Excerpts Archive | 5/2/2008 Article Header Image Excerpts:
Racial Benefits 4th Edition Player's Handbook  From a look at
classes, we move on to races, and why they matter more than ever
in 4th Edition. To answer that question, we turned to Rob
Heinsoo:  Original Design Intent  Before we began 4th Edition
design, James Wyatt decided that he wanted a player character’s
race to matter a lot more in 4E than it did in 3E. Andy Collins
and I heard about James’ decision during our first week of
brainstorming together. James said something like, “I won’t be
happy with this design unless it gives me a reason to care about
what race I am all through a character’s career. Not just
something that happens at first level.” That sounded great to me
and Andy.  Our early designs put race on par with paragon paths
and epic destinies as character elements that would be secondary
to class for ten levels at a time. Race supplied features and
powers from levels 1-10, paragon paths took over at levels
11-20, and epic destinies capp