D&D 5E Lets talk about the Forgotten Realms

[Grimmjow]

SORRY FOR BABBLING!


So from what I hear the Forgotten Realms is the most popular campaign setting D&D has to offer. Going off of this it will probably be the first setting to be released during DDN. So, when it comes out what should it look like? What should have changed? What should still be the same? Should the spell plague have happened? What kind of dwarf, elf, and halfling sub-races should there be? What about backgrounds and themes? (i call them themes ). Should bladesigner be a class or a wizard tradition and why?

4e's forgotten realms introduced the Drow race and the Genasai races. Should the drow be a elven sub-race or a race of its own? How about the Genasai?? Should they get sub-races that work as the 4e manifestations? (fire, storm, water, earth, wind?) should these two races even be in the game?

What about the 4e swordmage? From the looks of it the play-test 2-3 sorcerer is going to be turned into the swordmage. Should they do anything with the swordmage in FR? (May be be to early to decide seeing has how we havn't seen the new swordmage)

What other things can we had to the classes that we can assume will be in the core rules? Fighter, rogue, cleric?

I liked the way warlocks were going in the play-test and would like to see a dark pact warlock presented.

What else is important in the forgotten realms?

 

[Blackbrrd]

I really do feel that 4e introducing so many new races really didn't make very good sense. There are just too many different races in my opinion. It's more a criticism of 4e than of FR. I don't necessarily see FR continuing on from where 4e left off.

 

[Steely_Dan]

Well, in my FR campaign, as of 24 years, Elminster died, and Drizzt is now working as rough trade (a rent-boy) in Calimport.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

SORRY FOR BABBLING!

So from what I hear the Forgotten Realms is the most popular campaign setting D&D has to offer. Going off of this it will probably be the first setting to be released during DDN. So, when it comes out what should it look like? What should have changed? What should still be the same?

I thought a few of 4e's changes were needed, but WotC went way overboard with the changes. I think they could move the setting back (kind of like what they did with Dark Sun) to a proper point in time, which I would consider the death of Mystra.

There would be no need for a massive timejump which eliminated big parts of the setting. All that work you did on the Xanathar's Thieves' Guild ruined? Friendship with the High Queen of the elves lost? Well, now it's back.

Then freeze the setting in time. No more novels to advance the storyline. Novels would serve to flesh out the storyline, hopefully in a manner similar to Eberron (so not contradicting what your own PCs have done).

I'd also (breaking the fourth wall a bit here) have the Spellplague affect powerful wizards more than other characters. (It wouldn't affect the PCs at all, so no need for Will saves to resist or anything.) That's a way to eliminate the random epic-level wizards plaguing the setting beyond the Chosen of Mystra. The DM can always determine which high-level wizards have not been affected; this need not be flatly stated in the books.

Should the spell plague have happened?

Yes, but the effects can be toned down if necessary.

What kind of dwarf, elf, and halfling sub-races should there be?

Why are those even necessary? Do these mechanical differences do anything good for the setting? And if these subraces have to be there, why do they have to be playable? Do halflings that can talk telepathically actually make the setting better or create a better play experience? Do you really need dwarves that resist cold?

In short, I think subraces should be flavor text only. Ghostwise halflings could take a feat to talk telepathically, and it's culturally expected that you take that training (explaining why virtually every NPC halfling has that ability).

What about backgrounds and themes? (i call them themes ).

New ones are needed, yes. But probably only a few. Most or all D&DN are already applicable to FR.

Should bladesigner be a class or a wizard tradition and why?

A class. I doubt WotC will agree however. I like the 4e role system, and would classify the bladesinger under two builds, a defender build and a striker build. WotC will probably insist on multiclassing however.

4e's forgotten realms introduced the Drow race and the Genasai races. Should the drow be a elven sub-race or a race of its own?

In terms of flavor, or in terms of stats? Drow have been a statistically separate race for over a decade. For balance reasons they don't need all the other elven abilities (resistance to sleep, etc).

How about the Genasai?? Should they get sub-races that work as the 4e manifestations? (fire, storm, water, earth, wind?) should these two races even be in the game?

Genasi are one of those fringe races that don't really improve the game. I don't particularly care what comes of them, but IMO you shouldn't be able to "switch" between different types of genasi. Each individual genasi would have one of the four or five manifestations at start, probably granted as a bonus feat with feat-like levels of power. (So mostly flavor.)

What about the 4e swordmage? From the looks of it the play-test 2-3 sorcerer is going to be turned into the swordmage. Should they do anything with the swordmage in FR? (May be be to early to decide seeing has how we havn't seen the new swordmage)

Swordmage and bladesigner are two different names for the same thing - a fighter/mage. The role division only came about in 4e. So see what I said about the bladesinger above. Maybe elves call their swordmages bladesingers and tend to be more strikerish.

What other things can we had to the classes that we can assume will be in the core rules? Fighter, rogue, cleric?

Other than new cleric domains (I don't think there's domains in D&DN yet though) I wouldn't expect significant changes. The differences between FR and other settings have little to do with the machanics.

I liked the way warlocks were going in the play-test and would like to see a dark pact warlock presented.

The flavor of the dark pact warlock sounds quite a bit like dark elf "sorceresses" of Slaanesh in the Warhammer setting. (The setting has a deity which the dark elves worship - and I'm happy to say it's not a deity of a different race - but I don't recall any real priestesses.) But I have to wonder, given that Lolth is something like a demon, why does the dark pact have to exist? Wouldn't a drow warlockess be essentially an infernal warlock? Unless there's a mechanical difference (eg it's a controller rather than a striker) then I'd expect it to just vanish. Any dark pact-like powers become part of the infernal pact.

The other changes might be pantheon changes. There's probably no good way of doing this. You can either trim deities (ticking off some fans) or add more (eg a deity for evil elves who aren't drow and don't want to worship Bane).

 

[Shemeska]

4e's forgotten realms introduced the Drow race and the Genasai races.

Drow have been around since 1e (as a PC race, off the top of my head I know they were in 3e, possibly earlier), and Genasi have been around as a PC race since 2e.

As far as genasi subtypes, I'd like to see the classic 4 elements, with options for various paraelemental mixes and more esoteric ones (be they 2e/3e quasielemental or 4e ones).

 

[the Jester]

SORRY FOR BABBLING!


So from what I hear the Forgotten Realms is the most popular campaign setting D&D has to offer. Going off of this it will probably be the first setting to be released during DDN. So, when it comes out what should it look like? What should have changed? What should still be the same? Should the spell plague have happened?

I believe their plan is to offer adventuring options in all eras of the FR, so you can choose what you like best. Personally, if I were to run an FR game (which I don't), it would be Grey Box (1e). Other folks really like the 2e, 3e or 4e versions, and there have been supplements set in other eras as well. So I think they're making the right choice here, though it cuts the size of the audience available for FR adventures.

What kind of dwarf, elf, and halfling sub-races should there be? What about backgrounds and themes? (i call them themes ).

FR has a list of subraces for the standard D&D races already; there's no need to change it. As for backgrounds and themes, I think a few region-specific ones would be cool.

Should bladesigner be a class or a wizard tradition and why?

A bladesinger should be a prestige class built off of an elven fighter/mage chassis.

4e's forgotten realms introduced the Drow race and the Genasai races. Should the drow be a elven sub-race or a race of its own? How about the Genasai?? Should they get sub-races that work as the 4e manifestations? (fire, storm, water, earth, wind?) should these two races even be in the game?

A quibble- neither of those was new to 4e. (Drow go back to 1e, in fact, even as a pc race.)

I don't allow Drow pcs in my game, but I'm pretty sure we'll see them in FR pretty early on. Genasi, probably, too, just so that existing pcs can be easily converted over. That said, since I don't generally allow them either (for reasons of campaign flavor), I don't much care how they are handled.

What about the 4e swordmage? From the looks of it the play-test 2-3 sorcerer is going to be turned into the swordmage. Should they do anything with the swordmage in FR? (May be be to early to decide seeing has how we havn't seen the new swordmage)

I really don't think we need a swordmage base class. I'd prefer to limit base classes to reasonably distinct, hard to achieve via multiclassing kinds of things. I'd rather see swordmage as a prestige class. (I wouldn't mind having a bunch of prestige classes that are distinctly different that all focus on multiclassing warrior-casters in different ways.)

What other things can we had to the classes that we can assume will be in the core rules? Fighter, rogue, cleric?

I'm not sure what you mean here. I don't think the FR fighter should be any different than a core fighter, if that's what you're thinking.

I liked the way warlocks were going in the play-test and would like to see a dark pact warlock presented.

I'd like to see a whole ton of distinct warlock pacts, dark included.

What else is important in the forgotten realms?

I'll leave this one to the FR aficionados.

 

[Shemeska]

So from what I hear the Forgotten Realms is the most popular campaign setting D&D has to offer. Going off of this it will probably be the first setting to be released during DDN. So, when it comes out what should it look like? What should have changed? What should still be the same? Should the spell plague have happened?

It certainly was the most popular campaign for a very long time. I was a big fan of the setting and I purchased pretty much every 3e book and went back and collected a decent chunk of 2e material.

If it still is the most popular campaign setting, that's an interesting question because I suspect the way they handled the 3e/4e transition lost a lot of its fanbase. I went from buying most of the novels and all of the sourcebooks to none and none. And it saddens me, because I really liked the setting and there are more than a few novel writers whose work I really enjoyed from 3e FR but I've skipped their work on 4e FR because I can't get over the feeling of awkward distaste the setting changes evoked, completely independant of them. I'd really like to be able to enjoy their work fully again, because there are some really really good authors in the FR stable (thankfully for me they've also written outside of FR, so I'm not totally bereft of enjoyment there).

But, and it's a promising sign, they're certainly going all out to try to get those fans back, and they're making some good sounding moves (giving Greenwood a front and center position in the development of the 5e version of the setting for instance). However they've also said that they aren't going to retcon the Spellplague or timejump, which I worry may be a total non-starter for a portion of the fanbase they're trying to get back. How big of a portion isn't willing to accept the setting with the 4e continuity still there I can't say, and how many of them have moved on to other settings in the last few years I also can only speculate.

They're trying to get back a lot of community good will, and they're saying a lot of the right things, and at this stage I'm willing to wait and see what they do. That said, my optimum way of handling it would be to either completely retcon the Spellplague or split the setting into two timelines (supporting more heavily whichever one was more popular).

 

[GX.Sigma]

I really do feel that 4e introducing so many new races really didn't make very good sense. There are just too many different races in my opinion. It's more a criticism of 4e than of FR. I don't necessarily see FR continuing on from where 4e left off.

I think they should all exist in the Realms (which almost all of them have since 2e or earlier). It's a big place.

I see it as a problem of presentation: if there was an AD&D FR adventure where you find a city of half-fiends, descended from nobles who bargained with devils, you'd probably go "oh, cool."

The problem happens when the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting says "There are 7 races in the Realms: Human, Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, Tiefling, Dragonborn, and Eladrin."

 

[Steely_Dan]

Drow have been around since 1e

And that's where they were first established as having a penchant for two-weapon-fighting (dual-wielding).

 

[Steely_Dan]

They're trying to get back a lot of community good will, and they're saying a lot of the right things, and at this stage I'm willing to wait and see what they do. That said, my optimum way of handling it would be to either completely retcon the Spellplague or split the setting into two timelines (supporting more heavily whichever one was more popular).

Yeah, at this point Star Warsing it's ass may be the last bastion of defence.