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Same general ideas, but without the guilt!

May 1, 2012 -- 2:05AM, Chaddock wrote:

As long as we’re tying stats to race, why not gender/sex?  The idea of going back to gender-based stat changes was brought up recently in a Legends and Lore column and it looked like there was an uproar at the very implication that gender would have stats associated with it.  Why are these two issues any different from one another?

Because most people understand that the game is talking about species and exists in a fantasy world and that orcs are make believe.  Sentient species having different abilities and behaviors and sometimes hating each other is a standard trope of both fantasy and sci-fi.  People are trying to explore a world that is different than the real world and that has different possibilities because of how that works.

Genders are not make believe and the gender in the game is generally close to real life most of the time, with some exceptions.   Not all PCs even have a gender (warforged) and those that do may have one that works very differently than what we see in human societies: you could have a thri-kreen who is a male drone, queen, or potentially sterile female worker or soldier for instance and stat differences would make sense there even within a gender.  Or make shardminds hermaphrodites or self-cloning and stat differences would not make sense.  But for most PCs and campaigns gender is about what we have in the real world and people don't want that reflected in their fantasy game through stats.

Chaddock: check out the Eberron campaign setting.  Much more shades of grey than black and white; for example, goblinoids are not automatically evil, nor are dragons evil/good simply because of the color of their scales.

In addition, have you considered that you can simply do away with the stat bonuses?  Just tell your players to assign a bonus to any two stats (or one...depends on what races in D&D Next will give).  And if you have an issue with racial benefits (skill bonuses, features, powers, etc), just make a big list and let people pick a certain number.  So, for example, everyone gets to pick two stats for a bonus, two skills, one feature, and one power.

I don't want to dismiss your feelings, because it is clear that you feel very strongly about this issue.  All I can tell you is that I have never seen D&D in this way myself.  It sounds like you trully enjoy playing D&D (or at the very least, you want to enjoy it), so I would suggest taking advantage of the fact that we are all free to make the game work the way we want it to work.  I find alignment restrictions silly and pointless, so I allowed players to make paladins and blackguards of any alignment in my game.  I find arbitrary weapon restrictions silly, so I allow swordmages to use any weapons as implements, and rogues to use any off-hand weapons for the purposes of sneak attack.  There is nothing to prevent you from making the game fit with your own views and preferences.

May 1, 2012 -- 7:37AM, tiballagher wrote:

To get us back on topic, one thing that WotC could do is make it very clear that any attribute bonus tied to race was due to the character having a strong cultural emphasis on that attribute; for instance, half-orcs might get +2 to Strength because traditional half-orc culture values physical strength above all else.

A cheetah is much faster than I am, but that isn't because traditional cheetah culture values speed above all else.

The real difference is the one between culture and species.  "Race" is a horribly inaccurate term for these things, nobody really cares about race in D&D as we use the term in the real world.