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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arial Black" data-source="post: 8205544" data-attributes="member: 6799649">Reductio ad absurdum.An individual dwarf can certainly start out intelligent. Int 15 is definitely particularly intelligent.1st level gnomes can have Int as low as 10 in point-buy, and as low as 5 by rolling. A smart dwarf can certainly start out smarter than that gnome.Can the smartest 1st level dwarf be as smart as the smartest 1st level gnome? No. Not according to the 5e PHB.Of course, individual tables might not want to be restricted by the mere rules of the game. But, for me, letting the PCs start with +2 in a random stat (as opposed to +2 in a stat that the rules say they get) is no different than letting them start with a Blessing. Or an Artifact.Doable. Frodo did. But it's not the default. Sometimes concepts change, but more likely the game mechanics that represent a race's concept get tweaked.The rules are the edict, not me.And the principle of racial bonuses applies no matter how ability scores are initially generated. They are different stages of character creation. Your proposal seeks to take racial bonuses out of the game completely and replace them with bonuses that have no relation to race or any other part of character creation.Such a halfling is that strong because of where the ability scores were assigned at that stage of character creation (which represents the individual not the race). They are not that strong because they are a halfling!But they are not changing the core race concepts from what they were into races that are physiologically equal. They are not changing the concept, they are refusing to acknowledge physiological differences in species because they are afraid of cancel culture in the real world, and then ret-conning a half-baked idea that elephants are only stronger than mice because of their culture!</blockquote>

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