On 4th Edition Part One: A Question of Race
Last Christmas break, on a day when I was sitting home alone and bored, I called up Alpha and the two of us went on a quest to Hobbytown to peruse their selection of dice and Star Wars D20 sourcebooks. As we were looking up everything we could about how to use the Millenium Falcon in a Star Wars RPG, I spotted a book on the shelf. It was a preview to 4th edition. Alpha and I looked through it, Star Wars temporarily forgotten, and I found myself both intrigued and somewhat irate at the additions and subtractions Wizards of the Coast had made to the game. For example, the hints at making Tieflings a core race made me roll my eyes with distaste - great, I thought, now everyone's going to be playing the half-demon equivalent of Drizzt Do'Urden and we'll have a bunch of players using it as an excuse to whine about how persecuted they were and how they have to fight their evil heritage and try desperately to be a good person and so on.
That day, we left Hobbytown in a state of mild irritation, but our conversation moved on to other things, like Star Wars and the idea of watching all three Lord of the Rings movies in a row, extended edition (which was awesome). 4E left our minds at that time, but now, five months or so later, I remember my initial reaction to some of the races I read about. Some of those opinions have changed since I got my hands on advanced PDFs of the 4.0 Player's Handbook (thanks a lot, person who shall remain nameless due to the legality of having PDFs of books a week before they are officially released). So let's get started:
DRAGONBORN:
Initial Reaction: I was only mildly surprised to see dragons become a core race in 4.0. Heaven knows that whenever the subject of D&D comes up among me and my non-gaming friends, I've had countless people ask me; "so, can you play a dragon?" It was inevitable. Part of me felt as if including Dragonborn was pandering to the masses of dragon fans out there. Don't get me wrong, dragons are pretty awesome, but I know that I'm more likely to have a chill running down my spine from interacting with a Mind Flayer than a Red Wyrm. Like my initial reaction to Tieflings, I felt it was indulging the fanboys to pretty hefty degree.
That said, after looking the race over, I didn't have any strong feelings of distaste. As a Dragonborn, you get +2 to Strength and Charisma. That's a pretty sweet deal (that's been the biggest change for me in 4E; there are no racial penalties. More on that later). Dragonborn also get a breath weapon that can be either fire, ice, lightning or poison.
I have to say that again, while I like dragons, I don't see the need to play one the way many people do. That said, I know one of the guys in my group, Chris, is a huge dragon fan, and he's certainly excited to be playing a race of draconic heritage. And I'm not going to criticize someone who's having fun.
DWARVES:
Obviously not a new race, but they've definitely changed Dwarves up a bit. The thing that disappointed me the most was the removal of Dwarven Darkvision; that's something I'll definitely miss. One of the major perks of being a Dwarf at low-levels is being the only one in a dungeon crawl who doesn't need that silly torch to see the way. Now Dwarves have the same vision level as elves? Another one of my players, Evan, was less than pleased with this change.
The other thing I noted was the Dwarven racial ability boosts: +2 to Constitution and +2 to Wisdom. +2 CON is direct transfer from 3.5 of course, but the wisdom boost? Smells like they're encouraging Dwarves to take the route of Cleric types while other races (like Dragonborn) run in with weapons in true Fighter style. I don't know about other 3.5 players reading this, but I know I'm used to Dwarves running in with axes and cleaving goblins in half. Not that you can't play a Fighter as a Dwarf of course, but you'd have to spend a lot of points to get a high Strength, and that kind of reduces the Wisdom Bonus to the point of redundancy. Again, on a positive note, Dwarves are still sturdy little buggers, and getting proficiency with a warhammer, from what Evan and Alpha have been talking about, is pretty effin' sweet.
ELADRIN:
Previously confined to the pages of the Monster Manual, Eladrin have managed to muscle their way up to the pages of the PHB to stand beside their elf cousins, somehow managing to make a race as supposedly refined and aloof as elves look uncultured and boorish in comparison. Eladrin are supposedly more 'high elf' types with more fey blood than regular elves, and have been set up to be the Wizard race; You get a +2 to Dexterity and to Intelligence. You also get a really nice power; fey step, which allows you to essentially teleport once per encounter. I guess the inclusion of Eladrin surprised me. My assumption is that they were included to give an opposing counterpart to Tieflings (don't know how right that assumption is though), which really bugs me, as the traditional counterpart to a Tiefling is an Aasimar (a celestial-blooded character). Ah well, from what I've read, it looks like celestials are less involved in this system, so that's all very well. Looks like they'll be an interesting addition to the family, but until I've seen one in-game, that's honestly anyone's guess. Could be worse in my opinion; they could have made Drow core!
ELVES:
As I said previously, Elves have been knocked from their positions of being mysterious, elegant beings to the wilder and more uncivilized side of the family. Yeah, Eladrin have taken the position of party ponce away from the Elvenfolk (sorry, I have issues with elves), leaving them with a build that caters less to casters and more to sneaky sniper types. Elves have the benefit of being able to move 35 feet instead of 30, and their +2 ability boosts go to Dexterity (of course) and Wisdom. This is the point where I'd like to point out the major change regarding abilities. In 3.5, Elves had that same +2 Dexterity, but they also had a -2 to their Constitution score. 4E has eliminated stat penalties in the core races entirely, so all your elf gets is two +2's to stats. No negs.
And the only way I can be remotely okay with this is that every core race gets this - even humans (more about that later). Somehow they've managed to balance something this overpowered. Because that is the first thing you will notice about 4E; EVERYTHING is powerful.
And on the positive side, at least from my point of view, Elves being knocked down to the status of being rather less cool than their Eladrin cousins means I might find a way to hate elves less... I'm not making any promises though...
Why do I hate elves so much you ask? That will be discussed at another time...
HALF-ELVES
The first thing I noticed -- I literally said it out loud when I first looked at the page for Half-Elf in the PHB -- was "Holy S**t! they made Half-Elves not suck!"
And it's true. Half-Elves now have ability boosts -- a +2 to Constitution and to Charisma.
Those of you who understand the benefits of Constitution in 3.5 will know how useful that is. And your CON score is at least 3 times as useful in 4E, I promise you. To be brief, you use CON to determine things like HP and Healing Surges.
So yeah. Stat boosts like that? Makes it useful to be a Half-Elf for a change! Who knew? Half elves also get to learn some extra powers, learn feats from different groups, and do all kinds of other useful things that actually make them worth playing!
In my book, Half-Elves are an example of how 4E managed to improve things; by making a race that was only good for RP become something viable in combat. Shocking.
HALFLINGS
The first thing that hit me when I read the Halfling page was the fact that they all seem to have grown about a foot since 3.5. That's right, Halflings are now FOUR feet tall on average instead of three. I wish I knew what their motivation was for that, I really do.
Halflings are definitely still set up to be skillmonkey types. Their ability boosts are +2 to Dexterity (just as before) and +2 to Charisma. Their land speed has also been boosted up to the same as humans and others, so that's pretty sweet too. I don't know, I'm a big fan of halflings (and yes, I blame Tolkien entirely for that), and the fact that the only thing they've really messed with is height makes me feel pretty satisfied. Thank you 4E for not being compelled to try and fix something that isn't broken.
HUMANS
Normally it'd be assumed that I'd gloss over humans, as they're kind of the standard blah race of the PHB for people wanting something with a little more 'oomph' to it. But again I have to give 4E credit for balancing the game, as I mentioned earlier. Now, every other race gets a +2 to two particular abilities. Seems unfair for this to exclude humans right? Not so. Now, not only do humans get that extra feat, they also get an extra skill, an extra power, AND you can have +2 to ANY STAT YOU WANT.
I don't know about you guys, but that definitely gives me motivation to put on my human shoes. It means the idea of giving other races a +2 isn't unbalanced, and you have a reason to play something that doesn't breathe fire or teleport every ten minutes. Go humans!
TIEFLINGS
I'd like to apologize for my prior harsh words regarding Tieflings. If you take a look on my 'about me' page (it's buried on the website somewhere), you'll notice that I'm actually playing a Tiefling in another campaign. My complaint earlier was more towards players of Tieflings than Tieflings themselves. Honestly, while I think that 4E is pandering to kids who feel persecuted and want to battle inner demons IN-game as well as out of it, I have to say that they did a good job with them. They get +2 to Intelligence and Charisma (the only race that gets a bonus to two mental stats I might add) and are no longer humans with demonic heritage, they're their own race descended from humans who made a deal with devils. I like that better to be honest; it means it's easy for someone to say that the only thing left of their demonic heritage is their horns and glowing red eyes. My point is, it's more viable to play a good-aligned Tiefling in 4.0 than it was in 3.5. Trust me, I get funny looks from playing a Chaotic Neutral Tiefling in one of the other campaigns I'm in. Tieflings are also still being portrayed as tricky buggers, but that's something that works with more than just being a Rogue in 4.0. But more on that when I move on to Classes in 4E.
That's all I have to say about race at this point. My overall feeling about race is much more comfortable than it was five months ago in Hobbytown, and I find myself actually looking forward to picking between these races when I eventually get to play in a 4th edition campaign. Even though part of me sneers at Eladrin, Tieflings and Dragonborn, the fantasy nerd in me is squealing the way she did back in middle school when she had the worst crush on all four of the Hobbits in the Lord of the Rings movie.
Or was that Sophomore year of college? Unlike Editions of D&D, some things never change.
Next time: Classes, and an explanation of the 'power' system.
Happy gaming,
Lora H.
