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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jürgen Hubert" data-source="post: 4020459" data-attributes="member: 7177">You might have heard of <a href="http://eruvian.com/locale.asp?localeID=74" target="_blank">Urbis</a>, the setting I am developing and which I plan to publish professionally one day.Urbis set out with the intention to use everything in the D&D Core Rules (or rather, the basic d20 SRD), throw in all sorts of ideas from 19th century European culture and society, and create an interesting and coherent whole. However, now that the 4E version of the SRD is on the horizon, I naturally want the setting to be compatible with the latest iteration of D&D - and this means I need to rewrite some aspects of the setting to make room for the new material. Thus, I wanted to open a thread for brainstorming ideas how to fit the rules changes into the setting. Here are my ideas - tell me what you think of them, and don't hesitate to come up with your own suggestions.Classes:Not all 3E classes are going to be part of the 4E rules. I can live with that - sorcerors, druids, monks, barbarians, and bards aren't all that central to the setting. While these classes will be added to the 4E rules at a later date, I'm not sure if they will be included in the SRD as well. I'll probably restrain myself so that there are a few hints towards there existence, but only in a way that they can be safely ignored - or added in later if the GM has access to those rules.Paladins apparently now can be different alignments than LG. In this case, I'll probably make them "planar champion" of sorts - a specific plane that represents his alignment and character grants him his powers. But I will have to wait until more details are known before I can make up my mind on this issue.Warlords should be fairly easy to include - the setting certainly has no shortage of tactically skilled leaders of others. Warlocks are a bit more tricky - they can probably make deals with specific planes (including Faerie), but again I have to wait until I know more details.Races:Even if all of the old 3E races don't make it to 4E, I do not plan on removing any of them from the setting. Each race has its own, unique role in the setting and they would be far harder to remove than specific classes (with the exception of half-orcs, who are only bit players in the setting). Thus, I will include roles for playing gnomes (as well as hobgoblins). I'm still on the fence about half-orcs - I'm not sure if they are that important to include, and I would value your opinion on whether to keep them.That leaves us with the new races. Tieflings should work very well, and I want to extend their role as "offspring of demons and devils" to two new roles: For one thing, they can be "changelings" - beings left by faeries who steal small children, or else small children warped by the magic of the faeries. For another, they can represent "black seeds" or supernatural curses in certain families. For example, in each generation of a particular family there will be one firstborn child who will be born as a tiefling. This fits in very well with gothic stories, which were one of the many inspirations for Urbis.I'm not sure what to do about the dragonborn, however. Sure, I could associate them with the dragons of the Desert of Thunder, but that doesn't really seem satisfying - and it is too regionally constrained. I want to fill them their own, unique archetype, but so far I haven't been able to come up with anything suitable.Then there's the eldarin. These are obviously going to be significant players in <a href="http://eruvian.com/locale.asp?localeID=96" target="_blank">Avareen</a> and <a href="http://eruvian.com/locale.asp?localeID=392" target="_blank">Narevoreen</a> - they probably represent the ruling classes - but I'm still not sure about the precise details. <a href="http://eruvian.com/locale.asp?localeID=486" target="_blank">Tuvareen</a> probably doesn't have any eldarin, since that kingdom strikes me as rather more rustic than the others. Perhaps that lack of eldarin contributes to their lower fertility rates (perhaps they killed them all, or else the eldarin killed themselves by accident?).Here's an idea: Shortly after an elf is born who is a descendant of the elven aristocracy, it goes through a special ceremonial blessing which ensures that the baby grows up to be an eldarin. If there is no such ceremony, it will become a "common" wood elf. Thus, eldarin are essentially elf nobility, with special abilities representing their heritage. Tuvareen has lost the ability to conduct this ceremony, and thus they only have normal elves left.Furthermore, drow use a perversion of this ritual to ensure that the elves turn into drow shortly after birth. This means that children born to drow start out as normal, fair-skinned elves, but gain their dark skin color and white hair after this ceremony...What do you think of this idea?Magic:Obviously, I have to rewrite the rules for nexus towers to bring them in line with the new magic item creation rules, whatever they might be. After all, this "industrial" production of magic items should still be possible and represent a significant advantage. I don't see much of a problem with the other changes to the magic system.Psionics:This is going to be a problem, since the surathi, one of the major villainous races, depend on it - and it will take some time until the psionics rules for 4E are released. However, since for the most part psionics is exceedingly rare among the standard PC races, it should probably be sufficient if I write some quick guidelines on how to run some of the "standard" classes (such as wizards) with a psionic flavor.That's it for now. What are your thoughts on all this?</blockquote>

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