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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arial Black" data-source="post: 8204936" data-attributes="member: 6799649">The 'sometimes' means that you also believe that he racial ability bonuses are not random, which demonstrates my point.The 'not always' demonstrates that game designers have to balance PC races against each other.They chose to do away with the Level Adjustment mechanic from 3e, so they can no longer say that, say, half-celestials get Str +4 Dex +2 Con +4 Int +2 Wis +4 Cha +4, along with loads of other powerful goodies, and still be a balanced PC race by making them count as a PC 4 levels higher.So without that level adjustment mechanic, what should be a Powerful Race gets nerfed to the same level as other PC races, and to do that they have to make choices about what to let go and what to keep.But this doesn't mean that there is no longer any connection between the concept and the racial ability score bonuses. So while an elf in the One Ring game gets bonuses to nearly every ability score, elves in 5e could only get one +2 and one +1, even though conceptually they (Tolkien's elves, upon which D&D elves were based) are conceptually also smarter, wiser AND more charismatic on average. The devs had to choose which abilities BEST reflected their concept while still taking game balance into account.But this in no way means there is no connection between the concept of the species and the racial bonuses to ability scores for that race.</blockquote>