Quandary about Racial Feats from Excerpt

[Fallen Seraph]

This sorta got left behind in the dust in the Excerpt thread so figured should make its own thread.

While one of the Racial Feats we have seen, appears simple enough:

Underfoot - Halfling, trained in Acrobatics - Move through spaces of Large or larger creatures

The other:

Empowered Dragon Breath - Dragonborn, dragon breath racial power - Dragon breath uses d10s

Makes me wonder about somethings. First and foremost, this makes it seem that the Dragon Breath will be either at Paragon level if you take the feat: From 1d8 to 1d10 or 2d6 to 2d10.

The even more important question though is, why the redundency in the prerequisites? Why must it have both Dragonborn and Dragon Breath Racial Power. The only two ideas I can think of is that the Dragonborn has another choose for a Racial Power at Level 1 (or can switch Racial Powers before level 11).

Or and I think more interesting. Could this be a sign of half-breed mechanics? Could you have Bloodlines where your technically Dragonborn, but by being half-breed you must take a feat to earn Dragon Breath?

 

[Shroomy]

My guess would be that there are two racial powers for dragonborn (or that dragonbreath is a higher-level power).

 

[Stalker0]

The even more important question though is, why the redundency in the prerequisites? Why must it have both Dragonborn and Dragon Breath Racial Power. The only two ideas I can think of is that the Dragonborn has another choose for a Racial Power at Level 1 (or can switch Racial Powers before level 11).

Probably just to make sure for custom races and all of that. It never hurts to be more specific than you need to be.

 

[Gargazon]

Actually, as it appears that Dragonborn do get the breath weapon from level one, the requirements in the feat description are merely there for 'completeness' and so no complete dullard can go 'I take this feat, I meet the prerequisites'.

 

[Kordeth]

The even more important question though is, why the redundency in the prerequisites? Why must it have both Dragonborn and Dragon Breath Racial Power. The only two ideas I can think of is that the Dragonborn has another choose for a Racial Power at Level 1 (or can switch Racial Powers before level 11).

Or and I think more interesting. Could this be a sign of half-breed mechanics? Could you have Bloodlines where your technically Dragonborn, but by being half-breed you must take a feat to earn Dragon Breath?

Even if this stuff doesn't actually show up in the PHB, it's a good idea to account for it in case a later book wants to add more racial power choices, or races that "count as [race x]" for prerequisite purposes. In 3E, at least, remember that half-elves counted as orcs and half-elves counted as elves. That might hold true in 4E as well, which would explain the redundant prereqs.

For example, Races of the Lizardboobies might provide a new power "Why Does She Even Have Those?" that female dragonborn can select in place of Dragon Breath. If Empowered Dragon Breath just had the Dragonborn prerequisite, you'd get weird cases of dragonborn characters eligible for a feat that improves a power they don't have.

Likewise, there might be an "Elvensight" feat somewhere that merely requires the character to be an elf--half-elves might be able to take that, but not the Improved Elven Accuracy feat we saw in the Elf preview, because it requires a racial power the half-elf doesn't have.

Finally, including the race in the prereqs for all racial feats just makes it that much easier to quickly scan the list and pick out what feats apply to your race, whereas if they just listed the required racial powers, you'd have to remember which power goes with which race.

 

[Shroomy]

Another thing to consider, maybe a dragonborn can "trade" its dragonbreath power for another type of related-racial ability after 1st level.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

If that is the case too, can other races trade in their racial power for something else?

 

[Shroomy]

If that is the case too, can other races trade in their racial power for something else?

Maybe, it would probably make sense from a balance standpoint if you either eventually upgrade your earlier racial powers via feats or trade them in for something more powerful. But again, this is all speculation.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Maybe, it would probably make sense from a balance standpoint if you either eventually upgrade your earlier racial powers via feats or trade them in for something more powerful. But again, this is all speculation.

Yeah, but well speculation is fun

 

[Kobold Avenger]

The even more important question though is, why the redundency in the prerequisites? Why must it have both Dragonborn and Dragon Breath Racial Power. The only two ideas I can think of is that the Dragonborn has another choose for a Racial Power at Level 1 (or can switch Racial Powers before level 11).

Or and I think more interesting. Could this be a sign of half-breed mechanics? Could you have Bloodlines where your technically Dragonborn, but by being half-breed you must take a feat to earn Dragon Breath?

Well they might revisit Tieflings of varying appearances and abilities later, as an example. So they could later on introduce "substitutions" of various racial abilities later.