New Playable Races?

[Dausuul]

Dausuul? Why? Because it's much, much harder to provide guidelines for functional play with evil PCs (and it is!), and most play is heroic, they've went with "heroic party, no evil PCs" as the standard ruleset.

Of course you can break this and still have functional play; it just requires knowing what you're doing and not being a jackass. But if you do so, you're already playing off-warantee, so it makes sense that when they're presenting "evilish" options for general consumptiom, they provide flavor in the best possible light. After all, they -are- providing options like the half-orc, the reventant, the assassin, the warlock, and genasi, and the minotaur (and, of course, the drow), so it's not like they're not giving out mechanical crunch that can be used to dark ends.

I'm not seeing where genasi are a "dark" race; I'll concede the rest. That said, I think the "functional play" argument is a dangerous road to go down, because it leads designers to don intellectual blinders. Good ideas get rejected out of hand because it's something you "can't do."

Look at what happened with magic items. There was a while when WotC was claiming they "couldn't do" powerful and flavorful magic items because they would result in non-functional play. Then somebody took off his or her blinders long enough to think up the item rarity system--and now we're going to get powerful and flavorful magic items.

I think the same thing is worth considering for "evil" races. Taking the yanki/zerai example: People want to play githyanki. If there is sufficient demand (which admittedly is an open question), I think it's worth searching for a way to meet that demand, and it shouldn't be a deal-breaker if you can't come up with a way to cram githyanki into a "heroic race" mold. Think about other ways that githyanki could function as PCs. The typical PC in a "kill monsters and take their stuff" game is a violent sociopath anyway.

 

[Cyronax]

PHANATONS!

THOULS!

BARIAURS!

 

[Wednesday Boy]

I'd love to have a grippli race. I always liked those little guys. And a half-ogre, but they could be emulated pretty easily with a half-orc or goliath.

 

[Cyronax]

Everyone's favorite furry mascot, the Senmurv:

 

[Istar]

Kobold

 

[Destil]

I want more complete goblinoids and better orcs for my Eberron game. That's pretty much it (though for the love of batman make one of the races have the Con/Int option already. Warforged are right there).

 

[Vael]

Kobolds, Goblinoids for Eberron and Dromites. What can I say, I have a soft spot for small psionic bug people.

 

[Mummolus]

Kobolds, Goblinoids for Eberron and Dromites. What can I say, I have a soft spot for small psionic bug people.

We couldn't go wrong with more insectoid races. Thri-Kreen are a start, hopefully they'll be getting more support soon.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

This image... where did it come from?

 

[Neonchameleon]

What playable races do you think will be developed next, for the next Player's Handbook or whatever.

Some suggestions I've thought of:

Satyrs- I think these would be great. Another fey race.

Another fey race. And the favourite of repressed fourteen year old boys. Yay.

Goblins- Why haven't these been done already? Good rogue possibility.

Here I agree.

Half-ogres- A race with the possibility of becoming large sized through feats.

We already have Goliaths. Why do we want half-ogres? And no large PCs in 4e please. At least not without it being the level 16 feature of a racial paragon path. (4e doesn't really do the feat-tree thing and you'd need a lot of feats to balance being large).

Sprites- Tiny fliers!

Well that's two deal-breakers. Utterly non-viable before Paragon and very very dodgy afterwards.

Of course, there could be new races as well
Dreamlings- creatures from the Plane of Dreams, who have illusory powers.

Why not?

Mutates- Humanoids touched by the Far Realms who are mutated, feats for different powers based on mutations

Foulborn Bloodline IMO does this much better as would other bloodlines. You start with a regular race before mutating it. And the mutations are progressive.

The race I want to see is the Kobold with a slightly nerfed Shifty. Orcs, gobs, and hobgobs would also be nice as they are such perennials. But other than the Large Paragon Path (again, we have obvious races here - no need for the half-ogres), most of the rest seem to either be Bladeling Mark Threes or redundant.