Playing Minotaurs

[Nikosandros]

I think it would be cool if WotC would follow-up on the core races, and make some more racial feats as well (and especially) some racial paragon paths for them.

Yep. Both of those would be most welcome.

 

[Stormtower]

Good choice on nerfing the Oversized Weapons issue for Minotaurs (and Bugbears, you're next). A round of applause for WotC on this solid design choice. I hope it carries over into Goliaths for PHBII... oversized weapons are far too effective to not lure players away from the more traditional, core D&D races.

I hope future errata goes all-in with this design philosophy and eliminates Oversized weapons altogether.

 

[FireLance]

Good choice on nerfing the Oversized Weapons issue for Minotaurs (and Bugbears, you're next). A round of applause for WotC on this solid design choice. I hope it carries over into Goliaths for PHBII... oversized weapons are far too effective to not lure players away from the more traditional, core D&D races.

I hope future errata goes all-in with this design philosophy and eliminates Oversized weapons altogether.

Alternatively, you could have a racial feature or feat to wield oversized weapons, but instead of the damage die increase, you just get +1 damage with one-handed weapons and +2 damage with two-handed weapons.

 

[Vayden]

Alternatively, you could have a racial feature or feat to wield oversized weapons, but instead of the damage die increase, you just get +1 damage with one-handed weapons and +2 damage with two-handed weapons.

XP given. I like that a lot - gets rid of all those "2d6 brutal 2" style holes in the rules.

 

[Fifth Element]

Alternatively, you could have a racial feature or feat to wield oversized weapons, but instead of the damage die increase, you just get +1 damage with one-handed weapons and +2 damage with two-handed weapons.

That certainly fits 4E feat style (cf. Two-Weapon Fighting feat).

 

[garyh]

I don't like them losing oversized weapons. And Heedless Charge doesn't come close to making up for that loss. Yeah, this article has feats, but it's otherwise a total powerdown to the minotaur.

They could have at least left Oversized as an option for a racial feat.

 

[Shroomy]

So what does everyone think of the paragon paths and revised fluff? My favorite of the three paragon paths is the Beastblooded Minotaur, as the stance is nasty and the Savage Apotheosis is very good class feature (just think of it with that fighter epic destiny from MP). The Minotaur Kinspeaker would be next, mostly due to the flavor. I find the Horned Champion to be kind of blah next to the other two, but I do like it. As for the fluff, I think its solid and has a lot of interesting ideas in it; I think that the Baphomet Demonomicon will add more to the story in terms of the Dawn War and the fall of Ruul.

Also, did any notice Robert Schwalb's dedication? It just reminded me again of why I prefer the 4e racial system as opposed to the ECL/LA or monster level system; sure, technically, I have less choices overall, but those that do are solid from the get-go.

 

[avin]

Look this way: primary source for oversized is MM.

I do have MM, I don't have a DDI subscription.

How the hell could I know about this change?

It seems a lot of people are staying with oversized weapons until it hits errata.

4.5 is coming...

 

[Lord Nat]

I can't want to try them out with the Barbarian.
Seems to be a match made in heaven ^_^

The only thing I worry about is if anything will ever be able to stand up around a Minotaur Barb... SOOOO many ways to knock things prone.

 

[Badwe]

To give you an idea of the power level associated with increasing the size of a weapon: there is an epic destiny which has a feature of making the character taller/heavier, giving them +1 reach, and allowing them to wield larger weapons. Given that, I couldn't imagine there being anything else that would allow an increase of weapon size besides an epic destiny for quite some time. If a paragon path or even a feat from epic level were to allow that, there would need to be some way to prevent it from stacking with the Eternal Defender.

Any kind of giant like race could benefit from a race specific epic destiny to become larger, although truthfully with the way 4th edition works the only advantage to being large is the weapon size. One could easily show that the increase of STR/loss of DEX to get large in 3.5 was a reasonable tradeoff (to say nothing of reach!), but in this edition, being 2x2 is effectively a liability, and a big one at that. Perhaps if there was an allowance to increase the weapon size it could be balanced against becoming 2x2 (without reach, ofc), but these are all some pretty heavy variables that could easily spiral out of control. I think wizards will be slow to start changing the size of PCs.