Excerpt: Racial Benefits

[webrunner]

Both crunchy and patriotic!

.. even in milk!

 

[Andor]

The only problem I have with this is that you waste feat slot. Yeah you get more feat every other level now but still its not all that is cracked up to be. Now you get to choose between a racial feats, class feats, weapon feats and general feats and that's a lot feats, which what mention 3x more than 3.5 and not enough feat slots to really customize a concept.

I'm not following you on this. How is a feat slot wasted? It's only wasted if you don't like what you spent it on, and even then you can retrain it next level....

 

[Ingolf]

Is derren one of those people who hates 4E, has no intention of getting 4E and will never change his mind about it, but for some reason keeps coming on forums complaining about every single aspect of it?

Got it in one.

 

[Baka no Hentai]

One thing that they may do (and maybe it has been mentioned and I just missed it) is allow you to pick a racial feat at character creation free of charge. That seems logical to me, as in that way EVERY PC will exemplify at least one aspect that their race is known for. (This dwarf may be good with axes, and this other dwarf may be good with fighting giants, but they've all got something.)

If it is not done this way, it will be one of my first house rules. In fact, if they do allow you one free racial, I may just bump it up to two. (I like my PCs to be more on the powerful side, as it allows me to throw even deadlier stuff at them.)

 

[Storminator]

The only problem I have with this is that you waste feat slot. Yeah you get more feat every other level now but still its not all that is cracked up to be. Now you get to choose between a racial feats, class feats, weapon feats and general feats and that's a lot feats, which what mention 3x more than 3.5 and not enough feat slots to really customize a concept.

That's not wasting a feat, that's spending it. You have a lot of good choices, and you can't have them all. You can't be a generalist, multi-classing, weapon specializing, exemplar of your race... what's the problem?

Just means you have to play more characters to play with all the toys.

PS

 

[malraux]

The only problem I have with this is that you waste feat slot. Yeah you get more feat every other level now but still its not all that is cracked up to be. Now you get to choose between a racial feats, class feats, weapon feats and general feats and that's a lot feats, which what mention 3x more than 3.5 and not enough feat slots to really customize a concept.

I disagree. This gives you the ability to create concepts based around your class, your race, or some other theme. Certainly there should be some tough choices involved in character creation. None of these strike me as particularly awful, and they seem to do a decent job of making the racial feats roughly orthogonal to your class, that is, while they racial feats will certainly help each race in its traditional role, they are also useful outside of that role as well.

 

[Lizard]

Really? Race levels I felt were one of the worst 3.x/D20 rules made. How does an elf specialize in being an elf? You just are.

Always made sense to me. You spend time honing and improving your natural gifts, instead of working on training in a profession. It seems logical to me that if everyone in a race can do X, some will be better at X than others. And fantasy fiction is full of "You must learn the ways of the Ancient Great Ones, who truly mastered the gifts the gods have given us" bullcrap.

 

[Ulthwithian]

I find this is interesting. I generally have a good head for remembering situational modifiers, so that wasn't something that bothered me so much in 3.5, much less 4E.

I'd like to see them all before commenting fully, but it's very interesting. On a somewhat different note, for those of us who don't want to read Derren's quoted material, could people please not quote him even if responding to him? Just a little 'To Derren' entry at the beginning of the post should work fine.

 

[drothgery]

I wonder how this is explained:

"Light Step____Elf____Add to overland speed of group, +1 to Acrobatics and Stealth"

Knows better ways of trailblazing through wilderness, taking care of horses, making sure your feet don't get sore after hours of walking day after day, etc.

 

[el-remmen]

I wonder how this is explained:

"Light Step____Elf____Add to overland speed of group, +1 to Acrobatics and Stealth"

I'd look at it as a natural affinity for picking the best routes, etc. . . I assume "overland" means greater distances when traveling, not tactical movement. . . so it makes sense to me.


Unrelated question:

This article game me the impression darkvision is gone. . . Has this been mentioned before?


P.S. Jeez, I hate the idea of dragonborn as a core race. Talk about killing sense of wonder.