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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 4933568" data-attributes="member: 5143">Maybe it's his deeds that are more than human rather than his personality.  Someone can be physically different and accomplish different things.  If you want to play a character that is way more nimble than a human can be, you play an elf of a halfling.There are more ways to differentiate yourself than personality.It only holds up that sign because that's the way you think of dwarves.  To someone not familiar with the Dwarven stereotype, it instead put's up a sign saying "I'm a alcoholic Scotsman who is a miner".It raises the question, if you want to play this sort of character, why not just play a human?  Dwarves don't offer anything that humans don't.But why start with a stereotype?  What if your dwarf doesn't fit the stereotypes at all?  He is a Dwarven Wizard who spent all of his time studying magic from dusty tomes in a tower under a human mentor.  He hasn't been underground in his life, has been taught proper manners, doesn't drink at all because he values intelligence and being sober.  What can you do to make this character's race front and center?  Especially in a game where 95% of the action is focused outward on things like "will the villain accomplish his evil plan", "can we stop the monsters from destroying the village", and "where can we find the artifact?"And more importantly, how can you make your race front and center in a group with 6 different races without grandstanding or taking the focus off the group as a whole instead of specifically being about your own character.He didn't say that the half-elf in question wouldn't have a memorable personality.  He said that he didn't expect someone to spend all of their time trying to get into the head of the unique half-elf race.As I mentioned in a previous post.  I played a half-elf fighter/rogue back in second edition who had a unique and memorable personality.  People remember him for that time that he took on a nasty enemy single-handed and saved the entire party from certain death.  They remember him for the time they had to teach him not to steal from the party.  They remember the time he had his hands cut off by a trap and they had to get a regenerate spell cast on him.  They remember the time he used a Rod of Beguiling on a Drow Princess and forced her to wear a Helm of Opposite Alignment and then married her which caused all sorts of problems for the party.Over and over again in TV Shows, non-humans are used mostly as a plot device to show us how human we really are.  That's their entire reason to exist.  Often, the idea of an episode is that despite being non-human, they are more like us than anyone knows.Star Trek uses this in particular.  They meet non-human races who have one aspect of their personality emphasized, but they are mostly human.  Somehow they always find their similarities and get along just fine.  Often because one member of their race sees beyond their exaggerated attributes and sees it from the human point of view.Examples of this are rampant.  Humans meet a race that keeps slaves and aren't remorseful about it.  The humans show them what it means to be compassionate and they embrace the idea and become, basically....human.  Showing that every race in the universe has human values at heart.Yes, Ayofell is a memorable elf.  Omin is a memorable cleric.  They just choose to concentrate on different things.</blockquote>

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