D&D 4E Comparing 4e Races

[Cirex]

Someone remind me what the halfling's Second Chance is again...?

You get the chance to play a taller race.

 

[hong]

Thank you, we'll be here all week!

 

[jaldaen]

Thank you, we'll be here all week!

I got the hong into one of my threads! I've truly reached a milestone... where's my action point?

 

[katahn]

One thing missing from this analysis are what race-specific feats exist for each race. A race might start with weak or strong initial abilities and then have that balanced out by the feats they have available later on.

 

[FabioMilitoPagliara]

the addittional "at-will" ability of the human is a very strong power

very very interesting

human will excell at their chosen craft

 

[jaldaen]

One thing missing from this analysis are what race-specific feats exist for each race. A race might start with weak or strong initial abilities and then have that balanced out by the feats they have available later on.

I'm not certain race specific feats should be part of the equation. Requiring a player to take a particular feat in order to make their race "balance" with other races seems to be a bit out of place with the design we've seen from the 4e team... which seems to be building PCs off of the same structure from the ground up (thus the one feat/power progression to rule them all).

Still I do think racial feats will be an important option for players to consider when building a character.

 

[katahn]

I'm not certain race specific feats should be part of the equation. Requiring a player to take a particular feat in order to make their race "balance" with other races seems to be a bit out of place with the design we've seen from the 4e team... which seems to be building PCs off of the same structure from the ground up (thus the one feat/power progression to rule them all).

Still I do think racial feats will be an important option for players to consider when building a character.

Think of starting weaker as the "opportunity cost" of being able to buy more powerful abilities later perhaps?

I'm not entirely convinced that any race is crippled in effectiveness compared to the others right out of the gate, or that any apparent weakness/deficiency in starting abilities will even be necessarily noticeable. I can however certainly imagine some of my players basing their race choice on an analysis of what initial abilities each race gets, its attribute and other bonuses, and what sorts of abilities/feats are available later on.

In 3e terms, imagine being a drow elf was not an ECL race but instead via feats or possibly a paragon class one could get the other abilities. Initially one begins with all the drow disadvantages such as light blindness and a very bad reputation among surface races, and the initial bonuses are roughly on-par with being a normal elf. If we look only at race balance at "level 0" then clearly the drow in this example is at a disadvantage, but taking into consideration that being a drow gives on access to spell resistance, spell-like abilities, and so forth, the drow is most certainly not at a serious disadvantage.

 

[The_Fan]

halfling: second chance... seems like a very powerfull ability.

I can attest that it is. In my playtest, through judicious use of this (combined with an unnaturally bad rolling streak on my part), the halfling was immune to damage. Also, I have to hand it to the player. His usage of it was in such a way that it annoyed me and caused me to make mistakes. I commended him for his manipulativeness.

 

[Verys Arkon]

From the PHB photos just posted here we see the ranger gets +1 to Fortitude and Reflex, but not +1 to Will, which means for the pregen eladrin ranger to work out, the Eladrin must get a +1 to Will as well. This change will be made in PrRC v2.2.

Verys.

 

[Zelgadas]

the addittional "at-will" ability of the human is a very strong power

very very interesting

human will excell at their chosen craft

I'm not really sure it's as strong as people seem to think it is. Most at-will powers are going to be attacks, which means they're going to be standard actions. You can only take one standard action per round, so unless you're using an action point, you're only going to be able to use one of your at-wills each round, regardless of how many you have. It adds a little bit more versatility, bot not necessarily more power. An additional encounter or daily power would be a whole different story, though.