Tacked-On Races in WotC Products

[Viktyr Gehrig]

There's a lot of buzz, especially with Magic of Incarnum, about how Wizards of the Coast manages to put a handful of really weak races in every new product-- without really fleshing them out or giving much thought to their role in a campaign.

I've been kinda ignoring this whole thing, since I only really use the races I want to use, and the new races generally take up less page-count than the new PrC format does. (Though, if each race had a similar amount of coverage, they'd feel a lot less "tacked-on".

I've been kinda ignoring this, that, is, until I took another look at my Expanded Psionics Handbook.

And realized one of the races was "XePH."

Coincidence? You decide.

 

[Nifft]

Does Magic of Incarnum have a race called the Moi?

XePH is a good pick up... but it might not be a pattern.

-- N

 

[Squire James]

I think it is better than devoting a large portion of a book on a single race that most people probably won't use. Races of Destiny (aka the Book of One Near-Human Race We Thought Was Cool But in Reality Could Have Just Been a Human) is still getting critcism for doing that. I actually prefer these short descriptions... most non-human races are caricatures of various human personality types anyway, so all I really need to know is the personality type (which many take 1-3 pages to describe) and the crunchy bits.

As for the Xeph, I guess our Illustrious Game Designers get Name Block at times like everyone else...