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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 8369605" data-attributes="member: 6779196">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.”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.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.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.A race being strong isn’t biological essentialism. They’re larger, they have more muscle mass, that’s just a physical attribute. 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 natural athletes. Unfortunately, with the way abilities interact with class in D&D, this essentializing is unavoidable with racial ASIs.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.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 basisAnd what would be wrong with that? Cosmetics and superpowers are cool.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.I think this concern is overblown.</blockquote>

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