And the mystery race is...hated

[KingCrab]

But Lizardfolk just doesn't sound cool enough, and that is what is important.

I don't know. Sounds kind of classic to me.

 

[RigaMortus2]

I thought 3E dragonborn were basically a template, not a seperate race? Are they changing this, so that dragonborn are an actual race now? For example, I thought you could be a dragonborn gnome in 3E. Now it just seems to be "dragonborn"...

 

[Nebulous]

These are two very different species you are talking about here, Nebulous. One, with the wings, dragon ancestry etc are indeed called the Dracha. The others you refer to, the ones without wings, are in fact humans who went trough a magical metamorphosis and took up some "dragon taint", are genderless (and thus can't sexually reproduce) and are called the Mojh.

Ah, that's right. I knew there was more to it, but i forgot about the mojh bit. The whole flavor of that was tied heavily into the campaign setting though. I wonder if they're going to do this also for the dragonborn, or just leave it up to DM's to insert them or not.

 

[Derren]

I thought 3E dragonborn were basically a template, not a seperate race? Are they changing this, so that dragonborn are an actual race now? For example, I thought you could be a dragonborn gnome in 3E. Now it just seems to be "dragonborn"...

Yes, Dragonborn (and Tieflings) are not templates or template-like races in 4E but complete races like allother PHB races too.
See the Latest 4E Updates on top of the screen for details.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Dragonborn sound like they could be fun. I'd certainly consider playing one. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I'd take dragonborn or tieflings over gnomes any day of the week. I can't recall anyone in our group playing a gnome on purpose (stinkin' reincarnations!).

I can explain "lizard-y dragon dinosaur men" better than the "kind of like hobbits but more magical and not as chubby" gnomes.

I don't understand why people have so much trouble grokking gnomes. (heh. spell checker didn't react to "grokking") There are tons of great hooks and ideas that differentiate them from the other races, and they certainly have more personality going for them than elves ("We live in forests! Also, we like bows!").

Dig up Whizbang Dustyboots' racial description. Or take a look at what Paizo's doing with them in Pathfinder. There's a ton of potential there, and the designers' apparent inability to figure out what to do with them strikes me as a lack of imagination. Sure, those guys might be super-duper rule designers, but given things like Dragon Tail Cut, Emerald Frost, and their inability to figure out gnomes, I wonder if they shouldn't be outsourcing the fluff text.

 

[Derren]

There might be a lot of ideas how to give gnomes a own racial identity, but I have never seen them being used on a large scale.

The only identity gnomes really had where comic relieve (ever noticed that in nearly every D&D book gnomes are silly pranksters etc.?) tinkerers "mad scientists" whos machines blew up (dragonlance mainly, but FR Lantan gnomes weren't much better).

Imo 3.5 tried to give gnomes a different identity as Bards/Illusionists but that was not well recieved. They were always stuck between being some earth fey (which wasn't really supported) and dwarves with bigger noses (unimagitive).

 

[BadMojo]

The only identity gnomes really had where comic relieve (ever noticed that in nearly every D&D book gnomes are silly pranksters etc.?) tinkerers "mad scientists" whos machines blew up (dragonlance mainly, but FR Lantan gnomes weren't much better).

Eberron has gnomes as information brokers and fantasy telegraph operators. I think that's a cool twist but still doesn't seem quite right for a heroic PC. It still feels more like a support role.

I guess I just don't really care for gnomes. I don't hate 'em, but I wouldn't play one either. I don't think every single option in the game needs to be appealing to every single player. That seems like madness as far as design goals go; too many different players with different preferences and biases.

 

[Cyronax]

There might be a lot of ideas how to give gnomes a own racial identity, but I have never seen them being used on a large scale.

The only identity gnomes really had where comic relieve (ever noticed that in nearly every D&D book gnomes are silly pranksters etc.?) tinkerers "mad scientists" whos machines blew up (dragonlance mainly, but FR Lantan gnomes weren't much better).

Imo 3.5 tried to give gnomes a different identity as Bards/Illusionists but that was not well recieved. They were always stuck between being some earth fey (which wasn't really supported) and dwarves with bigger noses (unimagitive).

Gnomes were a quasi-villain race in my 3.0 3e (and eventually 3.5 houseruled) campaign world. Their culture was extremely secretive and illusion/shadow was a method of both protection and domination.

They were feared by many, and most gnomes resembled clean shaven, gnarley svirfneblin/deep gnomes. Most gnomes were non-lawful, non-good alignments, and were considered the flip side of ancient magic, to the more compassionate (though equally secretive) elves.

Ancient gnomes were in fact the creators of the demiplane of Shadow, and were the reason that Shadow became coterminous with the Prime Material Plane. The act of "coternminity" was part of an ancient gnomish attempt to dominate much of the world.

I never understood all the gnome hate. I just think there was a laxity on WotC/TSR's part throughout their entire product line.

Any race can be comic relief, though gnomes (worshipers of a god who espouses humor and using pranks as a weapon and a cathartic), halflings (thieves and kender), and dwarves (swaggering greedy drunk warriors) have a predisposition for it.


Further off topic, in the same world, I allowed tieflings (descendants from my world's equivalent of Hextor and devils) as a PC core race. Much like gnomes, tieflings less good and more lawful. It was the tieflings that came into the world as part of the gods' last ditch attempt to counter the forces of Tharizdun (who all the gods feared). The tiefling remnant operated much like I see the 4e tiefling -- rare, urbane, and sometimes reviled.

I even saw a tiefling diviner PC become the party's main source of (sinister) comic relief. Picture a young, tiefling version of the Simpsons' Mr. Burns (Lawful Neutral). The PC was sort of like a cooly rational and calculating opposite to sepulchrave II's Mostin the Metagnostic.

I think the new races are fine -- especially because the dragonborn are a race that breeds true.

Personally however, I wish CHANGELINGS (from Eberron) were the core race instead of dragonborn.

Digression ends,
C.I.D.

 

[Cyronax]

...

Who laps pudding?

Gnomes ... hence 4e's 'gnome pogrom.'

C.I.D.

 

[Voss]

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.

Very much not sword and sorcery. There are very few swords, precious little sorcery and the main characters almost never use either. Swords and Sorcery, as a sub-genre, has violence and sex oozing out the sides. Tolkien's work, and particularly the Hobbit, has very little in common with the major themes that characterize sword and sorcery stories.

As a general rule, if the main characters set out on an adventure without a single weapon beyond a knife for food and/or woodcarving (and they weren't in prison) and there isn't a single woman in the book, it isn't sword and sorcery.