D&D 5E Ability Score Increases (I've changed my mind.)

[Maxperson]

Abilities entangle everything.

Abilities carry baggage.

I didn't ask you to make a vague and unsubstantiated claim. I asked you to show removing +2 to charisma from tieflings eliminates a real life racist trope. That's a very specific claim you are making, so you need to provide very specific evidence to back it up.

 

[Yaarel]

I didn't ask you to make a vague and unsubstantiated claim. I asked you to show removing +2 to charisma from tieflings eliminates a real life racist trope. That's a very specific claim you are making, so you need to provide very specific evidence to back it up.

The point is, some cases are more troublesome than others. There is no ability stereotype for tiefling without there being ability stereotypes for other races too.

 

[Maxperson]

If Tiefling are all +2 CHA, they are right when they say other races are ugly. Given "they are ugly" has been used against subsets of humanity, it evokes a racist trope, and making it true in the game world is offensive to some.

No they aren't right. First, charisma does not equate to beauty. At the risk of Godwining the thread, Hitler was an ugly cuss, but had a very high charisma. If you actually look at tieflings, they ain't exactly cute, either. I'm not aware of any real life group being persecuted with the reason being, "They aren't persuasive enough." Second, there's no racial superiority involved with +2 charisma when compared to other races without a charisma bonus. Let's look at tieflings and elves. +2 charisma isn't going to help the tiefling get out of the way of the Indiana Jones boulder, and +2 dex isn't going to persuade someone to do what you want. Which is superior? Completley depends on circumstances outside of the race.

So I'll say it again...

Show me how removing +2 charisma from tieflings eliminates a real life racial trope.

 

[Maxperson]

The point is, some cases are more troublesome than others. There is no ability stereotype for tiefling without there being ability stereotypes for other races too.

You're still just making vague and unsubstantiated claims. So I'll take this as you not being able to actually point to anything racist in real life.

 

[Yaarel]

@Maxperson

The tiefling Charisma appears to relate to devil flavor, "seducing" others from behind the scenes to do evil.

This demonizing trope can be weaponized against certain ethnicities.

 

[Maxperson]

@Maxperson

The tiefling Charisma appears to relate to devil flavor, "seducing" others from behind the scenes to do evil.

This demonizing trope can be weaponized against certain ethnicities.

So you're seriously arguing that the devil flavor goes away with the +2 charisma bonus? That the demonizing trope stops being present in a race with devil horns and a heritage from literal hell?

 

[Lyxen]

Keep in mind, the same reason that floating ability score improvements were added to Tashas, is the same reason that racist fixed ability scores cannot be the default rule.

And yet they still are, and I don't think that there is any plan to change this.

Moreover, why this focus on ability scores, when the description of some races stay the same, how can this be more unflattering than not having a bonus to Cha: "Half-Orc: Half-orcs’ grayish pigmentation, sloping foreheads, jutting jaws, prominent teeth, and towering builds make their orcish heritage plain for all to see... Half-orcs are not evil by nature, but evil does lurk within them, whether they embrace it or rebel against it."

Please note that I'm not saying that I support any sort of racism, but that Floating ASIs are at best the tip of the iceberg here, and that this focus on stats is actually for me fighting the wrong fight, and in fact distracting from the real fight, which should probably not be fought on fantasy battlegrounds, and in any case not through that purely technical mean which I find misguided.

The whole point is to eliminate reallife racist tropes from the D&D tradition. Whose Intelligence is assumed to be higher or lower is part of the undesirable racist tropes.

Even if I agreed with you (which I in general do not for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do in particular with Floating ASIs, which is why I will leave them out of here), I would like to point out that changing initial stats on PCs will change absolutely nothing on the fantasy races of D&D, because the races are not defined by the characters.

The MM and other sources (all the supplements, all the modules) will still contain the standard stats and description of the fantasy races which are absolutely not equal to each other (thankfully, because it would just kill the genre if all creatures in the world had to have the same average stats), with some being extremely intelligent, others being extremely dumbs, and a lot of them being really ugly.

So it will have exactly zero effect on any fantasy racism that the fantasy races would have towards each other in the setting. Even if the PCs have exceptional stats, these are not displayed on their forehead, and they would therefore be treated as their entire race or (possibly even worse) as freaks amongst their race, both by their race and other races.

So while I totally support all fights against racism in the real world, not only is the translation of this to fantasy worlds highly debatable (again, not a topic for here) and debated, but claiming that the floating ASIs would have any effect on the way fantasy racism would be treated in the game is for me not a receivable argument in favour of the Floating ASIs.

 

[Bill Zebub]

The point is, some cases are more troublesome than others. There is no ability stereotype for tiefling without there being ability stereotypes for other races too.

I think the answer is simpler than that.

Racist trope: “Some ethnic groups are naturally more charismatic than others. It’s not how their community raises them; it’s genetic.”

Example in D&D: “All Tieflings, regardless of background, get +2 Charisma.”

Ergo, removing that rule removes one instance of a racist trope. (It’s not the reason I personally dislike fixed ASIs…I just want flexibility in character creation. But it’s there.)

Of course, at this point in the debate I don’t expect anybody who is determined to defend fixed ASIs at all costs to acknowledge this point. Better to engage in semantic contortionism than to concede any point, right?

 

[Lyxen]

Removing the fixed abilities has more to do with reallife race tensions. Moreover, younger players often have zero patience with old school sexism and racism.

I'm sorry, but isn't this ageism ? I'm really sorry to point this out, but you should really be careful here.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Show me how removing +2 charisma from tieflings eliminates a real life racial trope.

I don't think the goal is to eliminate a real life racial trope (I fear racism would still be in the exact same spot had D&D successfully been banned in the 80's) but making comfortable people who are not comfortable with it being present in the game rules. Much like there would be a pushback if the example about inspiration given for a cool roleplaying scene involved the character described as raping the beheaded body of his opponent: it might be more descriptive and creative than "I attack kobold #3" but it wouldn't... fly with many customers. Some people would want it removed from the game. The ASIs are in this situation. Some concept, equally worrying in real life, like apology of violence as a problem-solving method, are still in the game, not because real-life players are OK with killing people and taking their stuff (I hope!) but because not enough customers have decided yet that they don't want it in their fiction for WotC to act on it.