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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9414238" data-attributes="member: 6790260">As I said above though, the desire by itself is not a problem. Stat bonuses were never particularly interesting as a means to differentiate characters, and I've been pretty consistent about claiming that. I've always believed it was better for the game to make the actions of characters different, because actions speak, stats don't. Dragonborn have dragon breath. Tieflings tap into hellish powers. Orcs are blood-frenzy ferocious. Etc. Making races different by what special thing they do is far and away better than "Orcs have +2 Str and Con, and -4 Cha."The problem is, WotC doesn't want to do that. I fundamentally disagree with [USER=6801228]@Chaosmancer[/USER] on this. I absolutely do think they have a "replace everything with spells" agenda. I think we've seen the signs of that loud and clear, and that it takes significant player pushback for them to retreat from this stance. That's why they tried to make Warlock pacts into spells; that's why they initially made Hunter's Mark a spell, and why Divine Smite has been turned into a spell as well. The spell-ification process is not restricted to any one area. Yes, they do make other kinds of things, but there has been a consistent trend of using spells even when spells are NOT warranted, and essentially never going the other way, turning stuff that is a spell into a non-spell instead.But "you can cast spell X 1/day" (or whatever) does not feel the same way as a special racial feature that only fnords get. It just doesn't, and it never will. Instead, it feels like...getting to be a weaker spellcaster occasionally. The fact that dragon breath isn't just a spell really does matter. It feels different--even if you could theoretically restructure it as a spell, you really shouldn't, because that feels different.For an edition that has allegedly prioritized "feel" above all else, because (allegedly) "math is easy," the fact that they keep chucking so many things--no, not absolutely positively everything [USER=6801228]@Chaosmancer[/USER], but FAR too much and consistently more over time--into the flavorless-crappy-feels zone of "you get a couple weird spells!" just flat is not helping.It sounds like the goliath is a (IMO, rare) example of NOT doing this, and for that I'm glad...even if the "what do you do" sounds incredibly thin and frankly pretty dull.</blockquote>

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