Eberron's Worth...

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Surely you can see how a PC doppelganger dilutes the novelty of NPC doppelgangers, if and when they appear.

Changelings are pretty wimpy compared to a true doppleganger, unless you give them enough levels (and the right PrCs) to make them indistinguishable, which is a lot of effort for a player to go to.

Do elves dilute the novelty of the fey?

 

[MarkB]

They're not automatons to begin with so their sentience isn't interesting, they're around all the time if they're in the party, and they're not special because there's thousands of them. Therefore they're not interesting in the least, IMO, and just add an unwanted colour to the tone of the game: PCs as a band of monsters, which just serves to make all the monsters look "normal", too.

You appear to be equating 'interesting' with 'rare', which seems a little odd. By your definition no playable race in the game is interesting.

Warforged sentience wasn't planned - they were originally designed as simple constructs, cheaper and more mass-producible than golems. Even now their creators can't really explain why they are sentient. That opens up dozens of possibilities for exploring the nature of sentience, souls and self-definition, and because those plot elements can now be tied to a PC, instead of an ephemeral NPC who will be left behind when the PCs move on to the next stage of the adventure, there's much more room to develop such themes. Plus, the players get to take part in that process instead of just the DM.

 

[Crothian]

Elves, dwarves and halflings aren't usually presented as monsters, but rather the allies of the humans. The big giveaway is them being categorised as "demi-humans", as opposed to "humanoids" who are quite clearly delineated as monsters (although arguably this doesn't explain half-orcs).

Surely you can see how a PC doppelganger dilutes the novelty of NPC doppelgangers, if and when they appear.

In a thread that asked what is one of the most common enemies one of the more popular answers was Humans. And heck, the other races are at least in the Monster Manual. Allowing the PCs to cast spells doesn't take away from all those dragons and demons that cast spells.

I have a Changeling in my Eberron group (and they are no doppelgangers) and it does not take away or dilute the novelty of anything.

 

[MarkB]

Yeah, the changes to dwarves are pretty subtle, essentially making them a little more tribal and chaotic. IMO, they should have gone all the way, with barbarian dwarves, but that would have meant deviating from the PHB more than the other races do.

It might also have tended to clash with the barbarian halflings. I agree that more could have been done with the dwarves, but to an extent they're limited by their class features, which Eberron tends to leave unchanged - whatever you do with them, it has to account for darkvision, stonecunning and giant-dodging.

I haven't read Secrets of Sarlona yet, but from what I hear, it includes a fairly novel take on the Duergar.

 

[rounser]

Changelings are pretty wimpy compared to a true doppleganger, unless you give them enough levels (and the right PrCs) to make them indistinguishable, which is a lot of effort for a player to go to.

Do elves dilute the novelty of the fey?

Not usually. You can tie D&D's elves very tightly to the seelie/unseelie courts and get rid of all the Tolkienesque stuff to turn them into sidhe, and make them hang out with pixies, brownies, leprechauns, sprites and satyrs in the realm of faerie, but frankly this is a rare treatment of elves in D&D campaigns. They also lack all those fey special abilities, and generally that chaotic fey attitude.

The comparisons between a changeling and a doppelganger are much more direct because the special abilities are potentially all there.

If elves gained the ability to turn invisible at will, grow wings and gradually turned to be 2 foot high as they gained levels, I think you might have a better argument.

 

[Crothian]

If elves gained the ability to turn invisible at will, grow wings and gradually turned to be 2 foot high as they gained levels, I think you might have a better argument.

They can, just not a first level

 

[Glyfair]

Elves, dwarves and halflings aren't usually presented as monsters, but rather the allies of the humans. The big giveaway is them being categorised as "demi-humans", as opposed to "humanoids" who are quite clearly delineated as monsters (although arguably this doesn't explain half-orcs).

I may have missed a reference, but I don't remember the demi-human vs. humanoid distinction since 3E was released. IMO, that's reasonably good since the differences are mostly artificial (demi-humans are PC races, humanoids are non-PC races).l

 

[Pants]

I may have missed a reference, but I don't remember the demi-human vs. humanoid distinction since 3E was released. IMO, that's reasonably good since the differences are mostly artificial (demi-humans are PC races, humanoids are non-PC races).l

Yeah, the term 'demi-human' is pretty much dead now. Didn't make sense to begin with anyways...

 

[JoeGKushner]

No, I agree, and I don't think that one side of this issue is entitled to dismiss the other. I don't prefer Eberron's vision of things, but it doesn't make it bad or uncreative. I think fantasy in any direction is interesting, but I think that this idea that Tolkien is somehow now exhausted or inferior is ignorant (by definition) but I wouldn't want to compound the error by saying anything as equally ignorant about the dungeonpunk genre.

I think that Tolkien's standard is aped so much that it's become familiar and for many, meaningless.

Ancient magic in the past that's fading today?

Resurfacing ancient evils?

Elfs and dwarves whose kingdoms are no longer in their hayday?

Over at RPG.net someone did a good spoof on Ed's new campaign setting and called it Generica. I feel that way too many fantasy campaign tend to suffer from that. Heck, too much fantasy fiction tends to suffer from that.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

In no way are golems or warforged robots. It's a cute phrase, but utterly meaningless.

Folks who equate the two should probably try expanding what they mean by "robot," since it's pretty clearly not the dictionary definition.

They are as close to robots as Isaac Asimov's creations. A mousetrap fits the definition of a 'real' robot - so does an automated welder, neither is all that interesting. Asimov's Bicentennial Man on the other hand is also what a lot of people think of when the term Robot is used.

Warforged can also partake of Pinocchio, take your pick between the fairly hapless protagonist in the Disney version or the rather darker original. Darker still they can be modeled on Frankenstein's monster.

While I do not think of Eberron's Warforged as robots I do not think that it is necessarily a bad model - as long as it is not used as a blanket reason to ignore the setting - 'robots do not belong in D&D -> Warforged are robots -> Warforged do not belong in D&D -> Warforged are in Eberron = Eberron does not belong in D&D.' Too simple and inaccurate a sentiment.

For that matter the original robots - in R.U.R. are a good example of warforged, in the end rebelling against their oppressive creators.

The Auld Grump