PHB2 Races = Mos Eisley Cantina

[Chainsaw]

I don't think the DM should do anything except what he and his group agree on.

I really don't think there's a "correct" answer here except for what works for your group.

I agree. Some groups are probably comfortable immediately importing previously unestablished races into the campaign. That's fine. Others, like me, maybe we built a campaign around certain parameters that don't include wemics and won't suddenly include them just because the Complete Book of Humanoids came out.

I think that's the real issue that alot of people have - feeling like they have to disrupt their established setting to include new "core" material that WotC has published.

Like Dave said, the important thing is to discuss this sort of thing ahead of time, so that when new material comes out, everyone knows what to expect. In my games, we wouldn't be adding stuff just because it's in the new PHB. We might include it next campaign if whoever DM's wants to and can find players willing to play under those circumstances.

 

[Crothian]

Of the races in the PHB2 only the Deva is something that I didn't already have as part of my 3e settings. I think the PHB had slightly more odd races and PHB2 is coming back with some classics be them 3e classics as well as old classics.

 

[Obryn]

Weirdness from the GM/player perspective. Building a credible world around a few related races is much better and more believable than trying to cram "weird" PC races into the mix. You can read more on the subject from the creator of the game.

Wait, Gary Gygax created 3e and 4e?

Or are you just arguing that 3e and 4e are both clearly D&D, and that since Gary created AD&D 1e, he also created every subsequent edition through some kind of bizarre transitive property of game design?

I also think your judgment of what does or does not make a game world credible is entirely subjective. I find, for example, Tekumel to be an insanely well-thought-out and detailed world - despite its bizarre PC races.

I have no beef with folks who like to define their campaigns with very strict parameters. I do take issue when they assert that (1) this is how D&D is meant to be played, or (2) this is an objectively superior way to play D&D.

-O

 

[gribble]

I'm not going to get into the debate about what races are and aren't appropriate in D&D - as far as I'm concerned the PHB2 (and PHB for that matter) races and classes are part of a toolkit that individual DMs (and players) can use to build whatever campaign/world makes sense to them.

But in terms of the picture itself, I really like it, for one simple reason:
It's the only one in the whole book which shows all the new races side by side, and hence the only one to give a good idea of the relative scale of the races. For that reason I think it's fully justified and useful to me at least.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Can someone clue me in on where "the townfolk are suspicious and unfriendly towards you, perhaps downright hostile at times" turned into "THE DM IS TRYING TO KILL YOU CONSTANTLY!"

'Cause, uh, I'm not seeing the link.

 

[The_Fan]

Can someone clue me in on where "the townfolk are suspicious and unfriendly towards you, perhaps downright hostile at times" turned into "THE DM IS TRYING TO KILL YOU CONSTANTLY!"

'Cause, uh, I'm not seeing the link.

I believe that started when someone said that players could play whatever they want, but he would just have the townsfolk lynch any odd races on sight.

 

[Klaus]

HAN SHOT FIRST!

Yeah, but Greedo *drew* first: he was already holding his blaster.

 

[Jack7]

The fourth is a blue skinned space man with a glowing, spectral pet wolf

Well, folks, I gotta totally different take on all of this. If you can mass Clone the blue space man fast enough then I think we can all agree that the Sith-Sauron Axis is gonna have a very hard time conquering Middle Earth. It'll at least put a kink in their get-along.

On the other hand the Vamporc half-thing sounds like something the Puppeteers will want to definitely steer clear of. And I'm not sure that either Catwoman or the Kzin will care much for that glowing wolf either.

Eventually though I'm hoping my Asteroid Forged Sun Paladin gets a +12 Dragontonguelightsabre, with the detachable hovercraft and adamantimithril multi-tool.

It'll help him compete with the rubber foot Spider Armed Men of Zebulon Nebulax from the Quasar Consortium of Imperial Wizard World.

But if somebody at WOTC will just give my eldritched-upped Time-Warplock dude a Transforming Battlesuit with built in Tiger-growl teleport then I think I can take Orcus in the Ketzel Wardrum Run at under 3.2978631 parsecs.

It's just a theory, but by gum, I'll betcha he could do it.

(I don't wanna seem like I'm bragging though, so take that for what it is worth.)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Gnomes - The gnomes have had a massive reboot, so I guess you can consider them a new race. I really like the ditching of the tinker baggage and focusing on the trickster aspect with aspect of the 2e forest gnomes, keeping their secrets with illusions. I'm one of the people who doesn't like the art direction the gnome has taken, but I do like the black eyes and harsh angular features, so I hope some traditional gnomish features (such as beards and large noses) find themselves mixed back in with the current art design in the future.

That's not a reboot, that's just a restatement of what gnomes have always been, outside of Krynn and Mystara. Their Feywild ties are it for reboots, and I'd consider that more just giving them an explicit place in the new cosmology.

 

[ferratus]

I got a lot of comments to my post. I guess I'll just go through the major points:

1) I'm sure there are lots of people who can play dragonborn as a social creatures but I can't really seem to. I tried, but they just seemed too monstrous to really fit in to really make the "epic romance" style fantasy work. The shifters and the half-orcs work for me because they are human with a little bit of monstrous edge, while the dragonborn are monsters that walk like humans. So I feel the "Mos Eisley" problem that the OP referred to, that they work well as an exotic rarity at a cosmopolitan Astral Sea port, but not as your local constable.

2) I can certainly accept tieflings as mandarin masters or secretive merchant princes with a penchant for diabolism. I can also understand why people would put up with them if their power is deeply entrenched. In fact, that aura of power, majesty and menace is what makes tieflings cool in the first place. If you meet your tieflings as shopkeepers in Winterhaven... they stop being so cool, and are far less metal.

3) Gnomes were an elf/dwarf mix in 1e-2e, defaulted to rock gnomes. The strong emphasis on illusions and fey were there as "forest gnomes" in the complete book of gnomes and halflings, but the default were gem carving pseudo-dwarves. I think it is a pretty major reboot to make them entirely fey creatures with magical illusions as their primary focus and ditch both the dwarf flavour text and all the stuff 3e imported from Dragonlance.