Woot -- quality new race flavor!

[John Q. Mayhem]

Put me down as happy with the new core fluff.

By the by, why're people talking about it changing Eberron (or whatever) fluff? It's not like 3.5 Eberron uses the 3.5 core fluff.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Can someone please explain to me the need to rewrite the backstory on the old tried and true races anyway?

What is inherently broken with Tieflings and Halflings, etc? Its just backstory, which really does not have much gameplay impact. I had grown kind of partial to the original description for tieflings. If they wanted to create a new race, why not make somthing similar looking and give them a new name? Useful for consistency between versions at the very least.

Sure. Halflings in their original form are homebodies who never want to leave their towns to experience the world since adventure is looked down upon by their culture. Each time a player created a Halfling you needed to justify why THIS one was different from all the others. Each time you encountered a Halfling outside of their community you had to explain why it was there.

Their background made it difficult to use them in the actual game. Sure their background had no problems by itself. However, it didn't lend itself to being a player race where there were a lot of them being adventurers.

There is a similar problem with the tiefling background. If they are born from an demon and a human then it can't happen often enough to explain why there are a bunch of them around. Instead of each player being a rare exception it makes more sense to have a background that allows you to use them as characters as standard.

The goal with all the races would be to write a background that screams, "This race has cool powers, interesting story possibilities, unique personality quirks, and fits in perfectly as an adventurer."

 

[Eridanis]

Could someone link to where they talk about the racial backgrounds? I seem to have missed it, and your discussion sounds intriguing.

Front page.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

There is a similar problem with the tiefling background. If they are born from an demon and a human then it can't happen often enough to explain why there are a bunch of them around.

Luckily, they aren't.

Planetouched is a general word to describe someone who can trace his or her bloodline back to an outsider, usually a fiend or celestial.

The effects of having a supernatural being in one’s heritage last for many generations. Although not as dramatically altered as a half-celestial or a half-fiend, planetouched still retain some special qualities.

The two planetouched varieties described here are the most common. Aasimars are humans with some trace of celestial blood in their veins, and tieflings have some fiendishness in their family tree.

A royal family in particular might have regular planetouched "throws" reminding them of their ages old dealings, and adventurer would be an excellent occupation for such a child who had noble responsibilities but no place in the line of succession, but any family could have a tiny celestial or fiendish line that emerges in a child every few generations. If it wouldn't make it More Xmen Than Eberron I'd say that core playable planetouched as the mutants of the D&D setting would work well....

 

[Matthias]

With the Year of the Dragon drawing to a close, I am positively sick of draconic-flavored monsters, feats, and so forth in my D&D. I've been looking forward to 2008 and wondering what WOTC will have in store, being thankful there will a definite end to the many dragon-themed accessories: Draconomicon, Races of the Dragon, Dragon Magic, Dragons of Eberron... Not to say they were poor quality or anything like that, but I'll bet I'm not the only one who is feeling a little "dragon fatigue".

Now it turns out that with 4E coming out, we will have a dragon-flavored CORE player race which means we will be dealing with dragons and draconic-type things designed for players (that is, as other than monsters and NPCs) FOREVER. *sigh*

I know what the second "D" in "D&D" stands for, but come on, can't we give it a rest already?

If there was ever a time to introduce the dragonborn, it was in Races of the Dragon or Draconomicon. I'm not against introducing all-new player races in 4th Edition, but IMO the game's recipe needs more dragon about as much as it needs more elf. If you want reptillian PCs, promote lizardfolk or even kobolds to core-race status. Kobolds could be pretty interesting if you mixed up its older doglike heritage with its 3E reptile heritage, giving them traits of both mammals and reptiles without making them too much like either. Voilà, something strange and different.

On a related topic, how can we have tieflings with aasimar? I want to know this.

 

[Matthias]

I would place the Drow as D&D's Romulans.

True, that.

There really is no race of badass, tree-hugging hippies in Star Trek.

Those would be the Risians or perhaps the Betazoids.

 

[Merlin the Tuna]

Y'know, it occurs to me that the Eladrin have the perfect fluff... for the gnome race. I mean, otherwordly fey who are natural magicians? Anyone? Anyone?

I was just thinking that the Halflings could adopt a lot of gnome-isms. Given the gnomish propensity towards making goofy crap out of whatever they have sitting around, you could add that to the Halfling camp to make them a bit more like real-world gypsies and tinkers, since they've already got the Wagons 'n' Riverboats thing going on.

Funny how that works. The description of elves pulls them in different directions and we get two races. The description of gnomes pulls them in two different directions and they get written out. Guess there's something to being Medium after all.

 

[rounser]

On a related topic, how can we have tieflings with aasimar? I want to know this.

Survey findings reflected that +2 to dex and int was more useful than +2 to cha and wis?

Horns look cool on promotional artwork?

As an aside, I remember tipping the tiefling as "the next drow" on a thread on these boards many a moon ago (I also remember the idea being poo-poohed at the time by other posters). And there you go. Someone agreed, or a survey agreed.

"Cambion" would be better name for them though, IMO, but "tiefling" is better than "eladrin" at least...it's a pity they couldn't use "eldar", "eladrin" seems like such a 3rd rate "eldar"...

 

[Aloïsius]

"Cambion" would be better name for them though, IMO, but "tiefling" is better than "eladrin" at least...it's a pity they couldn't use "eldar", "eladrin" seems like such a 3rd rate "eldar"...

This is language dependant. For me, non-native english speakers, cambion sounds like "camion" (=truck) or the spanish sign "cambio" (exchange) and Eladrin sounds more fey than Eldar (wich rhymes with Chedar).
So, I like both Tiefling (sounds mischievous and slightly evil) and Eladrin.

 

[The Little Raven]

"Cambion" would be better name for them though, IMO, but "tiefling" is better than "eladrin" at least...it's a pity they couldn't use "eldar", "eladrin" seems like such a 3rd rate "eldar"...

Well, Cambion has always pretty much been the direct offspring of a demon, whereas tieflings are a true-breeding bloodline.

As for Eldar, I dunno why they chose not to use it. Feist used it in the Riftwar books, and Warhammer uses it. Maybe they wanted to go for D&Disms instead of just using stuff from Tolkein.