Winning Races - Changeling

[renau1g]

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Changelings)

So if you were hoping for a Winning Races article to help out with the complete lack of feat support for Changelings...well prepare to be disappointed. There is nothing here that helps you if you are already playing a Changeling. There's a bunch of poorly regurgitated fluff from the 3.5e Eberron supplements and ONE new feat that gives you bonus to one of their racial skills (not bluff or insight as it's a racial bonus) + a +5 bonus to avoid detection as one of that race. Just don't be a race with a racial power and wonder why the eladrin are looking at you funny when you never teleport or the elves when you struggle to move effortlessly over difficult terrain, or the shardmind when you can't explode into crystals, etc, etc.

I am so disappointed in this article as it was the one I was most looking forward to this month. Oh wait there's some new generic backgrounds. Now compare this article to the Half-Elf one last month where there's 10 new feats and a new PP for their race.

 

[Trolls]

I have to agree. I was pretty excited about the article, being a fan of both Eberron and changelings, and I found to article to be pretty lacking in anything useful.

Recycling some Races of Eberron fluff doesn't bother me too much, since a lot of people won't have access to old edition resources and Dragon is a good way to bring it back. But even then, a lot of this article just seems obvious. It's just a collection of brief descriptions about the races printed so far, and has very little to do with changelings themselves.

Then there's the almost complete lack of any worthwhile mechanics. I was hoping for a PP (maybe one that let them pick up racial powers in place of PP powers?), and more than one feat. The single feat we do have is a bit lacklustre, too. Sure, it's a few bonuses here and there that might prove useful, and I guess it's better than a few other straight skill bonus feats, but it's quite boring mechanically. I also get the feeling it was supposed to say that you count as that race for prerequisites (even if only on feats, and not PPs/EDs), but that may have been cut in development for some reason.

Oh, and why the switch from "Passer" to "Becomer"?

 

[Flipguarder]

Changelings don't need such trifles as support. In fact they all acted like half-elves thus fooling Wizards and forcing them to give half-elves disproportionate support.

 

[renau1g]

I also get the feeling it was supposed to say that you count as that race for prerequisites (even if only on feats, and not PPs/EDs), but that may have been cut in development for some reason.

My thoughts are that the editors might have felt it stepped on the revenant's toes as that's their schtick right?

 

[Shroomy]

My thoughts are that the editors might have felt it stepped on the revenant's toes as that's their schtick right?

You're most likely right. A lot of angry changeling fans on the WotC boards have proposed feats for the changeling that are almost identical to the revenant feats. Personally, I think that would be a non-starter with the editors as its way too close to the revenant's conceptual space. In fact, that may be why we haven't seen that many articles for the changeling, their most "obvious" feats have already been implemented for another race (as well as a pair of epic destinies). Time to start thinking outside the box!

 

[Klaus]

You're most likely right. A lot of angry changeling fans on the WotC boards have proposed feats for the changeling that are almost identical to the revenant feats. Personally, I think that would be a non-starter with the editors as its way too close to the revenant's conceptual space. In fact, that may be why we haven't seen that many articles for the changeling, their most "obvious" feats have already been implemented for another race (as well as a pair of epic destinies). Time to start thinking outside the box!

That's kinda easy to remedy...

Quick, Robin, to the articlesubmissionmobile!

 

[renau1g]

If it's half as good as the half-elf article I will be a happy camper.