Excerpt: Racial Benefits

[med stud]

Unfortunately in the larger text it states -

Action Surge [Human]
Prerequisite: Human
Benefit: You gain a +3 bonus to attack rolls you make during any action you gained by spending an action point.

Sounds restricted to a single action to me. Still, +3 to hit on your most clutch attack isn't a bad deal.

Oh, I didn't see that. But I agree, +3 to one attack is very nice as well.

On the situational modifiers: It looks like PCs will have many situational modifers. IME, players tend to remember what they can do to a much larger degree than DMs . I also think that all these modifiers are such an obvious potential problem that the designers must have looked very close at this. Often the broken aspects of a game are the things that look small from the start (like polymorph 3e; if the designers and playtesters don't use that spell to it's full potential, it can easily go under the radar). I think the broken aspects of 4e won't be anything that people think it will be now.

 

[Khaalis]

The only issue I have with the information presented is that it makes me wonder if "Flavor" feats are going to be suboptimal choices over more 'class ability focused' feats, or if they will truly make all feats of roughly equal value in one situation or another. I would hate to think that if someone wanted to play a fully archetypical elf or dwarf, having to gain somewhere from 3 to close to a half dozen or so feats (or more) to do so, that it would create a more "gimped" character than someone who goes after min/max oriented class power oriented feats. I really hope they managed to pull off the proposed "you can't accidentally gimp yourself" design.

 

[essenbee]

This is good stuff; I really like they things they are doing with 4e character-development-wise.

 

[Pinotage]

So many situational modifiers...

Yes, that's my only niggle as well. I'm all in favor of making race more worthwhile, but it seems the situational modifiers are all over the place. With elves running about and their racial abilities, and half-elves with feats that affect the whole party, and others it might just become too much. I hope I'm wrong.

Pinotage

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

Given that we've also heard that Dragonborn can gain wings at higher levels, I've now got a all-Dragonborn party in my head, swooping in from on-high and unleashing breath weapons on their foes...

...whilst the players are no doubt singing Ride of the Valyries...

...dah DUM da da dah dah, DUM da da dah dah...

 

[hong]

Okay, it looks like they weren't kidding about majorly toning down feats. This makes the multiclass power-swap thing better.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I love the smell of bat guano in the morning...

 

[Voss]

Yeah, not a fan of the situational modifiers either. Since quite a few are auras as well, its a serious pain. Given how clumsy this was in 3rd edition, I do not understand why they chose to inflict it on us again.


I'm glad they didn't go with 'racial levels' though. Those were incredibly badly done, especially since they took away from your class.

The action surge thing puzzles me. Either it changed to a human feat slightly before or after the playtest, or the half-elf is really just a borrower of other people's stuff.

 

[Derren]

Given that we've also heard that Dragonborn can gain wings at higher levels, I've now got a all-Dragonborn party in my head, swooping in from on-high and unleashing breath weapons on their foes...

But that will break D&D because flying is such a ultra powerful ability and you can't expect that in a world with many flying monsters and spells which make you fly soldiers carry a ranged weapon!!!!!!

 

[Nightchilde-2]

Reading that Bragon Breath part, I'll still never used to perfectly square breath weapons, though... :\

I'm not sure if anyone's brought this up before or not, but I had a "Eureka!" moment...

It's not that the breath weapon itself (dragonborn or dragon) is perfectly square. It's that the critter is turning his head/body and breathing a continuous stream of (insert breath weapon here) all around him.

It's all in how you visualize it...