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D&D Next has been advertising itself as the edition of reunification, promising to bring various different players of various different play-styles back to the same table. In this thread, I want to tackle one specific topic and how it relates to that goal, and that topic is racial design.

I don't know about anybody else, but race is a big deal to me in D&D, even if not always necessarily mechanically then always at least conceptually and thematically. In other words, even if my Minotaur Fighter and my Genasi Fighter are otherwise identically mechanically constructed, their racial differences, whether mechanical and thematic, make them feel very different to me. I love the idea of having various different styles of PC race so much that most of my personal home-brewing effort in every edition that I've played has gone towards creating or altering playable races (you can find some of my 4E work in my signature). Through this effort, I believe that I've stumbled onto some guiding principles of racial design that the developers of D&D Next would do well to look into and consider.

As I would like to be as constructive as possible, I will make every effort to balance every criticism with either some sort of praise or a proposal for a solution if not both. I would request that any posters participating in this discussion try to do the same.



I. RACIAL PIGEON-HOLING

If one of the goals of D&D next is to reunify players of different play-styles, then the game must be open to allowing players of different play-styles all to create similarly mechanically competent characters. To this end, I have concluded that in D&D Next, more than in any other edition before it, racial pigeon-holing is bad. All that racial pigeon-holing does is enforce preference for particular play-styles in a way that overtly mechanically penalizes players who want to create something different.

Here are some specific examples of racial pigeon-holing from the three most recent editions of D&D:
* In 3rd edition, Gnomes got a bonus to the save DC of their illusion spells.
* In 4th edition, Half-Orcs got a bonus to speed when charging.
* In D&D Next, Dwarves get a bonus to damage with hammers.

What specifically do these features do? Well, what they mean is that, for example, if I play a Half-Orc Shaman in 4th edition, then my character sheet lists a racial feature that is completely useless to me. It merely takes up space and reminds me that the character that I am playing is not the kind of character that the designers think that I should play. Because of that, because my character is effectively short a racial feature, it would not be unreasonable of me to conclude that my character is not quite up to par mechanically.

So, when I learn that races in D&D Next will be getting damage bonuses with traditionally racially favored weapons, I just see the same mistake repeating itself. If I decide to play a Dwarf Wizard, I will have a useless racial feature, one that only sits on my character sheet and reminds me that the developers think that Dwarves should all be wielding hammers or else be shorted a powerful racial feature. It does no good not to go ahead and point out everything that I see as problematic, so I'm also going to call out the Dwarf's "Speed" racial feature. Yes, it is a very iconic and traditional feature of Dwarves to be able to ignore speed penalties for heavy armor, but this feature runs into the same problem as the hammer bonus does; it's entirely useless to too many characters. My Dwarf Wizard now has two powerful racial feature that it will never, ever use.

Another very important example of racial pigeon-holing is racial penalties, and that goes not only for ability score penalties but also for penalties like the ones that small characters have traditionally gotten for wielding weapons. I've not seen any examples of this in the play-test material, though, so I don't think that I need to spend too much time on this point.

What are some examples of good racial features? Well, two of the Dwarf's other features, Dwarven Resilience and Low-Light Vision are perfect, as are the Elf's Free Spirit and Keen Senses and the Halfling's Lucky. All of these features are useable and useful to any character of any class or role. The Halfling's Naturally Stealthy seems questionable, but I would personally give it a pass considering that every Halfling can still use and benefit from it. Remember, what I'm saying is not that I don't think race and class should ever have synergy, just that I think such synergy should be more subtle in order to accommodate a wider variety of play-styles.

So, what can be done to accommodate the most play-styles in the spirit of reunification? I have come up with two possible solutions:

Solution 1: Move features like these out of the racial stat block and over to feats and themes. Want your Dwarf to excel with hammers? Pick up the "Dwarven Hammer Mastery" feat or select the "Dwarven Hammersmith" theme. This keeps the tradition alive while not forcing all Dwarf-players to deal with it if they don't want to. Character who want to select it will, and character who don't want to select it won't. This has traditionally been the way that some more obscure racially-stereotypical effects have been handled in the past

Solution 2: Turn racial features into options. If you played 3.5, think of how the PHB2 introduced alternative class feature options. If you played 4th edition, think of how some races like the Dragonborn and Elf got alternative racial power options after release. What if when I selected Dwarf as my race, I got the option between these two features:
* "Speed: You don't suffer a speed penalty for being encumbered or for wearing heavy armor."
* "Steadfast" You don't suffer a speed penalty for being encumbered, and spells cannot reduce your speed to below 3."
It's a very rough example, but I hope that it gets across the general idea. The option is granted between similarly-themed features, and players can pick whichever mechanical effect they feel is most right for their character, meaning that the stereotypically heavily-armored Dwarf can keep the Speed feature but the hipster lightly-armored Dwarf can still also select something else that it may actually get to use at least every so often, and it doesn't even have to expect any character resources like a feat to do it.



II. RACE VS. CULTURE

If one of the goals of D&D next is to reunify players of different play-styles, then the game must be open to allowing players of different play-styles all to create similarly thematically sensible characters. To this end, I have concluded that in D&D Next, more than in any other edition before it, culture and race must be divorced from one another, at least certainly as far as the basic mandatory racial stat block is concerned. All that inserting cultural features into racial mechanics does is enforce preference for particular character and campaign backgrounds in a way that overtly thematically penalizes players who want to create something different by saddling them with racial features that are nonsensical for their characters to have.

Here are some specific examples of race-culture conflation from the three most recent editions of D&D:
* In 3rd edition, Elves received proficiency with rapiers and bows.
* In 4th edition, Eladrin got a bonus trained skill due to their education.
* In D&D Next, Dwarves are able to identify stonework by culture.

What do these features do? Well, what they mean is that, for example, if I play an Elf in 3rd edition that was adopted and raised by Gnomes, then my character sheet has a listed racial feature that thematically makes absolutely no sense for my character to have. It merely takes up space and reminds me that the character that I am playing is not the kind of character that the designers think that I should play. This problem becomes even worse when we consider that, even if my Elf was raised by other Elves in the Elven culture typical of the setting, Elven culture is not the same across all settings, published or homebrewed.

So, when I learn that races in D&D Next will be getting damage bonuses with traditionally racially favored weapons, I just see the same mistake repeating itself. If I decide to play a Dwarf raised by Halflings or a Dwarf in a setting where Dwarves are more stereotypically considered gunsmiths, I will have a nonsensical racial feature, one that only sits on my character sheet and reminds me that the developers think that Dwarves should all be wielding hammers or else be considered counter to their expectations of character background. It does no good not to go ahead and point out everything that I see as problematic, so I'm also going to call out the Dwarf's "Stone-Cunning" racial feature. Yes, it is a very iconic and traditional feature of Dwarves to have some affinity for stone and stonework (though the 4E Dwarf got by just fine without it), but this feature runs into the same problem as the hammer bonus does; it's entirely nonsensical to too many characters. My Halfling-raised Dwarf now has two racial features that make no thematic sense for it to have.

Again to point out examples of good racial features, I will point to Dwarven Resilience and Low-Light Vision, as well as the Elf's Free Spirit and Keen Senses and the Halfling's Lucky and Naturally Stealthy. All of these features represent qualities that are biological or otherwise innate and that will remain consistently thematically appropriate regardless of character background or cultural variations within or between campaign settings.

So, what can be done to accommodate the most play-styles in the spirit of reunification? Again, both of the solution that I detailed for the problem of racial pigeon-holing will work. Culture-specific features can be moved to the domain of feats, where players can ignore them if nonsensical for their characters, or they can be turned into options, with more culture-neutral features offered as alternatives so that players can pick whichever mechanical effect they feel is most right for their character.



Although I disagree with their specific implementations on grounds unrelated to the topic of this thread, features like the Dwarven Resilience and the Elf's Free Spirit with their outright immunities lead me to believe that the developers are trying to make race a bigger deal in D&D Next. This is a move that I must say that I support very much, but if their implementation works counter to their design goals of reunification, then that will all be for naught. We need to get these messages across very clearly and very early in the design process:

* Racial pigeon-holing is bad.

* Conflating race and culture is bad.

to me is not cultural, is instinctive the dwarves are a subterrain race, is that 

I agree with the OP. The racial choice should be heavily genetic.  If you must add cultural aspects, there should be optional or have several choices in culture.

Hill dwarves favor fighters, axes, and hammers. Jungle dwarves favor rangers, spears, and bows. Artic Dwarves favor fighters and have icecunning.