Kalashtar are confirmed for the Eberron Player's Guide!

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

So are there any actual doppelgangers in 4E?

I'll have to check the MM1 to see if there is more than one stat block, but I am certain that they are under the same heading (Doppelganger or Changling).

 

[Asmor]

I'll have to check the MM1 to see if there is more than one stat block, but I am certain that they are under the same heading (Doppelganger or Changling).

4e doppelgangers are 3e changelings. They have no inherent psychic abilities or any of that silliness, IIRC, though I'm too lazy to go look it up.

 

[Spatula]

So are there any actual doppelgangers in 4E?

What's an "actual" doppelganger? If you mean appearance, no - the 4e doppelganger pretty much looks like the Eberron changelings. The MM1 stats out a doppelganger sneak, a doppelganger assassin, and has PC/NPC stats for the race. Their racial abilities have a mentalist theme (+1 Will, skill bonuses to Bluff and Insight), and the assassin has a "cloud mind" ability.

 

[doctorhook]

Monster power levels are much more relative in 4E; you can take a monster concept and create it at basically any level. In 3.5E, I think the reason Changelings were created was to solve the problem that Doppelganger stats didn't make for very good PCs on account of their advanced power level and the ECL debacle. Mechanically, both creatures do pretty much the same things, except that the Doppelganger can read minds. Thus, if you consider the Changeling to be basically a +0 LA version of the Doppelganger, then you'll see that there's not much difference between the two races aside from power level. Since power level is very relative in 4E, the two races would have been 95% redundant with one another in the new edition.

As for why the 4E Doppelgangers look like 3.5E's Changelings, I have no idea -- to make them look less "alien", and thus more suitable as a player race, perhaps?

I wonder what, if anything, will come of "Greater Doppelgangers" in 4E? Will they retain the extraterrestrial appearance of previous editions? Will they have psionic abilities? I think such a creature could make a great Controller, Skirmisher, or Lurker monster.

 

[I'm A Banana]

What's an "actual" doppelganger?

It's kind of a blurry line. Traditionally, doppelgangers in D&D are not the same things as changelings. Doppelgangers were intelligent, evil creatures suitable for "villain mastermind" status who had powerful shape-shifting and mind-reading abilities such that they could effectively kill someone in power and take their place without anyone (except, inevitably, the PC's) knowing the difference.

Changelings were billed more as subtle rogues who could hide in a crowd, who brought the identity question of "who am I?" to the Eberron setting (which is pretty suffused with questions of identity in general). They wouldn't so much take someone's place as they would lurk in the urban underbelly as scofflaws who couldn't be fingered.

4e doppelgangers don't have a whole lot of the first, and they've got plenty of the latter, though it might be said that the first is really just a "leveled up villain version" of the latter, which is a pretty fair argument. High level changelings and doppelgangers can pretty much fill the same role. But the more alien "race of psychic body-snatchers" isn't present anymore. You could still have 4e doppelgangers having a cabal of psychic body-snatchers, but because the entire race isn't quite like that, it lends a different sort of feel to the idea.

Still, it's a subtle difference, and rolling the two concepts together is, in my mind, not a bad move, since they were so close to begin with.

 

[Pseudonym]

(benign) aberrant horrors

A true enough description, but a funny notion none the less.

 

[doctorhook]

A true enough description, but a funny notion none the less.

lol I suppose it is kinda funny, isn't it? Eberron's cool like that; it likes to flip standard fantasy tropes on their heads.