I don't get the arguments for bioessentialism

[Shades of Eternity]

But what if the species were smarter than average (such as corvids, which are wicked smart, pass on generational knowledge, and seriously hold grudges, and that's just the birds in our world).

 

[Rainbow Scissors]

The examples the OP gives are not a problem. Bioessentialism becomes problematic when two things happen:

1. The essentialism is about being "the bad guy" such that it's ok to kill them on sight (evil Drow, evil Orcs, etc).
2. The way that evilness is portrayed is by using tropes that have historically been used as an excuse to exterminate and enslave other people.

Where I think it gets a little complicated in fantasy is that some creatures are said to be created by deities or supernatural beings that program them with certain behaviors.

 

[Corinnguard]

Moving the ASIs from Species to Backgrounds makes a certain amount of sense as picking up a certain background requires training in one or more ability scores. If your character has the Soldier background (I am using the Level Up version here), you learn some training in Strength, but you are free to pick up some training to be agile, hardy, intelligent, wise or charismatic.

At the same time, by having ASIs tied to Background, certain backgrounds now favor certain classes over others. Thus, it's a skip away from bioessentialism to career essentialism. You learn and train to become a soldier, an acolyte or an outlander.

PF2 tries to have the best of the worlds approach by having you get ASIs from your ancestry, background and your class. I suppose if you add more essentialism to something, the less essential it feels.

 

[Bill Zebub]

It's a theory. I don't think the theory holds up though, because my experience talking with 5e players is the lack of mechanical crunch to racial heritage doesn't get people to lean more into the question of "What would it be like to have a different biology or body or culture than my own"

The goal I was describing wasn't to get people to try something different from their own, but simply to feel like they can try non-traditional race/class combinations (so that it's not always elven wizards, orc barbarians, and halfling rogues) without having a mechanical penalty. Sure, I'd love it if more players didn't are about that additional +1 to their prime stat modifier, but the reality is that an awful lot of them do.

but rather just gets everyone to treat all characters as humans with rubber prosthetics glued to them. I don't see any sign that it gets people trying to imagine being something other than themselves.

Now granted, that group was probably only 20% of the players I've ever played with. Most people only play themselves no matter what is on the character sheet, but I don't think that dropping a mechanical connection to the fluff has helped in any respect.

And like I said, this strikes me as going to far the other way. Erasure of differences even in cases they'd be expected suggests a massive discomfort with "the other" rather than tolerance and acceptance of diversity. I generally want a lot of markers of "Hey, I'm an elf" or "Hey, I'm a sentient badgerfolk." or "Hey, I'm an algae colony with emergent intelligence" or whatever we are doing.

The sort of people who actually care about RP play non-optimized characters on purpose in part precisely because they aren't optimized. It's actually probably part of the attraction to go against type. But if there is no type to go against, well, where is the RP attraction?

Eh, I don't buy the "humans with funny hats" argument just because elves don't get +2 to dexterity. A bunch of races get dexterity bonuses, so how is that uniquely elven?

The really distinctive racial characteristics are the ones that are actual abilities, like immunity to sleep and charm, or the ability to recognize stonework, or whatever. Yes, it can be tricky to design those such that they don't suggest some classes over others, but that's not a reason to not try.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Where I think it gets a little complicated in fantasy is that some creatures are said to be created by deities or supernatural beings that program them with certain behaviors.

So change that lore? Why is that hard?

If you like the existing lore, change it back in your campaign.

EDIT: I am taking this in the context of official books published by for profit companies that want as large of an audience as possible. I don't think any of this applies otherwise.

 

[AnotherGuy]

But what if the species were smarter than average (such as corvids, which are wicked smart, pass on generational knowledge, and seriously hold grudges, and that's just the birds in our world).

Somewhere a Murder of Kenku enthusiastically chirped in approval at this comment. I understand Auran.

 

[Morrus]

But what if the species were smarter than average (such as corvids, which are wicked smart, pass on generational knowledge, and seriously hold grudges, and that's just the birds in our world).

I figure that can be true of the average of a species, but it shouldn't be biologically essential that you, specifically (or your character, rather) are. If you want to play a dumb corvid or a bizarrely strong halfling, why not? This stuff is constraining. We play games to expand our imaginations, not lock them in a box. Imagine if fiction writers were similarly constrained by arbitrary game rules. So much amazing fantasy could not exist. And the irony is half the rules are based on the work of fiction writers who dared imagine these things in the first place.

 

[Shades of Eternity]

Yeah, adventurers should always be the exception. I'd almost do the attribute bonuses, as the old saying goes, by guidelines.

You don't know where to put your attribute bonus. Here's a lazy option.

 

[Alzrius]

Basically, yes. There’s a difference between having four legs and being good at math. Or having dark vision and knowing how to use a longbow. The former in each case is a physical inherited trait. The latter in each case is a cultural thing.

Except that in a fantasy world, it doesn't have to be a cultural thing. You can have all dwarves inherently knowing the dwarven language, regardless of whether or not they grew up around other dwarves, because the dwarven gods imbue them with that language prior to their birth. Or because dwarves have racial memory of their mother tongue. Or because they can inherently hear the "voices of the stones" from which the dwarven language is derived, etc.

Just because something is cultural in the real world doesn't mean it necessarily has to be the case in a game of make-believe; the trouble comes when people start treating that as a commentary on the real world rather than an exercise of imagination.

 

[SkidAce]

I figure that can be true of the average of a species, but it shouldn't be biologically essential that you, specifically (or your character, rather) are. If you want to play a dumb corvid or a bizarrely strong halfling, why not? This stuff is constraining. We play games to expand our imaginations, not lock them in a box. Imagine if fiction writers were similarly constrained by arbitrary game rules. So much amazing fantasy could not exist. And the irony is half the rules are based on the work of fiction writers who dared imagine these things in the first place.

Agreed.

I think the problem arose in the old days when the designers conflated "elves are agile as species", as an average, with the characteristics of PCs. (See 1st E ability score min/max table)

If they had emphasized that PCs are not subject to those guidelines, we might not have these issues today.

Of course we were still in the "run the world as a simulation" design mode back then.