Will the Player's Handbook Races be continued during the release schedule of the essentials books? I found PHR Dragonborn and Tiefling to be rather charming. I would hate to see them curtailed.
The Player's Handbook Races books performed very poorly and were subsequently given the axe. At least that is what WotC said at GenCon.
Will the Player's Handbook Races be continued during the release schedule of the essentials books? I found PHR Dragonborn and Tiefling to be rather charming. I would hate to see them curtailed.
The Player's Handbook Races books performed very poorly and were subsequently given the axe. At least that is what WotC said at GenCon.
Yeah, they said that the format was hard for stores to deal with, and I can see that - lacking a spine to show their title on they had to sit with the front cover showing for people to see them, and that eats up a lot of shelf space.
I'm guessing the material for the PHR: Humans book ended up in the two Heroes of the ... Essentials Players books (they said Humans were detailed in both, but with slightly different flavors).
Perhaps, as has been suggested, the new essentials works will offer something akin to this for wider audiences with less specific focus.
That said, I would love to see some of the third-party publishers try to enlarge the phb races style supplement library.
Thank you all for the admittedly unsatisfying news of the demise of the phr books.
I was really anticipating halfling, dwarf, and genasi though. Halflings just don't feel special to me right now, dwarves I always love, and genasi could use a lot of racial options (since they start with so many to begin with!).
Very sad to see them go.
Perhaps WotC (and retailers) might be better served collecting these into larger books, like Players Handbook Races I and so on, that would detail multiple races in depth, with lots of options. I know I'd buy those books, even if they reprinted the tiefling and dragonborn books (though, hopefully adding a bit more for those races to fill out the space).
"The Gazetteer: Nentir Vale" is cancelled?
So do you think that the Winning Races articles are a decent outlet for smaller bursts of class/race content or do you think a revamped form of book would be better?
The Winning Races articles - to me - never seem to present a cohesive picture of any race at the same scope of the Player's Handbook Races books did - they seem to be too varied in tone and content. That said, I'm not sure what sort of book format would be good for that sort of material. Single races would be too narrow of a target audience along with the shelf-space-issue for stores to carry them, and a book containing content of that level for multiple races could run into an "only 10% is interesting to me" issue among potential buyers.
One thing i mentioned before about the phb races books is the feeling that you class or race is special enough to have a book dedicated to it. As mentioned above, the coverage doesn't always hit all the class options they could.
There are some rare gems though. The article that gave infernal locks a different at-will and an encounter power of every level, all of which used CHA instead of CON? Brilliant for a tiefling infernal lock. Makes me look forward to possibly playing one (if I ever get to play, I usually DM, but every so often I get a hankering to play).
As for the PHB Races books, I bought Dragonborn and LOVED it. There was a decent chunk of fluffy bits, the crunchy bits were a bit generic, but not bad. Just boughtg the tiefling book today, and so far am digging it. I do think, however, that PHBR: Humans would have been terrible. Do we really need a book on human culture, values and behaviors? Better a PHBR book that covers both elves and eladrin or something.
The you haven't read the articles since 4e started very well. The majority is underpowered. Sometimes brokenly underpowered. The overpoerwed stuff almost universally comes from the books.
This is very, very true.
Dragon material is, by and large, all about niche, unoptimized character concepts.
Im surprised WoTC didn't realize that 1 race per book was going to make those books pretty thin and not sell terribly well.
I mean, right now there are 8 races in the PHB1, 6 races in the PHB2, and 4 races in the PHB3, then you get 2 in DS, 3 in Eberron, and 2 in FR. Thats alot of races.
3.5 had the "races of" books, that support 2-3 races and I think also introduced a new one with a similar theme. Something like this is much better and similar to the power books. I wouldn't expect a book on a single class to sell well either.
Also, about Dragon, I find beyond a few things that really stick out, most of Dragon is on the level or underpowered. I wouldn't be surprised to find the amount of dragon content in my party is rather low. Really its AV1 and the power books that cause most of the 'must-haves' for optimizers.
I don't know that too much of the material is brokenly overpowered. But a lot of it seems, if not underpowered...too niche.
There are some rare gems though. The article that gave infernal locks a different at-will and an encounter power of every level, all of which used CHA instead of CON? Brilliant for a tiefling infernal lock. Makes me look forward to possibly playing one (if I ever get to play, I usually DM, but every so often I get a hankering to play).
As for the PHB Races books, I bought Dragonborn and LOVED it. There was a decent chunk of fluffy bits, the crunchy bits were a bit generic, but not bad. Just boughtg the tiefling book today, and so far am digging it. I do think, however, that PHBR: Humans would have been terrible. Do we really need a book on human culture, values and behaviors? Better a PHBR book that covers both elves and eladrin or something.
Rare gems? Did you really like that article?
First of all, I have to say that the underpowered articles to which they refer to are the Winning Races articles, and Crimson Knights of Bael Turath (Dragon 386) is a Class Acts one. Secondly, gosh, that option in the article was lame. Honestly, I did not read all the powers, I simply did not like that at-will power. It's not like I will catch an at-will power that I will use about 70% of the time, if it will not be useful. And even worse is to have a better option that is Hellish Rebuke, to which Gift to Avernus (the at-will I'm talking about) is no match.
About the Player's Handbook Races, I love the two races and for this reason I bought the books. I liked the content of both books, and I loved the art in the cover.
It's really sad to know that they will not publish any other book of this series, because I would happily buy them. But I agree in some way with their format problem, but not in the context of the bookstores, because actually I think that they should adapt themselves to the format of the books, not the contrary. In the other hand, I think that the WotC should have made this series as a collection of races of a certain book, for example, Player's Handbook Races 1 would deal with the races of the first Player's Handbook and probably some extra. I was anxious to have a copy of Nentir Vale, and now I know that it will not probably be released. Sad, really sad.
I agree WotC erred in doing Single-Race books. One Idea is to do a Kind of Yin/Yang thing where you bundle Races that have either Historic Links or Thematic links: Dragonborn & Teiflings, Elves/Eladrin & Drow, etc... Would make for interesting fluff and bigger books. Humans could then be bundled with all the "half-" races. Devas (as astral) and Genasi (as elemental) could also be bundled and so on.
Just my 2 cents
Like Wood Elves.
I know that with Dragonborn are supposed to represent a specific dragon based on their breath weapon, but it could have been fleshed out a bit more.
Or perhaps different versions of the same race?
Like Wood Elves.
I know that with Dragonborn are supposed to represent a specific dragon based on their breath weapon, but it could have been fleshed out a bit more.
Ummm...what?
First off, we're not gonna be getting new elf races. Part of the PROBLEM with previous editions' races was too many varieties of elf. And too many of them too similar.
And no, dragonborn are NOT supposed to represent specific types of dragons. Breath weapon damage types aren't even genetic among dragonborn families.
atleast the tiefling book had two useable feats.
the one for the tail and the one for weapons
and the rest did with its demonic heritage for nentiv vale.....
no thanks just gimme essentials or more FR stuff to look at
The Dragonborn failed to me becuase it seemed every feet in the book was geared towards its breath weapon.
Ummm...MOST racial feats relate to said race's racial power. There's a lot of elf feats that pertain to elven accuracy. Several tiefling ones regarding infernal wrath, drow feats galore that deal with their racil powers.
Why would the dragonborn being the same upset you so much?
breath weapon only
no tail swipe
no claw damage
no nothing else.
breath weapon only
no tail swipe
no claw damage
no nothing else.
Dragonborn do not have tails.
Or claws.
To date, the only PC race with claws that can be used as effective weapons are gnolls.
Of course, some actual play testing and quality control might be worthwhile. Didn't one of those races book have significant nerfs / errata between publication and compendium? Like, not even enough time to get the book home before you have to start checking over update documents every time you want to use something from it.