"...Just a shot in the dark... but...
You're an Adventure League player, aren't you Tom? Or at least, you're not that interested in the roleplay aspect of the world's greatest roleplaying game. You like 'number-go-up', and you like 'my-number-bigger-than-your-number', and that's what you're here for when you play. That's fine, by the way... but of all the types of players that Wizards should listen to and take advice from, that sort of player is at the very bottom of the list. At least, in my opinion..."A hilariously bad shot at that. I've never touched the adventure league. I mostly DM with a group of friends in a group where we sometimes focus heavily on roleplaying and sometimes focus on mechanically challenging encounters. And if someone in my group choose to play a suboptimal character, that is on them. But I do let them know that I don't account for that when designing encounters and tell them I'd be happy to help if they want to optimize their stats. I also try to help players avoid traps like True Strike.
"Roleplaying" is not a justification for punishing someone mechanically I accept, under any circumstances.
"...No race has 'worse' stats than any other – they just have different stats..."Some races have better stats for specific classes or roles. Barbarians have medium armor proficiency, so there is no advantage to the +2 dex there. And since that half-orc starts with a +3 to con instead of +2, they have the same AC unarmored until lvl 4. And yes, a barbarian who can get their strength and constitution to good values quicker and/or have room for feats like GWM are better. They are going to be more effective at what Barbarians do; hit and be hit. That class in particular has precious little utility, sadly enough.
5e is not a terribly complicated system. It isn't hard to identify what a class is supposed to be good at and from there it is very simple to see what is and isn't a good build.
"...So if you want to talk about 'gatekeeping', then answer the question I asked you, and which you tactfully decided to ignore: How do I play against type with an Owlin, or a Fairy? How? Tell me...."At this point, I do have to wonder if you're actually reading my post. I did. Read their lore for the setting and look at their features. None of those require the races to be limited to what they can start with good stats in. If you can't get what you need from that, that is your problem and not something I accept as an argument as to why everyone should have to deal with your preferences specifically.
"...You can play any race the Tasha way – that's standard as an option now, and isn't going away. I'm not stopping you from doing that; no-one is. It's there, and it's going to BE there, going forward. No-one is forcing you to do anything. But if they stop listing the default propensities for each race, and they don't describe them for new ones, then the only one being gate-kept out of their preferred playstyle in this scenario is me, not you..."And no one is stopping you from picking whatever bonus you want for your character in One D&D. Hurray, we did it.
Those default propensities are tied up in the old lore of dnd, which they seem to be moving away from, and by making it actually setting neutral, these rules fit better across more settings. And guess what? That lore that you're longing back to is still there. You want to play a Forgotten Realms dwarf? Read FR lore. It's not hard to find. I assume you would do that anyway, if you value aesthetics etc.
"...For the record: you're describing using Standard Array for ability score generation. Standard Array is an optional rule – the tertiary suggestion after the actual basic rule for ability score generation, which is rolling, and the secondary option, which is point buy. The standard array is not the standard method of ability score generation, ironically... though I'm going to hazard a guess that rolling for scores is anathema to you..."Another shot far off the mark. You probably shouldn't try to make more speculations about me, because these have been way of target, to the point where it is starting to sound like you don't think one can care about both roleplaying and having a ruleset that appeals to as many people as possible. I hope that's not the case, but that is how you're coming across.
If people want to roll for stats at my table, they can. They are responsible for their own characters. And that is irrelevant to the stat balance in the game, because we have non-random options we can use as the basis; standard array and point buy. So in 2 of the 3 ways you can choose to build the character Clarance is out of luck, while in the last one he is statisitcally more likely to be out of luck than Charles, because he doesn't have the int modifier. Why should any character have to deal with their primary stat being treated like that? I can't think of a good reason.
"...If not, then what you're describing is cultural and social, and it should have no impact whatsoever on matters of basic biology... so if your dwarves are still dwarves, then they're still built the same as realms dwarves, and have certain biological tendencies, just the same, and if they're not, then they're a subspeices with different propensities, or they aren't dwarves any more..."They might never have been Realms dwarves to begin with. You're treating FR as the basis for everything, everywhere, even though the game doesn't require any setting. Less FR sepcific rules means more freedom to adapt the rules without homebrew, both for WotC and third parties. That is a good thing.
"...I'll mention again: Tasha's options are an officially supported method of character generation now..."And One D&D looks like it did it even better by tying your character's stat bonuses to their actual past, rather than their race. That's a win in my book, both for roleplaying and character building.
I suppose a summation is in order for the whole racial stat thing. All I see are people who want their flavor of elf or orc or whatnot to be the default for everyone and are happy enough to let everyone else find their own solutions to a problem their preferences would create, despite this new system allowing them to play whatever character they want. I do think "gatekeeping" is a very fitting word for that line of thinking.
"...As for the whole race depiction thing..."They've luckily evolved with time, but the 1930s eugenics thinking is still going strong, given how obsessed people are with making sure they can categorize races. And let's not pretend we don't see backlash over the stupidest things from people, from black elves in the Witcher to a black human being the default appearance before you start editing it in BG3 to whatever people are upset with in the Rings of Power this week.
Still weird that the response is just "nono, it's totally not a real world inspiration here" though. Not exactly convincing.
