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| Wolfgang |
 Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 12:26 am Post subject: |
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Kobold Overlord
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| Neal wrote: |
Can I make gnomish avengers who come to this mortal coil with evil intentions, dealing death and murder most foul to those who displease the Fey Lords and Ladies? Does the PHB2 give me everything I need to scare the crap out of my PCs the next time they hear a village has a plague of gnomes?
Will the illusion/invisibility abilities make it possible to emulate Silent Hill as my PCs move through the town to stop these Gnomish avengers before they take the Sidhe's tenth for displeasing Fey?
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About the Devas: Do they have a stupid backstory like the gnomes that I'm going to have to retcon out, or are they just that damn good?
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About the half-orcs; what was the non-rape compromise? Or does the book carefully sidestep the whole issue? |
The gnomes can easily be twisted to serve evil. The Fey Beguiler racial paragon does that, and the tools are all there. I'll be continuing the Zobeck tradition of evil gnomes without much trouble.
Mind you, Avengers aren't necessarily evil... But they could be spun that way.
The devas backstory is basically "You used to be an immortal, now you're just reincarnated a lot". Which works for the mysterious types in Planescape. Not sure how well it will pan out in more traditional campaigns, frankly, but since Zobeck has quite a few angels already, these should fit in without much trouble for me.
The half-orcs have no compromise: the text is completely weaselly about the question. Which is fine; it's sort of a dumb question. To my way of thinking, "child of rape" is a harsh but plausible backstory for some types of character. Pretending that rape is unspeakable or a taboo subject in RPGs is childish. WotC doesn't want to address it, though, so there's a lot of dancing around the topic and no real answer.
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Wolfgang Baur
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| Otyugh |
| Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 5:24 pm Post subject: |
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Have they corrected the most glaring error of the PHB1 and made otyugh a playable race with a disease-based warlock pact?  |
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| Zherog |
| Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 6:30 am Post subject: |
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| Wolfgang wrote: |
| The goliath seems like a complete dud compared to, say, the 1E and 2E half-ogre, which had an identical role. The art doesn't match the description, the backstory is sort of weak, and making them big and dumb and stony doesn't seem any cooler than just saying "I'm a civilized half-ogre". |
I'm sure you're aware of this already, but just in case... the goliath isn't completely new for 4e. It appeared in Races of Stone, and - at least based on message board posts - was a very popular addition to the game.
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| They don't really "solve" the half-orc issue, but frankly I think that entire heritage argument is bogus. |
Preach it, my Kobold brother!
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John Ling
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| Wolfgang |
| Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 6:55 am Post subject: |
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| Zherog wrote: |
| I'm sure you're aware of this already, but just in case... the goliath isn't completely new for 4e. It appeared in Races of Stone, and - at least based on message board posts - was a very popular addition to the game. |
Yep, but there's a difference between "it was in a splatbook" and "it's CORE". If it's core, I have to assume that it's in the playtest groups, it's part of the standard party, and it's part of the default world/setting. To me, goliath is just too niche for that.
Why is it not that compelling as a core race? Redundancy. Half-orcs and dragonborn already do the big/tough role. And I expect PHB3 will pile on some additional redundancy.
The other races are a lot more successful in my eyes.
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Wolfgang Baur
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Last edited by Wolfgang on Mon Mar 09, 2009 7:10 am; edited 1 time in total |
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| Zherog |
| Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 6:58 am Post subject: |
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Well, I think that's more of a problem with their "everything is core!!!!1!!!!one!!!" philosophy rather than anything to do with the goliath itself. I mean, in my opinion the whole "everything is core" idea is a lame one to begin with.
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| Wolfgang |
| Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 8:40 am Post subject: |
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I agree that "everything is core!!!!1!!one" can be pretty lame. It means that the designers are not making hard choices or tradeoffs, and it also means that the worlds all start to seem the same.
The best settings have deliberately made choices about monsters, magic, and psionics. Witness DarkSun and Dragonlance, which certainly did NOT say that everything is core. The focus is on doing some things well, rather than doing everything in a mediocre way.
But at the same time, I've grown more tolerant of that design approach when it is executed reasonably well. It's a business decision by WotC to try to appeal to everyone. I don't like the results, but it means more people may come to Open Design, where we quite deliberately don't try to be everything to everyone. 
But back to PHB2. Maybe I should just throw out a spoiler, eh?
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Wolfgang Baur
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| Erekose13 |
| Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 8:53 am Post subject: |
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| Wolfgang |
| Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 12:34 pm Post subject: |
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Oh, I'll give it a shot. Requests?
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Wolfgang Baur
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| Wolfgang |
| Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 7:26 pm Post subject: |
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Wow, with that level of response, I'll skip the spoiler. I guess I overestimated the interest in PHB2. It's quite a decent book from a mechanical point of view.
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Wolfgang Baur
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| Erekose13 |
| Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 8:39 pm Post subject: |
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| doh missed out. I was hoping to see more about the Deva. Are there any paragon paths that talk directly about them or feats that tie in? |
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| Phil Larwood |
| Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2009 3:48 am Post subject: |
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| Wolfgang wrote: |
| Wow, with that level of response, I'll skip the spoiler. I guess I overestimated the interest in PHB2. It's quite a decent book from a mechanical point of view. |
It's interesting to note what they haven't put in the new SRD. There is no avenger or invoker, which strikes me as rather odd. I'm not quite sure what WotC is thinking, but some of the stuff they don't make available to 3rd party publishers kindda makes me rub my head in wonderment (then again, I've been shaking my head in wonder at WotC's antics for a while now). |
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| Wolfgang |
| Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2009 5:40 am Post subject: |
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| Erekose13 wrote: |
| doh missed out. I was hoping to see more about the Deva. Are there any paragon paths that talk directly about them or feats that tie in? |
Ah, the Deva! The races all get a paragon path in PHB2, and the deva gets the Ancestral Incarnate path. It's a reincarnation-themed path that let's a deva reuse encounter powers at 11th, for instance. Several of the path powers also generate servants/past-life incarnations that help with rituals, move and carry materials, or attack.
For feats, the Radiant Power feat is a bit of a 4E Power Attack for implement attacks. Not bad for avengers, for instance...
The deva are just begging to be used in a planar campaign.
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Wolfgang Baur
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| kristian_h |
| Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2009 5:59 am Post subject: |
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| Wolfgang wrote: |
| I agree that "everything is core!!!!1!!one" can be pretty lame. It means that the designers are not making hard choices or tradeoffs, and it also means that the worlds all start to seem the same. |
It also has severe repercussions on existing and upcoming Campaign Settings by WoC.
The new Races will have to be fit retroactively into the existing history of the Settings.
This might be relatively easy for a homebrew cmapaign in a WoC Setting where the DM simply disallows these new races.
But what about organized play?
And this is only PHB II. I guess we will see some new races with every upcoming PHB. |
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| Erekose13 |
| Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2009 12:55 pm Post subject: |
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| Interesting, is the Ancestral Incarnate available for any class? or is it geared towards a specific class for the Deva? |
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| Neal |
| Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2009 6:08 am Post subject: |
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If you're giving out spoilers, then... tell me more about PC backgrounds. Are they archetypal enough to be useful in lots of games, or are they overly specific to the implied D&D campaign world?
Would you incorporate them into your D&D 4e game? If so, why? If not, why not?
-neal |
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