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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Anguish" data-source="post: 3851011" data-attributes="member: 27032">1} Shifters are mechanically a serious sign of what 4th edition will bring us.  I figure that the way Shifters can take feats to increase their utility, that's what races will be like, only we'll get those improvements automatically.2} Shifters are what we fear.  Where warforged are the sins of our fathers, shifters are what goes bump in the night.  Eberron's inclusion of warforged gives us the outsider.  The thing we don't understand.  Does it have a soul?  Does it feel?  Should it be a citizen?  Is it alive?  Warforged let players and DMs explore that rich emotional soil.  Shifters are one of literature's great monsters, in a playable form.  What's it like to be so closely related to a race of monsters that were hunted down and made almost extinct?  What's it like to play something nearly beastial, that civilized folk don't entirely trust?  Are you SURE your bite doesn't make me a wereweasel?  Shifters are sort of like orcs are in most settings, only not evil.  More like half-orcs.  You can play one, and NPCs you meet will be nervous.  Only it's one of our real-world big baddies.  It'd be like being able to play a low-LA vampire.  How bloody cool would that be?  "I only drink from volunteers, who are paid well, and only to survive.  Meanwhile, by day and night, I struggle to help the world we all share.  Think of this, before you hammer home that wooden stake."  Shifters have a place.  A strong place.3} Psysically shifters have a home in the Eldeen and Sarlona, as has been pointed out earlier.  The Eldeen, they're primarily used as a group of folk that are hiding from most of society, because they're outcasts.  But they had a strong role in The Last War, helping form an actual nation, since Aundair seemed to not care enough about it's western lands.  They're culturally rebels, not unlike Luke Skywalker.  On Sarlona, it's a bit more complicated, but they fit into the mash of trouble that the entire continent represents.  Their involvement doesn't spill out into the rest of the world, so if you're interested in that stuff, you'd best pick up Secrets of Sarlona.4} Racial roles are slid around and broadened in Eberron.  Half-orcs and orcs are semi-civilized, mostly druids, who revere and honour the land, like elves traditionally were portrayed.  Elves are spiritual warriors... war-princes who revel in the battle arts as they simultaneously give honour to their ancestors' spirits.  Think something like Japanese Samurai are commonly portrayed, perhaps.  This is a new-ish racial identity.  Gnomes are tinkerers, but in a real, involved and vibrant way, not a comical way.  Dwarves aren't much changed, I find.  Shifters fill the untrusted savage role formerly that of orcs and half orcs.  Warforged fill another brand new niche, of a racial guilt-trip.  Changelings obviously are the living intrigue race.  The point being that there's been a dramatic shuffle of racial identities and roles, and several new ones have been added.  Shifters very much have a place amongst that reorganization.Just my $.02  Not that I really play many shifters, but that's mostly because I have so much else to spend my feats on.  Though I had a shifter psychic warrior that I think could've ended up a pretty fun character.</blockquote>

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