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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crimson Longinus" data-source="post: 8515276" data-attributes="member: 7025508">I mean I'm sure I've said all this about seven thousand times already in other threads, and everyone is tired of hearing it an no one is going to change their minds, but if you insist:So what you seem to have missed is that we're not talking about just humans. We're talking about literal different species with drastically different physical proportions and biologies. Are bears stronger than wolves? Argument here is that, well, because there is so much individual variation and some bears might be very weak and some wolves might be really strong it is really impossible to say. And frankly, that's just nonsense. <img src="https://www.enworld.org/attachments/dndspecies-gif.117829/" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />The idea that all these creatures of wildly different sizes would have the exact same range of capabilities is simply absurd. If a noob player would look at a picture of D&D species, and then read the description of ability scores, do you think they would expect all the species to be equal in all abilities? Or would they perhaps think that for example a species over twice the height and ten times the body mass of another might be stronger? That's the lack of verisimilitude there. The rules become disconnected from the intuitive assumptions, they become dull numbers than represent nothing. And some people don't mind such a disconnect. But I very much do. And I haven't ever heard similar concern raised in other franchises. I have never heard anyone complain that it might be problematic that Wookiees are stronger than Ewoks or that in Glorantha the Uz  have different ability scores than the Aldyrami.But yes, I get that some parallels to the real world issue can be drawn. In the real world it is indeed very terrible to say people of ethnicity X are better at certain thing than people of ethnicity Y. And that these are fictional species that actually are different from each other rather than human ethnicities might not be enough to stop it being an uncomfortable parallel. But if that is truly how it is, then we simply shouldn't have fictional species at all. If 'species X tend to be better at a thing than a species Y' is an offensive concept in fiction, it is so whether that difference is represented via an ASI, a trait or just exist in the fluff.Now I understand that due how D&D is designed main ability scores are fairly important, and I understand that on balance grounds several people wanted there to be more customisability. And that is as understandable desire. But I feel that hijacking the discussion about representation and social issues to demand a specific mechanic is frankly bizarre, and personally to me it even seems rather disingenuous.So yea, what I want is a game where orks are nuanced complex people instead of caricature evil mooks, but where they still can be physiologically different from humans and where that difference will be represented mechanically, including via ability scores.</blockquote>

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