Level Up (A5E) Changes to race (species?)

[Ruin Explorer]

A halfling can train a lot to be strong and be stronger than most average or untrained humans, but a trained orc will be stronger than a trained halfling simply because of biology. And there is nothing bad about that, those are different races/species so of course their biology is different.

I just want to say, I find this argument deeply disingenuous, because you're using a halfling, when in fact any race without a STR bonus is in an equal position. An orc and a human would be a better comparison. And indeed, a human cannot train to be stronger than a halfling, despite being twice the height, several times the weight, and possessing much longer limbs. It's just biology I guess (the dreaded "chimp strength").

As soon as you put a human and an orc in the same frame though, suddenly it looks a lot sillier.

And any other stat than STR and it looks increasingly ridiculous. Like almost literally in stat order. DEX is plausible. CON, yeah, maybe but meh. INT is hard to justify, especially given what it means (it's easy to justify specific things, like a better memory, but does that mean a higher INT?). WIS Nah. CHA? No.

This is a modern concept. Historically people from agrarian societies were smaller and presumably weaker than hunter-gatherers because they did have rather protein-poor diet. For the same reason a person from noble or wealthy background would be likely be taller and potentially stronger than a peasant; they had access to better food.

Frequently even the nobles were less built than their hunter-gatherer ancestors from a few hundred/thousand years before, based on archaeological evidence. But yes, early farmers were nearly always small/underdeveloped compared to hunter-gatherers (though as you say eventually the nobles etc. start getting as big later). This continued to be the case up into the 1900s for goodness sake. And yes protein is more the issue than calories - calories they did okay on, frequently. So yeah, to say farm strength is a "modern idea" is an understatement. It's been "a thing" for a shockingly brief period of time.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Also, in a pre-industrial society a person who isn’t nobility in an agrarian society will farm. Period. Your banker or whatever grew up on a farm. Farming.

Oh, and this is completely wrong BTW. The whole bloody point of farming is that (as opposed to in hunter-gathering) one person can easily produce more food than they need to consume. This means that not everyone in the society needs to be a food provider, allowing others to specialise in other things. This is exactly the reason why different social classes and massive number of professions only properly developed after adoption of agriculture.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Frequently even the nobles were less built than their hunter-gatherer ancestors from a few hundred/thousand years before, based on archaeological evidence. But yes, early farmers were nearly always small/underdeveloped compared to hunter-gatherers (though as you say eventually the nobles etc. start getting as big later). This continued to be the case up into the 1900s for goodness sake. And yes protein is more the issue than calories - calories they did okay on, frequently. So yeah, to say farm strength is a "modern idea" is an understatement. It's been "a thing" for a shockingly brief period of time.

Yep, exactly.

 

[Derren]

Also, in a pre-industrial society a person who isn’t nobility in an agrarian society will farm. Period. Your banker or whatever grew up on a farm. Farming.

Thats nonsense. Do you really think a Medici or Fugger knew how to farm?
Medieval society was very class based without much social mobility at all. Farmers tended to stay farmers (if they were serfs they were basically required to, craftsmen stayed craftsmen or at least remained in a city, etc.)

I know a number of people who grew up on farms. Without exception, they are substantially stronger than other people I know that grew up in the city. This despite the fact that one is a librarian, and another is a computer programmer.

Their choice of profession later in life has nothing to do with how they developed growing up, and the point of the Culture mechanic (as I described it earlier) is to encompass what is learned and developed before a person begins making personal life choices.

Saying that there is a 'weaker' desk clerk living in the village does not invalidate the point of the Culture selection, which is designed to describe the broad mechanical benefits that growing up in an agrarian society would confer on an individual. You are not yet at the point of individual choices in individual creation; that begins at Background.

"Growing up on a farm" has nothing to do with culture. If that alone would define culture every pre-modern society would be agrarian simply because of how many people it took to feed the nation. Romans would be an agrarian society, yet would roman senators be automatically be stronger than Hun priest? That would be the case if you assign Strength through culture.

I just want to say, I find this argument deeply disingenuous, because you're using a halfling, when in fact any race without a STR bonus is in an equal position. An orc and a human would be a better comparison. And indeed, a human cannot train to be stronger than a halfling, despite being twice the height, several times the weight, and possessing much longer limbs. It's just biology I guess (the dreaded "chimp strength").

As soon as you put a human and an orc in the same frame though, suddenly it looks a lot sillier.

And any other stat than STR and it looks increasingly ridiculous. Like almost literally in stat order. DEX is somewhat plausible. CON, yeah, maybe but meh. INT nah. WIS hell no. CHA? Are you kidding me?

Thats the problem with the removal of ability penalties in 4E+ and why I think penalties should come back.
And no, putting an human against an orc does not make it look sillier. The same thing would apply to them. Because of biology a trained orc will be stronger than a trained human, but a trained human can match or surpass an untrained orc.
The very same thing also applies to Int, etc. to. We know that intelligence is in part genetic, so different species can have a different base intelligence. Wis and Cha is a bit undefined, but why would genetics have no factor in it? According to its wikipedia article people being extrovert or introvert is also partly genetic. (Extraversion and introversion - Wikipedia). So again, different species would have different aptitudes because of their biology.

It's not "people", it's "adventurers."

So? That explains why they level or why they have so high stats overall. But they are still limited (and empowered) by their biology. They do not shed their species once they decide to become adventurer.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Do you really think a Medici or Fugger knew how to farm?

Medicis? Yes, absolutely some of them knew how to run a farm. You seem to be entirely ignorant of history here. That's a bizarre thing to suggest. I'm less familiar with the Fuggers so can't comment on them.

The very same thing also applies to Int, etc. to. We know that intelligence is in part genetic, so different species can have a different base intelligence. Wis and Cha is a bit undefined, but why would genetics have no factor in it? According to its wikipedia article people being extrovert or introvert is also partly genetic. (Extraversion and introversion - Wikipedia). So again, different species would have different aptitudes because of their biology.

Linking to junk science is pretty silly, especially if you're trying to justify CHA modifiers, given some of the most charismatic people in history were, by the standards of that junk science, introverts. It's very easy to be gregarious as hell and completely charisma-free (ever met a frat boy? or about a third of the jocks of the world?), or solidly introverted but extremely charismatic (c.f. a whole bunch of actors/artists/cult leaders/politicians).

Plus, D&D is not a simulation. It is particularly not a simulation of either junk science like introversion/extraversion (which is barely even real psychology, and psychology itself keeps failing to demonstrate it is actually a science), nor of genetic traits. Insisting things should be a certain way because you believe they are IRL is pretty silly.

(The heritability of intelligence in humans is pretty fascinating, because it's so complex that it's easy for two highly intelligent parents to have a moderate or even low IQ child, or vice-versa, if they have sufficiently different genes that contribute to intelligence.)

 

[Derren]

I see you have left any pretense of having a rational discussion so there is no point in continuing.
So have fun with your alternate history where the children of the Medici banking family who became popes and kings and lead one of the largest and most famous banks in Europe for generations grow up on a farm.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I see you have left any pretense of having a rational discussion so there is no point in continuing.
So have fun with your alternate history where the children of the Medici banking family who became popes and kings and lead one of the largest and most famous banks in Europe for generations grow up on a farm.

I don't think we're the ones with the "alternate history" here, mate.

No-one is saying they were hauling manure. But the reality is that at least some Medicis did live in the countryside and understood how to run a farm, even if they didn't do the hard work. This was a large dynasty that went on for centuries, and certainly owned countless farms and agricultural businesses. The idea that they all didn't know how they worked is laughable. I'm sure some didn't, but that's hardly the same thing. You seem to think that "farming = peasants" which is like, extremely bizarre. Tilling the earth, sowing the seeds, etc. = peasants, but managing farms/estates? Uh, who exactly do you think does that. I daresay more than a few kings, popes, and yes, bankers grew up on country estates with a good experience of agricultural management.

 

[Dire Bare]

Here's the thing.

The further back in history you go, the more different an agrarian American is from a coastal urban American.

Because it's not that "Farmer" is a culture, it's that Agrarian Society is a culture, that you can then place in a world, decide which races are predominantly part of it, and fill in the rest from there.
In an Agrarian society, everyone grows up doing agrarian tasks. Even the folks who aren't fully able bodied. And it sticks.

I know people raised on farms whose Background in DND would not be Farmer. My father in law would be a Guild Artisan from an Agrarian Culture, because he grew up on a farm in a farming town in a rural region of America in the mid 20th century, and became a mechanic.

He has things in common with other farmfolk down here in California that he doesn't have in common with city-folk from Idaho or Washington, where he grew up.

Perhaps.

But, 1) D&D isn't a perfect sim of reality, and when you parse things out into race/species, class, and background, it creates lines (or categories) that are a little more concrete than they would be in reality. 2) D&D isn't a historical game, it's a pseudo-historical game told from a modern mindset.

I'd also bet that your farmer friends have more in common with their fellow Americans from a variety of backgrounds than they have differences.

In game, if I have a culture or ethnicity based on 12th century England (tightly or loosely), I'm not going to parse that culture down into rural, town, and noble English cultures. It'll be one culture (and language), with multiple backgrounds available to represent those differences. And if I include ASIs in the game, they would not be assigned by species or culture, but either be floating or be assigned by background.

 

[Scott Christian]

This is a modern concept. Historically people from agrarian societies were smaller and presumably weaker than hunter-gatherers because they did have rather protein-poor diet. For the same reason a person from noble or wealthy background would likely be taller and potentially stronger than a peasant; they had access to better food. Though in that instance they might have such a good access that they could develop adverse effects like the modern people often do.

In any case, as has been stated 'farmer' or 'grew on the farm' is not a culture, it is background. There is no culture where everyone is a farmer.

I am going to disagree. Please look it up. The farmer had more food and a more stable diet than the hunter/gatherer. Look at the cultures of hunter/gatherers. Half of their songs and tales are just about getting food. The Athabascan people (hunter/gatherer) of Alaska lost large numbers of people each year to starvation. And this was in a land full of animals. But the Inuit, who had a different style of farming than our modern day version, but had planted crops and stayed in two locales (one for summer and one for winter), rarely starved. They too lived in Alaska.

I think farmer was explained well in a post above. It's not that farmer is a culture, but agrarian society is a culture. It encompasses many jobs. But the culture is influenced by the prevalence of the jobs. We are talking about groups, not individuals. A locale that has high tech, such as Silicon Valley, often has more educated people. Yes, they have farms and chefs and police officers. But, the culture is influenced by the high proportional amount of tech jobs. I like to think of traditional gnomes being a bit like that.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I am going to disagree. Please look it up. The farmer had more food and a more stable diet than the hunter/gatherer. Look at the cultures of hunter/gatherers. Half of their songs and tales are just about getting food. The Athabascan people (hunter/gatherer) of Alaska lost large numbers of people each year to starvation. And this was in a land full of animals. But the Inuit, who had a different style of farming than our modern day version, but had planted crops and stayed in two locales (one for summer and one for winter), rarely starved. They too lived in Alaska.

Well, you're simply wrong. It is not amount of the food that matters, it is the quality. This has been studied extensively,it is not a mystery. The protein and nutrient poor diet of the pre-modern (and some modern) agrarian societies is the reason why the people of the past were short.

I think farmer was explained well in a post above. It's not that farmer is a culture, but agrarian society is a culture. It encompasses many jobs. But the culture is influenced by the prevalence of the jobs. We are talking about groups, not individuals. A locale that has high tech, such as Silicon Valley, often has more educated people. Yes, they have farms and chefs and police officers. But, the culture is influenced by the high proportional amount of tech jobs. I like to think of traditional gnomes being a bit like that.

Yes, I'm sure Silicon Valley has more than average amount of well educated people. This doesn't magically make a taxi driver who lives there better educated. Techie or a farmer are backgrounds. Sure certain places have higher concentration of certain backgrounds than others. This is not surprising in the least. That doesn't make it a culture than encompasses all the people in the area.