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Post by notARobot on Oct 13, 2017 21:51:24 GMT -8
Yeah, I've never heard of Goliaths either. Then again, I'd never heard of Gensai Genasi until meeting the acquaintance of Ingot Gnomes appear to be the least popular race among the available core races in 2E. They're less than 20% as popular as humans, and less than half as common among PCs as dwarves. Also, it looks like hardly anybody plays them as anything other than wizards or rogues. Gensai Genasi, although not very popular, seem like they've got the most even spread among classes. For some reason paladins are the least popular class for them. After seeing this chart, though, I really want to see what it would be like if Ingot dual-classed into a bard Goliaths, whatever the hell they are, seem to be really good at being barbarians and not much else. Bird-people apparently don't see much use outside the roles of rangers and monks. And obviously, human fighters are way more popular, comparatively, than any of us would've guessed (I saw something on Reddit suggesting the interface for D&D Next sets 'human fighter' as the default race/class combo, so this table could just be reflecting that rather than deliberate actions on anyone's part). Any other interesting conclusions jump out at anyone from that?
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Post by Ezeze on Oct 14, 2017 3:42:45 GMT -8
Goliaths are tall, athletic mountain-people who tend to resemble rocks in color. They were included as a base rase in the same 4th ed book that introduced Barbarians and Shifters (semi were-creatures)
One of the weaknesses in 4th and 5th ed is the inability to have monster class levels, so to compensate WotC has gone out of their way to make LA 0 versions of the most popular races from 3.5 (which had more expansions and splat books and Dragon Magazine additions than anyone knows what to do with). They don't want to leave anyone's favorite behind, because then they won't buy the new books.
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Post by Daos on Oct 14, 2017 10:54:54 GMT -8
No kidding? Genasi were invented in 2E (specifically, Planescape), and I thought they were pretty popular in all of the editions after that, much like tieflings.
That tracks for 2E, though, as well. In all my time as a DM, I have only ever had four PC gnomes in my games. Three of them were Illusionist/Thieves (the fourth one was a ranger).
Yeah, so it seems. I've only had two 5E characters so far, and one of them is a human fighter (although technically, he's not mine, per se; he was a pregen so I didn't actually make him, just play him). The other one was a dwarf cleric (the game died before I even got started, though, so technically I never actually played him).
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Post by Jherek Everfull on Oct 14, 2017 13:54:11 GMT -8
Human is extremely popular as a Melee character base in most editions 3.5 and forward. The human ability to start with an additional feat often outweighs the situational or roleplay specific benefits of playing a demihuman. Those feats are hard to come by and most often require you waiting several levels to pick them up. As a human fighter you can start out hitting hard and stay effective till about mid levels...that's when those Quadratic wizards and clerics begin to alter reality. All the non-standard races come with the release of new material...they are expected to arrive though. As Ezeze said, 3.5 had a plethora of source material vommed out by WoTC. People want their favorite stuff in every addition...no matter how ludicrous it makes the story telling and world building. Its where I see WoTC fail the most...trying to explain the addition of umpteen new races to already established IPOs. It's nuts. Dragonborn, Warforged, Shifters, and the like just suddenly have places in Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms...
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Post by Daos on Oct 14, 2017 14:42:42 GMT -8
I can see why, though. TSR went bankrupt and many believe it was because they stretched themselves too thin with too many settings. There was Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Spelljammer, Planescape, Ravenloft, Mystara, Birthright, Council of Wyrms, and Dark Sun; and that's just off the top of my head. WotC seems very wary about making that same mistake, and so they've always been very light on settings. Eberron was introduced in 3E, but 4E and 5E have been limited to pretty much just Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk alone (they don't even work on Dragonlance anymore; it's been years since even a novel was published).
But because they limit themselves to just two settings, they have to shoehorn in everything into those two settings. Forgotten Realms has always been a 'fantasy kitchen sink,' though, so I imagine FR fans are just used to it by now.
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Post by notARobot on Oct 14, 2017 14:57:24 GMT -8
It seems like the last few editions have followed a trend of making the core rulebooks less "settings-agnostic" overall, too; I'm not sure exactly how that connects with the point you're making, Daos, but it seems likely that the two phenomena are related in some way.
For instance, every edition from 3.0 onward has included lists/descriptions of one or more pantheons of gods in the PHB, haven't they? That's something notably absent from the 2E core rulebooks. I also seem to recall seeing more detail put into the descriptions of demihuman cultures under the 'Race' part of the books, where 2E seemed to go out of its way to stick listing the most basic, generic/stereotypical elements, leaving the rest for the DM to elaborate on as befit their particular campaign world.
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Post by Daos on Oct 15, 2017 20:22:55 GMT -8
I'm not sure. I do know that the 5E PHB includes lists of some gods from Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Dragonlance (*) and Eberron, as well as a few real world religions (Celtic, Greek, Egyptian and Norse) and that there is a list of Greyhawk gods in the 3E PHB. I can also confirm that no such list can be found in the core books of 1E or 2E.
*They got some of the alignments wrong. Sirrion is CN, not TN, for instance.
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Post by Ezeze on Oct 16, 2017 15:39:43 GMT -8
Okay, okay, so back in, like, January my boyfriend and I made mead. Just to, like, see if we could? 'Cause we'd never made it before
so it's been sitting in our cupboard forever and I had a really hard day at work so I decided to have a little bit of it because neither of us are really big drinkers so it'll stay in there until we throw it out of we don't (I don't know why we didn't think of that when we made it but we didn't so hah we just have like, half a gallon of booze we aren't going to do anything with)
and I suuuuper misjudged how strong it was and i haven't been this drunk since I was 21 so that's a thing I thought I would share.
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Post by Jherek Everfull on Oct 16, 2017 16:44:39 GMT -8
Ezeze My buddies and I went to this joint in Houston and made 10 gallons of various meads for our D&D get togethers. Best decision I ever made. I'm partial to Chamomile and Orange cream.
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Post by Ezeze on Oct 17, 2017 5:14:25 GMT -8
Oh man, chamomile mead sounds really good.
We didn't add any special flavor to it the first time around. Because we have let it sit for so long it is ridiculously smooth. I've enjoyed adding it to lemonade, but I'm a light weight who can't really drink alcohol straight.
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Post by Jherek Everfull on Oct 17, 2017 12:24:16 GMT -8
They put al of that in Diety and Demigods and Legends and Lore right? I loved those books as source material mines!
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Post by Jherek Everfull on Oct 17, 2017 12:25:25 GMT -8
Katya, Mereida's Daughter, I drink like the crusty old dysfunctional veteran that I am. Practically have hollow legs.
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Post by Daos on Oct 17, 2017 14:09:27 GMT -8
I don't know about 'Deity and Demigods,' but I have a copy of 'Legends and Lore.' It does have a list of gods from several old real world faiths (Norse, Egyptian, Greek, etc.) and some info on generic 'non-human' deities found in several settings (like Moradin, Lolth, Yondalla, etc.). But it doesn't contain any info on the gods from specific D&D settings. I think you had to buy separate splatbooks for each setting. For instance, I know info on the Dragonlance gods could be found in 'Tales of the Lance.'
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Post by notARobot on Oct 17, 2017 14:32:58 GMT -8
According to Wikipedia, Deities and Demigods was just the first edition version of Legends and Lore: they were both intended for the same purpose, but for some reason (maybe the same '80s D&D panic that saw devils and demons renamed?) they changed the title when they revised the book for second edition. To confuse matters, they switched back to the original title when they released a new version for third edition! Once again, 2E gets to be the odd man out
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Post by Daos on Oct 29, 2017 19:31:10 GMT -8
So anyone got any big Halloween plans this year? I don't have any kids and all of my nephews and nieces live in other states, and my place only gets 1-2 trick-o'-treaters at best, so it usually just comes and goes for me.
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