D&D 4E Race Matters more in 4e?

[broghammerj]

My suspicion is that the racial abilities are a means to give you a power up every level to avoid the off levels where you get only a BAB/Save upgrade. To use 3E terms which may no longer exist you'll get something like this:

Level 1: Race, Class Ability, Feat
2.Class Ability
3.Feat
4.Race Ability
5.Class Ability
6.Feat
7.Race Ability

This may be an oversimplification of things, but I think the racial ability is a way to give you something every level. I am sure that they will be in some sort of talent tree (ala D20 Modern) or feat progression so that two players of the same race and class can make different characters.

 

[heirodule]

Hopefully, there will be dwarf abilities that are class-independent and/or targetted at classes other than the obvious default choice for the class.

So there might be a dwarven ability that lets you use smite once per encounter after spending 3 rounds in contact with the ground without moving 5 ft. Not very useful for a wizard.

But there might be a dwarven ability that you Empower a spell for free once per encoutner after spending 3 rounds in contact with the ground without moving 5 ft. (In fact these might two uses of the same ability.) Useful for a wizard!

And there might be a dwarven ability that grants you DR 1/- per 5 levels. More or less useful for everyone.

At least that's what I hope to see.

that sounds suspiciously specific. Are you a playtester?

 

[WhatGravitas]

Hopefully, there will be dwarf abilities that are class-independent and/or targetted at classes other than the obvious default choice for the class.

I think you're on the right track - either they get stuff that's useful for everybody... or they use their "roles".

In one article, they've talked about clearly defined roles, so party members will always have something to do, and they've got these "power sources" - probably arcane/divine/martial.

Perhaps each race gets an ability suite for each of these roles or power sources, so each race has two or three suites to evolve in.

This would make each race-class combination unique and hence more interesting to play, while making race important.

 

[Cabled]

I'm somewhat concerned about this snippet of information



Mainly that each race is more strongly tied to a niche. That half-elves will be the "social race", dwarves will be the "tank race", etc. That by choosing something other than the "best fit" race, you'll end up penalized for daring to play against stereotypes. 3.5 did a decent job of allowing people to play against type precisely because the race changes didn't make a colossal difference. Yeah, your half-orc wizard had a -2 Int, but really you could make an effecitve wizard of any race. It let people create a character they wanted, rather than feel they were being nudged in a direction due to their race.

I;m all for making race an interesting choice. For making the races play differently and for having different fighting styles and tactics by race. I'm just concerned that in the end, we'll have elves be the uber wizards, halflings the uber rogues, and of course humans back to their 1e roots of being useless.

Apologies in advance if this sounds snarky, it's not meant to, but...

In ANY system, if you have more than one choice, unless they are all exactly the same (and thus a non-choice), there will be one that is the best...it is an inherent property of having choices at all. If the internet was 80 years old and tophat and racecar each had a special ability, we'd have been having this same debate about monopoly and how broken the thimble is, with its high armor value The trick from a design standpoint is to not make the "best" choices overwhelmingly so, so that being sub optimal is crippling. "Sub-optimal" can be a continuum, not a black-and-white category, and that is always the hard part..offering choices without making them foolish choices.

 

[Imperialus]

I like the idea of race continueing to influance your character though all the levels. It remains to be seen how well they implement it but so far I'm hopeful.

 

[jasin]

that sounds suspiciously specific. Are you a playtester?

No, I'm not (but if any WotC folks are paying attention, I'd sure like to be! ), it's just that this all this brings back the heady early days of 3E, when we got a shiny new framework that still wasn't populated by specific implementations, so there was all sorts of room to work out our own. It gets my crunchy creative juices flowing. Just imagine the wonderful things I could think up if I really was a playtester!

 

[Klaus]

Re: elven evasion: how do we know "favored classes" made it to 4e? Maybe elves are the best... I don't know... rangers?

 

[JVisgaitis]

I would disagree. Tanis half elven from Dragonlance seemed to really exemplify the "half elf" torn between to races thing. I think you should be able to play that as a character. However, I would like to remove the whole Dragonlance tinker-gnomes thing.

Tanis is a perfect example and he's one of my favorite characters. The thing is, you can definitely play as that character and still remove specific rules for a half-race in 4e. Its not the rules that make Tanis what he is. Its the character's story.

If they simply have an entry in the PHB that says you can play as a half race but you pick the racial abilities of either of the full races and they go on to list some examples and motivations like half-elves, and half-orcs problem solved plus we save some pages for new content.

 

[MarkB]

I'm really excited by it.

I must admit I was very nervous when I read the first half of the article - my immediate response was "This could lead to some extreme class/race synergies - and the reverse - which will greatly affect the viability of particular class/race combinations."

Reading the rest of the article, I have the impression that they spotted this obvious flaw and toned down their original concept to account for it. However, we'll have to see how it really works out in play.

The only thing I wonder about, is that its apparently replacing level adjustments.

This part is what actually excited me most about the new system. It sounds very promising, and I'm looking forward to seeing it in play.

If we assume that the outside limit of "playable" LA races is +5, does this mean that by the time they reach 30th level the standard races will be the equivalent of a +5 LA so they can match the more exotic ones?

According to the article, race-related benefits apparently top out around 10th level. For races that are more exotic and powerful, perhaps racial characteristics could continue to be added beyond 10th level. The question then would be how to maintain balance - perhaps class levels which include racial bonuses would cost more XP than those which don't.

 

[broghammerj]

Tanis is a perfect example and he's one of my favorite characters. The thing is, you can definitely play as that character and still remove specific rules for a half-race in 4e. Its not the rules that make Tanis what he is. Its the character's story.
.

I don't say this often, but I totally agree with that. If it saves a few pages for new content I would be on board with your ideas.