What's your favorite form of racial support?

[ourchair]

I prefer the original design - a race's nature is expanded by feats - than new stuff that muddles up with the old design, even though I think racial powers make a hell of a lot more design sense.

For one thing, the 'feat tax' made sense to me, because it balances the 'extreme' stuff unique to a race against more mundane races. For example, if Thri-Kreen want to be the crazy multi-arm monstrosities they were in 2E, a player has to give up some stuff.

The new idea of allowing all characters to define themselves according to powers (i.e. Do I choose a class power, a theme power or a racial power), but I'm only willing to accept that if they redesign all the other races along the same lines, which is something I doubt WotC can do in a timely fashion, as it took them a long while after HotFK and HotFL to add floating modifiers to the other races.

I love that WotC is constantly evolving and reconsidering their design ideas in the game, I just dislike how they either significantly affect the economy and value of power and feat choices before and how it can make character building with all the material since 4e launch very very difficult.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

(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.

Sure, it is a concept worth mulling over. Personally I think there are things that deserve to be feats and things that deserve to be powers. For one thing it would be pretty hard to do much customization if you were required to dedicate one of your fairly limited number of power slots to each custom feature. It would certainly make it hard to have any of the more generic utility powers and yet do anything else.

I think static feats serve a useful purpose. They provide some kind of customization where you don't have to be constantly actively thinking about using that thing (especially true of enabling/access type feats).

Maybe a more interesting question would be why aren't feats the MAIN way in which characters are added to? Powers would still need to exist, but at least in theory they could ALL be provided by feat selections. This would allow for a character more like an E-class with potent but narrow action options, or one with a wider range of options more like a classic AEDU class. Obviously there would have to be some rules on regulating what you could take, but then again maybe not. In any case this gets pretty far from the topic as it certainly isn't going to happen in 4e as it is currently structured.

Still, providing racial power options via a feat might not be bad, since they would be extras, not swaps. They might be competitive with existing high value feats and provide more various ways to 'be a dwarf'.

 

[Marius Delphus]

BTW, what were you digging for in them?

Better rolls on the rumor table.

 

[Destil]

Making something a feat or a power should depend on the nature of what you're doing! Power level is part of it, but feats and powers occupy different design space in the game and should be treated as such:

Feats should be simple and low-overhead. Minimize how conditional it is, not for balance, but for player overload. Feats should never be an action (unless they grant a power). A max level PC will have 15 or more feats, they need to be as easy to forget as possible (ideally bonuses that can be written down elsewhere). Feats should never require special tracking: a 'once per encounter' feat is bad (multiclass feats are acceptable here, since you can only have one). A feat that modifies something already being tracked (one extra healing word per fight, for instance) is allowable (power level issues aside).

Powers vie for action economy, can be more complex, and need to be worth trading for. A player will look at the power when they use it, so something more conditional or involved is fair game.

 

[jbear]

The characters I have built so far, which are fairly numerous and all as tight as possible mechanically with a peppering of flavour (tight flavour) very rarely take racial feats.

The Dwarf and the Dragonborn are perhaps an exception with Dwarven Weapon Training and Breath Enhancing feats.

Feats need to have a solid tactical benefit to get in there. Too conditional and it's not evenvgetting a look in. Feats like Superior Will from Essentials has a solid base benfit and a conditional benfit that you are never going to forget, because you know when you are Stunned and there ain't much more to think about other than getting unstunned.

The current human fighter/runepriest hybrid I play has taken a feat quite early on to match background story but again the benefit is solid enough to make such a choice worthwhile. The feat is Wolfstone Hertige which gives me a nice +2 Athletics and gives a Daily stance power I don't have to swap any powers for which means i can reduce force movement on myself by 2 and when Bloodied gain Resist 5 all dmg and can't be knocked down. When the chips are down I'm the last one down.

Racial feats that ride on racial powers which are only ever going to get used once in an encounter need to be really good. For example the Drow feat that allows the Use of Cloud of Darkness as an Immeadiate .... Reaction ... almost gets there. If it was an Interrupt well it takes that extra step guaranteeing you the use of your power as a get out of jail free card 1/encounter ... which would bump it up just enough to be a great pick.

Racial Powers, along the same line would need to be attractive enough to consider them worthy of choice over class powers. Or following a theme so that one feat could boost them all.

Themes are great, adding flavour and options with an extra encounter power at level 1. Racial Theme powers seem like a good fit to compliment base Racial powers. I really am eager to see Themes released as a global element of 4e, not just Dark Sun Specific ones.

I know some people feel already too sqamped with options. I'm not one of those I don't think. I love options. A clean up would be a really good idea though. A lot of feats and powers just don't cut it. I would love to see them either brought up to par or simply given a swift and painless death.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The problem is there's no mechanism by which WotC can REMOVE something from the game. I guess they could invent a 'deprecated' flag in DDI, but otherwise all that stuff is still out there.

As for Themes, racial themes won't really work. They won't work for the same reason that racial PPs, EDs, feats, etc don't usually work well. The restriction to a specific race is generally kind of arbitrary. If you have a whole slew of themes that only work for one race you simply multiply the numbers of themes you're going to end up with to an inconvenient extent. I'd prefer this does not happen. I don't think WotC will make this mistake. Frankly I don't think the concept of theme is such that it should have any real restrictions at all. It should be something open to any race or class to give the character a... THEME!

 

[Dausuul]

Prefer racial powers. I've grown to have a deep dislike for the feat system--not so much because I object to the idea of free-floating "benefit packages," but because most of the benefit packages we actually get are boring numeric bonuses that do nothing to flesh out a character.

Moreover, racial powers have much more scope to make a PC's race matter. Ever since 1E, one of the biggest challenges in race design has been how to give nonhuman races interesting and flavorful abilities without making them ungodly powerful. Racial powers are an elegant and versatile solution.

 

[Ryujin]

I prefer that it be kept only to racial feats. In this way the flavour of the races remains reasonably static with the feats working within that framework, perhaps with the option of modifying how a racial power can operate to some degree.

 

[Incenjucar]

I prefer for racial support to be based on the needs of the race. Monster races will tend to do better with more power-based support, while demi-human types will do better with more feat-based support. That said, it's important for support to only be race-specific when absolutely necessary, like when something keys off of a racial ability or simply biology. There is an argument for class-enabling feats (that is, race/class feats that allow a race to function better at a class they would otherwise suck at), but I'm not sure if they're worth pursuing.

 

[FreeXenon]

I love the power support in Heroes of Shadow... Racial Themes... totally rocking....

I love feat support as well... Tiefling Paladin/Warlock anyone!

me loves 'em both