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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 8369413" data-attributes="member: 6779196">Then let’s stop pretending that “aarakocra have wings” or “dragonborn can breathe fire” is some sort of insightful observation. There’s a clear difference between saying a race is better or worse than others at something in a human way, and saying a race has a fantastical trait like incredible longevity, cat claws, or the ability to shapeshift.No one thinks it’s problematic for tortles to have shells or changelings to be able to change their appearance. “All differences between D&D races are bad” is a caricature you keep trotting out.Or, we could stop pretending that our brains work like computers and actually use our ability to evaluate things on a case-by-case basis using broad sets of criteria and principles instead of insisting on the impossible standard of a single objective rule that can deterministically sort all differences between races into “problematic” and “not problematic.”Biological essentialism is 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. It isn’t biologically essentialist to say birds have wings. Do the lines get a bit blurrier when it comes to made-up fantasy races? Yes, of course they do. But claiming that gnomes having a bonus to intelligence is equivalent to Tieflings having horns is just shameless whataboitism.I don’t claim it isn’t a complex topic. It is. But again, there’s an obvious qualitative difference between racial ASIs and fantastical traits like a Genasi’s control over their associated element, and it’s a waste of time and energy comparing those traits when we could be focusing on traits that are actually remotely comparable, like racial proficiencies (which I would argue are definitely biologically essentialist), Darkvision (which I would argue is definitely not), and things like dwarven resilience (which I would argue is on the borderline and merits some more in-depth interrogation.)</blockquote>

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