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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TwinBahamut" data-source="post: 5843718" data-attributes="member: 32536">Lowering the cost of something is certainly an important way of making it more powerful, and this is indeed where too many previous bad implementations went awry. I really hope that any future version of this sort of thing completely sidesteps the Level Adjustment/Savage Species style of mechanics.Well, the problem with looking at D&D campaigns for this sort of data is that the historically bad mechanics for this sort of thing tended to push people away from the choice. If you look at something relevant outside of D&D campaigns alone, then other trends become apparent. For example, many MMOs have pretty crazy racial choices, and they can be rather popular. I think that once you get past the group of players who just want to play humans (which is rather large), then the remaining set seems to feel as comfortable playing orcs, trolls, or panda-men as they do elves or dwarves. That's a bit of a vague generalization, but it's my impression.Also, I again want to express that I don't think you need to play a "monstrous campaign" in order to have races like dragons in a group of PCs. I know not everyone is okay with this flavor, but I'm rather fond of a group of PCs including 3 humans, a dwarf, and a dragon. When the humans and dwarf head to the pub, the dragon just chills outside, maybe wandering off to glean some information from the dragon who protects the king's castle. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />You would certainly need this approach. I have no interest in implementing these races simply by making players play their characters straight out of the Monster Manual. That would be a terrible approach. You need to build mechanics for them as races, the same as elves or dwarves. That will certainly require a somewhat different approach to race design than past editions, but it is possible. You won't get a fully powered Great Wyrm dragon at level 1, but you can certainly get a character who looks like a dragon, acts like a dragon, and has all the mechanics of not wearing armor and breathing fire needed for him to be unmistakably a dragon.I don't want this to be left up to third party works. WotC needs to tackle this one. This kind of thing needs to be built into the central mechanics of the game if it is ever going to work. It can't just be hacked in by some third party. I'm not really a fan of third party stuff anyways... I only ever bought two third party d20 books (both for Iron Heroes, actually).What can I say? I just can't see the appeal...I suppose I would start by not assuming that every creature of those types has that kind of power. For the most part, any given member of one of those types has a few fairly iconic abilities. Angels are holy and have wings. Demons/devils are unholy. Genies are elemental. Dragons breath fire. You don't need to replicate the full stat block of a Solar, Pit Fiend, or Djinni Prince in order to get the flavor across or get to the heart of their mechanics. Some could also have severe drawbacks that limit them compared to Humans (this is clearest with a Dragon's inability to wear armor or carry a sword, but similar drawbacks may apply to the others). Generally speaking, a very low level Angel, Demon, or Genie might very well closely resemble an Aasimar, Tielfing, or Genasi. It is only at high levels that the major differences would begin to shine through.</blockquote>

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