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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8806710" data-attributes="member: 6801228">But that clearly misses a few rather blatant things. 1) A human commoner is 10's in stats and 4 hp. The Kobold and Goblin commoners (if we count "Kobold" and "Goblin" statblocks as their commoners) have 5-7 hp and while they are physically weaker, they have a higher dex and they obviously use dex weapons. Even if you go to the human guard, which ups the hp to 11 and makes them physically stronger than the goblins, if you look at the actual damage output, the goblin is deadlier (+3 to hit and +1 damage versus +4 to hit and +2 damage) and the goblin is simply FAR more likely to win the fight due to the Nimble Escape bonus action allowing them to easily hide and slip away from the human during the fight. So, even with less hp, it is very difficult to say the goblin is significantly weaker. The main advantage the human has is based solely on equipment, and there is no reason goblins can't use better equipment than their statblock gives them.2) Even in the above example, I've demonstrated a problem. Statblocks are HIGHLY variable. Human statblocks alone swing between humans having 4 hp and 229 hp, between having 10's in all stat to having 20's in any stat. Because stronger and more skilled individuals exist, making it difficult to just lay out a single line. If that "goblin" happens to be a goblin boss, then they have 21 hp and a multiattack. If they happen to be a Booyahg Booyahg Booyahg then they have 40 hp and an at-will attack that has a +6 to hit and does an average of 11 damage. Meaning they can one-shot that human trivially. If we are looking purely at combat stats, it doesn't matter if they don't have a high strength. It hasn't mattered for a long time. Hell, it doesn't even matter if they both decide to pick the fighter class, because the Goblin can go dex fighter and frankly will be evenly matched with the Goliath who went strength fighter, all other things being equal. That isn't how that works. When discussing player choices they get to pick (assuming 6 players) 6 things that will be in the game. Are elves rare? Maybe they are, but the if the party has an elf the chance of an elf being in the party is 100%, even if they never meet another elf ever again. It doesn't matter if they are rare or common in the world, it matters what you encounter. Clerics and Sorcerers are supposedly incredibly rare in the worlds of DnD, but I've seen more clerics and sorcerers than I care to count. Because it isn't rare for a player to choose that class. To try and put it another way. The Minotaur in the original source material wasn't just rare, they were utterly unique. There was only a single one in the entire world. The chances of encountering them would be astronomically low from a pure statistical point of view. How common are minotaur's in fantasy? Pretty common actually, they show up a lot. Because everyone knows about them. And frankly, if you say that someone has to roll a 1d100 and get above a 90% to be allowed to play a sorcerer, do you know what the majority of tables will do? Just play the sorcerer anyways. You can't arbitrarily gate things like that. It doesn't work. They tried it with the stat prereqs for classes, and all it did was have people assign those stats as their minimum possible values and play those characters anyways.No, no they shouldn't. The idea of having to roll a random number to determine if I'm allowed to play certain classes is insane. The community would reject those rules out of hand.And yet when Elrond calls a council on short notice, humans, elves, and dwarves all know where Rivendell is and get there with no difficulty. A few decades ago by the time of that meeting, the Battle of the Five Armies happened, where orcs, men, dwarves, and elves all fought outside of Laketown. A town that now has a thriving dwarven kingdom right beside it. Gondor and Rohan fight orcs nearly constantly, at least commonly enough that when the Fellowship reaches them, they aren't freaking out about something they had no idea existed suddenly attacking them.So, is Bree really unusual? I think it would be harder to name a place in the LoTR series that DOESN'T have multiple species interacting. It is actually pretty dang common.But you have immediately CAUSED them to be isolated. "They all live on this island and rarely come to the mainland", yeah, of course they aren't going to be as well known away from the coasts. And this is the issue I was getting at. You can't really have it so that EVERY fantasy race that isn't halfing, dwarf, or elf is living on islands they never leave, or in a valley they never leave, or in a swamp they never leave, or in an isolated forest they never leave. It gets utterly samey and boring to have everyone be isolationists who never leave their lands and therefore no one knows about them. You have to mix it up, because anything sentient is going to be driven by desires, and those desires are going to find them searching for things.Middle Earth hasHumansElvesDwarvesHobbitsOrcs/GoblinsSentient SpidersTrollsSentient EaglesGiantsEntsDragonsThat's Eleven species?Even a bog standard DnD world hasHumansElvesDwarvesHalflingsOrcsGoblinsHobgoblinsBugbearsGnollsOgresTrollsGiantsSentient SpiderSentient EaglesSentient ElkTreantsLizardfolkMerfolkSahaguinDragons KoboldsGnomesAbolethMind FlayersMedusaMinotaurCentaurBeholdersBullywugKoa-ToaYuan-tiNagaEttinCyclopsDoppelganger/ChangelingsDryadGithGrellGrimlocksHagsHarpiesJackalwereLamiaKenkuKrakenManticoreMerrowMyconidOniOtyughPixiesSpritesQuagothSatyrThri-KreenTroglodytesUnicornYeti That is 58 sentient species, and I skipped a lot of them, and also didn't talk about anything NON-Sentient. That is over 5 times more than Tolkiens Middle Earth. And again, this is the problem, You say "this is just like Middle-Earth" but you don't seem to realize that Middle Earth is far smaller and emptier than a DnD world. It just simply doesn't have the same number of things going on. So you can't make them the same without heavily cutting vast swathes of DnD.</blockquote>

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