Excerpt: Racial Benefits

[Kunimatyu]

The biggest concern to me, as DM, is the continuity. If I was a beginning DM with "newbie" players, I don't think it would break anyone's Sense of Disbelief to tell them, for example, that Fomorians are rulers of the Feywild. However, I can't do that for my players unless I come up with pretty good reasons how those primitive, mutated giants huddling in remote caves.

1) Your players won't care.

2) If by some bizarre chance they do, just say that the Formorians they've seen on the Material Plane are simply poor exiles from the Feywild, ones who've lost many of the powers the Feywild Formorians have, because Formorians without the everpresent magic of the Feywild devolve into primitive, mutated giants huddling in remote caves.

 

[DandD]

1) Your players won't care.

2) If by some bizarre chance they do, just say that the Formorians they've seen on the Material Plane are simply poor exiles from the Feywild, ones who've lost many of the powers the Feywild Formorians have, because Formorians without the everpresent magic of the Feywild devolve into primitive, mutated giants huddling in remote caves.

3) Simply continue your old campaign, after you've roughly updated your characters from 3.X to 4.0.

4) Just tell them it's a new setting, and a new game. Some people can easily distinguish between Warhammer Fantasy Elves, The Dark Eye Elves, D&D Forgotten Realms Elves, D&D Dark Sun Elves, D&D Dragonlance Elves, Blizzard's WoW Elves, SquareEnix Final Fantasy XI Elvaan, Star Trek Vulcans, and whatever pointy-ear there is.

 

[Mort_Q]

Some people can easily distinguish between Warhammer Fantasy Elves, The Dark Eye Elves, D&D Forgotten Realms Elves, D&D Dark Sun Elves, D&D Dragonlance Elves, Blizzard's WoW Elves, SquareEnix Final Fantasy XI Elvaan, Star Trek Vulcans, and whatever pointy-ear there is.

Gnomes

 

[Rechan]

3) Simply continue your old campaign, after you've roughly updated your characters from 3.X to 4.0.

4) Just tell them it's a new setting, and a new game. Some people can easily distinguish between Warhammer Fantasy Elves, The Dark Eye Elves, D&D Forgotten Realms Elves, D&D Dark Sun Elves, D&D Dragonlance Elves, Blizzard's WoW Elves, SquareEnix Final Fantasy XI Elvaan, Star Trek Vulcans, and whatever pointy-ear there is.

5) Instead of Formorians, use something else.

 

[Sammael]

1) Your players won't care.

Could you be any more presumptuous?

I've been chewed out, in the past, by my players, for making much smaller retcons than this one. Sure, your second statement makes a perfectly valid retcon. Of course, the original post implies that Feywild will be retconned into the setting, which is a much larger change - unless the campaign already had a similar plane (mine uses the Plane of Faerie).

I've found that my players, at least, like continuity. I love it, and try to maintain a semblance of continuity between all my campaigns (regardless of which players participate in them), because sharing the world in such a manner opens up all kinds of adventure hooks and plots which I would have never thought of myself.

 

[Immolate]

Gark and Nark, orc brutes, are part of a raiding party that is assaulting a merchant's caravan that the PC's are defending. Hodo Bigguns, a halfling fighter, is standing between them and the wizard and ranger, who are creating all kind of havok among the other orcs.

Gark: let's cut that half-pint down, then kill off the squishies!

Nark: uh... okay, why not.

They both set upon Hodo, but in the first round, neither can lay a sword on him.

Gark: bah, can't hit the slippery little eel. He keeps getting underfoot! He's got me marked though, so you go on ahead, and I'll catch up if I don't start hitting him soon.

Nark: uh... okay.

Nark runs around and starts laying the smack-down on Mandarb, the half-elf ranger.

Gark continues to battle Hodo, and notices that he's much easier to hit now, so contents himself with trading blows with the little fellow.

So... there is no good reason for two brutes to focus on the halfling defender, because the defender isn't a damage dealer, while the wizard and ranger are. Most opponents aren't so stupid that they can't figure out that the defender is using their numbers against them. Since the fighter is only really good at tying up one, the other has no good reason to stay, and plenty of good reasons to leave.

At that point, the Hodo Bigguns has only a slight advantage in AC against a dwarven defender, and none over a human, who has probably put his stat bonus into an attribute that counts for fighters in heavy armor. Further, the human has more feats to play with. The dwarf has a whole host of defender-friendly abilities to make up for the +1 AC that the halfling enjoys.

The halfling will still make a good defender, but his advantages will only balance his natural weaknesses, rather than add to his strengths. His situational advantage will be big, but as my example demonstrates, it won't take long for opponents to figure it out, if they don't know about it going in.

 

[The Little Raven]

Nark runs around and starts laying the smack-down on Mandarb, the half-elf ranger.

Nark would have provoked an attack of opportunity for movement from Hodo, and if Hodo was successful, he would have been unable to move and marked as well.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The funny thing is, some (if not most) of the ardent 4ers who argue for a strong implied setting (inspiring! easy to ignore if you like!) are also arguing for monsters that are nothing more than mechanics (monster fluff limits my creativity! it can't be ignored!). And vice versa with the 4e nay-sayers: we don't want an implied setting, we want a toolbox! ...and monsters that are full of implied setting-ness!

For one side, fluff without mechanics to represent them is meaningless. That means a monster must have all the rituals, spells and items it might use in its description. But this also means that a mechanic has fluff attached to it, and I don't care the fluff, I can't use the mechanic.

For another side, fluff without mechanics means that it can either be ignored or be used as an inspiration. A monster with a lot of mechanics just to fulfill some fluff aspects of the creature means the monster is hard to use, because you'll have to find out which of the abilities are really relevant if you want to use the monster or change its fluff.



I think both sides generally agree that fluff that describes a character and what he does in his adventuring career should usually also be represented in mechanics. We're playing pretend, but we will only go so far. Some people extend this to other aspects, too, so sometimes they need mechanical elements for even more, profession (cook), underwater basketweaving, scarring or mental dispositions.

 

[med stud]

So... there is no good reason for two brutes to focus on the halfling defender, because the defender isn't a damage dealer, while the wizard and ranger are. Most opponents aren't so stupid that they can't figure out that the defender is using their numbers against them. Since the fighter is only really good at tying up one, the other has no good reason to stay, and plenty of good reasons to leave.

This is wrong, defenders deal as much damage as controllers. They are harder to kill, so there is a reason for monsters to bypass them. The problems with bypassing the defender is that the defender can follow, and in that case the monster is sandwiched between the defender and the strikers/controllers. That is one good reason not to run by the defender.

 

[Wormwood]

The funny thing is, some (if not most) of the ardent 4ers who argue for a strong implied setting (inspiring! easy to ignore if you like!) are also arguing for monsters that are nothing more than mechanics .

I want a strong implied setting so I can play the game out of the box. I also want monster stat blocks to be simplified and focused on combat utility.

There is no contradiction here.