Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Benjamin Olson" data-source="post: 8039384" data-attributes="member: 6988941">&quot;Races&quot; are a core game element WotC is likely feeling pretty unhappy about now, and have the incentive to try to radically rework. There is a minimal&nbsp; amount they can do without rewriting the PHB. I think they're best bet is to rework the PHB to have some sort of modular, somewhat expanded racial choices with the existing PHB options as &quot;quick build suggestions&quot; like they have for classes. But whether or not they do that they need to just drop the alignment entries for every race, because there was really no good reason for it to be there in the first place other than so that one more thing on the character sheet is linked to race, background, or class. Personally I never had a political issue with them, but I also never found them terribly helpful, inspiring, or important.I think at least goblins and orcs are such staples of fantasy and that they should get PHB racial option entries, given that first time player's pop culture expectations when told they can pick a fantasy race are likely to be that they can play these races. Having half-orcs makes the absence of full ones particularly weird and pregnant with tacit meaning.In any case, I think the seeds of 5.5 edition or 6th edition are being sown, either because they are going to end up immediately creating such a thing, or because whatever they create to ameliorate the &quot;racial issues&quot; as well as any way they may publish the UA variant class features is going to interact a bit awkwardly with existing player option materials in the PHB, Volo's, Xanathar's, etc. and thereby increase the perceived need to rewrite things from the ground up. There also seem to be a few new design ideas working their way through UA, like increased use of being able to do something a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, features that add a d4 instead of giving advantage (also big in Eberron), and having feats that give spells let you recast the spell with spell slots after you use up your free casting, that I can imagine them wanting to write into core materials if given the opportunity.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Benjamin Olson, post: 8039384, member: 6988941"] "Races" are a core game element WotC is likely feeling pretty unhappy about now, and have the incentive to try to radically rework. There is a minimal amount they can do without rewriting the PHB. I think they're best bet is to rework the PHB to have some sort of modular, somewhat expanded racial choices with the existing PHB options as "quick build suggestions" like they have for classes. But whether or not they do that they need to just drop the alignment entries for every race, because there was really no good reason for it to be there in the first place other than so that one more thing on the character sheet is linked to race, background, or class. Personally I never had a political issue with them, but I also never found them terribly helpful, inspiring, or important. I think at least goblins and orcs are such staples of fantasy and that they should get PHB racial option entries, given that first time player's pop culture expectations when told they can pick a fantasy race are likely to be that they can play these races. Having half-orcs makes the absence of full ones particularly weird and pregnant with tacit meaning. In any case, I think the seeds of 5.5 edition or 6th edition are being sown, either because they are going to end up immediately creating such a thing, or because whatever they create to ameliorate the "racial issues" as well as any way they may publish the UA variant class features is going to interact a bit awkwardly with existing player option materials in the PHB, Volo's, Xanathar's, etc. and thereby increase the perceived need to rewrite things from the ground up. There also seem to be a few new design ideas working their way through UA, like increased use of being able to do something a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, features that add a d4 instead of giving advantage (also big in Eberron), and having feats that give spells let you recast the spell with spell slots after you use up your free casting, that I can imagine them wanting to write into core materials if given the opportunity. [/QUOTE]

Verification