Tyloris
commented
2 years ago Sorry about the quasi-rant. If I had known how long this would end up, I probably would have put them into separate issues. Plus these are probably just my personal opinions instead of proper issues.
First up, Shadow/Necrotic Resistance. Is this a trait that all draenei should have access to? Lightforged draenei in the game don't have it, having holy resistance instead--if they get this trait as well, they have resistance to both necrotic and radiant damage. Which... is either lore-friendly (aasimar also have both) or not (being so Light-aligned, would not their opposite element hurt them more?), depending on how you see it. Then there are Broken draenei, who don't give off the impression that they are particularly shadow-resistant to me.
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Secondly, Lightforged draenei. Their racials don't really give off a 'holy warrior' vibe. They feel kind of bland and lackluster. Personally, I'd suggest including something like the aasimar's celestial revelation--if we are going to include this feature anywhere, here is where it would best fit. I'd probably replace Forged of Light with this feature. Other options are a death burst ability (Light's Reckoning), some sort of smite-based ability (like a X times/LR increase in damage dealt, more vs demons and whatnot, stacks with paladin abilities), etc.
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Third, there doesn't seem to be much common themes across the draenei. This is possibly due to the inclusion of the broken, but the only base race abilities are shadow resistance and a +2 bonus to Cha. Since the draenei as a whole were supposed to be very talented with magic, it might be worth looking into making a core trait related to that route, notably different from typical magic-themed racials like you'd see on elves. For example, if they take feats or levels in a class that grants cantrips, they learn an additional cantrip.
Another idea I had was to give them a core standard delayed magic, where they can choose one class to emulate and then they get specific thematic spells based on that; I've previously made a feat that does this. For example, if you picked druid, you'd get druidism, then animal friendship, then barkskin. The cantrip is always the utility cantrip for the class. My concern is that you'd weird things like a druidic paladin. (Just mentioning it for the sake of generating ideas, not sure it would be feasible).
EDIT: Okay, just noticed that there kind of is a common theme of magic casters, with the Heroic Presence, Light's Judgment, and Elemental Bond traits all being spell casting.
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Finally, there are the Broken. I'm not wild about their current implementation, either from a game or story standpoint. They don't seem to have a strong enough connection to nature (especially compared to tauren and orcs!) to warrant the Elemental Bond feature, and the Outcast and Darkvision traits seem more tacked on than anything else. I'm wondering about removing them as a subrace entirely and making them their own thing in a supplement, with the dual reasoning of them being that they are so BROKEN that they can barely be considered draenei anymore, in the same way that Nightborne and Night Elves are separate races, and that they aren't really allied with...anyone in WoW, much like the tuskarr, furbolg, or any of the other races that are being put in our supplemental races document.
Then, change their racials to be about endurance. The only ones left alive are the strong who managed to withstand the hardships of being broken, in the same way that the only undead that make up the Forsaken are those with strong enough wills to break free of the Lich King's will and withstand the reality of being undead.