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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 1996726" data-attributes="member: 7240">True enough. Criticism accepted. Although this does only tend to happen after five iterations or so. Also, although I rarely pick fights on ENWorld, I do enjoy them when they happen. I think these fora are the ideal place to have arguments with people and I'll be honest here: I enjoy arguing. And I don't think I'm the only ENWorlder who derives a portion of his enjoyment of the fora from this pursuit.I can afford to. I'm only making the case that my scenario is possible not that it is inevitable.Well, this is a sidetrack, in part because the main track isn't really going anywhere at the moment. Glassjaw appears to be AWOL so we can't get any details from him about what he's looking for and if any of our suggestions fit. Also, I think I've made it pretty clear that I'm not favouring any race all I was engaged in doing was showing that a particular scenario was not inevitable in order that should Glassjaw return we could discuss a wide variety of possible scenarios for his world.Now, on with the show...First off, not to stick up for the kobolds or anything but don't kobolds also live longer in addition to maturing earlier?Your succession cycle raises a really interesting issue that underlies much of D&D and usually isn't a problem until an issue like this comes up. Of course, in the real world, cultures adapt to different material and social conditions to maintain their dominance. But because a lot of Tolkien-inspired 19th century racial essentialism informs D&D, it appears that human beings are the only "race" that has that feature. But wouldn't it be interesting if races other than humans had some, admittedly less, cultural and material adaptability, but some nonetheless? For instance, in order to retain their dominance, what might a centaur-run or kobold-run society do? How might it adapt?To make a case for centaur adaptation, how about this? Centaurs might not pick up new skills and habitation patterns or increase their birthrate. They might, however, add value to their flocks in a number of ways. First off, they might train their flocks more intensively so that their sheep might come when called, increasing the possible ratio of beasts to shepherds. Also, they might also start fitting intelligent species into the pastoral paradigm. This might result in client humanoid societies being conceived-of as herds. Imagine the kind of social contract that might exist between a centaur ruling class and a group of humans raising hay for the sheep to eat during winter, or a group of dwarves constructing a flood control dam on a local river. What kinds of right and reciprocal obligations might come into being between these societies? I can also envisage a kind of sheep-dog caste of humans whose sole purpose is to act as intermediaries between the centaurs and their various types of flocks, intelligent and non-intelligent. I had assumed that a bureaucrat caste would be primarily or exclusively urban but I sort of see what you are getting at here: what of the numerous kobold proletariat? I really don't know.I have a lot of trouble with the D&D druid for exactly this reason. It's one of those areas we were arguing about from that last thread (where, surprisingly, you let me have the last word) -- I don't enjoy imposing modern conceptions of "nature" on pre-modern societies. It just seems cheesy to me. I prefer more historically-modeled sacred grove worshippers who, for the most part, had absolutely no problem with agriculture or with cutting down non-sacred trees for that matter. Glad we're on the same page nevertheless. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />My temptation, if we are to use Yuan-Ti, and again, I have some culture/genre problems related to the thread where we had our last debate, would be to make them the lower gentry/merchant caste below the dragons -- a kind of idle gentry whose power comes from holding title to huge tracts of land or controlling monopolies on certain trade goods. I also see them, if they are included, as one of the least populous groups in the society. My feeling is that humans within the society would not be viewed as deserving of or requiring sophisticated dealings and therefore beneath the Yuan-Ti. Where I might see them as useful would be as "advisors" to the quasi-sovereign humanoid states at the high-elevation fringes of the empire.This sounds quite appealing. This sounds disturbingly egalitarian. In my view, though, highly-developed pre-modern bureaucracies tended to be associated with despotic rule rather than shared power. Non-despotic pre-modern structures tended not to develop as much of a bureaucrat class. I would therefore suggest that in the alternative, these creatures might all be self-governing but in the context of the absolute power of the Dragon Emperor.Rather than having non-reptile rights or obligations entrenched in any way, I would tend to see the "rights" of these peoples being entirely contingent upon a patron-client relationship with a particular mandarin or aristocrat whose death, incapacity or loss of favour could result in expulsions, deprivation of property or even slaughter. Here, I agree -- but less numerous than patricians. I would argue in favour of a better equivalency to senatorial patricians.</blockquote>

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