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Message: <blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 5738954" data-attributes="member: 22424">If you're looking for 5e to be significantly different from either 3e or 4e, you're going to be disappointed. And one of the things that those editions have in common is that they're both extremely option-heavy. For 5e, WotC will pare down the option list for a while, but will very quickly move to "fill in the gaps", providing support for all the popular options from 3e and 4e.In the specific cases of races, I can actually see a strong argument for moving the Shardmind in to the PHB1. The thing is, for various reasons the 'perfect' number of options at any given decision point is about 7 +/-1. So, the number of races in the PHB1 is about right.But it is, quite frankly, utter madness to have 3 'elfy' races in the PHB1. "You can be an Elf, a more elfy Elf, or a less elfy Elf..." For 5e, they really should either re-combine the Elf and Eladrin, or at least defer the Eladrin until later. Likewise, the half-elf should either be a feat option, or again should be deferred until later.Doing this opens up two spots for new races. And, rightly or wrongly, the two races that seem to have gained the most traction (other than the 'elfy' Drow) and the Shardmind and the Warforged. Those are probably the best two to go for.(And that leaves a pretty good set, IMO: Human, Dragonborn, Dwarf, Elf, Halfling, Shardmind, Tiefling, Warforged. Lots of bases covered, lots of interesting choice, and each race also has a pretty clear and distinctive character.)For me, the reason 4e feels a bit long in the tooth is that WotC expanded the option list rather too quickly. Within 2 years of release, they had the PHB2 and 3, the first set of "Power" books, two "Adventurer's Vaults", the two key settings... Basically, they'd covered all their bases, and left themselves only various niches left to fill in. There wasn't really anywhere for them to go.Unfortunately, I'm not sure how they can really fix this. Ideally, they could slow down the rate of player-side supplements, and instead focus on less mechanically-intensive materials: settings and adventures. The problem seems to be, though, that neither of these sells particularly well.Maybe the solution lies with the DDI. If they basically abandon in-print player-side supplements (or perhaps slow the rate right down, to about 2 a year), but instead provided some new material every month via DDI, that would slow down the rate at which 5e saturates. At the same time, they can keep the value of DDI going by offering a brand new fully-fleshed out campaign setting, coupled with adventure paths and other adventures in eDungeon.It might work. Alternately, WotC might well feel they're quite happy with the rate at which 4e saturated, followed with the Essentials revision. Maybe they will just do much the same with 5e (just with new mechanics).I dunno. I'm kind of glad I'm not in charge of D&D right now! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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