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Latest excerpts from the 4th Edition Player's Handbook
For those with no care to Link:
Before we began 4th Edition design, James Wyatt decided that he wanted a player character’s race to matter a lot more in 4E than it did in 3E. Andy Collins and I heard about James’ decision during our first week of brainstorming together. James said something like, “I won’t be happy with this design unless it gives me a reason to care about what race I am all through a character’s career. Not just something that happens at first level.” That sounded great to me and Andy.
Our early designs put race on par with paragon paths and epic destinies as character elements that would be secondary to class for ten levels at a time. Race supplied features and powers from levels 1-10, paragon paths took over at levels 11-20, and epic destinies capped characters off at levels 21-30.
One drawback of our original “race offers powers at levels 1-10” approach was that it made race abilities less significant at higher levels. Another drawback was that our classes were already plenty rich. We realized that we didn’t need race, path and destiny competing directly with the class-based power lists that were the heart of the design.
4E Solution
So we settled on a hybrid approach. Each 4E race gets a small roster of abilities that make them stand out from other races. Each race gets a single unique power at first level that stays cool and useful over the character’s entire career. And each race has a unique selection of feats that flesh out the race’s advantages compared to other races.
Styles of Racial Feats
There are at least three different styles of racial feats in the Players Handbook.
Racial Power Related Feats: The logic for these feats is that you’re the only race in the game that can pull off a stunt that everyone else envies. Letting you choose feats that utilize your racial power makes you feel even better about your power. You’re opting to improve an already good power instead of choosing a feat that could shore up a weakness, so we aren’t shy about making racial feats a good deal.
Take the Enlarged Dragon Breath feat for the dragonborn as an example.
Enlarged Dragon Breath [Dragonborn]
Prerequisites: Dragonborn, dragon breath racial power
Benefit: When you use your dragon breath power, you can choose to make it blast 5 instead of blast 3.
A dragonborn’s breath weapon isn’t going to be its most powerful attack, but it is one of the few minor action attacks in the game. Increasing the blast area from 9 squares to 25 squares? It’s a no-brainer for any weapon-using dragonborn who isn’t already capable of attacks that blast many enemies at once. Once you’ve played a dragonborn with 5-square breath, playing a dragonborn with a wee little 3-square blast won’t cut it.
Flavorful Feats that Don’t Need to Clutter Basic Race Abilities: Some 3E races have laundry lists of abilities supplying situational benefits. In 4E, we have laundered those lists. Small situational benefits are great as feats that a player chooses because it suits their character concept, not as good as something that every player of a particular race has to keep track of. Here’s an example from the dwarf.
Dodge Giants [Dwarf]
Prerequisite: Dwarf
Benefit: You gain a +1 bonus to AC and Reflex defense against the attacks of Large or larger foes.
3E dwarves all ended up having AC bonuses against giants. 4E cuts this advantage out of the standard dwarf package and rephrases the advantage as a feat that can help dwarves against all bigger creatures, not just the few bigger creatures that happen to be actual giants.
Feats that Capture the Essence of a Race: Okay, I admit this last category is a bit broad. The perfect racial feat of this style supplies the race with a wonderful little feature that members of other races would love to have but don’t deserve. Sometimes we succeed perfectly, other times we get as close as we can.
Any guesses about the hardest race? Which race was the hardest to peg with feats that felt distinct and appropriate?
Other designers may have other answers, but I’d say it was humans. The problem is that you all know humans. You’ve got a pretty good sense of human capabilities, and even in a fantasy world with elves and dwarves and succubi, there are a lot of abilities that we could try to peg onto humans that would make you and most all your friends cock an eyebrow and hone your mockery skills.
So we settled on the idea that humans, at least the PC humans we’re concerned with, are the action-hero race, winning against improbable odds and fighting to the last breath. Try the following feat as an example:
Action Surge [Human]
Prerequisite: Human
Benefit: You gain a +3 bonus to attack rolls you make during any action you gained by spending an action point.
That’s an example of an ability nearly any PC would like to have, but as a feat, it’s only available to humans. You think you’ve got a human finished off and they pull out some heroic stunt that saves the party.
Full Circle
Enlarged Dragon Breath, Dodge Giants, and Action Surge have one point in common: all three are racial feats you can take in the heroic tier that will still be useful even when your character is 19th or 28th level. We made good on James’ original hope—your PC’s race always matters, and if you want to choose a number of racial feats, your PC’s race can matter a lot.
--Rob Heinsoo
Racial Traits
Each character race offers the following types of benefits.
Ability Scores: Your character race gives you a bonus to a particular ability score or two. Keep these bonuses in mind when you assign your ability scores.
Speed: Your speed is the number of squares you can normally move when you walk.
Vision: Most races, including humans, have normal vision. Some races have low-light vision; they see better in darkness than humans do.
Languages: You start off knowing how to speak, read, and write a few languages. All races speak Common, the language passed on by the last human empire, and some races let you choose a language.
Other Racial Traits: Other traits include bonuses to your skills, weapon training, and a handful of other traits that give you capabilities or bonuses that members of other races don’t have.
Racial Power: Several races give you access to a racial power, which is an extra power you gain at 1st level in addition to the powers your class gives you.
Racial Feats (Heroic Tier)
Name Prerequisites Benefit
Action Surge Human +3 to attacks when you spend an action point
Dodge Giants Dwarf +1 to AC and Reflex against attacks of Large or larger foes
Dragonborn Frenzy Dragonborn +2 damage when bloodied
Dragonborn Senses Dragonborn Low-light vision, +1 to Perception
Dwarven Weapon Training Dwarf +2 damage and proficiency with axes and hammers
Eladrin Soldier Eladrin +2 damage and proficiency with longswords and spears
Elven Precision Elf +2 to reroll with elven accuracy
Enlarged Dragon Breath Dragonborn, dragon breath racial power Dragon breath becomes blast 5
Ferocious Rebuke Tiefling, infernal wrath racial power Push 1 square with infernal wrath
Group Insight Half-Elf Grant allies +1 to Insight and initiative
Halfling Agility Halfling, second chance racial power Attacker takes a –2 penalty with second chance reroll
Human Perseverance Human +1 to saving throws
Light Step Elf Add to overland speed of group, +1 to Acrobatics and Stealth
Lost in the Crowd Halfling +2 to AC when adjacent to at least two larger enemies
Most of that seems reasonable enough. I'm not fond of the racial feats that modify the rest of the party. This game already seems to have a lot of niggling situational modifiers applying all over the place given how many class powers seem to grant buffs and debuffs on top of doing damage.
I'd really rather that the elf racial feats/features actually focused on the elf instead of those near them.
I prefer "always-on" situational modifiers because they get used much more often, and players are more likely to remember them.
The half-elf doesnt have to remember to remind a player, because its turned on all the time, and eventually players will likely get used to just noting that since the half-elf is close enough to add it themselves.Take bardic music, for example. New players to my group will often forget to add the +3 to attack and damage rolls. Since the old players pretty much subconsciously do this, even the bard forgets to tell people from time to time: often its the CLERIC who is saying, "Dont forget to add this-and-that!"
Also, many of the modifiers seem to last for one turn only. Simple enough to tell a player, "You get +2 to your AC for now." Normally, some buffs last for a matter of minutes, which is maybe enough to occasionally get through one encounter, rummage around for loot, and get to the next encounter. Sometimes.
I'm mildly surprised that they decided to go with racial feats. I was expecting it to be more like the heroic paths from the Midnight campaign setting where you get various powers for free from levels 1-20. (I admit I haven't been following this too closely, though.)
I'm mildly surprised that they decided to go with racial feats. I was expecting it to be more like the heroic paths from the Midnight campaign setting where you get various powers for free from levels 1-20. (I admit I haven't been following this too closely, though.)
From the article it seems to me that they did indeed try this out, but dropped it because they felt all of that PLUS your class and your paragon path abilities was too much.
Overall, I like it. And I do have to say it is awesome that some of those non-sensible abilities have been picked off. It always irked me that Dwarves were trained to fight giants, even if they supposedly came from somewhere that made that training silly.
Cheers! :)
From the article it seems to me that they did indeed try this out, but dropped it because they felt all of that PLUS your class and your paragon path abilities was too much.
Overall, I like it. And I do have to say it is awesome that some of those non-sensible abilities have been picked off. It always irked me that Dwarves were trained to fight giants, even if they supposedly came from somewhere that made that training silly.
Cheers! :)
I don't think it's a bad choice, but I don't see how it's any different than 3.5E (where you also had racial feats). I suppose it is different in the sense they made a conscious effort to give each race an ability that would stay useful at high levels.
I don't think it's a bad choice, but I don't see how it's any different than 3.5E (where you also had racial feats). I suppose it is different in the sense they made a conscious effort to give each race an ability that would stay useful at high levels.From the article it seems to me that they did indeed try this out, but dropped it because they felt all of that PLUS your class and your paragon path abilities was too much.
Overall, I like it. And I do have to say it is awesome that some of those non-sensible abilities have been picked off. It always irked me that Dwarves were trained to fight giants, even if they supposedly came from somewhere that made that training silly.
Cheers! :)
Not EVERYTHING can be radically changed. :P
One big difference is that some/all(?) races now give you an encounter power. Considering your limited number of encounter powers, this is actually a pretty cool deal. Eladrin can telport short distances, Dragonborn (maybe) get a breath weapon, Halflings can reroll an attack against them.
It sounds if you really want to play up your racial differences, you can really focus on these feats too, which is interesting.
Cheers! :)
I don't see size listed as something that varies with race. Does size no longer matter?
And what about Darkvision? The sight entry makes no mention of it.
I don't see size listed as something that varies with race. Does size no longer matter?
I think halflings are now 75%lings, and there aren't any gnomes in the first PHB. So size might not matter. (I could be wrong on the halfling bit, though.)
Size does still matter, I think. The pregen Halfling Paladin certainly seemed to have +1 to hit and AC.
As for Darkvision, it's gone from PC races, and according to designers much rarer in general. The idea was it made using stealth very hard in many situations, so it was scaled back. Plus, taking it out of PC races meant less arguing about lighting.
Cheers! :)
Dragonborn get a breath weapon encounter power right from the get-go, but I can definitely see people picking up one or more racial feats to expand upon its utility.
As for darkvision, it was removed because in 3rd Edition almost EVERYTHING had it by virtue of type. Monstrous Humanoids, Outsiders, Dragons, etc. This created problems because all of two races got it (dwarf and half-orc) and some had low-light vision.
This meant that a DM had to explain what a room looked like for the guy with normal vision, then a bit more in color for the guy with low-light vision, and finally figure out how far the last guy could see with darkvision and redescribe it again sans paintings, writings, and color (since darkvision cant pick out those details).
Some things still get it seemingly by type, such as undead, but then those arent PC races. Also, its much scarier if you get separated or lose your light source and something is skulking about you in the dark, instead of an aboleth charging you with a torch.
I don't see size listed as something that varies with race. Does size no longer matter?I think halflings are now 75%lings, and there aren't any gnomes in the first PHB. So size might not matter. (I could be wrong on the halfling bit, though.)
Gnomes are still in the game. They, along with a dozen other races, are in the Monster Manual. Several of those races are large (like the minotaur) and several are small.
Size is still going to be a factor. They would have said if it wasn't, but because racial powers are more important and continue to be useful long after first level, the size of your race isn't quite as important as it used to be.
Two things come to mind when I think of 3rd Edition racial feats. The first is that a lot of racial feats seemed very, very useless. The second is that you didnt get a lot of feats (whopping 7-8), and since there were often a plethora of extremely useful ones already in the game, you were hardpressed to even consider taking them.
A DM wanted to run an "evil" campaign, so I went browsing through the Book of Vile Darkness to see if any feats were tempting. I found many that I thought would be interesting to have, but none that were really on par with the feats that I also wanted.
One gives you a bonus to Intimidate checks. Another gave you a crappy 1d4 natural weapon attack. Not worth it.
The new racial feats have two benefits. One is that they are being integrated from the start. I would totally take a feat that gives everyone else a skill and Init bonus, even only +1, because it applies to everyone else. In fact, most of those racial feats sounds really cool to have, which is a far cry from what we have now.
The second is that you get more feats, so you dont have to be as stingy with them as you did before.