I think the case can be made that P&P and CRPGs have always cross fertilized each other. They are two different mediums for realizing the same idea: imaginative and usually non-competitive fun.

Only if they’re flying fish.

Grahams last blog post..Final thoughts after marathon 4e release day events

I consider what the Eredar were as essentially “good demons”, because I’m sure Blizzard developed them as demons and then said ‘hey what if they used to be good guys?’

Nonetheless, their appearance in WoW is clearly inspired by the concept of a half-demon, and it should be clear to anyone reading 4E that the new appearance of the Tiefling is inspired by things like the Dranei from WoW.

They are no demons, and they never were demons

They were Eredar, which was a race with magical ambitions, when Sargeras corrupted them, many became demons, but the Draenai we know never followed this path and are most likly divine fighters, not half demons

anyway its imho a bit hard to compare D&D with WoW, one is a Computer and one a P&P game, do you also compare birds to fish?

I think its not necessary to say who ripped off from whom, but how the gamesystem works… and i think both have their own Pros & Contras

Long live the D

Joddi

Gahh, don’t say that.

Our entire group is in their 20′s, many of us getting close to the 30 mark, and I don’t see us stopping anytime soon.

Don’t worry, we’re around. I’m 24, and my entire group is in our 20s.

Personally, I’d like to see new gamers brought to this hobby of old-school role playing. I play with a group of people in their mid-late thirties, with three of us turning 40 this year. We have one player in his 20s, and I wish we had more.

If a change in the appearance of the Tiefling gives new players a feel for playing a more fantastical (i.e., monstrous humanoid-like) character than a more mundane race, I’m all for it. I think that’s a good thing. The half-orc just didn’t fit well in as wide a variety of classes or character concepts.

And as much as I enjoy playing 3.5e, it can stand a lot of improvement, frankly. I like the direction they’re taking. Sure, you can make the argument that either game draws from the other. Both need to evolve. I don’t see a problem with that for D&D, since my games today are all about how I choose to run them. Don’t like warlocks? Don’t have ‘em in your world.

[As an aside: I played a warlock for a year after the class appeared in Complete Arcane, and I found the flavor and feel to be awesomely fun. I applaud its new position as a core class.]

On-Hit abilities: Paladin Smites:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drdd/20071128&pf=true
Flavourful, “Divine Protector”-themed abilities, which just happen to activate on a successful hit.

to Bartoneus:
I do understand why it was mentioned, and that they (obviously, due to the subject matter) share some stylistic influences. I just believe that the directions each took are pretty significantly different, and don’t believe they actually look like each other at all at this point. That’s really all I wanted to say.

to Nero:
The one big reason for giving Tieflings a standardised “norm” for their appearance is to help people visualise things. I, too, am a fan of Planescape, but I don’t necessarily believe that Planescape’s method is the only, or even the best, way to do a demon-touched race.

In any case, it’s all just flavour text, so you’re always free to change their appearance however seems best to you. As such, I’m pretty sure this is a minor point.

And yes, Dwarf women always had sexy potential. But now, in addition to drawing them more femininely (new picture, my favourite of the bunch), they’re actually specifying their lack of beards! Hooray!

re: Halflings

Bartoneus: The hairy-footed halfling was gone back in 2e, when the Kender-like halfling was introduced. Hobbits didn’t exist in 3e either.

The thing is, nobody ever had a problem picturing a 2.5-3 foot short, squat, hobbit-type halfling (though, if you look at the LotR movies, they’d be about 3.5 feet anyways, as Gandalf is something like 7 feet tall).

It’s the Kender-like, human-shaped halflings that D&D has had for the past two editions which are hard to picture at 2.5-3 feet.

re: Racial Feats

We’ve actually already had these. Any feat that says “Dwarf only” or “Elf only” in the pre-reqs. Any Prestige Class with the same thing. All of these were attempts at the same thing, but were kind of tacked on.

Most of these came in the “Races of ____” books, near the end of 3.5e. These books were both very well balanced, and very popular.

With this, it’s becoming integrated into the system from the beginning. This means that the system is being built with them in mind. And I can only see this as a good thing, both for flavour and balance.

Do note, as well, that these feats, while being options unique to their respective races, won’t necessarily be any more powerful than standard feats, and won’t be any more powerful than another race’s feats.

(There was an example of a racial feat in the Elf writeup on WotC’s site. I’d link it, but I’m already at my one link for this post. I’ll post again right after this, with the link.)

re: On Hit

Bear in mind that these will be closely tied to the class’s power source. A Fighter, for instance, may have an on-hit power that (when it hits) pushes the target back. Or he may have one that, on a hit, lets him make another attack against a second opponent. Or maybe one that, on a hit, trips or distracts the opponent. All martial, not magical.

A Paladin, on the other hand, will have ones that might cause bonus holy damage. One of the given “Smite” abilities used divine energy to “blind” the enemy, giving the target a penalty to hit the Paladin’s allies (though not the Paladin).

A Warlock, for a different bent, will channel arcane energies. A strike with a Warlock’s scepter/mace/rod/whatever might channel electricity through the weapon and into the target. Or it might teleport the target a short distance. In any case, very arcane-themed.

In all cases, though, in order to limit the fantasy aspect, you’ll want to limit classes. If you want a low-magic game, you shouldn’t have Wizards or Warlocks around. By doing so, you also get rid of the arcane on-hit abilities.

If anything, creating and running low-magic/no-magic games should actually be easier because of this, since classes like Fighter and Rogue have purely Martial powers, and can get along just fine without magical assistance (unlike in 3e, where without magic items you weren’t even close to your normal power level, especially as a Fighter).

On Hit Effects: One of the examples is the Warlord has an ability (tentatively titled “Feather Me Yon Oaf!”) that he can use which allows party members to get instant and free ranged attacks against his target. I’m actually not sure this is an on-hit effect, but the way it was written I believe it to be. Also Clerics are supposedly gaining effects that when they hit, the party gains a bonus to healing / instant healing. It’s not so much magic, and you could easily limit the player’s choice of powers as easily as limiting magic items, and it adds a level of dynamic choice to combat which I think will be very fun.

2: Tiefling Look like dranei

Sorry, I find the Tiefling change very disappointing. I am a big Planescape fan, so I probably will not be happy with any change to the wonderfully open ended way the Tiefling description was originally done. I can’t help but see locking them in one form as a step backward. And the only reason I can think of that they would do this is to ease the making and sales of miniatures. I have never played with miniatures, and I never will. Also, if they have changed the races appearance and background they should just call them something else. It is disrespectful to the original concept to mangle it so badly.

Dwarf women have always been sexy =)

4: Racial Feats
As I see it, more racial attributes will make racial balance harder, not easier. I am not against this concept as long as it is done intelligently. Which is why I am concerned.

7: On hit effects
The big difference is that with the effects on the items I can control the fantasy level of my game by controlling the availability of magic. I could be over reacting here though as I do not know what these effects will be. Are they released yet?

Thanks for your reply Graham, oh, and what happened to your Red wizard… is he sleeping?

My big problem with the new look of Halflings is simply that ANY image in the preview books, it looks exactly like a human. The only way you can tell is because it’s labeled “Halfling Fighter”, and that they all have braided hair. I think it’s great to have halflings like this, but they’re going towards excluding the hairy-foot style halfling entirely simply because they can’t envision someone that small/weak being a hero. Yet LoTR was a huge success based around those stumpy guys.

I think it’s very shortsighted when compared to everything else they’ve done for 4th Edition.

Also, I was just told yesterday that the only halfling bard in the FR books (possibly the only halfling to have his height listed, but I don’t know that) is 4 feet tall. I can’t confirm this myself, but was told by two diehard FR fans.

As for Dranei/Tiefling, the Tieflings now (across the board) have horns. That’s about the only similarity I see, and Dranei don’t even always have horns. I’d post more reference images, but would get moderated again. So I’ll link you to the art gallery page from Races and Classes instead.

As far as what you said:

I’ll find some images to illustrate the Dranei-Tiefling comparison. They definitely improved on the visual styles of every race, EXCEPT the halfings which I’m kind of aggrivated about the direction they’ve taken with them.

Races: Remember that in other editions all races were NOT equal, and typically the Effective Class Level adjustment didn’t work to balance things any better. Now they’ve beefed up all of the normal races so that everyone should be on an even playing field.

“More importantly why are we talking about Tieflings? They are not going to be in the core rules are they?”

Well, actually, yes they are. Core book, PHB, alongside halflings and dwarves.

People like the concept, and they’re incredibly flavourful. Their backstory has been altered nicely to have their existence make sense (they’re not half demon, but rather demon-cursed humans).

I was unsure at first as well, but I’ve grown to like the idea.

Alrighty.