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Message: <blockquote data-quote="doctorbadwolf" data-source="post: 7786588" data-attributes="member: 6704184">I addressed and disagreed with that in the post you're quoting. A good example is the lizard people that could have been in the Ravnica book, but were instead "use lizardfolk stats". Lizardfolk stats don't actually represent the race, so that shouldn't have been the solution in an ideal world. Obviously sometimes you have to sacrifice something for page count, or because the customer base has a surprising and weird preference, or whatever, but the ideal shouldn't be, for a game that isn't designed to be super thematically tight and focused, to ditch unique race stats just because there isn't a singular thing they have that is "iconic" to them. Mountain and Hill Dwarves don't have anything iconic that isn't shared between them, IMO, but it's still good that they're distinct. The fact that there are hard mechanical distinctions between races means that in 5e, for me and every other player I've ever met who isn't deeply invested in FR lore (for example), moon elves and whatever other elves that are also High Elves mechanically are just High Elves. They're not actually distinct groups, they're just the elf equivelent of humans from Cormyr and humans from Sembia. Which isn't bad at all, but it's good that there are actually distinct mechanics for wood elves and high elves and eladrin and sea elves, because thematically they are distinct, and it would be completely innapropriate for wood elves to have a wizard cantrip. In the same way, mountain dwarves and hill dwarves don't have iconic traits, but they do have both mechanical and thematic distinction, and a different story, which is all they need to justify their distinct existence in the rules.</blockquote>

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