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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord Twig" data-source="post: 8201335" data-attributes="member: 31754">You might not, but others would. I would give a mountain dwarf, half-orc or dragonborn smith an 18 strength. Or maybe not, because they are individuals, but I would take their race into consideration.And I don't care what exact ability scores ever single individual in a race has either, but I do care what they have in general. So I don't know what dex score all halflings have, but I know on average it will be 2 points higher than most other races, and that tells me something important about that race.So here I failed to emphasize that they are not just talking about removing default, static ASIs, Tasha's also removes default proficiencies for a race. So Dwarven Combat Training might now be training in cooking and playing the harp. Tool Proficiency might be calligraphy. In addition to removing their default +2 Con and +2 Str or +1 Wis.That's fine for an individual, but culturally the dwarves should focus on their culture. Otherwise they don't have a culture at all.The "sure why not" was a response to indicate that it is okay for one race to be better than another at some things. Not to indicate that it didn't matter at all what they were better at.And you are making my point with the Lotusden Halflings. If you remove the +1 wisdom you lose the information that they, as a race, are slightly more wise than other races. Which would include being slightly more perceptive. At least on average. Individuals can of course vary greatly within a species.Yes, the example does work both ways. If you want to completely change what dwarves are you could swap who is the smarter species. The way it doesn't work is removing the racial bonus to intelligence altogether. It is hard to have a super genius evil species if the are just as smart as everyone else. If you swapped the dwarves and Illithids intelligence you could still at least make the dwarves the super genius evil species.Gnolls do get an intelligence penalty. And again, if you want to make dwarves and halflings dumber than gnolls instead then you are changing what dwarves and halflings are. Just as removing default racial ASIs fundamentally changes what the races are. That's fine if you want to do something different for your game, but there should be a default, a baseline, that describes what a typical member of a species is, and racial ASIs are an important part of that description.This is about NPCs. Maybe you are confusing me with a different poster. If a single player character of a race has wildly different stats than a "normal" member of their race, they can be the exception. If the entire race is that way they are no longer the exception, they are just like everyone else.And I'm not sure why it matters that there are monsters with a high intelligence. I think I have made it pretty clear that I am okay with different species having different average levels of intelligence.Well I would imagine I would look at their stat block before I put them in a campaign and would see they have a 13 intelligence by default. I could then decide that this particular rakshasa was smarter than average and bump it up, or I could decide that he has a simpler plan, but makes up for it by having a keen insight into people motivations and inspires unwavering loyalty in his followers despite obvious evidence of his Evil because of his almost supernatural charisma. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />She certainly could be. I think she would be perfect as the mastermind behind the throne trope.Individually sure. As an indicator of general racial ability? It does matter. Changing individual stats as the need warrants has always been a thing.</blockquote>

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