D&D 5E (2014) If not the word "race", what word instead?

[ccs]

I would prefer "Type"

 

[The Myopic Sniper]

I don't think we need to be too terribly worried about it. 'Species Feat' doesn't roll off the tongue too clumsily for me at least...

Or we could opt for 'Special Feat' if we were going for that sort of consistency.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Or we could opt for 'Special Feat' if we were going for that sort of consistency.

Well, if I were designing a game (Oh, I did, lol), then I might consider linking feats more to things like 'culture' (but this could be a list) and that would be a whole other facet from species. Depending on the type of PC you want, the game milieu, etc. some PCs might focus more in different areas. One PC might be a ranger, leveraging his cultural hunting tradition, and another might be a dwarf ranger leveraging inherent species dwarf characteristics to be an underground scout.
I think the key is to avoid pigeonholing as much as possible. Yes, dwarves tend to be tough, elves tend to be magical, etc. Still, these are simply all advanced as positive associations that build on a core overall humanistic base that doesn't associate with specific negatives (IE orcs are barbaric violent evil thugs). Orcs may be strong, durable, capable of tapping into an unusual amount of aggressiveness (not as a negative necessarily), etc. It is OK to have Species Feats that elucidate these strengths. At the same time, a lot of stuff should go to culture, dwarves are good at stonework because the "mountain dweller culture" are stoneworkers, traditionally, but so are humans that are part of that culture.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I would rather use "Folk" instead of "Species."
Species feels far too Scientific and "Ancestry" makes me instead of think of hybrids instead of distinct different non-related beings.

I would think that, in world, the terms 'People' and 'Folk' might often be used by the inhabitants of the world to identify themselves. However, I would expect these words to have less precision than the game term 'Species'. That is, a 'Folk' might be the inhabitants of a given region, or a subset thereof, but not be precisely exclusive to only one species (IE some humans might be part of the 'Forest Folk', which are mostly elves of the Great Boreal Forest). Mechanically they are different species, culturally and socially they might be one 'People'.

 

[Remathilis]

Well, if I were designing a game (Oh, I did, lol), then I might consider linking feats more to things like 'culture' (but this could be a list) and that would be a whole other facet from species. Depending on the type of PC you want, the game milieu, etc. some PCs might focus more in different areas. One PC might be a ranger, leveraging his cultural hunting tradition, and another might be a dwarf ranger leveraging inherent species dwarf characteristics to be an underground scout.
I think the key is to avoid pigeonholing as much as possible. Yes, dwarves tend to be tough, elves tend to be magical, etc. Still, these are simply all advanced as positive associations that build on a core overall humanistic base that doesn't associate with specific negatives (IE orcs are barbaric violent evil thugs). Orcs may be strong, durable, capable of tapping into an unusual amount of aggressiveness (not as a negative necessarily), etc. It is OK to have Species Feats that elucidate these strengths. At the same time, a lot of stuff should go to culture, dwarves are good at stonework because the "mountain dweller culture" are stoneworkers, traditionally, but so are humans that are part of that culture.

On a mechanical level though, part of the reason D&D races work is they balance a mix of "cultural" and "biological" mechanics into a package that (in theory) is roughly balanced to one another. A lot of races would need serious rebalancing, because a race like dragonborn is ALL biological mechanics, where a dwarf is a mix of biological and cultural.

Not saying it can't be done, but you would be looking at a system closer to Pathfinder 2e where ancestry only grants a few token base traits (size, speed, vision) and the rest is handled by some other mechanic (feats in PF2)

 

[Ruin Explorer]

On a mechanical level though, part of the reason D&D races work is they balance a mix of "cultural" and "biological" mechanics into a package that (in theory) is roughly balanced to one another. A lot of races would need serious rebalancing, because a race like dragonborn is ALL biological mechanics, where a dwarf is a mix of biological and cultural.

Not saying it can't be done, but you would be looking at a system closer to Pathfinder 2e where ancestry only grants a few token base traits (size, speed, vision) and the rest is handled by some other mechanic (feats in PF2)

This is correct, but I think it's doable, and probably with a fairly simple system. You don't need to bring in 5E-style Feats, for example. Just some kind of simple value system.

The main problem I'd see is WotC themselves, and their designers wildly over-valuing certain "biological" mechanics. For example, low-damage STR-only (so not even DEX, which is actually a more common attack stat, I'd warrant) natural weapons (i.e. 1d4 or 1d6) seem to be valued extremely highly. As do things like low natural ACs (i.e. 12+DEX or 13+DEX). In real play, they simply aren't valuable. Virtually all PCs will have either no use for them (i.e. all non-STR-based characters for the weapons, and all everyone with Light Armour or better, or different AC mechanics, so literally everyone except what, Wizards and Sorcerers, for the armour). Even if stripped of everything, which is extremely rare, and usually lasts a small section of a single session, most PCs will have abilities that work around this (and 1d4+STR damage is only 1.5 points better than 1+STR damage, for example).

Likewise a lot of ultra-situational abilities seem to be highly valued whereas broadly-applicable ones like Magic Resistance are barely blinked at.

That said, perhaps this could be an opportunity to fix this?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

On a mechanical level though, part of the reason D&D races work is they balance a mix of "cultural" and "biological" mechanics into a package that (in theory) is roughly balanced to one another. A lot of races would need serious rebalancing, because a race like dragonborn is ALL biological mechanics, where a dwarf is a mix of biological and cultural.

Not saying it can't be done, but you would be looking at a system closer to Pathfinder 2e where ancestry only grants a few token base traits (size, speed, vision) and the rest is handled by some other mechanic (feats in PF2)

Well, in my own game, HoML, I made a 'rule of 3 boons'. A starting PC gets three boons, of whatever type. Beyond that your race establishes basic traits, as you say. The upshot is, every PC gets to start with some stuff that they get from species, from culture, from background, and/or from class. So, not all dwarves are experts in stonework, but it is an option. Your dwarf might instead pick some sort of rock climbing expertise boon instead. He might go whole hog into his 'knight' class stuff and pick only additional fighting styles and such and skip the hard core dwarf stuff. He'll still have the dwarf movement rate and poison resistance though.

 

[martynq]

"Lineage" is the word that has been going through my mind as an option.

 

[GreenTengu]

You are playing semantic games when it is the fundamental idea rather than the term that is causing the issue.

"You are wandering through the woods and you see an Orc" the response it
"I make an attack roll"
Or "You see an elf"
"Is it a light skinned or dark skinned elf?"
"A dark skinned one*
"I make an attack roll"

Does it really matter what term you use for "genetic stock" when "non-whites= evil-- please attack on site" and "White skin= Good-- you can trust them unless the DM is pulling a fast one on you".

You think switching terminology is at all going to make a difference.

And-- ironically-- upon logging in to these boards after like-- 3 years ago-- I noticed that literally the last time I posted on these boards, I responded to someone who said that blacks, asians and whites should have wiped each other out with the argument that "race" was a terrible term to use in D&D and if we used "race" in the real world the way it was used in D&D that all humans would be of the same race.

For having made a post arguing against the use of the term "Race" in D&D, I received an infraction from the moderators Darkness and Morrus, the literal owner of these boards, for daring to question the appropriateness of the use of race in D&D. In which I pointed out that if we used "race" in our world for how it is used in D&D that all humans of different, what we called "races", would actually be a single race in D&D terms and actually humans brought about the extinction of all human-like peoples who would be classified as "races" in D&D terms such as neanderthals and australopithecus and homo erectus.

But anyone willing to engage in these discussions ought to be well aware of the deeply held Euro-centric views and beliefs of the moderation team of these boards and how they are willing to use their powers to enforce their world view upon others. While I imagine that they may have decided to mute their tone after the recent BLM marches, if this discussion is now considered to be perfectly fine even though it was worth giving infractions over 3 years ago-- I don't see personal apologies sent to me from Darkness and Morrus or anyone else in the moderation team from the past 3 years for having penalized me for having had such a view that opposed that of the moderation team to make me think those who run these boards have had a change in attitude about the subject.

 

[Haldrik]

You are playing semantic games when it is the fundamental idea rather than the term that is causing the issue.

I agree that the problem of racism in D&D is fundamental, being structural and systemic. D&D is literally a game about fantasy racism. Where you pick "race", that is objectively and innately "racially superior" to other "races". The game has been about racism since its origins.

Fortunately, there is only one Human race, representing all ethnicities. The problem is, the other Humanoid races are too Human. Thus concerns about persistent racism remain.

If I had my way, the game would be more like a superhero game. You build your character statistics, and if you want to call it a robot, it is a robot, and if you want to call it an elf, it is an elf, and if you want to say it was bitten by a radioactive spider then that is how these stats happened. In this way, there is no racist essentialism.

But you can see, this choice to make race optional flavor was in this poll, and there is only roughly 3% support for it. Unsurprising, because D&D is a game about racism, and to make it a game about something else is a drastic change that players dont seem up for at this time.

That said. WotC has already said, all "humanoid races" will lack fixed alignment, thus Good Orcs and Good Drow will exist in significant numbers, and have complex societies. I expect that even within dysfunctional Evil societies there will be Good individuals, and conversely within healthy Good societies there will be Evil individuals.

Meanwhile, players will be able to customize the features of a "race" − so there will be Intelligence Orcs and Non-Dexterity Drow, and this will mitigate the problem of racist essentialism.

Meanwhile with these fundamental solutions in place − freewill alignment and feature customizability in place − the semantic change has a reallife benefit. Retiring the term "race" helps distance the D&D game from reallife racism and race politics.

"You are wandering through the woods and you see an Orc" the response it
"I make an attack roll"
Or "You see an elf"
"Is it a light skinned or dark skinned elf?"
"A dark skinned one*
"I make an attack roll"

Does it really matter what term you use for "genetic stock" when "non-whites= evil-- please attack on site" and "White skin= Good-- you can trust them unless the DM is pulling a fast one on you".

As mentioned, all humanoids will have free will and be of any alignment. So attacking a random anonymous Orc would be an Evil crime of terrorism.

You think switching terminology is at all going to make a difference.

And-- ironically-- upon logging in to these boards after like-- 3 years ago-- I noticed that literally the last time I posted on these boards, I responded to someone who said that blacks, asians and whites should have wiped each other out with the argument that "race" was a terrible term to use in D&D and if we used "race" in the real world the way it was used in D&D that all humans would be of the same race.

For having made a post arguing against the use of the term "Race" in D&D, I received an infraction from the moderators Darkness and Morrus, the literal owner of these boards, for daring to question the appropriateness of the use of race in D&D. In which I pointed out that if we used "race" in our world for how it is used in D&D that all humans of different, what we called "races", would actually be a single race in D&D terms and actually humans brought about the extinction of all human-like peoples who would be classified as "races" in D&D terms such as neanderthals and australopithecus and homo erectus.

But anyone willing to engage in these discussions ought to be well aware of the deeply held Euro-centric views and beliefs of the moderation team of these boards and how they are willing to use their powers to enforce their world view upon others. While I imagine that they may have decided to mute their tone after the recent BLM marches, if this discussion is now considered to be perfectly fine even though it was worth giving infractions over 3 years ago-- I don't see personal apologies sent to me from Darkness and Morrus or anyone else in the moderation team from the past 3 years for having penalized me for having had such a view that opposed that of the moderation team to make me think those who run these boards have had a change in attitude about the subject.

Most of us agree, injustice against people because of their ethnicity, sex, gender or orientation is unacceptable.

People feel passionately about this and sometimes overstep irrationally, and patience toward everyone is necessary.



I view a fair justice system as the foundation of a Good society.

If the justice system is corrupt, becoming unfair, it means the society is less Good, perhaps even Evil.