ELEMENTAL EVIL Player's Companion - FREE!

phantomK9 said:

I'm confused at to why only the Fire and Water Genasi have access to the brand new cantrips that were released. And yet they also get access to another related elemental spell.

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Fire genasi get Produce Flame, not a new cantrip.

Compare these genasi with a variant human taking the Magic Initiate feat:

Human: +1, +1, extra skill, 2 cantrips, 1 1st-level spell 1/day.
Air Genasi: +2, +1, hold breath, 1 2nd-level spell 1/day.
Earth Genasi: +2, +1, ignore difficult terrain, 1 2nd-level spell 1/day.
Fire Genasi: +2, +1, darkvision, resist fire, 1 cantrip, 1 1st-level spell 1/day at 3rd level.
Water Genasi: +2, +1, swim speed, amphibious, resist acid, 1 cantrip, 1 1st-level spell 1/day at 3rd level.

Seems Air and Earth got less stuff because they're using higher-level spells (like the DMG eladrin using Misty Step).

Klaus said:

Fire genasi get Produce Flame, not a new cantrip.

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Yes sorry, not a NEW cantrip but still a cantrip.

Compare these genasi with a variant human taking the Magic Initiate feat:

Human: +1, +1, extra skill, 2 cantrips, 1 1st-level spell 1/day.
Air Genasi: +2, +1, hold breath, 1 2nd-level spell 1/day.
Earth Genasi: +2, +1, ignore difficult terrain, 1 2nd-level spell 1/day.
Fire Genasi: +2, +1, darkvision, resist fire, 1 cantrip, 1 1st-level spell 1/day at 3rd level.
Water Genasi: +2, +1, swim speed, amphibious, resist acid, 1 cantrip, 1 1st-level spell 1/day at 3rd level.

Seems Air and Earth got less stuff because they're using higher-level spells (like the DMG eladrin using Misty Step).

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Cool break down, I'd do this myself, but at work right now, so don't have books (where for art thou PDFs?).

Not to be argumentative, but comparing to Human may not be the best. For Humans, everything is "of your choice" which I have found that 5e was designed with the general idea of "one thing of your choice = two things of our choice". This is of course not a hard and fast rule, but the numbers seem to work out that way.

I would still like to compare them to Dwarves and Elves, but thanks for quickly doing the work.

Mistwell said:

The answer to your post is contained within the parts of my post that you cut. Here you go again.

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I ignored it because it was not accurate and I wanted to focus on the mistake you made when you repeated Mearls's line. Saying that something needs to be announced to be cancelled is simply wrong. I proved that you do not need to announce (publically, to be specific) something to cancel it and, clearly, you do not dispute that fact. Mearls was indeed being pedantic and disingenuous, I agree with Morrus:

That particular episode rubbed me up the wrong way. Pendantry never attracts me to anything; and the whole "a D&D book is like a National Security secret" angle is starting to become obnoxious. Especially when ad copy exists, is being circulated, and they say nothing and then pretend to be surprised that anybody ever thought anything.

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Now for planning. I can't believe I'm indulging this. Anyway, this is what Mearls and Morrus said on twitter:

MikeMearls : We can't cancel a book we never announced!
Morrus : Interesting. You guys made ad copy and designed a cover for it, though?
MikeMearls : we do a lot of stuff that may or may not end up as a released product.
MikeMearls : we've played things close to the vest is that it's a huge, open question on what support for the RPG should look like
MikeMearls : for instance, we now know that the high volume release schedule for 3e and 4e turned out to be bad for D&D
MikeMearls: lots of experiments ahead...

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Notice how Mearls doesn't deny that a cover and ad copy where made for those products. And why would he? Those were made public on a online retailer's website in August and January. At least Mearls did not deny reality. If you make an ad copy with a price, it is because you are planning for a release. Plans change, and like Mearls said, they may not end up as a release product, but they still have to plan for that evenduality. Art, content, editiing, print doesn't happen over night.

Mistwell said:

Which begs the question, how did they get it? That's really what this is all about. How did an outside source (call them Kettie/Above the Treeline/Random House/Whatever) get something which the division head says he didn't release?

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By division head do you mean Mearls? Mearls never said the ad copys were not released to some distributors.

And it isn't that special to release ad copys to distributors.

It might have been pedantic, but it's pretty much standard for any business that creates things. In fact, I can't think of a single industry that doesn't create prototypes or test runs. Heck, I'm just a small time Indie dude, and I've made boardgames and lots of other books or things that won't ever see final production, even though they were fully created and had test copies made. I've even sent full completed copies of my boardgame to third party testers, and decided to not go forward (construction costs were too high in the end). Lord knows I have a buttload ton of commissioned art for projects that won't see the light of day. I can only imagine the things WoTC has done that they decided for one reason or another to not go full print run on.

Kamikaze Midget said:

It's a reasonable development.

<snip>

WotC presumably thinks this links them more closely with some iconic adventures, and fair enough, but those adventures were never iconic to my personal D&D experience, so linking them more closely is pretty irrelevant to how I'd usually use 'em.

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Fair enough. But as someone recently posted,

Kamikaze Midget said:

I really love how 5e isn't afraid to put options out there that not everyone will use. Rather than trying to water-down the aarakocra to please everyone who doesn't like flying at an early level, they just let the aarakocra be what they are and rely on DMs who don't like the thing to say "not in my game, buddy." That's awesome. It helps say something about games that both allow them and games that aren't interested in 'em, lets the DM take games in their own direction, and doesn't worry about making "knock-offs" that try to please everyone.

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This applies to flavour as much as mechanics, doesn't it?

Sword of Spirit said:

I like it.

One thing I'm seeing that no one else has brought up is that the Air and Earth Genasi seem weak relative to the other Genasi (or other races in general). Just compare Air to Water, for example--or compare Air to Aarakocra.

I'm thinking that Air and Earth's spell is supposed to refresh on a short rest, rather than a long rest.

Is anyone else thinking similarly about those subraces?

And I like the gnoll in the whirlwind art. For some reason it stands out as exceptional.

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Comparing Air to Arakocra is painful. The EE Optimization thread covers it well, so I won't rehash that here.

What I did want to point out, is how elegantly they handled arakocra and their always-on flying. They didn't restict it or bring back ECL or anything like that. They followed their 5e philosophy and let the DM decide. They put an opening paragraph on the entry, essentially "HEY DMs PAY ATTENTION! This could royally screw up you campaign, so think about it when the player asks for it." Simple, and all that's really needed. They recognized the balance issues and called them out, then took a step back.

Personally, I think the most obvious ways to maintain balance is to not gloss over the role playing aspect of some of these races. Do I think a genasi will be well received in a small town? Possibly a very superstitious town? Of course not. Choosing a race for pure optimization reasons may end up being more trouble than it's worth in the grand scheme of the entire game.

goldomark said:

I ignored it because it was not accurate

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Are you calling me a liar? If not, what was inaccurate, and why would you not say what is inaccurate at the time instead of cutting it out of your response? Please stop doing that. It's become a habit, and it's impolite (and I've already asked once before politely that you not do it). You don't have to respond to everything of course, but don't lift sentences from paragraphs when those sentences are clearly modified by the rest of the paragraph. When you remove context and pretend like there was none, you misrepresent what was said.

. and I wanted to focus on the mistake you made when you repeated Mearls's line. Saying that something needs to be announced to be cancelled is simply wrong. I proved that you do not need to announce (publically, to be specific) something to cancel it and, clearly, you do not dispute that fact. Mearls was indeed being pedantic and disingenuous,

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You took a single sentence out of context from what Mearls said (similar to what you did to me as well). He didn't say that in isolation, he explained what he meant by it, and what he meant by it is not what you're responding to right now. Which is why I repeated it back to you, to make sure you say what I saw and what he said. He didn't say "nothing in the world can be cancelled if it was never announced" (which is what you're responding to), he said that in the context of an unfinished experimental R&D thing it cannot be cancelled before it's been announced. Now maybe you disagree with his view, but it's not as certain a thing as you're making it out to be in that context. There are in fact some things which cannot be cancelled until they've first been announced, and this may be one of those sorts of things, and maybe not.

Notice how Mearls doesn't deny that a cover and ad copy where made for those products. And why would he? Those were made public on a online retailer's website in August and January

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Ah, that may be the source of the confusion here. No, it was not made public on an online retailer's website - at least not by WOTC. They were showing a distributor (in this case, Random House) what their unfinished plans were. No retailers were given that information. If some retailer posted it, they took it from the Random House information, which is not intended for release.

But whatever you respond to this post - please, don't cut out parts of the post when you respond. Nobody cares if you respond to everything, but please leave the context there.

Boss: "Did you put in a vacation request for Hawaii?"
Me: "Huh? I'm not going to Hawaii."
Boss: "I saw the brochure on your desk."
Me: "I was considering it, but decided against. Don't have the funds right now."
Boss: "If you're going to cancel your vacation, you need to let HR know."
Me: "I'm not canceling anything. I never put in a vacation request. I can't cancel what I didn't announce."