And the mystery race is...hated

[Voss]

Very, very tired of JRR. Just as tired of the 3rd edition 'kitchen sink' approach, which isn't endearing me to much of the 4E race list.

My own homebrew is shaping up, and I'm narrowing down to about a dozen intelligent races. Some, like the fey and demons will have assorted sub-races, but only because it fits their nature (primal and chaotic). But really, cramming a horde of intelligent races into the world just doesn't work for me to begin with (there just isn't room for 50-odd intelligent species), and Wizards really seems to like adding races that just somehow have always been there as soon as the new MM comes out. It just doesn't work for me.

At the same time, I don't want to be an absolute jerk to the players, who should be able to reasonably expect to use the standard stuff in the main book. Having to say no to stuff that really doesn't fit in my campaign will quite possibly lose me a player or two, and thats annoying, especially for emo demon brat and bland dragon guy.

 

[KingCrab]

So the race will be dragonborn. How bad can that be?

It matters more how they set up the mechanics for races in general than what the PHB races are. Dragonborn aren't something I would use in a setting, but if the system for how a race can effect your character is well done then I'm sure we'll see all sorts of interesting home brewed races that will be fun to play.

 

[Rechan]

If you have been playing DnD for a long time how can you hate it? My only thought is you're tired of it or you came on board with DnD in later editions when the Tolkien influence was a bit diluted.

Both for me.

I've never read any of Tolkien's work. I've never even watched the entirety of The Hobbit. So as close as I come to Tolkein is Peter Jackson. As nice as those movies were from the presentation, I have no affection for Middle Earth as a game world; it looks fairly yawn-worthy. I am personally tired of it being crammed down my throat.

D&D is moving to try and capture the next generation of gamers who are divorced from the 70s' fantasy scene.

I would personally use Dragonborn before I bothered with dwarves or halflings. In fact, in my homebrew setting, I intend to have no 3e PHB races except maybe humans.

 

[JoeGKushner]

I could see dragon-men fitting into Hyboria more easily than Halflings, Gnomes, or Dwarves, so I'm not sure how you get the impression that Dragonmen is a high fantasy construct.

You make them degenerate worshipers of a "snake god man was not meant to know" about, have them tie a hot chick to an altar and grab a big knife.

Insert one half-naked barbarian and you've got 50% of the Conan stories ever written.

Not arguing but it doesn't quite bode well for party togetherness.

Where the other humanoids aren't that far off from being human like, at least over the dreaded other.

Heck, if we're saying dragonmen as lizardmen are okay because they're the enemy that gets chopped down all the time by the burly Conan character, why not full blooded orcs, drow and kobolds?

 

[Ahglock]

I really wish if they had felt they needed to add a bunch of new races to the core they would of made them a more unified theme.

Eladrin and Tieflings while I'm not a big fan of work for me.

Both seem plane-touched one is fey-touched one if heck-touched.

Instead of dragonlings.

Make: Gensai, elemental tempest-touched
Shadowfolk -the shadow plane thing they mentioned-touched
The opposite of tieflings whose name I can't remember or negativeheck-touched.

This way you are only really tying in one theme for all the new races plane-touched.

Now I have to come up with excuses to show horn in multiple themes or lay down the law and not let them in. Neither appeals to me for a core book. I can probably shoe-horn them in, but its not an easy fit hence the need for the shoe-horn.

So end result of races in my book.

Human
Elf
Dwarf
Halfling
Eladrin
Gensai
shadowfolk
Angel-folk

I might add in one more new race, and flavor change the halfling to give some shadow folk roots. And imply all the non-human races have plane-touched ancestry, its just much more diluted, there like 95% prime material, 5% plane-touched, while the true plane-touched are 70/30 splits or something.

Humans would be a unique race in that there pure-blood prime material.

Sure it would have an implied setting one in which the planes hold more importance, but if there changing the planes fluff anyways roll with it in other areas like the races.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Yeah... elves and dwarves and halflings are high fantasy. Dragonborn and tieflings are way more sword-and-sorcery than them.

Though I'm also not at all clear on what points-of-light has to do with this. It's not like points-of-light is somehow incompatible with high fantasy.

I thought they were at first because I kept thinking in terms of Conan where pretty much anything non-human/humanoid was fair game for slaughter and placing over the fire place.

When someone mentioned Final Fantasy VII, for some reason it clicked.

 

[Caliber]

Yes, everyone knows that isolated communities are all about multicultralism and diversity.

And, if you are adapting (say) an ongoing Greyhawk campaign into 4e, how can you argue that dragonborn have been known for hundreds or thousands of years? Colour me skeptical.

RC

Remember that they have said a few times that this isn't really recommended, and I think we're discussing one of those reasons. Adding in new races (or getting rid of old ones) mid-campaign is really something that should be more of a focus for the story, not something handwaved in the background (unless your players just don't care, which I'm sure accounts for some). If this kind of thing would bother you though, I'd suggest you don't do it.

Problem solved!

 

[ivocaliban]

So...how many of you have played a dragonborn or played with a player who has run one (from "Races of the Dragon")?

(My answer: 0)

Zip, zero, zilch.

In fact, the only reason I would have picked up the Races of the Dragon was for the kobold coverage. Granted I don't know much about the Dragonborn, but with kobolds, half-dragons, dragonkin, and a draconic template I just didn't see the point in another dragon-based humanoid race. I suppose it was meant specifically for players, but it just missed the mark as far as I was concerned.

Seems like an arbitrary choice for 4e, but that's only because I can't see the big picture, right?

 

[ivocaliban]

The opposite of tieflings whose name I can't remember or negativeheck-touched.

Aasimar

 

[pawsplay]

Yeah... elves and dwarves and halflings are high fantasy. Dragonborn and tieflings are way more sword-and-sorcery than them.

Is The Hobbit not swords-and-sorcery? When I wrote my articles for RPG.net a million years ago, I went ahead and divided my essays into Epic High Fantasy versus Swords and Sorcery, just to be clear where I was drawing the line, but even so, a lot of works exist happily in either genre. Including, in my mind, LOTR. It is mainly LOTR imitators that drifted from what you would call swords-and-sorcery.