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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord Twig" data-source="post: 8200273" data-attributes="member: 31754">I don't believe that the WotC designers believed that the racial ASIs were meant to be archetypes at the outset of 5e. It strains credulity that they didn't assign racial stat bonuses as representative of biological abilities of the species they were portraying and were instead just trying to, paraphrasing "reflect archetypal bits of excellence in adventurers from D&D's past". We have a historical record here on ENWorld. I challenge anyone to go through the history of this board and find any quote anywhere from two years ago or before (maybe even before a year or so ago, I don't know when this idea started to percolate through Unearthed Arcana) that refers to the racial ASIs as anything but a biological representation. You won't find one, because it doesn't exist. It was cut out of whole cloth for the Tasha's book.But are they lying? I don't know. They may have convinced themselves that they were thinking something different at the time, or they may have rationalized it in their head somehow, or maybe they just forgot and now remember it differently, or who knows what. I don't know. Of course it is possible, although extremely unlikely, that they DID intend it as that whole "archetypal bits" and just didn't tell any one for the past 7 years.</blockquote>