Dave Turner said:
Some races have multiple dragonmarks (halflings have Healing and Hospitality), but the four new Eberron-specific races have none.
I understand that there might be some setting-based explanation, but I'm wondering why the design decision was made as it was.
I don't want to touch off a flame war, but the new races are generally quite powerful relative to the PHB races (i.e. much closer to dwarves/humans than half-elves).
The design change allows PCs to get a bit of a power bump.
Also the dragonmarked houses are the primary explanation for why the PHB races are spread across the continent while the "eberron races" are clustered more tightly and are less important. If there was a dragonmarked house of Kalashar then there would be Psions in every city available for hire. And so forth.
Remember that the existence of the Aberrant dragonmarks touched off a war (and Keith Bakers recent post about The Lords of Madness gives a hint as to why they were seen as being so dangerous).
Dave Turner said:
It seems like a bad decision to me, since it excludes the Eberron races from one of the fundamental setting components: the dragonmarked houses and the Prophecy.
A player and I were talking about something similar to this today. He explained that he wants to play someone with "combat skills and who can talk to people". And I explained (he already new this of course but he let me prattle on anyway) that for party balance reasons it doesn't work like that. Generally if you want lots of skill points you can't have best bab/high hitpoints.
His feeling was "but that means I can't play the character I want to".
I see this the same way. I'm sure that someone out there wants to play a Warforged, who is a member of a house, with the Dragonmark Heir prestige class, etc. etc.
3.5 does a good job of forcing people to make choices about their characters. Which is another way of saying there are limits. More flexible than prior editions but they are still striking a balance.
If you accept that the point of DnD design is to facilitate an environment where different characters have different abilities and different opportunities to shine then this kind of choice, while irritating to a given player who wants to be useful in many different situations, is in line with their design goals.
DnD is oriented around a "you need a balanced party of 4 people to finish this mission" type approach.