Seminar Transcript - Reimagining Skills and Ability Scores

The point here is this: devas were made up for 4E. They had no precedent in prior editions, didn't have 30+ years of traction, and their flavor was quite different than most other races. They don't really fit with the classic D&D-isms, which D&D Next is all about.

I really hope that they will release a full fledged 4E sourcebook soon after the release of 5E so that people who like the 4E races and classes don't feel left out. At least with 5E that will be possible, unlike what happened with 4E.

Kalontas said:

Reading that makes me feel like they're just pissing all over everything I liked about 4E. The more I read about 5E, the more disappointed I'm becoming. My favourite race (Deva) as a THEME?

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Kalontas, isn't Deva a "theme" even o 4E? I mean, I don't have the fluff around me now but I remember them as reincarnations of ANY race, not just a specific race.

Sammael said:

The point here is this: devas were made up for 4E. They had no precedent in prior editions, didn't have 30+ years of traction, and their flavor was quite different than most other races. They don't really fit with the classic D&D-isms, which D&D Next is all about.

I really hope that they will release a full fledged 4E sourcebook soon after the release of 5E so that people who like the 4E races and classes don't feel left out. At least with 5E that will be possible, unlike what happened with 4E.

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I think that's a HIGHLY dubious assertion that they "don't really fit". If there's anything about D&D it is what an utterly ecclectic kitchen sink it is. Everything fits. If stuff has to have 30 years of history behind it before it is allowed to stay in the game, that's a game I'm not wasting money on. Everything can fit and nobody gets to say THEIR favorite thing gets a bye simply because its old and not because it is GOOD.

As for races and classes I don't really care that much which book they're in myself. I just think that the smart set of priorities is what is cool and not "well, that wasn't added until 2008 so we're not going to touch it for 3 years" or something. Dragonborn are cool, Devas are cool, lots of things are cool, and lots of those things were pretty popular with players in 4e. My bet is they'll be popular with players in 5e as well. If a few traditionalists are always going to get to be the guardians of what is and isn't going into D&D, then heck, it will be the D&D community that has made itself stale and irrelevant. People will move on, either to other games or 3PP content, etc.

AbdulAlhazred said:

Dragonborn are cool, Devas are cool, lots of things are cool, and lots of those things were pretty popular with players in 4e. My bet is they'll be popular with players in 5e as well. If a few traditionalists are always going to get to be the guardians of what is and isn't going into D&D, then heck, it will be the D&D community that has made itself stale and irrelevant. People will move on, either to other games or 3PP content, etc.

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If there were just a few traditionalists, WotC wouldn't be designing a new edition right now. Which is, at it's core, pretty much a retro-clone of itself - FAR closer to Castles and Crusades than to 4E.

Since WotC does have a marketing department, I'm guessing that this time, they did a bit of research on what the majority of players actually wanted.

Bear in mind that I won't mind devas and dragonborn if they appear in a sourcebook. But I'll never allow them at my table except in a Planescape game (where anything goes).

Sammael said:

If there were just a few traditionalists, WotC wouldn't be designing a new edition right now. Which is, at it's core, pretty much a retro-clone of itself - FAR closer to Castles and Crusades than to 4E.

Since WotC does have a marketing department, I'm guessing that this time, they did a bit of research on what the majority of players actually wanted.

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I'm getting tired of this tune though. First of all nobody has demonstrated what the relative popularity of 4e vs any other edition is. All that has been demonstrated is that WotC promised Hasborg that it would make boku big bucks more than any other edition ever did, and it hasn't. So this kind of reasoning is built on a vast and very shaky house of cards.

Even if it IS true, which I think to a certain extent it is, extending that logic all across the entirety of 4e to basically say "anything I don't like from 4e must be that unpopular crap" is an EVEN MORE HUGE reach and IMHO rises to point of being just meaningless.

So, sorry, "I don't like DB and they're in 4e so they're unpopular crap that should be dropped" is just the worst kind 'reasoning' there is. As for WotC and its marketing my guess is they're quite a lot more sophisticated in their ability to decide what people do and don't like than 4e -> bad, 1e -> good.

Bear in mind that I won't mind devas and dragonborn if they appear in a sourcebook. But I'll never allow them at my table except in a Planescape game (where anything goes).

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Which is of course fine and dandy, but in my case 5e isn't really fully usable to us until these races exist because we use them, so the book for them to be in to please me and my gaming buds is the PHB. If they're not in that book, well, we might not buy that book right away. If they're not going to show up at all, I dunno, maybe we'll make our own or maybe we'll just keep playing 4e, which BTW is perfectly popular around here and I could keep running it for years from all indications.

Sammael said:

The point here is this: devas were made up for 4E. They had no precedent in prior editions, didn't have 30+ years of traction, and their flavor was quite different than most other races. They don't really fit with the classic D&D-isms, which D&D Next is all about.

I really hope that they will release a full fledged 4E sourcebook soon after the release of 5E so that people who like the 4E races and classes don't feel left out. At least with 5E that will be possible, unlike what happened with 4E.

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[MENTION=6762]avin[/MENTION]: they have unique biology and separate racial statistics, so for all intents and purposes, they are a race. In 4E, that is.

D&DNext is not supposed to be about being "classic", it's supposed to unify fans of all editions, and "4E" definitely count as one of "all editions". "Being made up for 4E" is thus as valid as "being made up for 3.5" or AD&D.

Even discarding that, Devas were meant to be a continuation of the Aasimar under new name and distinct appearance.

Again, discarding that argument, the fact they're so different is what makes them unique and attractive. Not everyone wants to play the same near-human races all the time. Some people actually prefer more unique options. What Devas lack in uniqueness in appearance, they make up for it with their uniqueness in behaviour and style. As such, they're one of the flagship children of 4E: giving people a multum of options, so everyone can enjoy themselves. And degrading such an option to a theme is (to me personally, as a 4E fan) a spit in the face or (to the industry) a sign of hypocrisy: they unite every edition supposedly, but "oh, without that corker of 4E, hehe, nobody played that, right?"

[MENTION=6762]avin[/MENTION] - No, Deva are all continually reincarnated angels.

I just don't want there to be a bunch of competing themes, where possible. ideally for me, race, class, and theme would all be roughly equivalent; that way, dual classing or hybriding would be done like "Human Fighter Wizard"; one could then do a "Deva Paladin avenger" by dropping race; &c.

I dunno, that's how /I'd/ do it, anyways.

Siberys said:

<!-- BEGIN TEMPLATE: dbtech_usertag_mention --> @avin <!-- END TEMPLATE: dbtech_usertag_mention --> - No, Deva are all continually reincarnated angels.

I just don't want there to be a bunch of competing themes, where possible. ideally for me, race, class, and theme would all be roughly equivalent; that way, dual classing or hybriding would be done like "Human Fighter Wizard"; one could then do a "Deva Paladin avenger" by dropping race; &c.

I dunno, that's how /I'd/ do it, anyways.

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Yeah, the problem is if a LOT of things are just foisted off into theme then they are all mutually exclusive. Each and every thing that is exclusive with other races should be a RACE, not a theme.

Not only that but the whole 4e deva is nothing like a theme. Devas don't have any overlap with other races. They are a 'race' of beings (admittedly not a culture and not a biological race exactly) that stands alone. It would make ZERO sense to talk about a 'human deva' or an 'elf deva'. What if I wanted to be a deva pirate or a deva knight too? It simply doesn't make sense except as a race.

I could see Revenant as something besides a race, some sort of 'template' or something, but it actually made sense mechanically in 4e as a race that was an overlay on another race. You could be a human revenant, but you weren't exactly a human, yet you still had all the other customization choices that any character has (again, as a theme revenant makes less sense, why can't I be a revenant pirate). Honestly I wouldn't expect anything as fringe as a revenant to be in the core books (it is not in any 4e book until HoS, before that it was a DDI race for a long time).

Of course maybe what this begs us to ask is if there's a more sophisticated possibility than just "you have a theme" because there are certainly a lot of times when it feels like there are 'overlays' that I'd like to have on my character that aren't mutually exclusive.

I almost feel like a better design for ALL this kind of stuff, PPs etc included would be something like the player and the DM agree on when it is thematic for a PC to have a specific 'overlay'. Maybe it can list some conditions that the PC should meet thematically (IE Pirate: you are a member of a crew of freebooters and have some familiarity with shipboard life and crewing a vessel). Once the player and DM agree, then the PC 'evinces' that overlay (IE they get access to the things that overlay can provide). There are no limits on the number and types of overlays a PC can evince (some might be mutually exclusive of course).

This way you could be a Vampire and a druid and an elf at the same time. Vampire is an overlay. Culture can be one too, as is background, etc. Each of these things can contribute any number of swaps the character can use. Some might also grant something outright, but that would probably be pretty rare since there would be no limits to how many overlays you could have in theory. Of course the DM could take them away too, and some overlays might even be bad. Curses could be overlays, etc. Anything that can be systematically character defining.

I wouldn't mind Devas as a race, at all, except that ig Great Wheel is restored Wizards will have to find a new name for them, unless they want to change GW's fluff.

I wouldn't mind changing their names too.

In fact, in my 4E Planescape game there was Devas (this race we're talking about) and the True Devas... just like sometimes people use the same word for different things.

Morrus said:

DC has been mentioned in various contexts. The chances of it not being d20 + mod are so small that I promise to eat my hat if it's not that.

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Would you consider eating my hat instead?

It's a nice Panama hat I actually picked up IN Panama last year. Smells quite good and still pretty clean.

OK, just trying to lower the tension level.