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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 8185255" data-attributes="member: 6779196">The thing is, while you can talk about the game balance issue independently of the racial sensitivity issue, you can’t really do the reverse. The biological essentialism problem follows from the game balance problem.For the sake of argument, let’s take it as a given that the single most important thing for a D&D character to be effective is their modifier in their class’s primary ability score. I understand that’s a controversial take - it’s the very core contention of the game balance element of this debate. But, the fact of the matter is, justified or not, a lot of players feel this way.So, ok, assume primary ability mod trumps everything else. If that’s true, then that means a halfling can never be as good of a barbarian as a Goliath can. Because the Goliath can start out with a higher modifier in the barbarian’s primary ability, the halfling will always be playing catch-up. It will take more than half of a 20-level campaign for the halfling to finally get the same modifier in their primary ability as the Goliath has (assuming, again, that having the highest mod in their primary score is the absolute highest priority), and even then, the Goliath will then have one more beneficial feat than the halfling, or a higher modifier in a secondary score.This isn’t an issue of one character just being stronger than the other, it’s an issue of one character being inherently better at something they both set out to be good at. If character’s <s>race</s>species can make them objectively superior to a character of a different <s>race</s>species at something they both set out to do... That feels pretty gross.Now, again, this all depends on the underlying assumption that primary ability mod is the single most important thing to any D&D character. And I understand people on the pro-ASI side don’t believe this to be the case. But if a significant number of players feels like it is the case, it’s naturally going to feel to those players like the game is implying some kinda biologically essentialist things.</blockquote>

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