Eberron: My issue with the 4e setting

[Crothian]

Your biggest issue is that they don't expressly forbid it, even though they came out and said explicitly that some of these marks on some of these races would be so extremely rare that the adventurer could be the only person in the world with it?

They went from it being impossible to it be possible if unlikely. To me it is a black and white issue, it was not allowed before and now it is allowed. The rarity of the situation matters not at all.

 

[Obryn]

To me it is not just a rules change. It is a change in the way the world is; the setting has changed. It doesn't matter that there are no NPCs stated this way yet. It could happen in the future.

I remember reading that they specifically will not have any NPCs with inappropriate Dragonmarks. The only ones who ever might would be your group's PCs, and that's only if you specifically allow it.

Damned if I can find the source, but it might have been in the interview with Baker.

-O

 

[Imban]

The original post referenced wizards that can do all of those things? Is that so?

Whatever, dude. The original post was clearly "since NPCs don't have to resemble PCs at all, they can just do whatever the DM wants them to, regardless of whether or not a PC can do anything like it!", but even if you don't think it was, I don't really care. If you think furthermore that it's 100% A-OK for NPC wizards to have those abilities that are forever denied to PCs, then we have a disagreement, but this is utterly irrelevant to anything.

So, you would houserule it to allow for players, if the players wanted to choose a dragonmark for character and story reasons, if the restriction still existed.

If you were willing to houserule it that way, then why aren't you willing to houserule it the other way when a player comes up to you and just wants min-max a character without any consideration of the story implications that are clearly laid out in the book?

Because he probably won't come up to me, he'll just write it on his sheet without telling me, and then point at the book if I take an issue with it. And at that point, I might not be able to carry the argument past "This is my viking hat", especially if I'm allowing another PC to take a cross-racial mark for what I feel is a good or at least vaguely interesting reason.

What you are effectively saying is that you're willing to houserule to encourage roleplaying but you aren't willing to houserule to discourage abusing a mechanic to min-max.

No, because I houserule to discourage abusing a mechanic to min-max all the time, especially in 3e. For instance, I houserule that you can't use Shivering Touch ever, because the game becomes terrible if you can. I just am usually of the opinion that if you want to make a min-maxed character, you have to deal with the restrictions and flavor that your choices impose on you. This removes that flavor imposition.

Really, the only thing removing the limitation does is to turn the table so that a DM only needs to step in to limit the abuse of the mechanic, rather than having to step in to allow a player to roleplay something interesting. I think that's a step forward.

I think it's a step back, especially because I can't even houserule it. If I say cross-racial marks are banned, then people will expect them to actually be banned.

 

[Grymar]

I'm with Crothian on this one; I strongly dislike the change. It's the whole "we can't say no to the players" mentality. I give my players plenty of choice (although as soon as I say that one of them will chime in to disagree), but there are some things that should just be not allowed. The only way an unusual race/dragonmark combination would come to pass is through Rule #1: the DM.

As far as the example of if a player came and asked if he could because it would be a great concept, I'd give him the same response I would if he wanted to play a LE paladin, a fighter with d12 hit dice, or use some odd splat-book varient of the sorcerer. "Nice idea, but sorry, not in this game."

 

[doctorhook]

They went from it being impossible to it be possible if unlikely. To me it is a black and white issue, it was not allowed before and now it is allowed. The rarity of the situation matters not at all.

Why not? The setting hasn't changed; there still aren't any Dwarves running around with the Mark of Healing, except with the possible exception of a single PC in each game (approximately 0.000001% of the population of Eberron). Bear in mind that it's easily explained as an Aberrant Mark, which grants the power of a given Dragonmark to someone who shouldn't have it; this still isn't different from 3.5E Eberron.

Have you considered that your reaction to this ultimately minor rules change is just a knee-jerk to something that seems unconscionable on the surface? As for myself, Eberron is far and away my favorite setting, and I didn't like this change at first either. That said, when you keep things in perspective you realize how insanely little this changes anything.

I'm with Crothian on this one; I strongly dislike the change. It's the whole "we can't say no to the players" mentality. I give my players plenty of choice (although as soon as I say that one of them will chime in to disagree), but there are some things that should just be not allowed. The only way an unusual race/dragonmark combination would come to pass is through Rule #1: the DM.

As far as the example of if a player came and asked if he could because it would be a great concept, I'd give him the same response I would if he wanted to play a LE paladin, a fighter with d12 hit dice, or use some odd splat-book varient of the sorcerer. "Nice idea, but sorry, not in this game."

You're aware that "Saying yes to players" is the mentality that designed Third Edition too, right? (It further informed 4E as well, but to a lesser extent than "Making the game more fun" did.) I get the impression that the "plenty of choice" you give your players is probably limited to, "Anything in the Rules as Written, minus the couple bits that I don't like," because your bottom paragraph suggests that you don't like bent rules.

Also, surely you know that Paladins can be of any alignment in 4E, right? I'm pretty certain that each of the "exotic" concepts you described appeared in 3.5E's Unearthed Arcana.

 

[Crothian]

Why not? The setting hasn't changed; there still aren't any Dwarves running around with the Mark of Healing, except with the possible exception of a single PC in each game (approximately 0.000001% of the population of Eberron). Bear in mind that it's easily explained as an Aberrant Mark, which grants the power of a given Dragonmark to someone who shouldn't have it; this still isn't different from 3.5E Eberron.

The setting has changed. It is not an aberrant mark, aberrant marks are different as the game clearly defines. And how do we know there isn't some NPCs out there like this? Not all NPCs in the world are stated up in fact very few of them are. And if it's only a PCs it doesn't matter that it is a small percentage of the population it's a character that gets all the face time!

Have you considered that your reaction to this ultimately minor rules change is just a knee-jerk to something that seems unconscionable on the surface? As for myself, Eberron is far and away my favorite setting, and I didn't like this change at first either. That said, when you keep things in perspective you realize how insanely little this changes anything.

Eberron is the only published D&D setting currently in print that I would ever consider running. This whole thing started with my saying that this was my biggest issue with the setting. That's how much I like it that this change is my biggest complaint. It is easily changed and frankly it's not a big deal. But since everyone wants to argue it with me this can go on forever. I'm not changing my mind on this point.

 

[Grymar]

You're aware that "Saying yes to players" is the mentality that designed Third Edition too, right? (It further informed 4E as well, but to a lesser extent than "Making the game more fun" did.) I get the impression that the "plenty of choice" you give your players is probably limited to, "Anything in the Rules as Written, minus the couple bits that I don't like," because your bottom paragraph suggests that you don't like bent rules.

Also, surely you know that Paladins can be of any alignment in 4E, right? I'm pretty certain that each of the "exotic" concepts you described appeared in 3.5E's Unearthed Arcana.

Well, we still play 3.5/Pathfinder, so the 4e changes do not apply in my game. But yes, I do tend to stick to the rules as written, which I don't consider to be a bad thing. In most of my games, we'll use the core rules, the Eberron books, the Complete series, the Spell Compendium, PHB2, and the Magic Item Compendium. Unearthed Arcana is not normally part of the mix, but I feel that they have enough choices that I'm not restricting them unfairly.

 

[nicholasgeorg]

I just moved my game into Eberron, because I think it's awesome. The party is level 11.

Almost every player wants to take the mark of storm. I told them that they can do what they want, but that there would be severe consequences. I let them know in no uncertain terms that the house in question would spare no expense in hiring level 25 gnoll ninjas (monster builder is AWESOME) to hunt them down and either throw them in a sphere of annihilation or bring them back for basement vivisection first, and then throw them in the sphere of annihilation.

Nothing's wrong with taking an out of race mark (within reason, obviously, they are the only person in thousands of years to do so, etc.) but they won't live long if they are found out. And it won't take much to be found out.

 

[malraux]

Nothing's wrong with taking an out of race mark (within reason, obviously, they are the only person in thousands of years to do so, etc.) but they won't live long if they are found out. And it won't take much to be found out.

I think this points to a big reason why out of race dragonmarks should have had an addendum of doublecheck with your DM. If any PC takes an out of race dragonmark, suddenly huge sections of the adventure become about that particular player. It also partially dictates what will happen in the adventure. It is a rare case where a single player's choice can limit other party members' choices (would the relevant dragonmarked house let one of the players be a member in good standing with an OOR dragonmark in the party?) in addition to limiting the DM.

 

[nicholasgeorg]

Totally right. My players would never take a feat like that without running it by me - it never occurred to me that player's might do that. Yikes. That could nuke a campaign.

Especially if word got to the dragons and the Light of Siberys is mobilized and several thousand dragons eliminate, say Sharn, to fulfill some aspect of the prophecy. Eeek.