Word of Mearls: Official Player races will not get Oversized Weapons. Forked Thread

[Lizard]

You could easily handle really wacky races with special rules in paragon tier. Ie, so you can't play a mind flayer unless you start at 11th level and some of your feats/powers and maybe path are pre-spent for you. Still works in the same system.

This is very likely what we'll end up with a year or two down the road when all the core race splats are exhausted.

 

[daveb22]

if people want to include oversized weapon and make it as players are now saying "balanced", then why not make a strength prerequisite? like str 18 or something.

if you don't want to have oversized weapon then don't.

or am i in the wrong for believing that D&D can still be made homebrew?

 

[Runestar]

Why then even bother having discussions like this, when we could just play our own games and not about how others run theirs?

 

[Infiniti2000]

Why look forward, when you can look backward?

You quoted the wrong person. That aside, I for one don't look forward to the same day. It will severely clutter up an otherwise clean ruleset with unneeded garbage from my perspective. Like SS, it should be a totally separate rulebook that would allow you to balance-out MM races.

 

[Ibixat]

Why then even bother having discussions like this, when we could just play our own games and not about how others run theirs?

People want their game/home rules to be "official", they want to be able to do it in RPGA settings to have an undue advantage etc.

And thanks for you guys personally attacking me in my response to the savage species stuff, I made sure my response was not personal, way to raise the bar in your replies to me.

You say most of them are underpowered and some are overpowered, well that sounds like a craptastic approach to race selection balance. And you're telling me that some races in the book were so bad they didn't compare well to standard races from the PHB? And if they didn't compare well, guess what, that's still broken, just in the wrong power direction.

I happen to agree with the 4E version of races compared to 3.5, if it limits your options then homerule it and move on, don't flog wotc for not using your version of the game as the official version and in tournament/rpga style play.

 

[Runestar]

And you're telling me that some races in the book were so bad they didn't compare well to standard races from the PHB?

Yes and no.

Savage species allowed you to play powerful races with a high ECL from 1st lv by breaking it down into a class level format. For example, a fire giant (ECL19) could be broken down into a 19-lv progression table. At each lv, you get some features, and at lv19, you are effectively a fully-fledged fire giant. There was no such thing as a base LA+0 fire giant race, because you had to finish the progression before you could take your 1st class lv.

So in theory, a fire giant should be on par with a lv19 fighter using a core race (say either human or dwarf) in terms of how meaningfully it can contribute in a standard 4-PC party. Though in actual gameplay, it appeared to be much weaker.

However, this appears more an issue of the designers failing to assign appropriate LAs/ECLs to the monsters, rather than any inherent flaw in the concept of a savage species progression. It was rare that a monster PC broke the game. So if those inflated LAs could be revised, it would be possible to have a balanced PC that was still a blast to play.

The allure in using them was for the unique gaming experience of being able to access special abilities normally reserved for monster adversaries (and normally unavailable to PCs) and the chance of playing an unusual race/monster (and the accompanying roleplaying rammifications).

For an example, I refer you to this thread - Such Tangled Webs They Weave: Assault upon the Abyssal Fortress [Archive] - Wizards Community, which involved a small group of celestials on a mission in the abyss.

It doesn't really have anything to do with the current discussion, that much I admit. I had simply made that statement I did earlier more as a passing remark about my incredulity as to just why so much emphasis had to be placed on the core races, and so little attention on more monstrous/exotic races. But then you tried to link the use of Savage Species to powergaming, and I felt that I just had to clarify this common misconception that monstrous PC = munchkinism.

The same scenario seems to be replaying itself in 4e. When you cite the MM provision and disallow a monstrous race as a result, are you doing it because you know for a fact that said race really is overpowered, or are you doing it simply because it is a monstrous race (and you assume that all such exotic races must surely be overpowered by default)?

Lets set aside the minotaur, since it has already been revised. The warforged for instance, was actually underpowered (since it received a boost in the dragon article).

Because if the race really is too strong, you would have a valid reason for not allowing it in your games, even without having to cite that clause. Conversely, if you use that clause as an excuse to disallow a particular race, than you really wouldn't care even if said race was perfectly balanced now, would you?

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

I'm glad oversized is removed from the PC realm because it means that every example of "damage builds" won't be a Minotaur/bugbear with a brutal weapon.

Someone asks a damage question and invariably some one chimes in with "Well a minotaur with an executioners axe...."

So basically, you get a bunch of people using a back of the MM race for 90% of calculations regarding how to make a damaging character. This alone should be a clue that oversized somehow tips the scales a little more than just the "it boils down to +1 damage for most weapons". You never hear about dragonborn or dwarven fighters anymore!

Again, doesn't this indicate that Oversized was broken right out of the gate? There's nothing wrong with allowing characters to be big, and have access to big weapons. The mechanics for doing so should, however, be universally applicable and easy to use.

Because Oversized was poorly conceived, Brutal breaks it, and now they have to pretend like they never intended anyone to use the MM race write-ups for PCs.

But just go back a few months and look at some of the threads complaining that there were no gnomes in the 4e PH. Look at what the response was. It was, "what are you even complaining about? They don't get a full write-up, but they're right there in the back of the MM! They're totally in the core books from day one!" So which is it? We've now been told that gnomes are and aren't intended to be used as PCs. And the reason why gnomes aren't intended to be used as PCs is because Oversized is broken. Not that gnomes even have that, but since the races in the back of the MM are intended for use as NPCs only, because Oversized is broken, gnomes are now NPC-only, retroactively from Mearls's post.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

And in the spirit of being constructive, why dont you replace the oversized race feature with a free superior weapon feat? This still allows your character to wield a big weapon, like a bastard sword or fullblade, but perfectly balanced with the rules. Very easy fix, and i use it in my campaign.

Why isn't this the text of Oversized, then? Or any of the other balanced fixes that myriad posters in this thread have proposed? Why did they go with the broken implementation?

 

[Ibixat]

Thank you Runestar for the much more civil response =)

I always look at the results we end up with when playing with savage species as the characters they end up having are more powerful, but maybe it's a lower level viewpoint (5-12 range) and maybe the players are not picking weak races (well, they definately are not picking weak races but that's normal usually)

I suppose everyone has differeing views on how things work out from that book.

Honestly the biggest stretch I'd want to see for oversized as a class feature would be to allow the use of a two hander as a one handed versatile weapon, I think that is close to going too far as it is.

If larger races are given full oversized then I hope DM's willing to penalize their size when apropriate as well. One square wide doors, buildings designed for "human" sized folks, lots of squeezing and I don't mean the charmin =)

 

[Cadfan]

Because Oversized was poorly conceived, Brutal breaks it, and now they have to pretend like they never intended anyone to use the MM race write-ups for PCs.

Basically, yes. It annoys me too, because I could have told WOTC that oversized didn't work. But regrettably, I, and my sheer awesomeness, are not on the WOTC design staff. And so we have at least two major flaws carried over from 3e- oversized weapons, and the hand jive.*

If 4e were actually a wargame like its detractors like to claim, WOTC would officially announce, "ERRATA! Oversized doesn't work. Here's a new set of rules for Oversized." and that would be the end of that. But unfortunately its an RPG, and we're going to be stuck with the same rules for Oversized for a long, long time.

But just go back a few months and look at some of the threads complaining that there were no gnomes in the 4e PH. Look at what the response was. It was, "what are you even complaining about? They don't get a full write-up, but they're right there in the back of the MM! They're totally in the core books from day one!" So which is it? We've now been told that gnomes are and aren't intended to be used as PCs. And the reason why gnomes aren't intended to be used as PCs is because Oversized is broken. Not that gnomes even have that, but since the races in the back of the MM are intended for use as NPCs only, because Oversized is broken, gnomes are now NPC-only, retroactively from Mearls's post.

I think you're overdoing it a bit. The rules were back there for those who wanted them, with the caveat that they weren't fully balanced. "Oversized" is apparently a specific example of that being the case.

*Hand jive- what you get when you have two hands, but three held items, and you want to use them all in the same round at various times and for various purposes. See, eg, a multiclass warlord/wizard.