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Message: <blockquote data-quote="overgeeked" data-source="post: 6663226" data-attributes="member: 86653">You seem to take a rather monolithic view of "lore" and "fantasy". Just because Tolkien made elves pretty and smart doesn't mean that every fantasy author ever, much less every fantasy game ever, should follow suit. Where's the creativity and uniqueness? Oh, I guess you get that from microscopic variations on the exact same tropes hammered to death over the course of 30+ years. Dextrous elven rangers. Yep. Coz that don't get old. Tough dwarven fighter. Plucky comic relief lithe halfling thief. Yawn. Gimme some variety. I'd much rather have a fat and stupid elf or a smart half-orc or a charismatic dwarf then trod those same hollow and over done stereotypes and tropes for another 30+ years.There's no mechanical guarantee that a wizard is smart. There's huge honking penalties if they're not smart. That's a wildly different thing. No, I simply disagree that the fantasy genre as a whole is some monolithic thing that should kowtow to Tolkien and never do anything outside what he wrote 80 years ago. Further, that when you casually label the entirety of a given race as smarter than everyone else or the entirety of a give race as dumber than everyone else or the whole of a species as good whilst the whole of other species are evil, that's blatant racism.In other games, sure. Not in D&D. You either play the best combo to achieve what you want or you suck. If you want to play the ultimate skill monkey and you don't take levels in bard and/or rogue (and possibly a few other things), you're doing it wrong. If you want to play a wizard you better have the highest INT possible, or you're doing it wrong. The system rewards optimization. The DMs reward optimization (despite some claiming they despise it). And most players reward optimization (despite railing against it on forums). You're sitting around a table and the DM throws an over-budget encounter at you. Either you get really, really lucky... have a party that's optimized for their roles... or you die. Sometimes groups get lucky or the DM realizes their mistake and pulls back. But it's optimization or TPK more often than not. And trust me, the next time someone comes to the table with a half-orc wizard everyone groans and loudly asks why they gimped themselves and the party. Doesn't take long for the culture to "correct" aberrant behavior. Why not? Because the game itself, the DMs, and the players all reward optimization and punish any lack thereof.</blockquote>

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