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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5803424" data-attributes="member: 82106">Yeah, the problem is if a LOT of things are just foisted off into theme then they are all mutually exclusive. Each and every thing that is exclusive with other races should be a RACE, not a theme. Not only that but the whole 4e deva is nothing like a theme. Devas don't have any overlap with other races. They are a 'race' of beings (admittedly not a culture and not a biological race exactly) that stands alone. It would make ZERO sense to talk about a 'human deva' or an 'elf deva'. What if I wanted to be a deva pirate or a deva knight too? It simply doesn't make sense except as a race.I could see Revenant as something besides a race, some sort of 'template' or something, but it actually made sense mechanically in 4e as a race that was an overlay on another race. You could be a human revenant, but you weren't exactly a human, yet you still had all the other customization choices that any character has (again, as a theme revenant makes less sense, why can't I be a revenant pirate). Honestly I wouldn't expect anything as fringe as a revenant to be in the core books (it is not in any 4e book until HoS, before that it was a DDI race for a long time).Of course maybe what this begs us to ask is if there's a more sophisticated possibility than just "you have a theme" because there are certainly a lot of times when it feels like there are 'overlays' that I'd like to have on my character that aren't mutually exclusive.I almost feel like a better design for ALL this kind of stuff, PPs etc included would be something like the player and the DM agree on when it is thematic for a PC to have a specific 'overlay'. Maybe it can list some conditions that the PC should meet thematically (IE Pirate: you are a member of a crew of freebooters and have some familiarity with shipboard life and crewing a vessel). Once the player and DM agree, then the PC 'evinces' that overlay (IE they get access to the things that overlay can provide). There are no limits on the number and types of overlays a PC can evince (some might be mutually exclusive of course). This way you could be a Vampire and a druid and an elf at the same time. Vampire is an overlay. Culture can be one too, as is background, etc. Each of these things can contribute any number of swaps the character can use. Some might also grant something outright, but that would probably be pretty rare since there would be no limits to how many overlays you could have in theory. Of course the DM could take them away too, and some overlays might even be bad. Curses could be overlays, etc. Anything that can be systematically character defining.</blockquote>

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