Morninglord has some perks in comparison to Deep Gnome:
- self healing (10,000 HP, 2/day).
- +3 Spell pen
- up to about +700 SP with Fey Tap and Arcanum
- +1 enchant DC
Deep Gnome has great stuff with Illusion Spells especially if you can get good DCs for Phantasmal Killer and Greater Colour Spray is excellent as well. Some neat saves and MRR too.
I generally think not a hell of a lot of thought went into the iconics.
I still scratch my head why Morninglords have +INT and things like Aasimar scourge use two maces when the rest animation in the character screen they are clearly using blades. Also they give them a power which actually kills the character.... ???
They give deep gnomes 4 light hammers....?
PDKs are just reskinned half orcs, they still dance a Haka and are actually uglier than half orcs...and not that much different to a regular fighter
Shadar Kai are just...too weird. Its like they put a BDSM goth/biker hybrid in there from fallout that fell through a portal into D&D land...
At the time that Morninglords were made available Warlock was the easy stick power class and Enlightened Spirit/Tainted Scholar was the easiest build to play.
That made 3 Morninglord past lives almost de rigueur in Warlock builds. People shoehorned Morninglords into any number of builds to get there. Then they brought out Cleric domains and it became easy.
Morninglords predate the warlock. But it is true that iconics with inadequate race-class and absolutely anti-iconic from the point of view of background has been a commercial trick to sell +1 hearts. Of course, if Turbine hadn't planned it in advance, they took advantage of it as soon as the iconic left Lammania. Bladeforged and PDK were a great source of hearth+1 sales too. This is something that, as a customer, has pretty much tarnished my willingness to spend on this game: I don't like these kinds of dirty tricks.
The early morninglord was a great excuse for wizards and fvs to spend +1 hearts. Later on it was warlocks. Morninglords lost traction for this sale as more iconic and common races were added. But the trend to create iconic anti-iconics is still here, alive and well.
Morninglord make a fun Artificer build