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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 9170086" data-attributes="member: 6877472">I suppose for some, admitting that humans need special abilities to survive in a magical world would be a bitter pill to swallow; or maybe the issue is more that, once humans stop being humans as we know them, the game becomes far less grounded and harder to grasp.Once we throw out human limitations, the ability of a DM to decide how long it takes to accomplish a task or how hard it is goes right out the window.  The fantasy of being "a normal guy who holds his own in a not-so-normal world" vanishes, as no one is normal, and everyone is a superbeing.D&D made the mistake of treating other races (sorry, species) a lot like how Star Trek does "well, they're basically humans with makeup and somewhat flanderized traits" long ago, so most of the time, no matter what you play, you're still "human but...".Curiously, the exceptions to this are, historically, among the species most likely to get pushback when you want to play them. Like, I saw a DM lose his mind when coming to the realization that a 3.5 Warforged is truly built different, and doesn't care about a lot of human frailties.  Doesn't need sleep, doesn't need to eat, doesn't need to breathe, doesn't get tired, isn't bothered by poison or (most) disease- he treated them like they were some kind of broken uber-species (never no mind they couldn't heal naturally or could rust, lol) and quickly banned them from his Eberron campaign ("pending review")!And the fact that there really isn't a compelling downside to a player to be an Elf or Aasimar compared to a regular old human doesn't help either- most D&D worlds were built human-centric, but now in the year 2023, it really stops making a lot of sense that this is the case (if it ever did).Recently, an old thread from 2014 was necromanced about Drow being able to overcome their light-blindness and it really opened my eyes (pun not intended) about the changing attitudes towards species in D&D.Once, to play anything other than a human, with cool special powers and a unique look and culture, you had to take penalties. As time has gone on, these penalties have been removed, and at each step, there have been those who feel very strongly about it.  I remember the backlash about Tieflings and Dragonborn being in the 4e PHB, for example.  Putting the Drow in the 2014 PHB was seen by many to be some kind of sin.Now in 2023, Drow are accepted among other races (species, did it again), and they don't even flinch in the daylight anymore.  And it becomes glaringly obvious that humans are very much not special in any way, and in the future, they might not even be the main characters of D&D, replaced by cooler and more interesting races entirely.They won't go away, of course, but perhaps one day, instead of threads decrying the reasons for halflings to exist in D&D, we might see threads about "remove humans from the PHB, they're boring and have no place in the world!".Or maybe the pendulum will swing the other way, and 6e will remove all species mechanics entirely to avoid offending anyone, and what you are is what you say you are.  Who can say?</blockquote>

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