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?"
Seriously? No one is spitting in your face. This is the kind of hyperbole that ignites edition wars, and this is something that I hope EVERYONE wants to avoid with this new edition. At least WoTC appears to be trying to avoid it.
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).
I like 4e Devas, 4e Dragonborn, 4e Tieflings. Not as enthusiastic about Shardminds or that Treemen race or even Vampires (as a race) or Revenants (as a race).
But it's possible we're making too many assumptions about what being a "theme" entails. Maybe they are deeper than 4e themes with more uniqueness and customization. Maybe there are options in each theme you choose between, so you can be a human deva pirate, or an elf deva knight, and as races they might be wildly different or even very similar.
I agree with you, but I still don't want them in the first players handbook.
I think that's what people are forgetting here. You can't fit everything in the first book. Unless you make it like say, The Encyclopaedia Britannica 'book'.
I love devas and dragonborn, even if they did take a while to grow on me. But I don't want them right at the start. They always felt like really rare races to me. Common races need to be available first. The same applies to tieflings.
We all have to bear in mind that somethings will not be available at the start - It just can't be done. SOMETHING has to be left out. It is logical therefore to leave out the things which appear in the fewest editions. Devas and Avengers only appeared in 4E, and even there they weren't in the first PH.
This is a reasonable post... We're not going to get everything in the first book and with this in mind, people shouldn't start screaming that WoTC or "Hasborg" has stolen their dog and kicked their cat. With the release of 4e, people went all gnome crazy because they had to wait a few months for the race to be released in a book and the vitriol that was being spewed was utterly classless.
Let's hope that people can be patient, or maybe WoTC can release a "back-of-the-napkin" release schedule for races and classes so people can get an idea for when their favorite bits will be released - noting the fact that the release schedule is not set in stone.
Or better yet, in our digital age, maybe some get released online first (for playtesting) and then added to a print book later.
To me personally, having a deva soul in a reincarnated body as a theme make perfect sense. That doesn't mean this is the option they will go with though.
As for Avengers, I always saw them as an alternative to paladins. Turning them into a kit or prestige class or some other variant form of paladin makes perfect sense to me. If that's called a 'theme' now, then so be it.
Every edition of DND takes common English words and twists them a bit. In this instance it looks like theme is going to be one of those words. From what we've heard thus far (which is very little!) 5E theme is very different from 4E theme.
Yea, my point above is that we really don't know what qualifies as a theme yet.
BTW -- even though I liked the 4e deva, I think it can work just fine as a theme. Maybe even subclasses all become themes.
Imagine the race "elf" and then there are themes for "drow", "eladrin", "wood", etc... You can do "human" and have themes for "northman", "easterner", "desertfolk".
Or even more radical, you can have a race called "beast" and have "hobgoblin", "bugbear", "goblin", "orc" be themes. And a race called "reptilian" and theme it up with "kobold", "dragonborn", "lizardman". (Though, I dunno about whether these can work, or if it would really tick people off...)
