Foxwarrior wrote:Maybe substituting in kobolds, goblins, orcs, illithids, or something else would be more convincing.
First of all, any creature that has a level adjustment is a non-starter for 'becomes the master race by mass-empowering people at the bottom of the social ladder'.
Dwarf: Charisma penalty. Non-spellcaster favored class. Long lifespan.
Elf: See above. Chaotic Good by nature.
Half-Elf: Completely inferior to humans from a 'how does this race contribute to an Industrial Revolution bootstrap', since their one positive trait can be emulated with a feat.
Aquatic Elf: Intelligence penalty.
Kobolds: Evil disposition. Incredibly xenophobic towards other sophont races. Charisma penalty. Poor reproductive rate ("one noncombatant child and one egg per ten adults"). Daylight sensitivity. Favored class is one that they have a primary stat penalty towards.
Gnome: Long life. However, the Monster Manual also says that they're naturally inquisitive and that they're usually neutral good, so this may not count against them.
Goblins: Evil disposition. "Poor grasp of strategy" by nature, but the MM admits that they can be bullied or cajoled into more complex projects. Charisma penalty. Filthy by nature but doesn't have a racial disease resistance. Non-spellcaster favored class.
Orcs: Evil disposition. Daylight sensitivity. Penalties to all mental stats. Non-spellcaster favored class.
There might be some real competition in other books, but as far as 'race suited for a Fantasy Great Leap Forward' in the basic Monster Manual goes it's pretty much impossible to beat humans. The feat, reasonably short life, extra skill point, and selectable favored class is just downright brutal.
Ice9 wrote:When you can make crap-ville into awesome-town by spending some spells that would just go to waste anyway, I think a lot of people are going to do that.
It's not 'spending some spells'. Have you read the previous threads on fantastical infrastructure spellcasters could conjure? Without fail, they devolve into one of three suggestions:
[*] The spellcaster has to constantly babysit whatever project that they're working on, because they're doing something like filling aqueducts with Control Weather or making pesticides with Minor Creation or supervising work teams with Command Undead. Some suggestions, like Fabricate or item creation, require that the spellcaster sink in some additional investment like Craft/Metalwork or Perform.
[*] The spellcaster has to be of very high level, like level 15 or so.
[*] The spellcaster has to rely on some rules exploit or lean heavily on abusing a broken subsystem like custom magical item creation.
I don't doubt that there are going to be some SimCity wizards who are able and willing to put in the effort. However, just extrapolating from what we know of human nature in the real world and basic game theory relying on them to create a Fantasy Great Leap Forward is just not plausible. People remember bullshit like Carnegie's donated libraries and Gates' computer science hall precisely
because they're such a pittance compared to the actual wealth of the overclass that they stick out more.