A Concern About Wizard's Race Designs of Late

[renau1g]

I love tieflings, but too bad despite every piece of fluff pumped out they aren't great Infernal Locks, but make amazing Fey-locks.

Oh, when it comes to the shadow sources, I hope the races are cool/interesting and not emo races.

 

[Rechan]

No, only the assassin is going through DDi. I fully anticipate a Necromancer and probably a Hexblade.

And no, I anticipate they will do elemental. I happen to believe there's mechanical room left. And look at all those people in that thread alone clamoring for a necromancer.

 

[AngryMojo]

I just can't figure out if I think shardminds are really lame or really cool. I think they may be both.

On the main note though, it's only sensical that as the game expands, the options released move from general and obvious (Fighter and Dwarf) to niche and odd (Battlemind and Wilden). The new classes released two years after 3.5 hit the shelves were much more niche than the standard PhB classes, and the same can be said about the options in 2e as well. As long as people get use out of them, and continue to enjoy the game, that's all I care about.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go ponder my opinion on shardminds some more. Awesome... lame... awesome... lame...

 

[AverageCitizen]

A lot of people do not like Dragonborn or Tieflings either. In fact here's a nice fat poll and huge thread about some's hate for DB/Tieflings. Not to mention the poster above me claiming there's nothing worldbuilding inherent with them and the races are "gratuitous".

Does that mean the PHB1 quality was bad?

I do not think they are meant to appeal to everyone. They are meant to appeal to enough to justify their inclusion, because they are a fun option that presents something new. I for one will not be satisfied until we have an insect race (I GUESS Tri-Keen will do).

At what point does popularity = quality?

Popularity does not equal quality, but it is correlated. Please don't get offended because I am saying higher quality creations with tend to have a more general appeal. It is a reasonable assessment.

I know wizards has been doing it for a while but I was hoping they'd be more deliberate this time around. Anyway you all have brought up a valid point, if most people like them then there isn't much I can complain about. However, that poll on the Dragonborn/Tieflings has at least a 50% positive response. I doubt the Shardmind/Wilden will get that much.

So I made a poll, for the sake of rigor.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-4th-edition-discussion/274468-do-you-like-shardminds-wilden.html

Everybody go and vote! I am genuinely curious as to the responses.

I suspect that at first it will be low, but if we did it again in a year it would be a lot higher. Rechan, I used to really dislike the dragonborn but now I appreciate them a lot more. I suspect that might happen for these ones a bit. Maybe grognards like me just take a while to get used to new things.

 

[tyrlaan]

I agree and disagree. Is there a lot out there to consider when worldbuilding? Absolutely. And not just races. I'm surprised you didn't bring up classes, or even power sources for that matter. I don't know about you, but in my homebrew I currently have no space for psionic classes.

So I agree there is a lot out there to worry about, but I don't perceive it as much of an issue. Mainly due to the suggestions posted thus far in this thread. My tendency is to go with the "exception-based design." For example, one player approached me with wanting to play a warforged. I told him that was okay with me and I started to come up with a way for them to fit into the world. Though frankly, warforged especially can easily be nixed because they're clearly setting specific.

Also, is there a citation out there regarding WotC's miniatures mandate? I'm a bit dubious about this since goliaths (to my recollection) had the face markings back in 3e as well.

On to the PHB3 races: Personally, I like the minotaur and the wilden and can easily live without the gith and the shardmind. But like someone has touched on, I really don't think the point of new races at this point are about pleasing everyone.

And after writing all this, I have to say that I'm a bit unsure what exactly your gripe is. Is it that there are too many races or that you just don't like the shardmind and wilden (and the look of goliaths and devas)?

We've got a Character Builder campaign file, which I update as I'm reading if I find things that fit my vision, and my players appreciate that they don't have to scroll through hundreds of later-published feats just to find the ones they're actually looking for.

Can someone clue me in on this CB campaign file? Is this just a doc you distribute or something that actually restricts what you see in CB?

 

[KarinsDad]

It bothers me a little that the adventuring group is full of non-humans, but I'm generally okay with it. The world is easy to adjust, I got to do something creative, and the players are having fun.

This.

Our group currently consists of:

Drow
Dwarf
Elf
Genasi
Goliath
Longtooth Shifter

Except for the Dwarf and Elf, this really sounds like Monsters Are Us.

Part of it is the powers of the races. Players want to play races with cool powers and don't care if the thing is really a monster or not.

Me, I'm old school D&D. I like non-monster races and monster races and the oversimplification of "Those are monters, get 'em".

I kind of drop races in my head into 4 general catagories:

PC or non-monster:
Dwarf
Elf
Half-Elf
Halfing
Human
Gnome


Quasi-non-monster:
Eladrin
Kaslashtar


Quasi-monster:
Changeling
Deva
Goliath
Half-Orc
Shadar-kai
Warforged


Monster:
Bullywug
Dragonborn
Drow
Duergar
Bladeling
Bugbear
Genasi
Githyanki
Githzerai
Gnoll
Goblin
Hobgoblin
Kenku
Kobold
Longtooth Shifter
Minotaur
Orc
Razorclaw Shifter
Revenant
Shardmind
Tiefling
Wilden


Virtually every race in the monster category is either one that the PCs in various groups have attacked on sight over 3+ decades of D&D, or they have attacked a similar looking race on sight (e.g. Dragonborn are basically Dragon-like reptile men, similar to Draconians, not much different than Kobolds or Lizardmen to me).

The politically correct concept of any race can be any alignment and PCs have to talk to monsters before engaging them is less of D&D and more of real world philosophy. It would be nice to have a human or two in the group and fewer monsters, and the good old days of "Orcs are enemies" was actually a lot of fun.

Shardmind? What a waste of space as a PC race. IMO, obviously YMWV.

 

[Phaezen]

Can someone clue me in on this CB campaign file? Is this just a doc you distribute or something that actually restricts what you see in CB?

On the Manage tab of the Character BUilder there is a slot called Campaign Setting. You can use it to restrict sources or add custom elements to a campaign setting.

It saves as a .dndcamp file under: my documents/ddi/saved characters and can be shared between players.

 

[CubeKnight]

At the enormous risk of having everyone here tell me I'm an idiot (AGAIN) I'm going to say that I would be happy with a campaign setting where there were nothing but humans and "race" distinctions were in fact cultural rather than genetic.

Ye Olde Mileage May Verily Vary.

Back when I was DMing, my campaign world was only "human", the different D&D races being different human clans/ehtnicities/the like. So, for example, Goliath were humans that lived in mountains, AKA mountainfolk.

 

[Rechan]

The politically correct concept of any race can be any alignment and PCs have to talk to monsters before engaging them is less of D&D and more of real world philosophy. It would be nice to have a human or two in the group and fewer monsters, and the good old days of "Orcs are enemies" was actually a lot of fun.

Or it rose out of a playstyle emphasizing more than "Kill anything that doesn't look human".

You know, people who like shades of grey. Or depth of story and motivation. Or enjoy wanting to be something that ISN't human for a few hours.

It has nothing to do with Real World philosophy and more to do with a shifting taste in playstyle, taste and media. Look at comics and action movies today. They are full of Anti-heroes and Shades of Grey (except for the classic heroes like Batman/Spiderman/Superman). The "They're evil, we're good, that's all we need to kick their ass" oversimplification hasn't existed since what, the Golden Age of comics? That has little to do with Philosophy and more to do with what's Interesting. I think a lot of people find oversimplification, well, boring.

And I find it almost incomprehensible that wanting to pretend to be an elf or a wizard is OK, but wanting to pretend to be a character that isn't human-looking is somehow politically correct or Odd.

Sure, the "good ol' days of orcs as enemies was actually good fun". Bully for you. But the current days of "I need a reason to slaughter this thing, as opposed to just its appearance" is also a lot of fun.

 

[Holy Bovine]

You very much missed my point on the minis. I don't play with them. I can see their appeal, but I don't think they're worth the cost. My point about the minis is that Wizards has given their creative design team a mandate: Make your new stuff so that its easy to make into a mini. I think that is really, really dumb. I know its easy to paint the mini to be the way I want it, but I can't go back into my books and repaint every instance of the Deva, goliaths, shardminds and wilden to look as cool I have them in my head, and in my world. The books should be the priority, not the minis.

You can have that opinion if you like but I think with the massive changes that have happened in the miniature line (the cutbacks in sets, the division of PC minis and monster minis etc) really put a lot of doubt into your theory. Heck of the 2 races you are talking about initially the shardmind looks extremely difficult to make into a mini. I feel it is pretty obvious the books have greater priority (and profit) at this point than the minis.