Races & Classes details from the WotC boards

[Rechan]

What if my world has no forests, do I have to remove elves? And it also has no mountains, so no dwarves?
What if the campaign settings consist out of 5 ft. wide floating islands in the middle of nowhere? Do I have to remove all races which can't fly and are bigger than medium size?

So you must hate this, right?

Most elves live in woodland clans numbering less than two hundred souls. Their well-hidden villages blend into the trees, doing little harm to the forest. They hunt game, gather food, and grew vegetables, and their skill at magic allow them to support themselves simply without the need for clearing and plowing land. Their contact with outsiders is usually though some few elves make a good living trading finely worked elven clothes and crafts for the metals that elves have no interest in mining.

Elves encountered in human lands are commonly wandering minstrels, favored artists, or sages. Human nobles compete for the services of elf instructors, who teach swordplay to their children.

That comes right out of the 3.5 PHB, page 15.

Can we please stop acting like this is the first time the PHB has ever told us more than just mechanics?

 

[Klaus]

On rivers valleys and "cleared" forests:

My point above is that humans in the "Race and Classes" world are not going there...halflings have got the rivers (all the pyramids and zigaruts will be built to smaller scale), elves the forest.

Oh, and if the plains are too dry: Dragonborn.

No, no.

The humans still build those cities and ziggurats in Mesopotamia. But they rely on the barge-dwelling halfllings to ferry goods up and down the Tigris and Euphrates.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I have zero desire to play a wildshaping druid, but a crazy desire to play one that focuses on spells that unleash nature's fury.

Isn't that exactly what wizards do, with fireball and lightning bolt? Best fit for that in 4e would probably be a wizard or sorcerer.

 

[Rechan]

They're going to have a Barbarian class? But Barbarian isn't a class, it's a cultural slur! Do we need villager and city dweller classes now? Barbarian as a class can be taken by anyone, but it has an implied setting of being illiterate and primitive!

Oh wait, that's 3e. So that's acceptable. Sorry, move along.

 

[Rechan]

Isn't that exactly what wizards do, with fireball and lightning bolt? Best fit for that in 4e would probably be a wizard or sorcerer.

Except that wizards can't make volcanos erupt, cast Entangle, summon avalanches, have the animals of the forest converge on the enemy, etc etc.

 

[pawsplay]

They're going to have a Barbarian class? But Barbarian isn't a class, it's a cultural slur! Do we need villager and city dweller classes now? Barbarian as a class can be taken by anyone, but it has an implied setting of being illiterate and primitive!

Oh wait, that's 3e. So that's acceptable. Sorry, move along.

Did anyone say they liked the Barbarian writeup exactly as it was? I thought it was almost universally accepted that something was not quite right with the Barbarian.

 

[Bishmon]

Isn't that exactly what wizards do, with fireball and lightning bolt? Best fit for that in 4e would probably be a wizard or sorcerer.

There's always going to be some overlap among spellcasters. A druid's spellcasting, though, should encompass much more of nature than just producing a lightning bolt or using a spell that has fire.

I just think there's a lot of potential for a druid that is focused solely on spellcasting. Using natural elements to hurt and/or hamper foes, controlling plants to entangle or strangle enemies, allying one's self with animals and fey to get information or to fight alongside them, even causing or stopping natural disasters. Plus, with the Feywild, there's a whole new possibility of druidic applications. The eladrin's short-range teleport-like effect by moving through the Feywild, turning one's self invisible by moving to the Feywild, or possibly allying with creatures native to the Feywild who are capable of damaging enemies on the material plane, sort of similar to ethereal creatures.

It might be possible to file the serial numbers off a 4E wizard to do most of this stuff but there's too much potential for both flavor and mechanics to limit a druid to being a repurposed wizard.

 

[Rechan]

Did anyone say they liked the Barbarian writeup exactly as it was? I thought it was almost universally accepted that something was not quite right with the Barbarian.

And yet there was no shriekng about the Barbarian being setting specific flavor and WotC forcing them to shove it into their campaign setting.

 

[Cadfan]

I think I was right on the druid earlier.

The druid had to get cut up a bit. Wildshape is cool enough to support an entire class. Druid spellcasting is cool enough to support an entire class. Giving them both to the same class is too much. So you have to either nerf wildshape and give it to a spellcaster, or you have to nerf spellcasting and give it to a wildshaper, or you have to do both and create two classes.

 

[pawsplay]

And yet there was no shriekng about the Barbarian being setting specific flavor and WotC forcing them to shove it into their campaign setting.

The Barbarian is legacy, which means it's hard to muster about a very fiery outrage, just sad exasperation.