[OSSR]Races of Eberron

[Orion]

If true, my interpretation would be that in the original document, Eberron simply had playable Golems, Lycanthropes, Doppelgangers, and Githzerai. When Keith Baker discussed this with the WotC developers, they refused to budge on making playable mechanics for these races, so the compromise of creating new races that were thematically similar was made at that point.-Username17

Where the hell if your evidence for this? You personally would have liked those rules to exist, but there's no evidence I'm aware of that baker was ever thinking about the issue in those terms. Isn't it equally plausible that Baker submitted a steamtech setting with no robots at all and some Wizards guy realized this was an opportunity for pseudo-golems?

[Username17]

If true, my interpretation would be that in the original document, Eberron simply had playable Golems, Lycanthropes, Doppelgangers, and Githzerai. When Keith Baker discussed this with the WotC developers, they refused to budge on making playable mechanics for these races, so the compromise of creating new races that were thematically similar was made at that point.-Username17

Where the hell if your evidence for this? You personally would have liked those rules to exist, but there's no evidence I'm aware of that baker was ever thinking about the issue in those terms. Isn't it equally plausible that Baker submitted a steamtech setting with no robots at all and some Wizards guy realized this was an opportunity for pseudo-golems?

Not really, no. It isn't like there hasn't been a continuous stream of new playable races in other products. Very specifically, Unearthed Arcana came out four months before the Eberron Campaign Setting did, so if there was some sort of burning in-house need to make playable robot rules that's where it would have gone. You know, in the 42 page optional races section they had in the book of clearing all their half-baked ideas into a big test balloon book that came out shortly before Eberron went into its final stretch.

The only plausible story is that Warforged and Shifters happened because Keith Baker wanted them to. And if he says that they came from the discussions with WotC development about what they liked and didn't like about his ideas, then obviously they are negotiated settlements between what Baker was asking for and what WotC development would allow.

Presumably, since the Eberron backstory is "there has been a big war and everything is torn up and all the high level characters are dead or missing," Baker originally came up with the idea of golem troops and people using lycanthropy as a super soldier serum as major plot elements. And thence to allow players to play those things in the postbellum period. Because that's a fairly obvious sort of thing that D&D fans keep coming up with. And of course, we already know that every time people suggested that players be allowed to play those things, WotC development threw temper tantrums (see Rich Redman's discussion of the design criteria for Savage Species).

I have no idea if the things Baker was actually asking for were remotely balanced or sane, but what we ended up getting is blatantly obviously a massively toned down version of whatever it was.

-Username17

[Ancient History]

OSSR: Races of Eberron

Chapter 2: Shifters


Meh. Close enough.

A unique species that breeds true

We put that tag line on your setting as a joke!

AncientH:

I'm not saying D&D hasn't had more than a few furry options over the years...


I'm spoilt for choice.

...but the major question has to be: why did they feel we needed another one? The majority of lycanthropes or shapeshifters of various stripes in D&D are the result of a curse and/or disease, which may or may not be communicable. I remember having to roll my eyes and shit back when fellow freelancers would ask me if their elf would pop out puppies if they banged a werewolf (answer: no, canines and humans aren't compatible to breed), but this is D&D. The fact that the folks at WotC felt the need to have a race whose great-grandma was a literal bitch always struck me as odd.


Mandatory chart.

FrankT:

Shifters do not, on first or second or twenty-second look make any sense at all. Lycanthropy is a disease in D&D, you have it or you don't. And people who are born to the infected grow up having it and they are better than you. Natural born Lycanthropes aren't less Lycanthropic, they are more. They have greater animal powers and more control over their shifting. Lycanthropy doesn't attenuate through the generations, and being a 27th generation Werewolf wouldn't make you have “just a hint of wolfiness” or something, it would make you a powerful shape shifting monster from childhood.

But Shifters don't exist to fill a setting need, they exist to fulfill a game mechanical need. People want to play werewolves and 3rd edition D&D assigns such creatures a level minimum that prevent them from being played in low level games and a level adjustment that prevents them from being any good in high level games. Shifters provide some Lycanthropic flavor and mechanics that are almost the same as being a Wild Elf so you can nominally play them at all levels. The fact that the explanation for what they are and how that happened are such transparent bullshit is almost a feature.


These are basically the Werewolves from Teenwolf Too. But that does thread the needle of being Werewolves at all while not overshadowing the characters of players who are playing Dwarves and Orcs and shit.

Because Eberron will never ever use something simple when a mountain of kludge text can be shoveled out instead, the description of what happens when you get enhanced mutton chops and some claw elongation once per day takes over a page and a half. Shifterness is Lycanthropy cut down to be almost wholly cosmetic, but it's still so full of words that you could include an entire wikipedia article about a real group of people instead. One of the big drivers of all this text bloat is that you get to pick whether you are cosmetically a Werecow or a Weresquirrel instead of just getting strength and claws like a character in 1st season Teen Wolf. I have no idea why, but these also come with extremely trivial game mechanical differences and it drags what could have been a half page rules description out into a two page wall of text.

I don't even know why there's a Werecow option. No one is demanding to play Werecows. D&D doesn't even have Werecows. That is not a thing. D&D has Wereswine, Wereermines, and Werebaboons, and I will grant that those are all hella dumb. But no Werecows. Seriously, what the fuck?

AncientH:

Naturally enough, this doesn't mean someone didn't stat out a werecow anyway, but it's not official.

Pretty much the defining aspect of being a Shifter is the ability Shifting (Su). This is a bit like a crappy version of a Barbarian's rage ability, and by like it I mean it does not actually resemble rage in pretty much any way, and does not interact with rage in any meaningful fashion, and if you actually choose to specialize in Shifting via taking a bunch of Shifter feats and shit, you will be SOL the first moment you hit an antimagic field or something, because your ability is Su instead of Ex, so fuck you. Also you get a bonus bullshit Shifter Trait.

Fun fact: In college, someone tried to complain to me that Shifters were broken because of the Assume Supernatural Ability feat. I just stared at them until they went away.

FrankT:

Shifters are noble savages. You might think that this would give this section all the racial sensitivity of a Twilight novel, and you wouldn't be wrong. I mean, it doesn't literally say they are offensive stereotypes of First Nation peoples, but they do get pictured with reddish skin and talk about hunting and nature and the freedom of the forest and being in touch with animals and shit.


Not an offensive depiction of a Native American, but not not an offensive depiction of a Native American.

So if you just did find and replace of “Shifters” with “Indians” you'd get about what you'd think you'd get:

Indians have a raw connection to instinct that members of other races seldom understand. Fueled by their ancient legacy, Indians hold within them extremes of emotion that strive to dominate their thoughts and actions. This raw inner turmoil comes forth in some Indian warriors as a barbaric rage, enabling the Indian to perform berserk feats of strength when he enters combat. Other Indians suppress all emotion, dealing with their bestial instincts in their own way and remaining stoic in the face of any situation lest their powerful emotions overwhelm them.

We could talk about their totems and tattoos and shit, but really it doesn't get any better. Once you've thought about these guys being First Nations stereotypes, it's pretty hard to unthink it, and it's all down hill from there.

AncientH:

With their unique racial powers and outlook, shifters bring fresh options and character concepts to any D&D world.

That's from a small sidebar - bottombar, if I'm to be honest - called "Shifters in D&D." The idea being that you might want to port Shifters into your Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk game or something. I think this is a mistake, but probably not for the reason you think - yes, Shifters are a crappy character option, but there are many many crappy character options in D&D, and that never stopped anyone from playing an Ogre Ninja or something.

No, the problem is that the Forgotten Realms are already vastly detailed, and the thing about adding new PC races is trying to locate new geographic and cultural areas to squeeze the fuckers in. Sometimes this is done by grand events, the equivalent of mass migrations and things, and if you were playing Planescape and suddenly a shitton of Shifters showed up because The World of Three Moons phased in and the Black Moon Howlers are invading from the Abyss, you might see a brand new ethnic ghetto pop up overnight. But in games like the Forgotten Realms, trying to adjust to brand new power systems and races is a bit of a hassle, involving as it does finding some spot on the map and declaring they had been there all along, honest.

Shadowrun doesn't quite have this problem. Take Bulgarians for example. Shadowrun doesn't directly mention Bulgarians, but it assumes Bulgarians are there. Your character can be a Bulgarian. Your enemy can be a Bulgarian. Your neighbor or contact can be a Bulgarian. There may never be a major (or minor) campaign event or metaplot event involving Bulgaria and Bulgarians, but nothing in Shadowrun excludes you from playing a Bulgarian. But in D&D, you just look around one day they're supposed to have always been there. When this happens, I like to pretend that chronomancers have been fucking around with the timeline.


Arch Heirophant, dost thou recall this passage about the blink dogs and the halflings?

FrankT:

Truth be told, I have seen people play Shifters in real games. Because for all the fact that the backstory is incoherent and borderline offensive, it fills a real game mechanical niche. People want to play Werewolves, and Shifters are kind of like getting to do that. The end. Every word they write in this book to try to flesh it out more than that just makes me hate the book. It's not a concept that requires or allows any elaboration, because it's built on cognitive dissonance. The player is imagining themselves being a badass werewolf warrior, and the game mechanics are kinda sorta giving that to them. And that's all there needs to be.

But the page count must be filled because this is a shovelware book. There are ten flavors of Shifters who get minorly different bonuses when they grow mutton chops. And that's an excuse to whip out the good old thesaurus! So Gorebrute shifters (the aforementioned Werecows) are “loud and aggressive” while the Longtooth shifters are “savage and almost feral.”


Mutton chops!

AncientH:

Every single heading for Warforged applies equally to Shifters, Changelings, and Kalashtar, so we can skip most of them. There's not a lot to say here, except that writers are trying to make the Shifters so cosmopolitan that they're almost flavourless. Also, I keep getting confused when they say that Shifters are often used as "scouts," because I confuse that with the Scout class, which isn't very good, and because the Shifter preferred class is Ranger. This is basically the problem you get when you give common names to classes. The fact is not helped by the "sample community" provided at the end of the chapter, where all the Shifter scouts are actually rangers.

Also, if Shifters are a thing, what happens to the canines/whatever whose great grand-parents were shapeshifters? Are there herds of sentient cows out there, able to use their supernatural Shifting power to speak or change their hoofs to hands to open locked doors?

Chapter 3: Changelings


In D&D, these are Dark Ones, not Changelings.


There we go.

FrankT:

Changelings originated from unions between doppelgangers and humanoids in the distant past. Eventually, their descendants became the changeling race. Like shifters, they are a unique race that breeds true.

IT BREEDS TRUE!

Let's get this out of the way right now: that's a stupid backstory and doesn't make any sense. We could go into the ways and whats of why that's dumb, but it doesn't really matter. These guys are in here because they fill a niche. The truth is that the Doppelganger is conceptually an appropriate foe at any level. A first level party could uncover the shape-shifter who took the place of the village elder while the twentieth level party could uncover the shape-shifter who took the place of the Phoenix emperor. It's a power set that scales to any possible power level. As long as there are people you care about, a creature that can successfully impersonate one of them is a foe that can matter to you. And that's the case for Friar Tuck and Hercules and Superman. Doppelgangers are such a useful foe at every power level that Dungeon Magazine was forced to ask people to stop sending them Doppelganger stories because they already had too many.


Relevant.

You'd think that D&D would respond to this fact by just making scaling Doppelgangers. 1st level Doppelgangers who can impersonate dudes and 10th level Doppelgangers who can impersonate powerful wizards and so on and in between. And you'd be wrong. What it does instead is create additional monsters like Ethereal Doppelgangers, Psionic Doppelgangers, and Greater Doppelgangers to slot in as higher tier foes. But this only gives you more powerful Doppelgangers, but the basic Doppelganger in the Monster Manual is like 4th level. Sometimes you want a lower level Doppelganger to impersonate butchers and stableboys and shit. So there was definitely room for a 1st level Doppelganger, on both sides of the DM screen.

Which doesn't excuse the terrible and nonsensical backstory, but does make me not care very much. It's a needful niche, it got filled, the end. Or at least, that should be the end. Mysteriously there are thirteen and a half more pages in this section.

AncientH:

Frank's going to rant about the mechanics next, so I'm going to take a moment and point out that even within the generous context of Eberron, where they were free to re-fluff any and all monsters, the Changeling doesn't make any sense. Doppelgangers in 3.5 have the Shapeshifter subtype, so they're not out-and-out aberrations and don't have their normal warm-and-sticky relationship with Mindflayers. In fact, Doppelgangers in pretty much every setting have never gotten a great deal of development regarding their history or culture, and the Changelings basically don't add much to the mix.

While googling for a critter (the minor doppelganger) which I thought existed in some ancient monster manual, I found out that D&D actually released a Races Gift Set. Just...wow. I'd love to see somebody order that out loud.

FrankT:

The mechanics for Changelings are incoherent. Their signature ability is called “Minor Shapechange” and it's supposed to work like disguise self. Except that it does not work like disguise self in any way. Their ability let's them spend a full round permanently altering their physical body without changing their clothes. Which is zero percent similar to disguise self, which is a standard action illlusion that temporarily layers over your body and clothes making them look like something else without physically altering them in any way. They might as well have started the bit as “Like fireball but...” or “Like deeper darkness but...” This is the sort of thing that probably made more sense as “like change self but...” back in AD&D days. This is evidence that the Changeling was originally written up before 3rd edition was a thing, when this kind of nonsense was more normal. But it could also just be old school ideas creeping in, and since we know all the people who worked on this book and all the people who worked on the original Eberron book were active 2nd edition AD&D players, this sort of legacy effect could be in their minds rather than their initial writeup. You can take the player out of AD&D...

Anyway, Changeling Psychology has its own section because the proforma demands it. But like the Warforged, the answer this book gives is that they are all different and there's no point in generalizing. “The mutability of changelings means that they have no clear place in the world.” Well, thanks for that. Changelings are an ability set, not a tribe or a nation. Having established that they live in other peoples' societies and don't have generalizable cultural traits, why is this chapter still going on!? Fuck. I've mentioned before that a race can really be encapsulated in 500 words, and that more than that really needs to come only for when you have something to say. This book has nothing to say. Having established that Changelings are like Doppelgangers but weaker, not-telepathic, and able to start at 1st level with the rest of the player characters, we're done. This book has nothing else to say. Changelings fill a niche that needed filling because of shoddy earlier design work and a general unwillingness to not grandfather in some bad decisions made in early 90s, and that's all there is to it. Everything else in this chapter is just cranking on the procedural text generation procedure.


Changelings in Eberron are Doppelgangers with hair. Or Mystique from X-Men. Mostly it's Mystique from X-Men.

AncientH:

The most exciting part of being a Changeling is the Shapechanger subtype, which I vaguely recall qualifies them for a certain classes and feats, although I'm blanking on them except "Warshaper" from Complete Warrior. That's not a terrific prestige class, especially with the +4 BAB requirement, but the abilities are sufficiently generic it's not terrible unless...oh, wait, it has cleric progression on the BAB. Who does that? I mean, it's a fighter prestige class in a fighter book, you might as well give it the full BAB. It's not like immunity to critical hits and stunning is worth all that on its own.


A large part of the Warshaper prestige class is the reader going "Wait, can't they do that already? Fuck."

FrankT:

An important aspect of a changeling's identity is the issue of gender. Unlike doppelgangers, which are entirely genderless, a changeling does have a default gender that manifests in adolescence, but each changeling can adapt his or her form to be of either gender, hermaphorditic (both genders simultaneously), or entirely generderless. A changeling can alter his or her gender (and reproductive abilities) as part of using the race's minor shapechange ability.

That five comma spurge of run-on word salad is this book's valiant attempt to begin tackling gender identity for a species that can change their biological sex that lives in a society dominated by species that can't do that and have expectations of gender roles. It's trying so hard to be sexually progressive, while at the same time being completely incoherent and unsure of what words mean. So I'm going to go out on a limb and say that at least this subsection was written by Gwendolyn Kestrel. It's very much giving me the same vibe as I got reading the Book of Erotic Fantasy. Her heart is basically in the right place, but she's trying to write about social science issues that she does not understand. I'm not even offended. It's weird to me that she had at this point been writing about this stuff for years without ever asking an anthropologist what these words meant, but by actually trying to talk about these issues she at least gets a D-. That's sadly more than we could usually expect from game authors in 2005.


Here's a ball.

AncientH:

It's probably worth comparing these races to the bloodlines in Unearthed Arcana, at least once so that we can say we've done it. Changelings compare favorably to the Doppelganger minor bloodline, because Changelings get to change shape at 1st level, and Doppelganger-blooded characters get...shit, basically. Not even kidding, Alter Self 1/day at 8th level and Detect Thoughts 1/day at 16th. Jesus wept, why bother? Lycanthrope minor bloodline likewise is much, much worse on pretty much every level from playing a Shifter.

That isn't to say that Shifter or Changeling are good, it just go to show that someone realized that there was a desire to play these characters, and no real consensus, desire, or ability to actually give players nice things. I don't know why.

FrankT:

The book pads its length by attempting to get us to believe that Changelings like stuff that also changes. So they like to wear cloth that looks like a different color when seen from different angles and like cooking with basic things like flour that can be made into a lot of different kinds of dishes. And other cartoon bullshit like that. Apparently, since Changelings have change in their name, they like to give rants about how paint and ovens and shit change things. It's about on the level of an 80s or even 70s childrens cartoon. These guys are about the philosophical sophistication of Changy Smurf. Or that “A Few of My Favorite Things” adventure from Unknown Armies.

Sorcerer: Sorcerers emphasize a tie to draconic blood. Changelings generally focus on their doppelganger heritage, so few become sorcerers.

Now I could harp on the fact that just two chapters ago they were egging us on to make Warforged Sorcerers, who of course do not have blood or heritage at all. But this is a symptom of a much larger issue where 3rd edition never really decided what Sorcerers were about. Some people got a stiffy for the whole “dragon bad touch” backstory, while others went for a more “Mary Sue spellcasting” type deal. It's not actually a big deal either way, but it's pretty telling that in a book with only four writers in it, they still can't get themselves on the same page even long enough to write the opening chapters.

The end of the chapter are some partially completed NPC stat blocks to jump start on encounter building or something. 3.5 never did figure out a way to deliver an abbreviated statblock in a way that people could actually use it. So these are pretty incoherent.

Chapter 4: Kalashtar


I'm sorry, that's a Githzerai.


Nope. Pretty sure those are still Githzerai.


There we go.

AncientH:

The Kalashtar misliked me on a number of levels. For one, they were yet another attempt by the Wizards on the Coast to give us a psionic-flavored PC class that didn't suck. As such, they're on par with the Elan - and the comparison is a bit like Dromites and Thri-Kreen.


Momma told me not to get my thorax pierced, but did I listen? Nooo...


I like what you've done with your antennae.

I'm going to come out and admit I like psionics in D&D. Yes, I know every single edition of the psionics rules has been broken and confusing. No argument there. But I liked that it was different, and I liked the fluff that surrounded it, and it made porting shit in to my Star Trek campaign much easier than "magic."

I actually like the fact that unlike the Warforged, Shifters, and Changelings, an effort was made to give the Kalashtar their own cultural identity. It wasn't much except some pseudo-Tibetan/new agey thing, but it was something, and considering that they were a psionic race that could pass for human, that helped a bit.


Fun fact: I once went an entire campaign as a Kalashtar pretending to be an elan. Even bought Skill Focus (Bluff). The joke was on me, in the end: no one cared what the fuck I was playing.

FrankT:

The Kalashtar are Githzerai who have few enough inherent psychic powers that the designers are OK with allowing them as official starting character options. And... that's about it. Earlier I described them as being Githyanki, which is wrong. They are Lawful and specialize in Monking and Psionics and personal discipline, which makes them the Githzerai. There's some half hearted attempt to give these guys a back story, but no one cares and it doesn't make any sense. They are humans who got the bad touch from Eberron specific psychic dream alien monsters rather than Mind Flayers, but you don't actually give a shit and neither do I.

So rather than really get into the nitty gritty of the Kalashtar philosophic swamp, let's just go back and read the Unbroken Circle of Zerthimon.

First Circle of Zerthimon
Know* that we are the First People. Once all was chaos. The First People were thought drawn from chaos. When the First People came to *know* themselves, they were chaos no longer, and became flesh.
With their thoughts and *knowing* of matter, the People shaped the First World and dwelled there with their *knowing* to sustain them.

Yet the flesh was new to the People and with it, the People came not to *know* themselves. The flesh gave rise to new thoughts. Greed and hates, pains and joys, jealousies and doubts. All of these fed on each other and the minds of the People were divided. In their division, the People were punished.

The emotions of the flesh were strong. The greed and hates, the pains and joys, the jealousies and doubts, all of these served as a guiding stone to enemies. In becoming flesh, the First People became enslaved to those who *knew* flesh only as tools for their will. *Know* these beasts were the *illithids.*

The *illithids* were a race that had come not to *know* themselves. They had learned how to make other races not *know* themselves.

They were the tentacled ones. They lived in flesh and saw flesh as tools for their will. Their blood was as water and they shaped minds with their thoughts. When the *illithids* came upon the People, the People were a people no more. The People became slaves.

The *illithids* took the People from the First World and brought them to the False Worlds. As the People labored upon the False Worlds, the *illithids* taught them the Way of the Flesh. Through them, the People came to *know* loss. They came to *know* suffering. They came to *know* death, both of the body and mind. They came to *know* what it is to be the herd of another and have their flesh consumed. They came to *know* the horror of being made to feel joy in such things.

The Unbroken Circle is the *knowing* of how the People lost themselves. And how they came to *know* themselves again.

Second Circle of Zerthimon
Know* that flesh cannot mark steel. *Know* that steel may mark flesh. In *knowing* this, Zerthimon became free.
Know* that the tentacled ones were of flesh. They relied on the flesh and used it as tools for their will. One of the places where flesh served their will were the Fields of Husks on the False Worlds of the *illithids.*

The Fields were where the bodies of the People were cast after the *illithids* had consumed their brains. When the brain had been devoured, the husks came to be fertilizer to grow the poison-stemmed grasses of the *illithids.* Zerthimon worked the Fields with no *knowing* of himself or what he had become. He was a tool of flesh, and the flesh was content.

It was upon these fields that Zerthimon came to *know* the scripture of steel. During one of the turnings, as Zerthimon tilled the Fields with his hands, he came across a husk whose brain remained within it. It had not been used as food. Yet it was dead.

The thought that one of the husks had died a death without serving as food for the *illithids* was a thought Zerthimon had difficulty understanding. From that thought, came a desire to *know* what had happened to the husk.

Embedded in the skull of the husk was a steel blade. It had pierced the bone. Zerthimon realized that was what had killed the husk. The steel had marked the flesh, but the flesh had not marked the steel.

Zerthimon took the blade and studied its surface. In it, he saw his reflection. It was in the reflection of the steel that Zerthimon first *knew* himself. Its edge was sharp, its will the wearer's. It was the blade that would come to be raised against Gith when Zerthimon made the Pronouncement of Two Skies.

Zerthimon kept the blade for many turnings, and many were the thoughts he had about it. He used it in the fields to aid his work. In using it, he thought about how it was not used.

The *illithids* were powerful. Zerthimon had believed that there was nothing that they did not *know.* Yet the *illithids* never carried tools of steel. They only used flesh as tools. Everything was done through flesh, for the tentacled ones were made of flesh and they *knew* flesh. Yet steel was superior to flesh. When the blade had killed the husk, it was the flesh that had been weaker than the steel.

It was then that Zerthimon came to *know* that flesh yielded to steel. In *knowing* that, he came to *know* that steel was stronger than the *illithids.*

Steel became the scripture of the People. *Know* that steel is the scripture by which the People came to *know* freedom.

'Third Circle 'of Zerthimon
Zerthimon labored many turnings for the *illithid* Arlathii Twice-Deceased and his partnership in the cavernous heavens of the False Worlds. His duties would have broken the backs of many others, but Zerthimon labored on, suffering torment and exhaustion.

It came to pass that the *illithid* Arlathii Twice-Deceased ordered Zerthimon before him in his many-veined galleria. He claimed that Zerthimon had committed slights of obstinance and cowardice against his partnership. The claim had no weight of truth, for Arlathii only wished to *know* if flames raged within Zerthimon's heart. He wished to *know* if Zerthimon's heart was one of a slave or of a rebel.

"Zerthimon surrendered to the *illithid* punishment rather than reveal his new-found strength. He *knew* that were he to show the hatred in his heart, it would serve nothing, and it would harm others that felt as he. He chose to endure the punishment and was placed within the Pillars of Silence so he might suffer for a turning."

Lashed upon the Pillars, Zerthimon moved his mind to a place where pain could not reach, leaving his body behind. He lasted a turning, and when he was brought before Arlathii Twice-Deceased, he gave gratitude for his punishment to the *illithid* as was custom. In so doing, he proved himself a slave in the *illithid* eyes while his heart remained free.

By enduring and quenching the fires of his hatred, he allowed Arlathii Twice-Deceased to think him weak. When the time of the Rising came, Arlathii was the first of the *illithid* to *know* death by Zerthimon's hand and die a third death.

'Fourth Circle 'of Zerthimon
Know* that the Rising of the People against the *illithid* was a thing built upon many ten-turnings of labor. Many of the People were gathered and taught in secret the ways of defeating their *illithid* masters. They were taught to shield their minds, and use them as weapons. They were taught the scripture of steel, and most importantly, they were given the *knowing* of freedom.

Some of the People learned the nature of freedom and took it into their hearts. The *knowing* gave them strength. Others feared freedom and kept silent. But there were those that *knew* freedom and *knew* slavery, and it was their choice that the People remain chained. One of these was Vilquar.

Vilquar saw no *freedom* in the Rising, but opportunity. He saw that the *illithid* had spawned across many of the False Worlds. Their Worlds numbered so many that their vision was turned only outwards, to all they did not already touch. Vilquar's eye saw that much took place that the *illithid* did not see. To the Rising, the *illithid* were blinded.

Vilquar came before his master, the *illithid* Zhijitaris, with the *knowing* of the Rising. Vilquar added to his chains and offered to be their eyes against the Rising. In exchange, Vilquar asked that he be rewarded for his service. The *illithid* agreed to his contract.

At the bonding of the contract, a dark time occurred. Many were betrayals Vilquar committed and many were the People that the *illithids* fed upon to stem the Rising. It seemed that the Rising would die before it could occur, and the *illithid* were pleased with Vilquar's eye.

It was near the end of this dark time when Zerthimon came to *know* Vilquar's treacheries. In *knowing* Vilquar's eye, Zerthimon forced the Rising to silence itself, so that Vilquar might think at last his treacheries had succeeded, and the Rising had fallen. He *knew* that Vilquar's eye was filled only with the reward he had been promised. He would see what he wished to see.

With greed beating in his heart, Vilquar came upon the *illithid* Zhijitaris and spoke to his master of his success. He said that the Rising had fallen, and the *illithids* were safe to turn their eyes outwards once more. He praised their wisdom in using Vilquar's eye, and he asked them for his reward.

In his greed-blindness, Vilquar had forgotten the *knowing* of why the People had sought freedom. He had lost the *knowing* of what slavery meant. He had forgotten what his *illithid* masters saw when they looked upon him. And so Vilquar's betrayal of the People was ended with another betrayal. Vilquar came to *know* that when Vilquar's eye has nothing left to see, Vilquar's eye is useless.

The *illithid* gave to Vilquar his reward, opening the cavity of his skull and devouring his brain. Vilquar's corpse was cast upon the Fields of Husks so its blood might water the poison-stemmed grasses.

Fifth Circle of Zerthimon
Zerthimon was the first to *know* the way of freedom. Yet it was not he that first came to *know* the way of rebellion.

The *knowing* of rebellion came to the warrior-queen Gith, one of the People. She had served the *illithids* upon many of the False Worlds as a soldier, and she had come to *know* war and carried it in her heart. She had come to *know* how others might be organized to subjugate others. She *knew* the paths of power, and she *knew* the art of taking from the conquerors the weapons by which they could be defeated. Her mind was focused, and both her will and her blade were as one.

The turning in which Zerthimon came to *know* Gith, Zerthimon ceased to *know* himself. Her words were as fires lit in the hearts of all who heard her. In hearing her words, he wished to *know* war. He *knew* not what afflicted him, but he *knew* he wished to join his blade to Gith. He wished to give his hate expression and share his pain with the *illithid.*

Gith was one of the People, but her *knowing* of herself was greater than any Zerthimon had ever encountered. She *knew* the ways of flesh, she *knew* the *illithids* and in *knowing* herself, she was to *know* how to defeat them in battle. The strength of her *knowing* was so great, that all those that walked her path came to *know* themselves.

Gith was but one. Her strength was such that it caused others to *know* their strength. And Zerthimon laid his steel at her feet.

Sixth Circle of Zerthimon
Upon the Blasted Plains, Zerthimon told Gith there cannot be two skies. In the wake of his words, came war.

So it came to pass that the People had achieved victory over their *illithid* masters. They *knew* freedom. Yet before the green fires had died from the battlefield, Gith spoke of continuing the war. Many, still filled with the bloodlust in their hearts, agreed with her. She spoke of not merely defeating the *illithids,* but destroying all *illithids* across the Planes. After the *illithids* had been exterminated, they would bring war to all other races they encountered.

In Gith's heart, fires raged. She lived in war, and in war, she *knew* herself. All that her eyes saw, she wanted to conquer.

Zerthimon spoke the beginnings of that which was against Gith's will. He spoke that the People already *knew* freedom. Now they should *know* themselves again and mend the damage that had been done to the People. Behind his words were many other hearts of the People who were weary of the war against the *illithid.*

Know* that Gith's heart was not Zerthimon's heart on this matter. She said that the war would continue. The *illithid* would be destroyed. Their flesh would be no more. Then the People would claim the False Worlds as their own. Gith told Zerthimon that they would be under the same sky in this matter. The words were like bared steel.
From Zerthimon came the Pronouncement of Two Skies. In the wake of his words came war.

Seventh Circle of Zerthimon
Know* that the Rising of the People against the *illithid* was a thing built upon many turnings. Many were the People who lived and died under time's blade while the Rising was shaped.

The Rising was shaped upon a slow foundation. Steel was gathered so that it might mark *illithid* flesh. A means of *knowing* the movements of the *illithids* were established, at first weak and confused, then stronger, like a child finding its voice. When the movements were *known,* then the *illithids* were observed. In observing them, their ways of the mind were *known.*

When the ways of the *illithid* were *known,* many of the People were gathered and taught in secret the means to shield their minds, and the way to harness their will as weapons. They were taught the scripture of steel, and most importantly, they were given the *knowing* of freedom.

These things were not learned quickly. The *knowing* of much of the ways was slow, and in all these things, time's weight fell upon all. From the *knowing* of one's reflection in a steel blade, to the *knowing* of submerging the will, to the *knowing* of seeing itself. All of these things and more the People built upon. In time, they came to *know* the whole.

Eighth Circle of Zerthimon
Know* that a mind divided divides the man. The will and the hand must be as one. In *knowing* the self, one becomes strong.
Know* that if you *know* a course of action to be true in your heart, do not betray it because the path leads to hardship. *Know* that without suffering, the Rising would have never been, and the People would never have come to *know* themselves.

Know* that there is nothing in all the Worlds that can stand against unity. When all *know* a single purpose, when all hands are guided by one will, and all act with the same intent, the Planes themselves may be moved.

A divided mind is one that does not *know* itself. When it is divided, it cleaves the body in two. When one has a single purpose, the body is strengthened. In *knowing* the self, grow strong.

That comes in at a bit under 2,500 words, and it details the history and philosophy of the Githzerzai in as much detail as you could want. It's actually written by the same dude who made the Master Race's Handbook, so it stands as simple and powerful testimony that someone can write something bad one day and something very good the next. So there's that.

Anyway, the words of Zerthimon are pretty obviously the real inspiration for everything the Kalashtar think and do, and there is nothing to be gained by not going back to the primary source.

AncientH:

...unless you want to get finicky about the 3.5 details. Kalashtar may or may not have been a fan-favorite race like the Warforged, but there were obviously a writer favorite race, since they got quite a bit more dedicated feats, racial substituion levels, prestige classes, magic items and whatnot that required you to be this high a kalashtar to ride. I think it also helped in that they were basically the only real way to interact with the psionics system in Eberron, which endeared them to psionics fans, and their big super-secret big bad villains actually got published in Secrets of Sarlona.

See, this is the benefit of any sort of interesting backstory: you can expand on it and elaborate on it to your heart's content. Good backstory helps generate new content. What the fuck content can Changelings and Shifters generate?


Well, besides erotic fanfiction.

FrankT:

Despite their connection to the world of dreams, the kalashtar need not be tied to the Eberron setting. In another campaign world, that connection simply might not exist. The humanlike appearance and mental powers of the kalashtar might be the result of a long-ago offshoot of humanity...

In other words, the authors don't even think you should bother using the Kalashtar official backstory, you should just use their game mechanics and replace their backstory with the Githzerai backstory. I'm not going to say they are wrong, because of course the Githzerai backstory is more interesting than the Kalashtar backstory. Rather unsurprisingly so.

The big question of course is why we need to do this at all. The Githzerai are psychic warriors and mystical monks and shit, but you can do all that with character classes. Unlike the other creatures, there really isn't a compelling reason why you couldn't just write “Human” on your character shit, take levels in the Psion class, and call yourself a Githzerai. And that's probably more than anything why this race had so little traction compared to the other three.

AncientH:

The Eberron cosmology annoyed the fuck out of me, just because it was explicitly at odds with the established cosmology for no good fucking reason except a bugfuck-complicated 13-moon lunar cycle. I mean, if they've brought in Spelljammer or something and visiting another plane was one trip through the aether away, I'd understand, but they didn't so it's just annoying.

And, as Frank points out, the downside to tying your backstory to a single setting is that when porting the race/characters/fluff into another setting becomes difficult. Hell, there's even a difficulty for this in-setting. Kalashtar can interbreed with humans (they really basically just are humans, except possessed by a psionic spirit - WoD would have pumped out a book full of Kalashtar-like entities possessed by fiendish spirits or something, like Demon: the Fallen but more fucking), and those unions can result in Kalashtar orphans that know nothing about their root culture.


You get it from your father's side of the family.

FrankT:

The Kalashtar mostly sit around in their monasteries conducting “spiritual warfare.” And honestly, I can't tell if this is parody or not. It's pretty much played totally straight, which means it's hilarious. Because if you take the Christian concept of spiritual warfare and just say them with your outside voice, you sound like a crazy person. So mostly Christians these days downplay the whole thing or say it's a metaphor or something if they acknowledge it at all. But there are real people who really believe this is a real thing, and I am legitimately unable to tell the difference between people making fun of them through sarcasm and those people earnestly explaining their actual point of view. We're at the part of fringe Christianity where Poe's Law is absolute, and there is simply no way to tell the difference between fundie madness and parody.


This is, I think, not supposed to be a joke.

So whoever wrote that piece is either a card carrying Christian crazy person or read about the practice and was so weirded out that they thought it sounded like it belonged in a fantasy story.

In any case, they have evil counterparts who are conducting large scale feng shui projects to make sure that the dream world stays evil or something. And now there's a war on, and I just. Don't. Care. Presumably this all got built up from the Githzerai/Githyanki schism and it got all weird because it had to be filled with shovel text.

AncientH:

I don't understand why the "Kalashtar and Other Races" section didn't give at least lip service to how Kalashtar deal with the other psionic races. I mean, granted you're not likely to encounter a lot of half-giants in Eberron, but I seriously want to know what they think the tangible difference is between an Elan and a Kalashtar as far as playing experience at the table, since they're both human-derived psionic critters. Instead, we get this:

Kalashtar communities are typically isolated. They may be mixed but are never integrated.

This is a good example about why fantasy racism is bullshit.

If you have isolated communities that refuse to integrate with the main world, even though they live side-by-side and are sexually compatible that is not realistic, and it brings up uncomfortable racial ideas of the past for no benefit. The fact is that in any community with a mixed population in the real world, you begin to see some crossover. If you plant a human village next to an elf village, you get half elves. Even if social strictures try to prevent mixing. And unless you want the Kalashtar to be the inbred psionic hillbillies of the setting, they need to be able to interact with other cultures on the community level.


On the other hand, that might explain the preference for Soulknife.

FrankT:

This book wants Kalashtar players to play Soul Knives. You don't want to play a Soul Knife because that class is a dog with fleas. I suspect that at some level the authors know that Soulknives are a cruel prank, because they are unable to name check a single thing that the class actually does that is in any possible way good. It's pretty surreal.

And of course, the Githzerai Kalashtar make raiding parties of psychics and monks to go fight Illithid Dark Qori. Because as explained in The Illithiad, that is how the Githzerai roll.


A Kalashtar raid.
Sorry, that's Githzerai again.

AncientH:

I don't know if we've talked about Soulknives in detail, but they're basically a precursor of sorts to Magic of Incarnum - an effort to nail PCs down to a wealth-by-level appropriate magic psionic weapon that leveled when they did, and which with the right feats and class features could be adjusted for different purposes.


Also, somebody spanked a lot to Jim Lee.

The sad thing is, in Eberron and with Kalashtar in particular, they took this to...an unusual extreme, with crap like Mind Shield. But the thing is that D&D3.+ rarely went back on anything truly bad, it always doubled down. Most of the writers, I think, didn't understand enough of the mechanics to realize whether or not a class was good or bad, and didn't care enough to check. They took what looked like compatible race/class combinations and threw them out there, and came up with new (untested) abilities and variants to stack on top of the tottering heap, like the Sega Genesis Doom Tower.



...and like that mighty tower of power, while it looks impressive from a distance, when it comes to actually playing the monstrosity...why the fuck did you bother? Why did anyone bother?

[schpeelah]

I felt the mandatory chart can never be without its twin.

[ishy]

FrankT:

I don't even know why there's a Werecow option. No one is demanding to play Werecows. D&D doesn't even have Werecows. That is not a thing. D&D has Wereswine, Wereermines, and Werebaboons, and I will grant that those are all hella dumb. But no Werecows. Seriously, what the fuck?

People who like anime might be into werecows?

AncientH:

The most exciting part of being a Changeling is the Shapechanger subtype, which I vaguely recall qualifies them for a certain classes and feats, although I'm blanking on them except "Warshaper" from Complete Warrior. That's not a terrific prestige class, especially with the +4 BAB requirement, but the abilities are sufficiently generic it's not terrible unless...oh, wait, it has cleric progression on the BAB. Who does that? I mean, it's a fighter prestige class in a fighter book, you might as well give it the full BAB. It's not like immunity to critical hits and stunning is worth all that on its own.

A large part of the Warshaper prestige class is the reader going "Wait, can't they do that already? Fuck."

Interesting note:

David Noonan[/url]]When we were playtesting Eberron, I had a player who came up with a completely abusive combination of mechanical artifacts including the shifter race, the weretouched master prestige class, and the warshaper prestige class from Complete Warrior.

---

But I didn’t realize that shifter/weretouched master/warshaper/etc. was such a nuclear weapon. From my vantage point behind the DM screen, it just seemed like the PC had a lucky night. I didn’t realize that the PC actually had an unlucky night, but despite that, he was as powerful as all the other PCs combined. Even the other players didn’t realize it right away.

[schpeelah]

My assumption is that the werecow is the "kind of a minotaur" option.

[Reynard]

Huh. I must've blanked out on that changeling gender change paragraph and assumed they can't actually change their gender.

[spongeknight]

My assumption is that the werecow is the "kind of a minotaur" option.

Nah, you can play a half-minotaur at level 2 and be significantly more badass than a 2nd level fighter.

[OgreBattle]

sorcerers strike me as the perfect example of how a 'race as class' works in D&D, with their backstory being that they have dragon or some other blood. That's as much of a race as "mildly psychic" or "has hairy arms" is.

[CapnTthePirateG]

Can you guys link that Rich Redman interview where he purports that monster PCs need to suck? I keep googling and googling and can't find it anywhere.

[Koumei]

Warshaper is often referred to (or was, back when people talked about 3Ed) as the Changeling Paragon. Firstly, it lets them actually heal themselves when they physically change their injured bodies to look uninjured (fast healing).

Secondly, because the very first level grants "Grow a new natural weapon or boost the size category of an existing one" at will (as long as you're not in your own form, which is basically always for Changelings). The limitation on that is "The Bullshit threshold of Mister Cavern", as the ability as written lets you grow a million Claw attacks and then increase them all to Colossal+ size.

In practice you'll probably get to have maybe 5 natural weapons, all at Large size. But if you don't at least try for "Six slams, one tail slap, two bites, one gore, one tail sting, six tentacles, four claws, two hindclaws, one ram, two wings and a partridge in a pear tree", then you're not trying.

The only time I played a Changeling was in Iron Kingdoms, as a Warlock, who spent 100% of her time pretending to be an Elf Wizard. One player commented, regarding my "wizardry", how bad I was at faking stuff and pretending. I had to keep a straight face, as it was six sessions later that he realised I wasn't an elf.

[Morat]

Huh. I must've blanked out on that changeling gender change paragraph and assumed they can't actually change their gender.

The author fucked up the vocabulary in the same way you are. They might not be able to change gender. What they can change is their biological sex. We don't know if changelings even have a gender identity, nor do we know if it's mutable.

Perhaps they don't think of themselves as men or women, perhaps they ID as men when they're biologically male and women when they're biologically female, or perhaps they have a fixed-ish gender identity and are men or women regardless of what they've got in their pants.

[hogarth]

For a long time, I thought I liked Eberron as a setting, but I finally realized that I really only liked a few things from the setting: changelings, warforged, and Sharn.

There are a quite a number of things I don't care for in Eberron (I don't need trains in my D&D, for instance), but when it came out I was excited by the idea that someone had at least attempted to fix things that I didn't like in previous settings.

For example:

• Adventuring occurs in different leveled zones, so you don't need the same kind of suspension of disbelief that comes with "rubber band" difficulty.
• The PCs are supposed to be the bad-ass heroes of Eberron, not just the people who get called when Elminster's sidekick's assistant is out of town.
• The idea of "always evil" or "always good" alignments is tossed out the window; it's easy to have an evil priest in a good church without getting instantly found out.
• There's a guild that can provide high-level healing without being combat experts that make the PCs obsolete.
• The psionic rules aren't just a complete afterthought.

[erik]

Can you guys link that Rich Redman interview where he purports that monster PCs need to suck? I keep googling and googling and can't find it anywhere.

I thought it was a post or two that he made on the Wizards of the Coast forum, like 2-3 incarnations ago and likely lost to the winds.

This is like a forum post from 10+ years ago, so my memory is hazy on specifics. Something to the effect of that the design philosophy of Savage Species was to make monster characters worse options than vanilla races to discourage/limit their use.

Meaning that they created a product with the express purpose of ruining play for the very people interested in buying said product. A pretty bold dick move.

[Prak]

Interesting note:

David Noonan[/url]]When we were playtesting Eberron, I had a player who came up with a completely abusive combination of mechanical artifacts including the shifter race, the weretouched master prestige class, and the warshaper prestige class from Complete Warrior.

---

But I didn’t realize that shifter/weretouched master/warshaper/etc. was such a nuclear weapon. From my vantage point behind the DM screen, it just seemed like the PC had a lucky night. I didn’t realize that the PC actually had an unlucky night, but despite that, he was as powerful as all the other PCs combined. Even the other players didn’t realize it right away.

Holy crap.

First of all, jesus h fucking tits is Weretouched master poorly ...formatted. Each and every one of the Weretouched I abilities could have just been "when shifting, the character benefits from [trait] in addition to the trait they're manifesting. If this would cause them to manifest a trait twice, it is cumulative (increase damage 1 die)." Or even just "The shifter manifests an additional trait when shifting, chosen when they gain this ability. This allows them to manifest a trait twice, in which case it stacks, and damage is increased one step rather than giving them a second attack."

Second of all, it's not entirely clear what David Noonan's player was using to justify entry into Warshaper, but presumably it was the Weretouched Master Alternate Form ability, which functions "like polymorph." Which is his own fucking fault for allowing, and possibly more evidence that WotC writers employ houserules that render their playtest games almost entirely unlike what the books give us.

Third of all....

But I didn’t realize that shifter/weretouched master/warshaper/etc. was such a nuclear weapon.

I didn’t realize that the PC actually had an unlucky night, but despite that, he was as powerful as all the other PCs combined.

Let's say you're trying to be a werebear, because that's probably the most powerful option with Weretouched Master (because no one will ever make me care about Con, so weretiger is out and bite might start a die type larger, but your strength isn't going to be raised as high, so everything else is out too).

So you go Shifter (whatever) 5/Weretouched Master (bear) 5/Warshaper 2, with an eye for making your claw attacks the very best. So you take Razorclaw as your shifter trait, for a 1d4+1/4 chlv claw attack. We'll go ahead and assume you got to start with an 18 str, so prior to WT, this means you have 2 Claws 1d4+6. ...you might as well use fucking daggers, because at least then you could make iterative attacks (yes, seriously, Shifters can't get iterative attacks with their claws. I don't know why either).

But ok, then you go Weretouched Moleaster. First level, you say RAR IMMA WEREBARE and when you shift your claws now do 1d6+8!


You still can't fucking make iterative attacks, so you might as well shift for the strength boost and use daggersshort swords.

So you keep taking BadWeretouched Master, because you need to get that shitty alternate form and there's a stat boost capstone. At level 2 you get a bonus shifter feat, but you chose to play a shifter, so you don't really get to complain about having to interact with that shitfest. If your GM says you can only pick from the feats specified in the SelfWeretouched Master writeup, then you... I don't know, fucking roll a die, or something. I mean, I suppose you could take Extra Shifter Trait and pick up one of the movement mode traits, but EST specifically states that you don't get the stat boost, so, you really have to find a trait that is good on it's own without the boost. Goodluck. Also, that assumes you either took two shifter feats already, and there are better things to do that require you to have Shifter feats. I could understand deciding to take Beasthide, but... fuck. +2 Natural Armour is... not worth a lot. Outside of that, your best option is maybe Shifter Defense? I mean, it cuts down damage by 2 because no one will have fucking silver weapons. On the other hand, if you're trying to do this, you may have a couple Shifter feats from leveling, so I suppose the Elite stuff isn't a terrible thing to pick for your bonus. Contextually, I mean.
If your DM is at all sane, and says that you can pick any Shifter feat, not just the ones that existed when WtAM was printed, then your five levels of (Whatever) had at least one level of barbarian and you take Shifter Savagery because now your claws crit on a 19-20 and deal 2d6 if you rage and shift at the same time, for 2 Claws 2d6+10 (including rage). You've finally reached the point where your claws actually have a merit beyond using swords--the fact that there are noticeable penalties for wielding a Greatsword in your offhand. Congrats.
But, ok, so you take another few levels of WtM, because you need the Alternate Form at 3rd, and you want the stat boost at 5th. At the end of the class, your claws are 2d6+12 weapons. Once a day. Twice if you decided you liked shitty feats and took a Shifter feat at first or third level. Maybe you grabbed Reactive Shifting for... some... reason...

So. That was underwhelming. The warhead of this "nuke" must be Warshaper, right?

Well, I mean, the first two levels increase your Claws a die step, meaning that they now do 3d6, and give you +4 strength, so now you're doing 3d6+14 with two attacks, for an average damage of 46. ...for one or two combats per day.


I mean, sure, you've managed to add 12 to your strength a couple of times a day. That certainly seems impressive, and if the other characters are really shitty, and the players are cool with only doing two battles a day, that could be something.

But, the most ready comparison in my mind is a character I played that basically made rage his bitch, and is a lot simpler. Just be a Wild Elf Barbarian5/Berserk4/Frenzied BerserkX. Given the same 18 str assumption, this character walks into the game with a 20 str that the shifter can only have a few rounds a day. The Berserker character is putting his feats into more broadly useful things like Power Attack and Cleave to qualify for Frenzied Berserk or things that power up his rage shtick, like Extra Rage, which is blatantly better than the whole shifter feat thing because even if it's ruled that each iteration add uses to Rage or Frenzy, not both at once as the writing ambiguously might allow, you're still getting +2 uses/feat, rather than +1/2 feats. But my broader point is that if you're measuring effectiveness in raw damage output, the Berserker build here can make iterative attacks and at 10th level can increase his strength as much as 16 points once a day and 10 points a second time per day. At 12th level, the end point of the hypothetical WarShifter build, where it can fob off doing other things, the Berserk can increase it's strength by 16 points twice a day, and that's assuming the build hasn't pulled shenanigans to get more feats(ie, asked for Flaws to be in play), or said "I'm ok with not starting with a 20 strength" and is a human instead of wild elf, or decided to go Brb3/Ftr2 pre-PrCs to handle two of the feats needed for Frenzied Berserk and allow them to devote more feats to raging. Hell, that's actually much more ideal. Human Brb3/Ftr2 gets five feats, which means you can satisfy FrB's feat prereqs and have a feat left over for Extra Rage, meaning that when you hit 6th you can take Extra rage and ask to apply it to Berserk's Battle Fury, allowing you to do a full Rage/Battle Fury three times a day for +10 str, and when you hit 9th and have a level or two of FrB you can take it again for Frenzy and get your strength boosted four times as much as the WarShifter two more times a day. With +9BAB iteratives. If you're trying to work TWF in, that just means you've sacrificed an interation of Extra Rage. Or your DM ok'd Flaws. At 12th level, you're either still +4 str and two combats ahead of the WarShifter and swinging two blades around, or you're +4 str and three combats ahead because you put those three levels in Barbarian and one of your PrCs for the Rage et al. uses and took Extra Rage again.

And this all works just as wellmuch better for the IMMA WEREBARE thing, since the level 3 ability of Berserk is "Beast Form" which gives you a hybrid form like an lycanthrope that only boosts str and con +2 rather than the full set of ability boosts a lycanthrope would get and one of the animals allowed is Brown Bear, and you could go into Bear Warrior at any point which has "When you rage, you become bear-y and +8 Str, +2 Dex and +4 con instead of your normal rage ability buffs" as a first level ability. And your bear-y-ness isn't limited to it's own times per day, it's just a thing you can do when you rage, and how big of a bear you turn into improves with Bear Warrior levels. And this functions like Polymorph, so the GM that allows Weretouched Master to get into Warshaper should allow Bear Warrior to get into Warshaper too, meaning you could go Barbarian/Fighter>Berserk>Bear Warrior.

This must be what it's like to analyze the monk class. You would think Weretouched Master/Warshaper would be the build that makes shifters work, but when you look at it, there's just... nothing there. Worse, it's questionable whether it even fucking works, and a much simpler build outperforms it in the both the mechanical and conceptual goals it aspires to.

*admittedly this requires getting a PrC from a 3rd edition sourcebook okayed, specifically Deities and Demigods. But given that it's not actually a godly PrC, just one written for games dealing with the Norse pantheon, and isn't full of 3rd Ed. specific stuff that got changed in 3.5, that isn't too farfetched. Maybe I'm wrong.

[CapnTthePirateG]

I always had the impression that the warshaper could grow X natural weapons, where X was the number of natural weapons you could think up. That morphic weapons ability is really poorly written.

[icyshadowlord]

Poor formatting, in a clusterfuck book like this? What a shocker.

[tussock]

@Prak, the 3e design team had a thing where the best low-level Sorcerer spells were

Mirror Image, Hold Monster, Fly, Stoneskin, Sleep, Teleport, Fireball, Polymorph, Invisibility, and Magic Missile. From 10 to 1 where the best of all is Magic Missile because of how much damage it does, and the next best is where you stand at the back and Invisibly summon monsters forever!!!111one (cite: D&D for Dummys, by Bill Slavicsek and Richard Baker, copyright 2005).

Not Web, not Glitterdust, not Tentacles, not Colour Spray, not Slow, not any Wall spell at all, not Solid Fog, because they don't do that sort of thing in the games where the boss plays. Stoneskin, but not Protection from Arrows when you have Fly. I guess it's nice that they know about Polymorph, if not Fleshrakers, and there's one SoD in there.

It's maybe part of that office culture where you keep your job by being the boss's friend, and he's also your DM in the office game, so he's an awesome DM and you totally can't bust his game wide open with standard spells. Your other boss is playing the Fighter class he personally designed, so making Fighters feel small in the pants is how you lose your job.



Because what also beats that bear stuff is any Druid build, as a Bear, with her pet Bear, while also being a full caster who can lock her enemies in place, take all their actions away, and summon Bears on top of them, all of whom are better than that at lower levels. WotC just didn't talk about that at all, not in their art, not on the web, not in the FAQ, not in the NPCs, it just wasn't part of their game.

They even talked in one of their pre-4e things about how there's options in the game they never even talk about with each other, because of how functionally superior they are. I've read of similar attitudes at other game design companies, people too busy being friendly to exploit the rules and get on with winning, wouldn't want to be rude.

--

There really isn't a compelling reason why you couldn't just write “Human” on your character shit (sic), take levels in the Psion class, and call yourself a Githzerai.

You can replace most stuff in D&D by just being a human full caster and handwaving the fluff. Human Druids make good Dryads or Werewolves or whatever, Human Sorcerers make passable dragons without all the stupid feats and prestige classes, just by casting spells. Human Clerics make really good arcane archers, or so I hear, but also Fighters and Monks and shit. It's always been easy to duplicate Rogue with Wizard spells, given that they existed before the Thief class.

Ultimately, stuff like Dragons are just a Wizard with extra hit points, Balors too. There are spells that just let you eventually add up to a proper Iron Golem or Wraith or Umber Hulk if that's what you want to be.

[Reynard]

Morat:
> Perhaps they don't think of themselves as men or women, perhaps they ID as men when they're biologically male and women when they're biologically female,
That's called "gender identity". "Gender" (as a social behaviour/expectations) is a different thing.

Please, either stop spewing regurgitated PC nonsense or actually learn what do the words you are using actually mean (and fuck off in both cases: as long as it is not grammar/syntax mistake I wouldn't care less).

[Reynard]

tussock:
> You can replace most stuff in D&D by just being a human full caster and handwaving the fluff.
Did anyone play as a wizard, but said to other players it's a homebrewed monk class?

[Prak]

Reynard:
Sex: The physical component, has to do with chromosomes and what genitals are between your legs
Gender: The mental component, what society thinks goes along with the genitals, primarily a construct of the half of the species which is vaguely more predisposed to aggression and muscle tone controlling the half of the species which is vaguely more predisposed to cooperation and a modest body fat percentage
Gender Identity: An individual's psychological affiliation one of those roles, when there's a disparity between the individual's sex and the gender they see themselves as sometimes it's associated with a revulsion/objection to what's between their legs, but not always.

[Reynard]

Prak, I think you misspelled Morat.

[Prak]

Nope, I was responding to you. Gender Identity and Gender are only different in that the former is the individualized form of the latter, not a some radically other thing.

[Reynard]

> Gender Identity and Gender are only different in that the former is the individualized form of the latter, not a some radically other thing.
If Gender is what society thinks and Gender Identity is what an individual thinks, then - yes. They are different things and using Gender Identity as an example of Gender is wrong.

[Grek]

Yeah, Reynard, you're actually full of shit here. If you can change sex at will, having a gender identity as a man or a woman makes even less sense than usual. Identifying as "I'm whatever I'm currently shapeshifted to look like, refer to me as such." is just as valid as "My gender is changeling, not man or woman." is just as valid as "I'm always a woman, even when I change to look like a man." or vis versa.