D&D (2024) Do you think they will add more races to PHB2024 to make up for dropping other stuff?

[FitzTheRuke]

I try to pronounce Aasimer as "Awesome-er" to avoid pronouncing it "Ass-simmer".

They sound significantly more awesome that way.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I would like them to stop putting player races in the monster manuals.

I'd like them to put all the heritages in the MM, in the form of suggested additions to NPC statblocks in the appropriate appendix. Level Up got some of the way there in their monster book, and I homebrewed my own.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Ay-sim-are

 

[Micah Sweet]

Minotaurs and Devas became playable races in 4e. As for Dryads, I vaguely remember seeing a mention for an Unbound Dryad. I think they were Dryads who were no longer bound to a tree.

Minotaur were first made a playable race in Dragonlance Adventures for 1e.

 

[Remathilis]

Like they are reverting so much, does anyone else think they will try and make up for it by adding more PHB races?

They had considered putting the entirety of the player species in Monsters of the Multiverse in there, but that had to be cut so we could fit 50+ beast statblocks for the druid to wild shape into.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

When is "used to have"? The original Tieflings had more choice than literally any other Tieflings since. Technically that continued in 3.XE, it just lost all the charts and completely changed Tiefling personalities, saying they were all super creepy and almost-certain to be evil, and giving them a penalty to CHA (!?!??), and depicted all Tieflings as basically Cambions without wings. Then 4E changed things again and that's when they got limited most appearance-wise, because it gave them a unified appearance. 5E followed on from 4E where, but SCAG technically opened the doors to varied Tieflings again.

On the grand scale of things, 5E is in the middle in terms of how much choice you have over Tiefling depictions.

The problem with Aasimars goes back to 2E, I note. Unlike Tieflings, they weren't designed by Zeb Cook, so have much more of a basic conceptualization and visualization, and unfortunately that has followed them around. Daevas were a much better conceptualization and more like something that would actually have fit in Zeb Cook's Planescape, I'd suggest.

Yeah when I say 'used to' have less choice, I'm generally thinking about 4e. I don't think 4e handled aasimar and tieflings well at all. Though its genasi were more interesting than the 5e ones, which just look like humans with red or blue skin.

Ideally I'd like all planetouched to have an insane variety of choice for how they look physically. Ranging from 'looks human' all the way to 'eldritch horror'.

I really like how Pathfinder 2e has handled them.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Having a uniform but customizable form is how tieflings became an enduring core race while aasimar are being threatened with replacement by the egyptian pantheon but angels.

 

[Corinnguard]

Back in 3e, some of the Planetouched were the descendants of certain Forgotten Realms deities. So the animal-headed Ardlings could be the Aasimar descendants of the Mulhorandi deities. This would make them into a regionally-specific Aasimar subrace.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

I mean, if nothing else, Tiefling doesn't have an English pronunciation that tends to make people start it with the word "ass"... that's pretty much objectively superior lol.

Might be my accent but I've never pronounced the 'aas' in aasimar the same as 'ass'. Rather I've always pronounced it the same as 'as'.

But I can see how people with different dialects would pronounce it differently. 'Westcountry English' isn't exactly what people have in mind when picturing how words will be pronounced.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

Coming from a language that says the letters the same way every time, I've kind of given up trying to discuss how to pronounce things with english speakers or using english examples.

Aasimar is, like, a prime offender on that front, because it keeps coming up... and now I have to wonder if PF2remake going with Nephilim is going to open new-found horrors on how to mangle words.