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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6127599" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 317: March 2004part 2/8Dork tower has relationship issues. Two gamers with girlfriends in the same group? Surely not!Countdown to Eberron: Last teaser covered the role of all the standard classes, and the new one in Eberron. Not too surprisingly, this one does exactly the same with Races. All the regular ones are there, plus some more new coolness. Curiously enough, they leave out the warforged, which were ironically the most popular once the game came out, to focus on the LA+0 doppleganger and lycanthrope variants, which are slightly less imaginative. The fact that the core idea isn't completely original doesn't stop the implementation from being both interesting, and very mechanically fine-tuned though, as they've gone to a lot of effort to integrate them into the setting, and create race-exclusive feats that (hopefully) allow you to develop your innate abilities and remain balanced for your level. Some of them scale quadratically, with the power of the feats determined by the total number of heritage feats you possess. It all shows a definite refinement in their understanding of the 3e ruleset. If they didn't have to put everything core in, maybe they could have made the setting mechanically balanced and still interesting? Nah, it wouldn't sell as well. This teaser keeps my interest, once again showing what they're doing differently from the old days. It's all about the flexibility and inclusiveness, at least when it comes to races. Xenophilia: Our first proper article follows directly on from the teasers with another helping of new races. Let's see if they're as exotic as the issue's theme would like, or just another load of mysterious grimdark novel bait with angsty pasts. Adu'jan are somewhere between elves and treants, human-sized plant creatures with incredibly long lifespans, although they root as they get older. They tend to be even more serious about the connection to nature thing than elves, and are good at social stuff due to their control of pheromones, but can also be naive about realpolitik, and need plenty of sunlight to stay healthy. Dungeoneering isn't the best career path for them, but a few younglings will try it anyway. Gruwaars are evil fae that seem to be naturally disposed towards epic trolling, devoting themselves to agendas on a lark, and then dropping them just as suddenly. The important thing is the drama, not the cause. Which means they're likely to join up with an adventuring party, but trusting them will be another matter. Will you share the lulz with your party, or keep them all for yourself? Golemoids have the same basic idea as warforged, but different specifics. Originally created by gnomes as domestic servants, they eventually got turned into real boys and girls by Garl Glittergold, and now have a regular lifespan, and ability to breed more little golemoids. How twee. They're less mechanically interesting than Warforged as well, so I think these could safely have been cut by the editor knowing what's coming soon. T'kels were once your basic savage marauding humanoids, but now they've learned how to live in harmony with nature, and are advancing technologically pretty rapidly. This means they still have to deal with people who arre used to their old stereotype though, which is an interesting roleplaying challenge for both PC and DM. They get claws and a swim speed, which are basic enough abilities that they remain LA+0, but still useful. So while these races have quite interesting backstories, ability-wise they aren't particularly strange. I suppose they want the appearance of exoticism while not actually making them a problem to play in a group. Compromises, compromises.</blockquote>

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