What's your favorite form of racial support?

[Klaus]

Recent races, like the shade and the vryloka, have racial support in the form of "racial powers" you can take in lieu of class powers. Previous races relied on feat-based support to expand their unique natures, and possibly offer specific ways in which a race and a class might interact.

Which form of racial support do you prefer?

Mind you, this is in no way official, just out of curiosity.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Well 100% of the respondant so far say "Either way, possibly both in equal measure." and I agree with them as they are me.

I think it is good to have a mix and racial powers are a good way to make a race more uniue. But they are a bit harder to do as there are a lot of different styles of classes out there and it is hard to make one that will work for most classes.

That said, I think elves and dwarves would be very good for this. Elves with some bow-oriented feats, as most elves will have enough dex to be competent, if not good with a bow. Dwarves with some hit point powers would fit them well also.

Overall, I would prefer more powers and fewer feats.

Races really should be themes anyway.

 

[mudlock]

I would love to see all race-specific feats changed into racial powers... and all class specific feats changed into powers.

Heck, just get rid of feats and add utility power/feature slots at the 4s and 8s.

Edit: and also at the 1s!

 

[Mengu]

I also agree with 100% of the responders so far (all 4 of them).

 

[Marius Delphus]

Dwarf-forged undergarments offer the best support.

So I've heard.

 

[Klaus]

Well 100% of the respondant so far say "Either way, possibly both in equal measure." and I agree with them as they are me.

I think it is good to have a mix and racial powers are a good way to make a race more uniue. But they are a bit harder to do as there are a lot of different styles of classes out there and it is hard to make one that will work for most classes.

That said, I think elves and dwarves would be very good for this. Elves with some bow-oriented feats, as most elves will have enough dex to be competent, if not good with a bow. Dwarves with some hit point powers would fit them well also.

Overall, I would prefer more powers and fewer feats.

Races really should be themes anyway.

When creating the racial powers for Heroes of Shadow, I tries to emphasize the nature of the race regardless of class. If I were to make racial powers for elves and dwarves, I'd focus on mobility/keen senses for elves and resilience/endurance for dwarves. That means that elf fighters and mages would be more mobile (skirmishers) than other races, and dwarf rogues and mages would be steadier and more durable ("soldiers") than other races.

 

[IanB]

I answered the middle one, but only because it would be my second choice after VERY LIMITED TO NO racial support.

Basically I would prefer if racial support was baked entirely into the choice of race itself, and didn't have a big effect on character choices going forward from there. I feel too much race-specific support tends to make humans end up very rarely someone's first choice for race, and I'd like my games to skew towards something vaguely resembling the assumptions baked into nearly all campaign settings that humans are the dominant race population-wise. In other words:

Too much racial support = too many powerful-and-tempting builds that require a specific race instead of working across a number of them = everyone is a tiefling (or whatever.)

While I realize the answer to that may very well be 'well humans would get support too' my opinion is that the racial support for humans always feels kind of lame and unflavorful to me (not underpowered, just boring.) Because we *are* humans it always feels strange to see special powers assigned to humans just for being human, you know? Humans get a lot of RRRGH NEVER GIVE UP sort of stuff but I see humans give up all the time. Also these sorts of powers are more in the 'generally useful' category than the 'pushes you to a specific combo/build' category so they don't get as much consideration.

You could always bake in some of the racial-power-affecting feats into the powers themselves so people don't have to fret about not being able to play those up as part of the character concept, too; for example, you could have dragonborn breath just go to blast 5 at a certain level, etc. This is the sort of thing I have the least problem with, feats and such that make your halfling dodge or your elf reroll or whatever work better are generic enough to be OK I think.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Dwarf-forged undergarments offer the best support.

So I've heard.

No substitute for practical experience.

BTW, what were you digging for in them?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Racial powers are interesting for those kinds of things that are active choices. Feats are better for the passive overall theme-building concepts. It would for instance be pretty hard to convey something like "dwarves really like to use axes" with a power, but Dwarven Weapon Training does an excellent job at that. OTOH 'drow are expert infiltrators' can easily be pulled off as a racial power option. I don't really see a reason why designers of new races, or enhancements for existing ones, should be limited to only one tool artificially.

 

[mudlock]

Racial powers are interesting for those kinds of things that are active choices. Feats are better for the passive overall theme-building concepts.

(Consider this a "staking out an exaggerated version of my stance for the sake of argument" post.)

Perhaps that's how they're mostly, but not exclusively used now. But how is, for instance, the at-will rogue utility (forget the name) that eliminates the stealth penalty for moving more than 2 squares better as a power than as a feat? I believe there's even a feat that does the exact same thing. And what about power attack, which isn't static, but is something that you have to choose whether or not to use each time it's available. So, one, I don't think the line is as clear-cut as you'd like to believe. What's "bad" about having a power that says "you have 2 more healing surges"? (Just give it a different color than green, red, or black (Not to mention feats that give you a power, like CD feats or some MC feats.)

Two: breaking feats into smaller groups might help some with bloat. There are how many hundreds of feats that have zero requirements; that literally any character can take at first level? Divide them up, assign them to different levels, different classes, different races... it might make the decision process every other time you level up easier.

I dunno. There's been a lot of threads recently along the lines of feats: what are they good for? or complaining about "feat taxes" etc. etc., and it's just got me thinking. Why NOT have just ONE thing--powers--that can fill the role currently taken up by powers and feats? It's something I've been thinking about.