Introducing Racial Variants (again?)

[twilsemail]

Also notice how both of these racial options gets rid of the "Dwarves can use any rock and stick combination weapon" option that they denied was broken .

Last I checked, that feat's only pre-requisite was "Dwarf."

Unless you are, for some reason, arguing that getting proficiency in two military weapons was in some way broken...

 

[Klaus]

True enough. But they keep releasing articles about how D&D is just too confusing for people. This is much of why. They keep breaking away from a unified system and into little pockets of rules.

I don't see these as separate from the racial entry. The racial backgrounds use the background mechanic, and the variant racial powers are simply an extension of the racial entry described in PH or the Heroes of ____ books.

These mechanics give you more tools to play, say, a gold dwarf: you can devote a feat, a background choice or a racial benefit. Or, if you want to play the goldest of gold dwarves, go for broke and pick everything (and apply some Australian Gold while you're at it)!

 

[bganon]

Yeah, if there had been more support in the past I can certainly understand how it would be confusing.

But there's currently only a single feat to mechanically distinguish Sun elves from Moon elves, and even then it's just that they get a slightly different benefit from using Fey Step. I don't play FR, do people even take the Sun Elf feat? It looks pretty weak. And the FRPG has only location-based backgrounds, nothing based on race.

So if the Neverwinter book offers new ways to distinguish a Sun Elf from other elves (or eladrin), then hooray! It's pretty much automatically going to be more interesting than the single (rather weak) option that existed already.

 

[Incenjucar]

There are also Dusk Elves and variants of dragonborn and tieflings.

 

[Neverfate]

I don't play FR, do people even take the Sun Elf feat? It looks pretty weak. And the FRPG has only location-based backgrounds, nothing based on race.

So if the Neverwinter book offers new ways to distinguish a Sun Elf from other elves (or eladrin), then hooray! It's pretty much automatically going to be more interesting than the single (rather weak) option that existed already.

As someone who has a level 16 eladrin thief and 10th level eladrin bard in LFR, I can say that I've never seen, or have myself taken one of those feats. I just designate my character as a Moon elf. So this change up sounds promosing.

However, a lot of what WotC has done in the last year has been promising. They just don't seem to have the follow through. New classes get made and then go unsupported along with old classes that were new once and that didn't get much support. I'd like to see them to actually support more than just the main PHB1 races with these racial offshoots.

 

[JoeGKushner]

True enough. But they keep releasing articles about how D&D is just too confusing for people. This is much of why. They keep breaking away from a unified system and into little pockets of rules.

Yeah, I've mentioned this before. With a rules heavy system, the solution, strangely enough, isn't more rules.

It's building the options into the rules.

This is why Hero and GURPS, despite a wealth of options, tend to not have a ton of new rules but rather ways to skin them.

Or at least in my experience with 'em. I'm not too familiar with the latest version of Hero.

 

[WalterKovacs]

The big thing is:

Most of the feat concepts for things like bloodlines or sub-races, didn't work. They probably see, based on character builder feedback, people aren't taking them.

So, something you get 'for free', like a theme, alternate racial options, etc ... is more likely to be used than a feat tree that is competing with feat taxes, cool class options, multiclass feats, etc.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

The big thing is:

Most of the feat concepts for things like bloodlines or sub-races, didn't work. They probably see, based on character builder feedback, people aren't taking them.

So, something you get 'for free', like a theme, alternate racial options, etc ... is more likely to be used than a feat tree that is competing with feat taxes, cool class options, multiclass feats, etc.

I would agree with this. Most of them aren't that impressive. And the ones that are good have to be weighed against those class feats or multiclass options that are much more versatile or powerful, among other mechanically superior options.

Themes and backgrounds are the more logical place to put things like this anyway. Unfortunately, at this point it has a "rules bloat" effect because if they went in and removed the bloodline feats in favor of backgrounds people would scream bloody murder. Including people who have never taken one in their lives but are taking some sort of moral position on "removing choice."

They're not allowed to retroactively fix dumb ideas, so we're stuck with an absurd mix of good, bad, and indifferent ideas.

Frankly, I'd love to see them create a batch of good backgrounds for bloodlines and such and start removing feats. There are far, far too many feats already. They need to start excising them because they're becoming a liability rather than a feature during character creation. But that's probably an argument for a different thread.

 

[Neverfate]

For good or ill, WotC said it's our job to remove any feats that aren't useful (old weapon Expertise feats) or useless (Barreling Charge) from the selection process itself, likely because they cannot afford the time/manpower to do it themselves.

That said, I was doing some thinking and I can't check myself at the moment, but I'm pretty sure a lot of newer races, like PHB3, Dragon or HoS races haven't gotten Bloodline feats. Heritage feats have also been far and few between. This at least shows that while they are still adding to the game, they aren't adding to an area that doesn't need it like Feats. I'll take that as a win.

I also hope to see options for other races. I think that dwarves are as iconic D&D as you get, so I want to say that's why we see more support for them and why they were chosen first to be previewed. But I'd like to see if they even bother touching Shardminds or something as new as Shades (which many feel is the worst player race in game).

 

[Aegeri]

I hate the post essentials direction so much. Why did we need more Dwarves and Elves again? Will this kind of support ever manage to find it's way to anything outside of the PHB 1 (ahahaha, yeah I thought not)? Sigh.