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4 years ago ::
Jun 14, 2009 - 6:14PM
#1
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Date Joined:
May 17, 2006
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I have to admit I was probably excessively excited about this book. I insisted last week that "they aren't changing anything significant..."
But... wow.
The "logic" basically is "we want people to take dragonmarks, and we want PCs to be able to make any sort of PC they like."
By the same logic a human fighter should be able to take all the dwarf feats in the book that they want.
It's a shame that the whole concept of dragonmarked races and houses is being jettisoned in favor of what... making a bunch of supercharged feats that every class feels like they have to take to stay on the power curve?
Whatta revolting development..
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4 years ago ::
Jun 14, 2009 - 6:27PM
#2
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Date Joined:
May 17, 2006
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A quick skim of the feat list suggests the more likely design motivation was "we still couldn't come up with equally attractive choices for all the feats so we just punted..." Obviously, I liked Eberron as a place with a story, and an internal narrative. I wonder if wizards was worried they couldn't sell Eberron as Eberron and just felt like they had to pour on the "juice" (i.e. crunch). It would have been nice to see the marks reenforce the original key function in the story, (i.e. you are a member of a dragonmarked house). Maybe they felt like intrigue and story-roleplaying element was too "niche"; that Eberron needed to match up perfectly with "superpowered people running running around killing stuff" that is the DnD power fantasy?
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4 years ago ::
Jun 14, 2009 - 6:32PM
#3
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- Stampeding Hybrid
- Dragon Slayer
Date Joined:
Aug 19, 2007
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It's a shame that the whole concept of dragonmarked races and houses is being jettisoned in favor of what
They aren't being jettisoned. The houses are still there, and the majority of the holders of a mark(basically every NPC) still correspond to the appropriate race. The PCs having the option of having a mark not normally associated with their race is supposed to be a rare and unusual event that has major storyline implications. It isn't just that suddenly half the people on the continent woke up with a random mark. It is that at most a few people ended up with an unusual mark resulting in a large number of movers and shakers becoming interested in why it happened(and possibly preventing anyone else from becoming aware of the fact that it happened).
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4 years ago ::
Jun 14, 2009 - 6:33PM
#4
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Date Joined:
Apr 12, 2003
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You are over reacting.
Take a deep breath, relax.
Couple concepts we need to reinforce before we continue.
1) The dragonmarked feats no longer have racial requirements.
2) In 4th edition the rules for NPCs and PCs are not the same. NPCs don't recieve feats generally do not recieve feats at all.
3) PCs are special.
4) In 3.5 there was an adventure that marked undragonmarked races. Eyes of the Lich Queen.
5) According to the Lore in the Eberron Player's Guide and the Eberron Campaign Setting the Houses are made up of the races they always have been. Dwarves bare the mark of Warding, they always have, House Kundarak is a house of Dwarves. There has never been a human with the mark of warding.
Alright, we got that? The history of the setting has not changed. However the fact that the dragonmarks are the prophecy written on the flesh of the mortal races is being played up, so yes a human fighter PC could choose to bare the Mark of Warding. Because he's special, because the prophecy has marked him.
This isn't common, in fact its unheard of. Imagine the reaction you just had, now magnify it by about 20. Imagine the reaction of House Kundarak to this. Or the Dragons of Argonessen. Keith has said that races with the improper mark will be adressed in the ECS, they're conidered Aberrant, and unnatural, and may well have some of the most powerful organizations in the world gunning for them.
Or not, you know your table, your choice. Feats are for PC building, not NPC building or world building.
Aesop had it right 2,500 years ago, "By endeavoring to please everyone, he had pleased no one, and lost his ass in the bargain".
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4 years ago ::
Jun 14, 2009 - 6:36PM
#5
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- Stampeding Hybrid
- Dragon Slayer
Date Joined:
Aug 19, 2007
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Also Keith Baker's thoughts on the matter:
And behold... I appear from an internet hotspot at UK Games Expo to attempt to soothe fears.
There are no racial restrictions on the dragonmark feats themselves. However, both the EPG and ECG have a lot of text discussing the significance of race, highlighting the fact that the marks are tied to race, but "as a player character, you can choose to be an exception, because player characters are uniquely significant individuals." The ECG goes into this in more detail, noting that such a character might be one of the first in history to develop such a mark, and could potentially be targeted for extermination by the houses. So if you take the marks in isolation - stripping setting away - they have no restrictions. However, within Eberron there ARE racial connections and consequences for ignoring them.
In short, what you're getting now are just glimpses of a big picture. People posting things often haven't read through all the information or are only presenting part of it. I won't say any more, because *I'M* under NDA and because I'm traveling and really don't have the time. But bear in mind that brief spoilers may miss the greater depth of the book.
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4 years ago ::
Jun 14, 2009 - 6:43PM
#6
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Date Joined:
May 17, 2006
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Don't think I'm overreacting...
As pointed out "marks in weird places" was a common theme in 3.5.
Adventures game them to random people; books featured protagonists with "wrong" mark/race match-ups, etc.
KB had someone carring around one a bottle, even.
Nope, storymiester Wyatt's Eberron Design and Development post is claiming this is their "major innovation".
Why do that if it's not a change.
You may feel it's an awesome change; but if they're writing whole design articles devoted to it then it's meant to be a significant change.
They could have come up with something that supported and built on the Dragonmarked Houses, not tore upart the logic that underpinned their exisitence.
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4 years ago ::
Jun 14, 2009 - 6:48PM
#7
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Date Joined:
Apr 12, 2003
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Or maybe they wrote the design and devlopment article to try to pacify this reaction which we've been seeing crop up time and time again ever since this was confirmed at Gen Con of last year.
The Dragonmarked houses are the same, the history is the same, the fluff from the book dragonmarked is the same. At individual game tables someone can take a dragonmark not of the proper race, but its impact on the world is decided by the DM at that table. This change has not altered the world.
Yet still people are flipping out about it. So yeah they wrote an article explaining why they did it.
Aesop had it right 2,500 years ago, "By endeavoring to please everyone, he had pleased no one, and lost his ass in the bargain".
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4 years ago ::
Jun 14, 2009 - 6:49PM
#8
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As the Design and Development article put it, at one point, someone asked 'Did Dragonmarks in 3rd Edition do what we wanted them to do?' The answer, as it turns out, was 'no'. They got a needed revision to actually do what they're supposed to do; make you a little better at what you do, not provide a weak ability that doesn't help much.
An example was given: The Mark of Healing. In theory, a Jorasco healer should be one of the pre-eminent healers of the day ... instead, since it was racially restricted to halflings, you got a rogue with a 1/day cure light wounds, which paled behind the cleric (and the three wands of cure he invariably toted about).
Another day, another three or four entries to my Ignore List.
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4 years ago ::
Jun 14, 2009 - 7:26PM
#9
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Date Joined:
Jan 18, 2007
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seems like a fair thing to do.
i don't see any problems, personally...
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4 years ago ::
Jun 14, 2009 - 7:36PM
#10
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Is it just me, or do all threads with the phrase "Epic Fail" in the title turn out to be someone getting hysterical about some small detail?
I don't think Epic Fail means what you think it means.
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