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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9023701" data-attributes="member: 6790260">That's fair. If you play in a tightly confined cultural and historical sphere, where homogeneity can be expected of at least some groups for various reasons.On the broader scale, yeah. Sapient beings aren't cookie-cutter; as I'm fond of saying IRL, humans don't fit neatly into boxes until they're dead. Plus, what could be more artificial--and "samey"!--than fiat declaring that every member of a particular species always has an identical set of skills?The extra-organs thing is interesting. I could potentially see something of the slan variety, where the "class" is there simply because every member of this species has some physiological quirk that makes them have no need for most other skills (a classic concept for psionics, since the "power of the mind" can replace most if not all tools once trained up enough.) Arguably, not just van Vogt's slan, but also creatures like the Liir from Sword of the Stars, who don't normally even do industrialization because telepathy, telekinesis, and being almost-but-not-quite immortal kind of do that.**Liir pseudo-immortality is actually quite tragic. They don't die of aging, they die from growing too large for their internal organs to support them while in a gravity well. Unless, of course, they decide to say "F that nonsense." At which point, their only means of escape is to press-gang their species through the Industrial Revolution and spaceflight, so they can ascend as truly immortal "Suul'ka." They become universally cruel, despotic tyrants because, y'know, they literally had to psychically enslave and press-gang their entire species already.</blockquote>

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