Talk:Arcane (race)

For the record, the Arcane were remade as the Mercane for 3.0 edition in the Epic Level Handbook pages 204–205 and Manual of the Planes 3rd edition pages 179–180. However, they become planar merchants with five extra-jointed fingers rather than six fingers. There's no Realms connection I can see, however. — BadCatMan (talk) 01:17, April 12, 2018 (UTC)


 * Yes, I remember running across the Mercane and thought, "Huh, so they are basically planar Arcane," but I never read that closely, and I guess I never thought of them as remade, but now that you mention it, it's rather obvious, isn't it&hellip;? I'll have to check if they are in any Planescape material, but I doubt it. ~ Lhynard (talk) 02:27, April 12, 2018 (UTC)


 * That's very interesting. Now that User:Saya222 has found a connection between mercanes and the Realms, should we rule that arcane and mercanes are one and the same and adopt the policy of the latest edition name being the official one? They still seem a little different (planar arcane, indeed), so I for one would vote to regard them as distinct entities until some more unambiguous identification is found. However, I guess a case could be made either way. It could be that the arcane never were mentioned as extraplanar entities because that was too early in the game, for example, and their name got changed so it would not create confusion; but it could as well have been on purpose (since extraplanar creatures already existed even before Planescape came along). &mdash; Sirwhiteout (talk) 11:49, April 12, 2018 (UTC)


 * I'd always just heard from other fans that the arcane were renamed to mercane, presumably because spelljamming wasn't covered in 3.x editions and the name "arcane" is just confusing. :) Several other sites have assumed this, like Planewalker and Dungeons & Dragons Wiki. I don't know if there's been an official statement however.


 * The arcane and mercane seem similar enough that merging and renaming seems appropriate. However, if you, as resident expert on arcane, feel they are too different or it would be too complicated to merge them, that's also fair, and we could leave them separate, with notes and See Also links between them. Like the various shadar-kai and kenku races, etc., there's precedent for splitting similar but different updated races. — BadCatMan (talk) 12:17, April 12, 2018 (UTC)


 * My vote is leave them as separate for now. They could be different subraces, for example, for all we know. Fan sites often get a lot of things wrong. (Consider the issue with noble eladrin that I unraveled a while ago.) We seem to be one of the only places that actually cares about defending our statements with sources. Especially since the new Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes is coming out, I think we should at least wait and see if mercane and/or arcane make it into 5e. ~ Lhynard (talk) 13:15, April 12, 2018 (UTC)