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Message: <blockquote data-quote="rounser" data-source="post: 4027322" data-attributes="member: 1106">PC races are a different kettle of fish to monsters.  Monsters last for an encounter, PCs for a campaign.  There’s a lot more pressure to integrate a PC race into the world than there is some random monster, and a much bigger thematic footprint if you’ve got dragondudes downing tankards in the local tavern.  You don’t have to wonder whether the barkeep lets chuuls in, for instance (unless it’s the City State of the Invincible Overlord, perhaps).Well, Fairyland, gods, and giants/titans have mythological basis, and so are likely to slot into familiarity and a lot of worlds.  The Plane of Shadow isn’t particularly mythological, but is generic in a way similar to how the elemental planes were – as in, there’s a solid theme to it like “this place is firey, everything’s about fire here”.  Pretty strong trope, although arguably a bit arbitrary…why shadows, but not tapioca pudding, for instance?Arguably they would have been better kept as “something elf”, because “eladrin” sounds contrived.  They sound like a third rate “Eldar”.  Again, I ask why GW can use this name and WOTC can’t?  It’s better than Eladrin.  Oh right, trademarks.How much of it was for crunch munchkin reasons skewing the data, though?  And if the game needed PC dragons, give them PC dragons.  Not some halfway house anachronism, the real McCoy.  That would have fitted in every D&D world better than what we’ve got, even if they had to stay shapechanged into humanoid a lot of the time.Three comments:  The core shouldn’t lend itself to needing to be banned, it should be generic enough that it didn’t make you reach for your banhammer.  Secondly, these races will be turning up all over the shop as NPCs in published adventures and settings, and will need to be weeded out manually.  Thirdly, this is the thin edge of a huge ideological wedge regarding the content of the core.  A race or two can be removed maybe, but what other hardcoded flavour cannot be removed so easily, like coupling ice and acid together, say?The difference is that there was less specific impetus to have to ban stuff.  You could just eyeball the list of races, think of the mythology you could tap for your own world’s elves and put a new spin on, and just include them.  Now you have to stop and think about it, because not everything fits as much by default in your “average fantasy setting” anymore.  It’s more specific than that.  There have always been D&Disms in D&D, but I don't see that as an invitation to add more to the core when they could perfectly easily just be saved for a supplement.</blockquote>

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