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NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.
PH3 Playtest Race: Wilden
- Thread starter Rani
- Start date
Mustrum_Ridcully
Legend
I don't know. Who would really get up in anger and fear of a plant? Don't you feel kinda ridicilous for that: "Let's grab the forks and pitches, there is a bush in town that looked funny at my daughter!"
LOL. You're kidding, right? Ever heard of The Day of the Triffids or The Invasion of the Body Snatchers?
And that's just contemporary culture.
Older editions have more creepy plant monsters than you can wave a branch at, from needlemen to yellow musk creepers, assassin vines to shambling mounds, black treants to vampire roses, killer trees to whipweed, mantraps to those weird far realm scorpion plants, archer bushes to wolves-in-sheep's-clothing etc etc etc.
The true D&D milieu is thick with the things. Yes, run from or lynch the freaking plant monsters if they start ambulating, normal plants don't do that.
Keefe the Thief
Hero
Rounser, i highly doubt that these guys are thought as a player race for what you call the "true D&D milieu." However, for a game of "invasion tentacles from Far Away are beaten back by teh teleporting Eladrin elite and their newborn plantskin allies" they are a perfect fit. Strangely, exactly that is currently happening in some of my POLish forests.
And thats what i want - i want fantastic races galore, to broaden my worldbuilding, not the next slightly different elf-xerox ("Elf? No, we´re alfs, thats what we´re called. We are masters of arcane magic with a somewhat altered spell selection, get *idiotic new weapon proficiency* as a bonus feat and contemplate our mystical power while frolicking aloof.")
And thats what i want - i want fantastic races galore, to broaden my worldbuilding, not the next slightly different elf-xerox ("Elf? No, we´re alfs, thats what we´re called. We are masters of arcane magic with a somewhat altered spell selection, get *idiotic new weapon proficiency* as a bonus feat and contemplate our mystical power while frolicking aloof.")
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
Races are a strange beast.
WotC seems to be treating them like classes, which isn't the smartest idea. Classes are more modular: introduce a new class, and your character can then multiclass (assuming there's multiclass feats?) pretty quickly, gaining its powers.
Introduce a new race, and you are saying: "Time for a new character!" You can't retrain yourself as a killoren, or as a gnome. It's one of the few immutable parts of your character sheet in 4e.
So they're less easily usable; you need fewer races than classes in the game.
What you do sort of need is a way to turn any creature into a PC race. Some people like the standard fantasy milieu, some people wanna play beholders and sentient squid. You will never be able to anticipate the races people actually want vs. the ones who will never be used. The most efficient solution is to make creatures easily convertible between the DM's side of the screen and the player's. 3e tried to do that, but didn't do so great of a job. 4e has abandoned that idea, and so needs to play the odds a bit more. As they run out of races with significant game history, they're going to wander more and more into the realm of "why should I care?"
A new race only adds to an ongoing game a cast of NPC's and a potential race for new/dead PC's or re-started campaigns. In 4e, the weight is more on the latter, since NPC's don't need stats, and player stats can't be used as combat stats. Each new race says "Start a new game with me!" Of course, given the duration of most D&D campaigns (and the reasons they fall apart), and the rarity of true death (especially in 4e), they aren't even very useful for that. I suppose it allows characters to "retire?"
People are saying that the killoren sounds more like a monster but, really, almost any new race is going to be pretty monstrous. Heck, the dragonborn, and the eladrin are pretty monstrous, as-written.
A lot of the time, when a race is seen as a "monster," the DM usually means that they aren't mundane enough -- a lot of DMs in this thread don't want killoren wandering around their cities, or farming the fields of their town. It's important, usually, to have a PC race capable of doing mundane things: it makes the adventurers of the race more exceptional. Human adventurers are awesome because most humans are dirt-farmers. Killoren adventurers might not be so awesome, compared to other killoren.
4e, I think, has difficulty making anything mundane (similar to 3e before it). It's intentional, but it also works against the goal of providing new PC races -- a goal which, as I pointed out above, has limited returns in the first place.
I like weird races, and the race itself certainly has a place in my world, but I'm not holding my breath for it ever to be actually used, unless maybe I get a chance to play.
WotC seems to be treating them like classes, which isn't the smartest idea. Classes are more modular: introduce a new class, and your character can then multiclass (assuming there's multiclass feats?) pretty quickly, gaining its powers.
Introduce a new race, and you are saying: "Time for a new character!" You can't retrain yourself as a killoren, or as a gnome. It's one of the few immutable parts of your character sheet in 4e.
So they're less easily usable; you need fewer races than classes in the game.
What you do sort of need is a way to turn any creature into a PC race. Some people like the standard fantasy milieu, some people wanna play beholders and sentient squid. You will never be able to anticipate the races people actually want vs. the ones who will never be used. The most efficient solution is to make creatures easily convertible between the DM's side of the screen and the player's. 3e tried to do that, but didn't do so great of a job. 4e has abandoned that idea, and so needs to play the odds a bit more. As they run out of races with significant game history, they're going to wander more and more into the realm of "why should I care?"
A new race only adds to an ongoing game a cast of NPC's and a potential race for new/dead PC's or re-started campaigns. In 4e, the weight is more on the latter, since NPC's don't need stats, and player stats can't be used as combat stats. Each new race says "Start a new game with me!" Of course, given the duration of most D&D campaigns (and the reasons they fall apart), and the rarity of true death (especially in 4e), they aren't even very useful for that. I suppose it allows characters to "retire?"
People are saying that the killoren sounds more like a monster but, really, almost any new race is going to be pretty monstrous. Heck, the dragonborn, and the eladrin are pretty monstrous, as-written.
A lot of the time, when a race is seen as a "monster," the DM usually means that they aren't mundane enough -- a lot of DMs in this thread don't want killoren wandering around their cities, or farming the fields of their town. It's important, usually, to have a PC race capable of doing mundane things: it makes the adventurers of the race more exceptional. Human adventurers are awesome because most humans are dirt-farmers. Killoren adventurers might not be so awesome, compared to other killoren.
4e, I think, has difficulty making anything mundane (similar to 3e before it). It's intentional, but it also works against the goal of providing new PC races -- a goal which, as I pointed out above, has limited returns in the first place.
I like weird races, and the race itself certainly has a place in my world, but I'm not holding my breath for it ever to be actually used, unless maybe I get a chance to play.
RefinedBean
First Post
Haven't played much 3rd ed Faerun, have ya?
I'm on record as hating the Eladrin, but I see why they exist, there was more than enough room for both Eladrin and Elves. Otherwise, you have to wonder why forest elves are getting a +2 to Int, when they honestly couldn't care less about book learnin'.
As for the topic at hand, it's a PHB3 race. They may as well throw in some "crazier" races that people can use or not use at their leisure.
Frankly, if a village in a typical D&D world are going to turn away adventurers on appearance alone, they probably deserve to have their homes burned down by a dragon.
CelticMutt
First Post
Oh noes! How dare WotC want to actually give us options! How dare WotC want to get away from the tired old Tolkien cliches, and bring in more mythology/fairy tales! Those big ole meanies!
Seriously, I'm disappointed it's not a better race, like the Thri-kreen like I had been hoping, but they're not bad just because they're different, m'kay? Would you guys have been complaining this much if it had been the Thri-kreen?
I mean c'mon, big ole scary insect people versus plant people, right? Nevermind that they have a history stretching back furhter than the Dragonborn and were a common sight in Dark Sun cities.
Oh wait, you mean just because their fluff states they have a shared history with the other races, that makes it all better? Then change the fluff for the Wilden if their existence pains you that much.
Seriously, I'm disappointed it's not a better race, like the Thri-kreen like I had been hoping, but they're not bad just because they're different, m'kay? Would you guys have been complaining this much if it had been the Thri-kreen?
I mean c'mon, big ole scary insect people versus plant people, right? Nevermind that they have a history stretching back furhter than the Dragonborn and were a common sight in Dark Sun cities.
Oh wait, you mean just because their fluff states they have a shared history with the other races, that makes it all better? Then change the fluff for the Wilden if their existence pains you that much.
Keefe the Thief
Hero
I wasnt mocking anything. I want fantasy races that are fantastic, not retreads - no FR subraces, no "look, we´re elves with dark skin - guess our alignment." It seems you cannot approach this subject without edition-warring, though.
