Originally Posted by Scoonster49
Originally Posted by mrfuji3
So no mutual agreement that PCs should have significant inherent racial differences, gotcha. One human with darkvision, gnomish cunning, dwarven resilience, and/or draconic breath weapon please. :P

First off we have not been talking about any of that just the ability point scores. But hell if you want to talk about those too my 2 cents is I will usually go with the traditional but if I have a character idea that includes something out of the ordinary then heck why not pick it if I have the option. If others want to stay rigidly with whats canon then fine, if others want to go hog wild, fine neither hurts me. The main point is If I am given options but choose not to take them I don't care if others do in their own game. You seem to be very invested in others playing the game the same way you do
We weren't originally talking about that but I shifted the focus of the conversation to try to find a point where we could possibly agree. I understand, sometimes one misses something when reading and responding to a lot of people's posts. I've certainly done it myself.

To me, it's good to have a world system that emphasizes the differences of entirely distinct creatures and incorporates those differences into character concepts instead of allowing players to ignore them. Ignoring racial features (again and importantly, without penalty) veers much too close to the "the backstory of my character is that they're smarter than everyone and thus should start at 20 Intelligence" phenomenon. Rules provide a framework for playing a game/telling a story, and imo racial ASIs add more to that than they restrict mechanically.

In Pathfinder you can spend a feat to gain the abilities of different ancestry (race). This allows freedom but at the cost of dedicating a feat to this. I'm fine with this solution. In D&D 5e, I'm in favor of the "everybody gets a free starting feat" homebrew rule, which allows any character to start with 16+ in a stat by taking a half-feat. (but some races can start with an 18 or get a Full Feat instead)