anything other than human consciousness. My objection is to the notion there is only One True Way to play a dwarf. At this point, I'm prone to be dismissive of your question and say "I want a cool hat". But I will attempt one more good-faith discussion.I don't want "dwarf" to mean just one thing. I want a dwarf to be able to be all about axes and Moradin if you want, but I want the option to NOT be that if I choose. A dwarf that grows up in the jungles of Chult or the heart of Waterdeep isn't the same as one who lives in the heart of Mythral Hall. I certainly don't want things like "Dwarves are usually Lawful Good" or "Dwarves are all proficient with hammers" in the PHB. And I'm fairly neutral on the idea we need a mechanically separate culture element like PF, LU or ToV use. To me, the fact that 5.24 gives me just enough species traits to be interesting without boxing me into " the fighter race" or "the cleric race" is fine enough. But I don't want to go back to monoculture dwarves any more than I want to go back to racial limitations on classes or level limits or humanoid types having typical alignments. Anything else, agree to disagree.</blockquote>

Verification