Honestly, if WoTC didn't create it would 4e be D&D?

[hong]

Yes, well, some of us have a suspension of disbelief that not only defies gravity, but is like a rocket to the moon, and would immediately start drafting notes for empires of talking toasters had WOTC put them in as a core PC race. (And yeah, I know they're in Toon.)

There is nothing particularly hard about believing that dragonborn and tieflings coexist. It was all laid out in Worlds & Monsters, and this material is also repeated in the DMG. In fact, the histories of these races are inextricably linked together. Your inability to digest this material speaks of a digestive tract grown fragile with age.

A D&D without wizards is quirky for D&D, so you live with the ban given the fact that you know you're going for a quirky campaign.

You say this like it's a negative thing.

When the default implied setting is quirky, and you have to ban just to get a "normal D&D experience", you know that the implied setting has gone off the rails.

I'll bet you've never banned halflings either.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I don't care about what "the world" thinks - and it's not just the world they've borked up, it's countless D&D worlds because they've borked up the implied setting, for goodness sake.

Why does it affect thousands of settings? Nobody is forced to use the implied setting, or even base anything on it. But it provides a good starting point for someone inexperienced that still wants to homebrew his own campaign. Anyone with a lot of experience in this stuff can rip out all the races and classes he doesn't like.

You can still dislike that WotC tries to add races that players seemed to have desired for long. And maybe that makes it "not D&D" for you. Me, I like new shiny toys. To compensate, I am less flexible concerning real world matters.
...
So, why am I even discussing this again?

 

[rounser]

There is nothing particularly hard about believing that dragonborn and tieflings coexist.

I have no problem with that; it's what gets called a core race that I have a problem with. Do you understand that what gets made a core race or core class actually matters in terms of the game's implied setting, theme and flavour? That dragonborn are now "assumed" to exist in every world in a PC context, putting up their feet and incinerating the furniture in taverns everywhere, UNLESS you specifically get rid of the ugly, arbitrary so-and-so's?

Your inability to digest this material speaks of a digestive tract grown fragile with age.
I'll bet you've never banned halflings either.

You really like to play the man and not the ball, don't you?

I'd have no problems if it were a single campaign world. I'd gobble that right down, along with banned halflings, psionic alien lizardmen riding tarrasques, and PC flumph power rangers. What you fail to acknowledge is that the implied setting is much bigger than a single quirky world, and imposes stuff by default on every world, unless you specifically ban it. I can't be bothered banning this stuff, and it doesn't inspire me because there's a bad taste left over if I have to, so there's a whole lot of let's not bother involved.

Why talk about it then? Frustration, incredulity...and habit, I guess. I'm really annoyed with how short-sighted WOTC have been this time around. It'll pass, and D&D will have it's precious dragonborn warlords without me.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

It'll pass, and D&D will have it's precious dragonborn warlords without me.

Exactly what I am going to play for our 4E converted Savage Tides campaign!

 

[hong]

I have no problem with that; it's what gets called a core race that I have a problem with. Do you understand that what gets made a core race or core class actually matters in terms of the game's implied setting, theme and flavour? That dragonborn are now "assumed" to exist in every world in a PC context, putting up their feet and incinerating the furniture in taverns everywhere, UNLESS you specifically get rid of the ugly, arbitrary so-and-so's?

Seeing as how my first long-term D&D game featured no halfings, elves, dwarves, gnomes, wizards, clerics, paladins, psions or psychic warriors, I fail to see why this is such a terrible thing. I'm sure that my D&D game world appreciates the concern, though.

 

[rounser]

Seeing as how my first long-term D&D game featured no halfings, elves, dwarves, gnomes, wizards, clerics, paladins, psions or psychic warriors, I fail to see why this is such a terrible thing. I'm sure that my D&D game world appreciates the concern, though.

The difference this time around, for me at least, is that there's been nothing in the core of D&D which has actively pissed me off enough to want to ban it in every campaign I'd run, and would annoy me somewhat in ones I played in run by other people.

Warlords and dragonborn meet that criteria in spades, and that's a new experience for me. That's why the implied setting is no longer a friendly place, for me at least, and it always was before. Even when it was being weird and against type (e.g. assassins with spells, monks in the oriental sense in an otherwise occidental setting) you could overlook it's idiosyncracies, sort of. Now, the stupid is in your face in the form of an entire stupid class and race, IMO. That's new, and kills my desire to run the game, though it obviously poses no problems for you.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Warlords and dragonborn meet that criteria in spades, and that's a new experience for me.

Whilst I can totally understand disliking Dragonborn, they are quite change from the "normal" D&D setting imho, what's wrong with Warlords? When HP are clearly not just "damage", you're surely not simply objecting to the fact that they can heal (which in most cases in 4E means "help someone heal themselves" rather than blast them with healing rays), so what is it about them that you're finding so monumentally retarded.

If it is that they can heal, then your problem isn't with them as much as the fact that they've "clarified" (i.e. completely re-worked to the point where previous perceptions are invalid) what Hit Points are, and thus such a class now potentially makes sense.

 

[Mallus]

The difference this time around, for me at least, is that there's been nothing in the core of D&D which has actively pissed me off enough to want to ban it in every campaign I'd run, and would annoy me somewhat in ones I played in run by other people.

I've never run a world with gnomes. Heck, my current world has humans, warforged (a late addition), and four homemade races. I take what I like from the RAW and make up the rest. It's half the fun (3/4, even)!

That's why the implied setting is no longer a friendly place, for me at least, and it always was before

What's this fascination with the implied setting with regard to fluff? Use what you like, discard or re-skin the rest. Why do all these settings and campaigns you're not actually playing at the time matter so much? Or at all?

 

[rounser]

what's wrong with Warlords?

What isn't?

1) They don't fit an adventuring party, they should be commanding an army. An adventuring party is a group of heroes who cooperate, not a military hierarchy with orders being thrown around. This is the first class that actually attacks the nature of the adventuring party, and implies that everyone's running Black Company. Very, very shortsighted. All of a sudden, if someone takes "warlord", your formerly independent Conan-type becomes a shoe-licking subservient looking up to the inspiration and guiding tactical light of his precious master and hierarchical leader, because that's what the sodding rules imply.

2) The name is completely wrong. A warlord has land and troops, has current currency of commiting atrocities, and the status the name implies makes no sense at low level. It's like having a first level archmage. There is no role behind the name - the idea of saying "we need a new warlord" in the tavern is ludicrous - adventuring parties are adventurers, not soldiers. They go on adventures by default, they don't "declare war"! This name, this concept, belong on a battlefield with soldiers at the "warlord's" beck and call, and a D&D party is NOT that.

3) The warlord's powers imply that somehow he's more knowledgeable about archery than the ranger, more knowledgeable about blade combat than the specialist fighter - he's the dork know-it-all who somehow knows better than the specialists about their specialty, if they'd only listen to him. It makes no sense in a D&D class context, where classes are the masters of their own specialist domains. The warlord's specialist domain is "illegitimate contemptuous out-of-line order-barking know-it-all who deserves to be ignored if it weren't for the stupid rules" IMO.

4) If they really have to exist in the game, IMO all the warlord's powers should have been dismembered and distributed among the legitimate D&D classes. The ranger should be instructing the other PCs on how best to do archery, the fighter how to fight with a sword and board maybe, the paladin should inspire with his righteous divine courage etc.

Okay, enough ranting...but really, argh!

 

[WayneLigon]

I can't be bothered banning this stuff

I don't see as that leaves you a whole lot of room to complain, then. If you want an implicit setting served up to you that you don't have to change, then you either have to hunt long and hard, hope and pray that some third-party makes a setting you can stand, or else learn to live with disappointment. Or do what everyone else does and modify the game according to their taste.

It's good and also quite astonishing that up until now, the entire panoply of D&D's implied world has been OK with you but surely you knew that at some point it had to change?

I've had to modify things in D&D since the first time I GMed. I can't stand the traditional D&D troll's looks. It just makes me shake my head everytime I see it, and not even Wayne Reynolds art can make it palatable to me. Or the 1E Orc. Or the Great Wheel or at least a dozen or couple-dozen little details that I changed in every game I've ever run. That's just part of world-building and being a GM.