Swapping Racial Traits

[HauntWrigs]

Greetings! In Pathfinder we can swap Racial Traits (from those given in the Core Rulebook to those given in the Advanced Player's Guide). Does 4e provide this options to players? It appears to me that they don't, instead they provide several different races. Am I reading this correctly?

[NecroRebel]

Greetings! In Pathfinder we can swap Racial Traits (from those given in the Core Rulebook to those given in the Advanced Player's Guide). Does 4e provide this options to players? It appears to me that they don't, instead they provide several different races. Am I reading this correctly?

For the most part yes, but there are a couple of exceptions. For instance, humans can take the choice of an extra at-will power from their class or the Heroic Effort encounter power, while half-elves get either a use of one other class's at-will powers as an encounter power or the Knack for Success encounter power. Eladrin in the Neverwinter campaign setting can choose some different features as well.

Many things that would have gotten separate race writeups in 3.x are simply handled by racial feats in 4e. Sun Elves and Moon Elves in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting are just eladrin who took the appropriate feat (which are mutually exclusive).

[Kurald Galain]

Greetings! In Pathfinder we can swap Racial Traits (from those given in the Core Rulebook to those given in the Advanced Player's Guide). Does 4e provide this options to players? It appears to me that they don't, instead they provide several different races. Am I reading this correctly?

Kind of. Last year's dragon magazine provides a few alternative options for the PHB1 races, e.g. giving elves a big initiative bonus instead of their reroll ability. Before that, you'd be limited to a few "subrace" feats that are very weak overall, and that humans can take the powerful Heroic Effort instead of the weak third at-will (why is that weak? Because from mid-heroic and up, you're going to be using your encounter powers for almost all of the combat, not your at-wills).

[Epinephrine]

Many things that would have gotten separate race writeups in 3.x are simply handled by racial feats in 4e. Sun Elves and Moon Elves in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting are just eladrin who took the appropriate feat (which are mutually exclusive).

They've added quite a few racial subtypes (e.g. shield dwarf, wild elf, kapak draconian). I've never liked the feat-based approach for races - it adds an extra cost to what should be a pretty basic part of your character, and slightly weirder, they can be retrained (Oh, I used to be descended from Sun Elves, but I trained really hard, and now my heritage is Moon Elf!).

[MrUberGr]

Which dragon magazine is that?