Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Sea-Envy Aug 14, 2010 13:28:06	Dose anyone think the material in the human book will have any kind of rule to prevent Half-elves, Mulls, and any future race with a heritage feature from taking them? If they do would that screw the reincarnated champion destiny? Dose anyone think there will be new heritage options so that Half-orcs, Shadarkai, Shifters, or teiflings can get in touch with their human anscestors? You know the Pinochio plot line As I have mentioned before my Teifling cha-ladin would take an epic quest to rid his body of coruption and become a human. Of course this is all just speculation because even if the writers lurked the boards religiously there would be no time to change it.
#2 yaldabaoth Aug 14, 2010 15:42:57	Dose anyone think the material in the human book will have any kind of rule to prevent Half-elves, Mulls, and any future race with a heritage feature from taking them? If they do would that screw the reincarnated champion destiny? Dose anyone think there will be new heritage options so that Half-orcs, Shadarkai, Shifters, or teiflings can get in touch with their human anscestors? You know the Pinochio plot line As I have mentioned before my Teifling cha-ladin would take an epic quest to rid his body of coruption and become a human. Of course this is all just speculation because even if the writers lurked the boards religiously there would be no time to change it. WotC have revealed at GenCon that they aren't going to do a human book; the dragonborn & tiefling books look like the end of that line. But I can't imagine for other mechanics that WotC would specifically bar races that can be human... from being human. I doubt that there will be published material that makes any of the races you mention more like humans. (They are too far removed.) I admit that there could be an exception for half-orcs, but the PHB2 version tends to see them as "breeding true" and seldom hybrids (unlike muls and half-elves). I could see a feat allowing them to be considered humans as well as half-orcs. I doubt it would ever see the light of day, though.
#3 drnick Aug 14, 2010 17:26:02	WotC have revealed at GenCon that they aren't going to do a human book; the dragonborn & tiefling books look like the end of that line While I can understand why they did this (limited target audience and all) it's still very disappointing.
#4 Orcboss Aug 14, 2010 20:44:31	I'm hoping it'll work its way into a few "Winning Races" articles.
#5 Duskweaver Aug 15, 2010 3:28:02	While I can understand why they did this (limited target audience and all) That wasn't the reason. The reason was that retailers hated the nonstandard format of the books (and I'm using the term 'books' rather loosely here). A 32-page, spineless, staple-bound softcover is apparently a nightmare to stock. You can't stand them on-end on a shelf (unless the shelf is packed tightly) because they slide down and get crushed and bent and otherwise damaged. Ideally, you want to stack them like comics or newspapers, but that potentially means you have to keep them separate from all the other D&D products (as well as taking up more space). You also can't easily count them or see what they are if the front cover is not visible. The tiefling and dragonborn books look identical from the side, so you have to actually take them down from the shelf and sort them when doing stocktaking, rather than just quickly scanning the shelf. It's just a big pain all round for the retailer. The material that was planned to go in PHB Races: Humans will probably be released in some form eventually. The death of the PHBR series is not the death of dedicated support for specific races, just of that particular publication format.
#6 thax Aug 15, 2010 12:04:54	They didn't say they was not gonna do the races books, but that the format that the first two had was not optimal. Wizards is looking into a different format for the them to use before they continue. I hope they go with smaller size like the Shadow book, perhaps B&W printing to reduce the cost and work on continuing to make the Races books next year. They may also (God Forbid) just turn them into Dragon Articles.
#7 Orcboss Aug 15, 2010 12:27:46	What's the beef with them being in Dragon?
#8 Damon_Tor Aug 15, 2010 12:48:17	Many DMs disallow dragon content for a variety of reasons: 1.  Exclusivity.  Not everyone has it, including DMs.  When you game at your local Game Store you can easily nab a copy of PHB3 from the shelf to find whatever power.feat/feature is in question.  Not so with Dragon. 2.  Balance.  Dragon seems to have a different standard for balance, with some options that are considered overpowered, others that are confusing, and others that are non-functional.  Dragon articles are rarely fixed by errata, and left as they are, more often than not. 3.  Simplicity.  Fewer options means characters take less time to create and level-up. I'd like to see these released in larger books containing maybe three races at a time.  "Scions of Fallen Empires" might contain Dragonborn, Tieflings, and Humans, for example.  "Half-Blood Heroes" could contain Half-Elves, Half-Orcs, and Shifters perhaps.  "Feywild Wanderers" could be for Elves, Eladrin, and Gnomes, and so on and so forth.
#9 thax Aug 15, 2010 20:59:51	I think the combined hardbacks may be a possibility also. Spot on about Dragon, though Celt will disagree with you... There is errata for dragon, btw, just wish I could tell which ones were affecting the annual.
#10 celticmutt Aug 15, 2010 22:58:29	I think the combined hardbacks may be a possibility also. Spot on about Dragon, though Celt will disagree with you... There is errata for dragon, btw, just wish I could tell which ones were affecting the annual. Why did you bring me up?  Talk about obsessive. And of course I disagree, because stuff in Dragon is usually underpowered, not overpowered, and because the articles do get errata'ed, even months after release.
#11 Janx_14 Aug 15, 2010 23:30:54	Oddly enough the example of overpowered was errata'd to be virtually useless to the class it was overpowered for. The overpowered stuff that never seems to get touched for years has still been largely in the PHB1 and the adventurer's vaults.
#12 Gazra Aug 16, 2010 2:54:56	A lot of the Dragon content is regulated to a higher degree than the options released in books. When a Dragon article goes up, it is subject to the intense scrutiny of the CharOp board until the compilation of the issue. And changes are made from the article to the compilation all the time. Sure, the articles released toward the end of the month doesn't get as much scrutiny, but I don't see where Dragon is some uncharted mess of overpowered options that should be disallowed.
#13 hatsuma Aug 16, 2010 7:20:45	Many DMs disallow dragon content for a variety of reasons: 1.  Exclusivity.  Not everyone has it, including DMs.  When you game at your local Game Store you can easily nab a copy of PHB3 from the shelf to find whatever power.feat/feature is in question.  Not so with Dragon. 2.  Balance.  Dragon seems to have a different standard for balance, with some options that are considered overpowered, others that are confusing, and others that are non-functional.  Dragon articles are rarely fixed by errata, and left as they are, more often than not. 3.  Simplicity.  Fewer options means characters take less time to create and level-up. I'd like to see these released in larger books containing maybe three races at a time.  "Scions of Fallen Empires" might contain Dragonborn, Tieflings, and Humans, for example.  "Half-Blood Heroes" could contain Half-Elves, Half-Orcs, and Shifters perhaps.  "Feywild Wanderers" could be for Elves, Eladrin, and Gnomes, and so on and so forth. 1) Really?  Online content is less accessible than counting on your gaming store to have every 4e book in stock at all times in case you need to look something up?  I suppose if no one in your entire gaming group owns a laptop, it'd be a pretty good case against the magazines.  Of course, you could also print them. 2) I can find plenty of broken stuff in print books.  In fact, the only problem I've ever had with a PC (battlerage vigor dwarf) was from a print book.  This is a fair argument, but random point samples does little to convince me that this is magazine exclusive, or even indicitive of a trend. 3) True.  Banning all books besides the core 3 would help even more.  I'm not really trying to say that banning magazines is a bad idea, I mean, it's your call.  But these reasons, in the context of "this is why low quality folders stuffed with random rules in a limited print run that only adds needless complexity to one race", seem absurd.
#14 drnick Aug 16, 2010 10:59:27	Having never worked at a book store, I hadn't considered the challenges the format might present to retailers. I'm still disappointed though. Dragon articles are a couple of pages at most so I assume if we get Dragon articles instead of books, there's going to be a lot of cutting (even if they run a couple of articles on the same race).
#15 Tharag_Bocc Aug 17, 2010 10:55:32	I'd like to see these released in larger books containing maybe three races at a time.  "Scions of Fallen Empires" might contain Dragonborn, Tieflings, and Humans, for example.  "Half-Blood Heroes" could contain Half-Elves, Half-Orcs, and Shifters perhaps.  "Feywild Wanderers" could be for Elves, Eladrin, and Gnomes, and so on and so forth. This. It's what I thought they should have done from the start.  We don't get mono-class books, we get the power source series.  Likewise, I always thought that expanded racial options should be grouped into thematicly conected races, much like the 3.5 "Race of ..." series.
#16 ah_stormbringer Aug 17, 2010 14:25:21	That would be a great idea to group 3-4 races together to make a book now that is something I would buy.
#17 greatfrito Aug 17, 2010 18:08:44	The local shop stocks all of their RPG books on "magazine"-style shelves, so I'm guessing they never had that issue.  I could see the big box stores having that issue, but still. I was really coming to enjoy that line.  The Dragonborn book didn't strike me as "necessary", but the Tiefling one was an instant buy - and I don't really have Tiefling players all that often. Boo on the loss of an interesting line.  Boo, I say!
#18 longlive2ndedition Aug 17, 2010 18:28:29	This is one line of books I would have bought just to have the entire set. Much like I did back in AD&D and the Complete book of Dwarves/Elves/Humanoids series.
#19 Duke5150 Aug 18, 2010 20:09:39	Yeah, this blows. They should follow through with the rest of the races, just put multiple races in a single book (hardback!) and sell it. I'd buy it. That's like 3-4 books.