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

[Charlaquin]

So we are just talking about cosmetic differences then? If that's all there is, then we shouldn't anyone but humans.

First of all, no, we aren’t only talking about cosmetic differences. Second of all, even if we were, why would that mean they shouldn’t exist? People like cosmetic differences. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with races that are only cosmetically different than humans.

 

[Charlaquin]

Not a mechanical difference. Being long-lived may change some the stories you tell, but it is still a cosmetic difference.

That’s not what cosmetic means.

 

[Charlaquin]

I have to say that if we cannot actually depict aliens/fantasy species as having different instincts and ways of thinking than humans, then it's not worth bothering with them. Those are the actually interesting differences, not whether someone can fly or shoot lasers from their eyes.

I think the way the vast majority of people play D&D would indicate that they feel the opposite. People usually play their characters as basically human (because, you know, a human brain is controlling all of their thoughts and actions). That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have different options to choose from like being able to fly or shoot lasers from their eyes.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

I think the way the vast majority of people play D&D would indicate that they feel the opposite. People usually play their characters as basically human (because, you know, a human brain is controlling all of their thoughts and actions). That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have different options to choose from like being able to fly or shoot lasers from their eyes.

This. Going deep into speculative xenopsychology for nonhuman characters is perfectly well and good for a novel or a movie, but for TTRPGs? From what I've seen it just becomes an impediment to roleplaying at the table.

 

[Blue]

I've been against separating ability score increases from race in D&D for some time now. My main opposition to removing it was because I felt as though it made choosing what race to play matter even less than it matters now.

The root problem is that there is so little attached to the races. It's the same reason our centaurs are medium sized, and people flip out about flying races, and forget tiny races - there's so little design space that anything meaningful that's new is probably too much compared to the existing races. I wish all of the races had flavorful, nifty, and meaningful abilities so it truely was a full pillar of character creation, like originally said back in D&D Next - race, background and class. And then we could have a race that's large, and it's okay because it's balance by the opportunity cost of not getting all the goodies a medium race gave you.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

That isn’t what biological essentialism means. But, I don’t want to get bogged down in semantics, so whatever term you want to use for “belief that ‘human nature’, an individual's personality, or some specific quality (such as intelligence, creativity, homosexuality, masculinity, femininity, or a male propensity to aggression) is an innate and natural ‘essence’, rather than a product of circumstances, upbringing, and culture,” just imagine I used that term instead whenever you see me use “biological essentialism.”

I actually want to get bogged down to semantics, because it is pretty relevant in this context. What you actually understand biological essentialism mean if we apply it to actual different species?

Biological essentialism is generally used synonymously than biological determinism: that something is due biology rather than other factors. I.e. nature part of 'nature vs. nurture.'

Did you just call wings and breathing fire purely cosmetic? If you believe that, we are operating on very different understandings of what cosmetic means.

No. There was 'or' there.

And there’s value in discussing the areas where it is unclear! Let’s do that instead of whataboiting over things that are obviously not problematic.

Perhaps you should be a bit less sure that you can accurately determine what is and isn't problematic?

And if changelings were depicted as an inherently duplicitous race who used their shape shifting ability to infiltrate societies of other races for nefarious purposes, this might be a valid concern. That would be essentialism. Simply having the ability to shapeshift is not a problem, unless it’s used to define essential qualities of the race.

I mean, it is not like that, but it is also not exactly completely unlike that: "A changeling can shift its face and form with a thought. Many changelings use this gift as a form of artistic and emotional expression, but it is an invaluable tool for grifters, spies and others who wish to deceive. This leads many people to treat known changelings with fear and suspicion." Then it also goes to tell how they often live among other species without their knowledge.

A race being strong isn’t biological essentialism. They’re larger, they have more muscle mass, that’s just a physical attribute.

That is result of their essential biological nature...

What’s problematic is when those physical attributes are used to define essential qualities of the race. When Goliaths are not just strong but a race of athletes. Unfortunately, with the way abilities interact with class in D&D, this essentializing is unavoidable with racial ASIs.

Whilst I understand the desire to have all lineages to be equally good for every class, D&D classes are not relevant to social justice, they're arbitrary made up categories for game play purposes. It is not any more essentialising to be good fighter than a good weightlifter just because former happens to be a class in D&D and latter doesn't.

Yes, there will always be someone who can find something to take issue with anything. Our goal should be to achieve a reasonable standard, not to make the game 100% critique-proof.

Reasonable by whose standards?

That seems like a silly conclusion to come to, perhaps based on trying to come up with a deterministic rule instead of evaluating on a case-by-case ba

Ultimately we cannot just evaluate these things based on our gut feeling. It might give some indication, but it is far too subjective and we're blind to our own biases and privileges. There should be at least some sort of logically-semi-coherent framework.

And what would be wrong with that? Cosmetics and superpowers are cool.

Superficially. If that's all your fantasy species has going for them, I wouldn't bother.

Yeah, I don’t love that description of orcs either. What it, and your “industrious, holds grudges, and loves gold” example have in common is that they describe essential qualities of the race. Those are all perfectly fine traits for individual members, or even entire groups of those races to have. They just can’t be inherent qualities of birth. Make it nurture instead of nature.

And then you cannot describe different species! They cannot be mentally different. Saying "some dwarves are like this, but then again, so are also some orcs and some humans" is useless. That is the problem.

 

[Charlaquin]

I actually want to get bogged down to semantics, because it is pretty relevant in this context. What you actually understand biological essentialism mean if we apply it to actual different species?

I’ve given you my definition twice now. Tack “oid” onto the end of “human” in that definition and it applies to D&D races just fine.

Biological essentialism is generally used synonymously than biological determinism: that something is due biology rather than other factors. I.e. nature part of 'nature vs. nurture.'

Biological determinism and biological essentialism are very closely related concepts, but they are not interchangeable. Biological essentialism is treating someone’s essential qualities as biologically determined. How strong someone is is absolutely biologically determined. Whether they are “a jock” is not, and treating it as such is called “biological essentialism.”

No. There was 'or' there.

Gotcha, my mistake.

Perhaps you should be a bit less sure that you can accurately determine what is and isn't problematic?

I’m not sure that I can in all cases, and it’s those cases I would like to actually discuss, instead of wasting time and energy bickering about things that are obviously not. Can we please put the stupid examples like aarakocra flight and dragonborn breath to bed so we can talk about the cases with actual ambiguity like Goliath strength and gnome intelligence? Thanks.

I mean, it is not like that, but it is also not exactly completely unlike that: "A changeling can shift its face and form with a thought. Many changelings use this gift as a form of artistic and emotional expression, but it is an invaluable tool for grifters, spies and others who wish to deceive. This leads many people to treat known changelings with fear and suspicion." Then it also goes to tell how they often live among other species without their knowledge.

Nothing in that quote ascribes essential qualities of changeling nature to their shape shifting. “many changelings use this gift as a form of artistic and emotional expression,” not “changelings are artistically and emotionally expressive thanks to this gift.” “It is an invaluable tool for grifters, spies, and others who wish to deceive,” not “changelings are grifters and spies who use this tool to deceive.” “This leads many people to treat Changelings with fear and suspicion,” not “Changelings should be treated with fear and suspicion.”

That is result of their essential biological nature...

No, it’s a result of their biology. Extrapolating to their essential nature, such as calling them “natural athletes” or what have you due to that biology is what we call biological essentialism.

Whilst I understand the desire to have all lineages to be equally good for every class, D&D classes are not relevant to social justice, they're arbitrary made up categories for game play purposes. It is not any more essentialising to be good fighter than a good weightlifter just because former happens to be a class in D&D and latter doesn't.

It is essentializing for an entire race of people to be better fighters than entire other races, just as it would be for an entire race of people to be better weightlifters than entire other races.

Reasonable by whose standards?

The general D&D playing public?

Ultimately we cannot just evaluate these things based on our gut feeling. It might give some indication, but it is far too subjective and we're blind to our own biases and privileges. There should be at least some sort of logically-semi-coherent framework.

We are working with a logically semi-coherent framework, it just isn’t completely deterministic. It requires socially constructed consensus, just as all such frameworks do. But pointing out absurd examples that are obviously outside that framework and trying to claim the framework is useless because it doesn’t deterministically rule them out does not help to build that consensus. It only distracts from the process of building that consensus, which is why it comes across as bad-faith to do.

Superficially. If that's all your fantasy species has going for them, I wouldn't bother.

Ok, then you don’t have to bother. The rest of us will enjoy our cool game with imaginary people who look different and have different capabilities than humans but aren’t treated as monoliths because of their different appearances and capabilities.

And then you cannot describe different species! They cannot be mentally different. Saying "some dwarves are like this, but then again, so are also some orcs and some humans" is useless. That is the problem.

It’s not useless at all! On the contrary, it opens up room for more varied stories to be told using them, and makes them infinitely more nuanced and interesting characters.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I’ve given you my definition twice now. Tack “oid” onto the end of “human” in that definition and it applies to D&D races just fine.

Biological determinism and biological essentialism are very closely related concepts, but they are not interchangeable. Biological essentialism is treating someone’s essential qualities as biologically determined. How strong someone is is absolutely biologically determined. Whether they are “a jock” is not, and treating it as such is called “biological essentialism.”

Gotcha, my mistake.

I’m not sure that I can in all cases, and it’s those cases I would like to actually discuss, instead of wasting time and energy bickering about things that are obviously not. Can we please put the stupid examples like aarakocra flight and dragonborn breath to bed so we can talk about the cases with actual ambiguity like Goliath strength and gnome intelligence? Thanks.

Nothing in that quote ascribes essential qualities of changeling nature to their shape shifting. “many” changelings use this gift as a form of artistic and emotional expression,” nor “changelings are artistically and emotionally expressive thanks to this gift.” “It is an invaluable tool for grifters, spies, and others who wish to deceive,” not “changelings are grifters and spies who use this tool to deceive.” “This leads many people to treat Changelings with fear and suspicion,” not “Changelings should be treated with fear and suspicion.”

No, it’s a result of their biology. Extrapolating to their essential nature, such as calling them “natural athletes” or what have you due to that biology is what we call biological essentialism.

It is essentializing for an entire race of people to be better fighters than entire other races, just as it would be for an entire race of people to be better weightlifters than entire other races.

The general D&D playing public?

We are working with a logically semi-coherent framework, it just isn’t completely deterministic. It requires socially constructed consensus, just as all such frameworks do. But pointing out absurd examples that are obviously outside that framework and trying to claim the framework is useless because it doesn’t deterministically rule them out does not help to build that consensus. It only distracts from the process of building that consensus, which is why it comes across as bad-faith to do.

Ok, then you don’t have to bother. The rest of us will enjoy our cool game with imaginary people who look different and have different capabilities than humans but aren’t treated as monoliths because of their different appearances and capabilities.

It’s not useless at all! On the contrary, it opens up room for more varied stories to be told using them, and makes them infinitely more nuanced and interesting characters.

What it doesn't do is make dwarves different from humans or orcs. While it doesn't seem like that matters all much to you, it certainly does to some of us.

 

[Malmuria]

Ultimately we cannot just evaluate these things based on our gut feeling. It might give some indication, but it is far too subjective and we're blind to our own biases and privileges. There should be at least some sort of logically-semi-coherent framework.

We do have a framework, which are the tropes and language used to define otherness and dehumanize individuals and groups in recent and continuing history. It's a framework, though, amenable to argumentation and historical citation but not reducible to a one page checklist.

Superficially. If that's all your fantasy species has going for them, I wouldn't bother.


And then you cannot describe different species! They cannot be mentally different. Saying "some dwarves are like this, but then again, so are also some orcs and some humans" is useless. That is the problem.

Let's say as a rule of thumb (that is, a quick summation of an aspect of that larger framework, not a set-in-ston-apply-in-all-cases type of rule), we say giving different creatures inherent physical abilities--like flying, not having to sleep, being resistant to fire, breathing electricity, or shooting lasers out their eyes--is a kind of essentialism or archetype-making that is not likely in itself to cause correspond to real-world bigotry, and so is generally ok. But that ascribing what we usually think of as individual personality traits to entire species is more likely to be similar to the language employed by real world racism (and moreover, reductive and simplistic world building.

Between the two comments quoted above, you seem to be arguing that the former (differentiation by physical/supernatural abilities) is cosmetic and superficial and thus not worth bothering over and that thus the latter (assigning individual personality traits to entire creatures, wholescale) is the only way to provide meaningful differentiation? I think this is an unreasonable demand. Differentiating fantasy creatures by their supernatural abilities, shooting lasers out of their eyes for example, is a very practical and actionable method of differentiating fantasy biology from culture in a way that could both remove problematic language and provide opportunities for richer worldbuilding. Maybe it's not completely internally consistent, in one view, that readers would be offended by a fantasy race that was uniformly hot tempered but not one that could uniformly shoot lasers from their eyes, but that's why we have a framework for reading and not a determinative one page checklist when we design and play games.

side note on this discussion: have elves, dwarves, or halflings ever been described as truly alien in any edition of dnd? To my knowledge, they have always been very human-like. From the 1e PHB, p. 15:

All of the non-human or part-human races closely resemble humans in many aspects. It is assumed that similarities are sufficiently apparent so as to warrant no further comment, and only special racial characteristics which are dissimilar to humanswill be dealt with. Characters differ slightly within their respective races as a whole.

Indeed, the succeeding race descriptions in that book hardly mention personality differences and focus instead on physical abilities (and languages)

 

[Charlaquin]

What it doesn't do is make dwarves different from humans or orcs. While it doesn't seem like that matters all much to you, it certainly does to some of us.

Dwarves are different from humans and orcs. They have a different range of typical body proportions, their visual perception system works differently (than humans; orcs and dwarves are the same there), they have more robust systems for managing toxins, the list goes on. Just because you only care about differences in essential nature that are biologically determined doesn’t mean others shouldn’t.