3E D&D introduced us to a 'so simple, so elegant, why the fuck did it take 30 years for someone to do this' concept that was almost immedeatly wasted horribly.
I'm talking about Templates and how they relate to certain playable races that have migrated across the D&D lineup.
In the main book is the first offender, actually. I recall reading that orcs are horribly promiscuious with any and all races. Fertile? Maybe not. Mutts and hybrids are not typically stable self sustaining species in their own rights. Show me the man that has a mule breeding operation and I'll show you a man who has a lot of horses and donkeys and a bunch o' baby mules.
If orcs will stick it into anything, why are there no 'half dwarf-orcs' and no 'half halfling-orcs' or no 'elf/orcs'? Especially that last one as elves have proven to be fertile across species lines themselves. In the monster manuals we have, time and again throughout the ages of D&D, been shown examples of orcish breeding habits with the orc/ogres and the orc/demons and the like.
You would think that half orc would then be a template. Hey! What a concept. Ditto with Half Elves, though to a lesser extent. Perhaps the writers feared offending the grognards, fears the nerd rage such a move would undoubtedly provoke.
Ah, but you see, they turned around and did it again and again. You have your assimars and your tieflings, your genesai of all manner and stripe.
And here, of all places, the Template truely needed to come into its own, could have functioned flawlessly. I'll accept that the idea that orcs produce viable breeding populations of hybrids with only certain species. Double ditto for Elves, though that really is a failure of the imaginations of generations of fantasy writers more than anything else. Elrond? Ok, where is Elgood Took? But whatever. Its fantasy, it doesn't need hard logic, only the ability to entertain.
But outsiders? Creatures not of our reality, arguably made up of pure energy manifested into physicality? These only breed with humans? You don't say?
But a simple glance at the monster Manual proves other wise. Right there you have templates for Half celestial and half demon. As a template that means you can arguably apply it to anything. A half demon skeleton, or a half demon ooze may be pretty dumb (though in the later case entirely rational and likely given certain greater demons of yore...), but at least 'book legal' options.
Moreover, in all these cases we are told time and again that these 'races' do not congregate with their own kind, they are loners and outcasts and unique and special snowflakes. There are no aasimar nations, no aasimar tribes or villages*. In short, Aassimar are not really a race at all. Two aasimar do not, typically, find each other and have baby aasimar, they breed instead with their 'host population'. Which, as it stands, is only, ever, human.
I submit to you then that as written, these SHOULD BE templates. Applicable to any playable race. In theory an Aasimar daddy and a Teifling Mommy can get together and have a assatief baby. And as written, there is no way to handle this situation. Imagine if those are your PC's that decide to have a baby... what do you tell them it is? Sure, its not likely, or even hard, but it should be a given. It should be whatever 'host species' the parents had/imply and then have the aasimar and tiefling TEMPLATES added to it, and a +2 ECL on top of that.
Speaking of those two races, and before I move away from the Template portion of this rant, I have repeatedly noticed a severe transgression of GM/Player roles at the table (according to common concensus, the Player make decisions about his character, such as appearence, not the GM... disagree if you like, I don't give a shit) in regards to these 'species'.
A GM will nearly always tell a Tiefling player that his character has horns. He will likewise allways tell an aasimar that they look albinoid. This, however, clashes with the actual descriptors for the two races. Telling a drow player his character has black skin and white hair is justifiable. Telling a tiefling that his character can't walk down the street without getting mobs following him trying to run the demon out of town is annoying and intrusive. Insisting that a player give you a 'distorted appearence characteristic' is perfectly fine, but again that is the players description to add. I know the artists are just lazy gits who are not payed enough to come up with clever alternatives to horned heads and albiniod (not, you'll note, Albino) PC glow fuckers, but they set a trend that after iterations becomes tradition becomes immutable unwritten law. Stop it, its annoying to those of us who have other ideas and the text to back it up. D20 modern, interestingly, compounded this by insisting that all Tieflings were inherently evil and all aasimar were inherently good, settling the 'Orc Baby' debate once and for all. Yes, virginia, it is legal to assume a PC's race must necessarily determine their inherent behavioral tendancies and disposition. Some folks really are just born bad after all. Thus we can say that anyone who professes to be good and holy can murder certain babies without a shred of guilt. If you like that sort of play, more power to ya, but ya don't need to elimate the ability to play more 'shades of grey' for the rest of us to enable it. Unnecessary and offensive, quit it.
Then we can talk about the Drow for a moment. Let me say this, I hate RA Salvatore with a passion few can understand. He took two things that I loved dearly in my D&D RPGs and managed to make them dirty dirty cliches. I can dig out GURPS characters I made when I was 14, every last one of those fuckers had ambidexterity, and its not even that cool in GURPS rule terms. I used two weapons in teh first D&D game I ever played in, and there wasn't a single rule for it that I was ever told, I just had a choice which weapon to use on my attack. And I've loved the Drow ever since I got my hands on the first Fiend Folio way back in the mid eighties from a used bookstore.
If I could I'd ram Drzz't right up Salvatore's Ass, sideways. If you must write iconic shit that drooling fanboys can turn into dirty words, at least have the decency to do a good job with them. Oh, and do them with some shit that isn't beloved by yours truly... because I am a selfish bitch.
That said, the drow have been handled poorly by the 3.5 rules. That +2 ECL shit is crippling, and if the GM reads it a certain way, that means you cap out at level 18, which is downright punative if the game is going to 20. And when you really look at the drow, you notice something pretty quick: They don't really earn it.
Compare them to the ECL races, the Aasimar, the Tiefling, teh Genesai. Aasimar get +4 to their attributes total, and in a potent pairing for several classes, not least of which are the Paladins that are their 'favored class'. Tieflings get a +2 to Dex and Int, a nasty combo, and 'suffer' a -2 charisma, which in many games is treated by all and sundry as a 'dump stat', even if it isn't really (ironically, that makes the Tiefling's favored class(Rogue) partially gimped. Tieflings make terrible con men...something that rogues can be very good at normally). They get Dark vision, they get Darkness/Light spells, and they get THREE elemental resistances apeice.
Drow? They get +4 total to attributes (-2 to Con... and everyone likes hitpoints...), they get darkvision, they get Spell Resistance (which is an all or nothing and remains at parity to potential hostiles... dropping as the Drow ECL puts them at a two level disadvantage....) and they get some really crappy 'trick' spells for no apparent reason other than historiocity.
Amazingly enough, that is a damn near perfect match to at least TWO ELC +1 races. And unlike the other two races the Drow actually have real penalties to play, light blindness and the inability to blend in despite being a race that EVERY RACE ON THE GAME WORLD justifibably hates, even their own kind. Tieflings? yeah, they can blend unless the GM is an illiterate dick. Aasimar? even easier, and even if they don't they are more likely to be lauded than hated. Drow? Not even other Drow like them. Not even other evil races like them. Not even... well, you get the picture. I see two major disadantages (one mechanical). I see a balance issue. Never mind the optional '0 ECL' variant that was really nothing more than a gimped Elf with black skin and light blindness. In fact, the only reason I see for this weird ECL increase is simply because they are a popular choice, and popular choices are uncool, man. Fuck Salvatore with his stupid naming conventions on a rollercoaster.
But I'm done with all that jazz now. Why is it that all the time I read all about these bad ass, tall and ethereal elves and when I get D&D I get midgets who can't pick a gender? Fuck, ya gotta hand me short elves, at least gimmee Pini Elves, who whup ass, take names and eat raw red meat right out of the steaming carcass of a fresh kill. Mmmm... raw meat.... Mmmmm....
On a related note: Feats are learned things mostly. A few are sort of vaguely innate ability sorts of things that could be learned like 'being a sneaky bastard' or somesuch. Yet, some dumbass decided that things like 'snakeblooded human' or 'merchant family' were Feats. Don't ask me why, they sound more like 'race' type things, you know stuff you were born with. Whatever.
LA seemed quite a bit of suckage to me, as far as 3.x was concerned. I mean... you get fewer hit dice for that shit. It's almost never a fair trade. I'm just hoping 4e gets rid alot of that stuff. Monsters with 1hd per ecl that could be (ostensibly) turned into classes or somesuch. Likewise, a single "fiendblood" class/template to cover varying degrees of closeness to source. Not having twelve classes/prestige classes that are blooded... but only maybe (warlocks, sorcerers, dragon shamans... I'm sure there are others).
good rant 7/10
would've been higher, but:
--a bit late, subject-wise, eh?
--i'm a drow-hater. seriously, that race, with those cultural attitudes, would've imploded or been wiped out by a more organized species ages ago :rolleyes:
but excellent points. i've always hated LA/ECL. racial levels (from the monte cook stuff? and the WoW RPG) are a much better solution.
templates are a great idea, but i got sick of seeing them too. for something to add uniqueness to a character, you saw an awful lot of them in published adventures.
and for all the neat stuff we're seeing so far for 4E, i think the addition of tieflings or whatever as a core race cheapens the half-bred outsider concept even further.
Like templates, but loathe the "half-" thing. In 2e, half-dragons only existed for dragon species with shapechange abilities, which made sense. The 3e "dragons breed with whatever moves" thing makes no sense to me and is a bit gross if you think about it.
IMC, most half-templates only arise from some sort of magical crossbreeding.
Quote from: beejazzLA seemed quite a bit of suckage to me, as far as 3.x was concerned. I mean... you get fewer hit dice for that shit. It's almost never a fair trade. I'm just hoping 4e gets rid alot of that stuff.
Have you been following the game design material? Their philosophy seems to be "keep PC stats and monster stats separate." The bad news is that at first, monsters book won't automatically have the ability to be used as a race
at all. OTOH, I understand that they plan to put out player versions of creatures.
Not sure what to think about that, but so far I'm not too keen on in. I agree LA/ECL needed fixed (probably the biggest thing that needed fixed), but I liked that they gave creatures and PCs a consistent baseline in 3e.
QuoteMonsters with 1hd per ecl that could be (ostensibly) turned into classes or somesuch. Likewise, a single "fiendblood" class/template to cover varying degrees of closeness to source.
I really liked the idea of racial levels in Arcana Evolved, Unearthed Arcana, and World of Warcraft RPG. In fact, the tauren in WoW RPG became my minotaur race.
I'd nix half-elves and half-orcs in my game too, but I hesitate to nix things in the base book. (Which is one reason I am not keen on 4e... I really don't like making tieflings and warlocks into core.)
I agree its a bit on the late side, but hey, its still relevant for at least another six months or so :D
As for the Drow's horribly broken culture...
Fuck Salvatore with his entire published line in a mens room in Grand Central Station.
The original Fiend Folio Drow were a lot more tolerable because their culture was not detailed, extreme, or stupid.
I too love the 'Racial Classes' mechanically. Its very 'metagamey', which sets my 'clockwork world' teeth on edge, but unlike the original 'Bloodlines' idea from Unearthed Arcana, that solution was particularly Elegant.
Quote from: SpikeThe original Fiend Folio Drow were a lot more tolerable because their culture was not detailed, extreme, or stupid.
Yeah. Salvotore doesn't bug me so much because, well, I ignore FR and novels.
But I paged through the recent
Drow of the Underdark, and some of the conventions therein seems patently nonsensical to me. A race subject to the "tests" therein would have dwindling numbers. Especially an elven race.
See, I could ignore, and happily, Salvatore except the existance of Drow of the Underdark, and shit like that, is almost entirely based on his utterly crap writing. As far as FR system developement goes, the RPG writers treat RA Salvatore as the Canon God of All Things Drow.
Which he frankly, sucks at. With chrome stained lips.
I mean, the Fiend Folio told us that Drow were evil, hated sunlight, had a matriarchal society and worshipped Lloth. And they used poison...
and that was about the extent of it. You could spin all sorts shit from that. Or you could say 'hey, they are chaotic evil, so lets make a society that puts forth the most simplistic and broken view of chaotic and evil and make THAT the official Drow Way (tm). never mind that it doesn't work.'
Orcs are chaotic evil too, but we get a fairly stable tribal structure from them... when anyone bothers.
Also, I thought that the reason elves and orcs could breed with humans had to do with the whole "humans are uber neutral" thing. So I'd be more for adding things like dwarf/humans to the mix instead of orc/elves. No excuse for things like aasimar and tieflings (because celestials and fiends are supposed to be able to breed with anything thanks to their "magical nature").
Heh: I still like my take on why humans can breed with orcs and elves from way back when the site was new.
Which I will continue to pimp for the rest of my posting career. Gotta keep my ho's workin'....:pimpdahoe:
Ah, but what sort of pimp forgets to link?
Quote from: beejazzAh, but what sort of pimp forgets to link?
One with no intarwebz skillz? :keke: