TaranTheWanderer
Legend
This will be campaign dependant. So the whole question loses meaning.I have said above that it is fuzzy. if we are assuming that elves get benefits in play other characters don't often, then that might qualify. But it doesn't count if in this one adventure it happens that an elf PC will help the party make contact with a faction, or whatever. That's just stuff that happens in play.
Essentially, if the benefit* is something listed in the race description in the character generation chapter, divorced from any context, it is a "mechanical benefit*" for my purposes in this discussion. If a cosmetic, setting or lore feature of a race is something that could potentially come up and provide a benefit*, it doesn't qualify.
*or hinderance
Half of the answers at the beginning of this thread are, “depends on the campaign and how the races are portrayed.”
If you take those answers out as “those don’t count because gaining a narrative advantage from your race is a mechanical advantage” then you’re left with the other half of the answers from this thread,
“ I wouldn’t bother playing” or “I’d only play human because race is irrelevant”
Edit: I should have read your second paragraph closer. Thank you for clarifying.