Origins of the "New" Races

[thecasualoblivion]

but gnomes are monsters. They can desecrate those corpses!

rawr!

 

[Plane Sailing]

Eh, the name "eladrin" is really the only new thing about that concept of elves.

Did I miss the teleportarama of previous elves somewhere along the line ?

 

[Tuft]

Did I miss the teleportarama of previous elves somewhere along the line ?

The teleportorama is an artefact of the 4E combat system.

 

[Fifth Element]

Did I miss the teleportarama of previous elves somewhere along the line ?

I don't think a very short-range teleport once every five minutes significantly affects the concept of the high-arcana elf.

 

[Mallus]

I don't think a very short-range teleport once every five minutes significantly affects the concept of the high-arcana elf.

Yeah... I'm not getting how an elf that can occasionally slip into Faerie is somehow less elf-y. How do you think they stole all those children?

 

[Prisoner6]

While I'll admit to a certain wistful regret that my PC's can no longer desecrate dead gnomes, I don't actually miss gnomes .

At least we resurrected him when we got back to town.

 

[SKyOdin]

As said before, Dragonborn came out of the ridiculous popularity of Dragons and dragon-like characters. A few years ago, a fellow player in a D&D campaign I was in described a campaign he tried to start where the PCs were allowed to play almost any monster available in Savage Species. Without conspiring with each other, every single player elected to play a half-dragon.

Heck, I have seen dragon-like humanoids in anime series, videogames, and other works of fiction for years before 4E came out. People just like dragons. Since playing a dragon is problematic, playing something that is similar to a dragon is the next best thing.

 

[Turjan]

Except for the name (the origin of that has been mentioned), I'd say that Dragonborn have their origin in good old Dragonlance.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

The seeds for dragonborn were, indeed, probably sown by the draconians of Dragonlance - not that they were initially presented as PC options, of course.

The "dragonborn" name first appeared in late Third Edition's Races of the Dragon, but was quite different in conception - dragonborn in that book were members of other humanoid races such as humans and dwarves who pledged themselves to Bahamut's service, in a ritual which transformed them into a dragonlike version of themselves: basically putting a draconic head on their body and giving them scaled and claws.

Obviously, the dragonborn of Fourth Edition are quite different!

Likewise tieflings first appeared in Second Edition planar material as the descendants of half-fiends like the cambion and the alu-fiend, spotlighted enormously in Planescape as PC options alongside the aasimar. Obviously, Fourth Edition tieflings have a very different backstory and a unified "Hellboy"-like appearance, but: whatever.

The name "aasimar", by the way, made a lot more sense in Second Edition, when the celestials that Third Edition would call "angels" were called "aasimon" - astral devas, monadic devas, movanic devas, light aasimon, planetars, solars. Of course, everything comes full circle in Fourth Edition, since it looks like the celestial counterpart to the tieflings will be the "deva" race.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I don't think a very short-range teleport once every five minutes significantly affects the concept of the high-arcana elf.

?!?!??!!?

I can't see it as doing anything other than fundamentally changing the whole way that a race exists and relates to other races. It is a massive change from anything that has ever existed before in D&D.

I'm astonished that you think this regular teleporting "doesn't significantly affect the concept of the high-arcane elf". Where have you EVER come across this concept outside of science fiction?

Really?