Arcana Unearthed versus Arcana Evolved?

[Obryn]

While core AE casting is somewhat weaker than 3.5 D&D's (except evocation), some of the spells that made it into the Spell Treasury are quite simply, poorly converted, and often more powerful than the core rules version rather than a nerf.

I suppose I didn't find it to be that way - but I did note that you mentioned how evocation in AE is more powerful than in 3.5.

While each individual spell was often less powerful or of a higher level, it was the combination of several things which broke the heck out of it in my group.

(1) Higher ability scores, in general. This adds to spells per day and - most critically - save DCs. The ability-enhancing spells are also significantly buffed.

(2) While there were no save-or-dies, there are still plenty of save-or-sucks like Resilient Sphere.

(3) The flexible spellcasting system often meant that a successful save just meant the Magister would try the same spell next round, until it works. So, it was just a matter of time until that Resilient Sphere would work.

(4) The evocations really are that bad, Sorcerous Blast in particular. When you add together long ranges, unrestricted elements, and the option to cast it as a 2nd-level spell against a single foe... It's crazy. And, as I mentioned, they can be freely spammed.

(5) A more or less must-have feat (Brandish Magical Might) lets spellcasters punch through spell resistance fairly easily, many times per day. This means that throwing creatures with SR against them is often fairly futile.

(6) A flying race + powerful evocation. Nuff said.

(7) And the biggie - templates. For the cost of a feat you would probably take anyway, you can add crazy buffs to most of your spells. A 20gp gem gets you an extra 2d6 on Fire spells. A 30gp gem adds a Stun effect to any damaging spell, or a two-round stun effect for any Electrical damaging spell. Runic spells are a little slow - but they can easily become an effective -6, -10, or more penalty to saves. And the worst is Acid, which is an auto-stun, no saving throw, lasting 1 round for every 20 points of damage, at the cost of a 20gp gem.


Please don't misunderstand me - I ran AE for several years, and it was one of the best character-driven games I've ever run. I'd rather play it than default 3.5 any day. I love the setting and I love the rules, overall. But weakening some individual spells doesn't really change the fact that spellcasters are nevertheless more consistently powerful in AE than in default 3.5. They kind of broke the game for my group, even sticking with the spells in the AE core book and largely ignoring everything from Spell Treasury.

-O

 

[Knightfall]

BTW...

Do I need to have AU/AE to use the Legacy of the Dragons monster book or does it stand on its own? Does it include all the feats required in the book or do I have to have access to AU/AE?

I'm assuming I'd have to tweak the skills but that's not a big deal to me.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Both the Iron Heroes and the Arcana Evolved monster books work well without the original system, I think. I highly recommend then, there are some interesting creatures in it. (Examples to mention: A creature that heals its victims because it can only procreate in combat thanks to its evil masters design, or a race of intelligent spiders that fear humans.)

I would generally suggest picking up Arcana Evolved if possible. It contains just more material and it uses more of 3.5, which might make it easy to unlearn/relearn things. Aside from that, the evolved stuff can be very interesting, as the return of the Dragons.

But if you already have the Diamond Throne, the AU might be sufficient.


I ran a long campaign using AU/DT (I think I later "upgraded" to AE mid-campaign). I am not sure, maybe we got around 12th level or so? At that point, I was unfortuantely getting a little tired of running a high level game and I had a lot of other ideas I wanted to run. In a way I wanted the campaign to move "faster" - but without missing elements and twists I created, which of course was impssobile.

 

[Ruland]

Perhaps it should be mentioned in this thread that AE is still available as a PDF on a rather well-known RPG-PDF-Outlet ...

The price seems reasonable, but printing the book on your ink-color-printer is going to drain your cartridges as if they were blood bags in the hands of a starved vampire.

On the other hand - its a possibility to get this extraordinary, but out-of-print book.

 

[Knightfall]

Both the Iron Heroes and the Arcana Evolved monster books work well without the original system, I think. I highly recommend them, there are some interesting creatures in it. (Examples to mention: A creature that heals its victims because it can only procreate in combat thanks to its evil masters design, or a race of intelligent spiders that fear humans.)

After taking it a look at it the other day, I'm fairly certain that I want the Arcana Unearthed monster book. Still, getting it isn't my first priority right now.

I've never considered the Iron Heroes monster book, however. I was really interested in IH when it first came out but I lost interest in it almost right away.

I would generally suggest picking up Arcana Evolved if possible. It contains just more material and it uses more of 3.5, which might make it easy to unlearn/relearn things. Aside from that, the evolved stuff can be very interesting, as the return of the Dragons.

But if you already have the Diamond Throne, the AU might be sufficient.

I mainly want the information on the races while everything else is secondary. If there was a way I could get the background information and statistics for the AU races without the rest of the book, I would.

I'm assuming that's not an option.

I bought the DT book on a lark. It was such a good price (CAN $10) that I said "what the heck."

 

[Arkhandus]

Nah, that's not really an option. The races and classes are only available in the AU book and the AE book (though a scant few have been previewed on Malhavoc's website to some degree, and one or two are found in other books, such as the Totem Speaker base class in Transcendance; it's sort of a druidic mediator class, that sprang up after the return of the dragons, trying to maintain balance and peace between the dragons and giants, nature and civilization; they are sort of a cross between Totem Warriors and Greenbonds).

Transcendance, as mentioned by others, details various new options and variants for improving characters in different ways. For one thing, it introduces the Totem Speaker class, which has a medium BAB, high Will saves, mediocre HD, above-average skills, medium spellcasting progression (like a Runethane, Witch, etc.), several totem trait choices over time, and few mediation, spirit-talking, and vitality benefits from the Green over time. Transcendance also includes replacement levels, more or less like substitution levels in D&D but not so race-related. It adds a few more feats other other abilities for each class to help them specialize or differentiate themselves, and includes other new options for the classes, like Akashic items, Exotic Combat Rites, and feats that require a level in the appropriate class and involve that class' features in some way. There's a prestige class or two mixed in there, such as the Living Oath prestige class for Oathsworn.

Transcendance also adds the ability-evolution classes, a set of six pseudo-prestige-classes that work similar to the Evolved racial levels detailed in Arcana Evolved. Each of these classes goes up to level 5 and improves the associated ability score by 2 points of the course of those levels, along with granting some additional benefits appropriate to their theme (for instance, the Strength Evolution levels can increase a character's size slightly with some limitations, while the Wisdom Evolution levels can increase a character's effective spellcasting every other level). The book/PDF (I bought it in PDF from RPGNow) also introduces some Runic Affinity feats for any character to take (though each may only take one), some Tylonian crystal weapons/armors/etc., and some Arcane Evolution options, granted by some replacement levels, which provide benefits based on a chosen spell descriptor such as air, electricity, force, etc.

I haven't read any of my Arcana Evolved PDFs fully yet, only skimming parts of them so far, since I only bought them a few months ago, so I don't have any direct experience or opinions on how it works in play yet. I bought Arcana Unearthed years ago in the bookstore (the FLGS didn't have it), and am more familiar with it, but haven't had a chance to play it run it yet.

AE's only new base classes are the Totem Speaker (in Transcendance) and the Ritual Warrior (in Arcana Evolved), as far as I know. I don't have an opinion yet on the Ritual Warrior, but other posters have already described it a bit. My first impression is that it might be a bit weaker than other AU/AE warrior-types, but I'm not sure, it might be on-par or a bit stronger. *shrug* Arcana Evolved adds the Dracha race (a winged race of dragon-created warriors, able to glide somewhat, more physically adept than the mojh). AE adds a few things for various classes, but not a lot. The Champion of Justice and Champion of Knowledge choices for Champions were added. Not much else as far as I've noticed (though I haven't finished reading the PDF yet).

Roleplaying-wise, Arcana Evolved has some expanded descriptions for the races and other stuff, and of course adds a bit of setting information related to the return of the dragons. It has only a few pages regarding lands outside Dor-Erthenos itself (two or three pages on the lands immediately around Dor-Erthenos such as Zalavat and Thartholan, a page about Pallambor, the land just west of there, under a page of detail on Skaraven to the south, and that's it).

Legacy of the Dragons, the monster-book, seems pretty good, but again, I haven't had a chance to see it in play yet. It includes notes for use of the critters in 3.0 and 3.5 D&D rules (such as 3.0 and 3.5 D&D versions of Damage Reduction). There's a Conversion Appendix in it for using the creatures in non-AU/non-AE games, such as replacing particular feats or gear of the creatures with equivalent ones from the D&D core rules/SRD. My impression from reading some of the creature entries is that, with the conversion appendix, you don't need AU or AE (and I don't think you need either particular version of those rules, it seems useable with both versions).

I'd recommend all three books, but if you already have The Diamond Throne, then you can do just fine with Arcana Unearthed instead of Arcana Evolved. I bought AE mostly because it was on sale and I didn't have The Diamond Throne yet, so I figured it was worthwhile just to get The Diamond Throne material along with the added or revised material that wasn't in my copy of Arcana Unearthed. AU will provide you with most of the AE book's material that you don't already have, though, since you already own The Diamond Throne. AE only adds a few things, like Evolved racial levels, Evolved class levels (21st through 25th), the Dracha race, the Ritual Warrior class, and little more. You could use Legacy of the Dragons or Transcendance without AE, though I think Transcendance's ability evolution and arcane evolution stuff might not be useable without AE (I forget if Transcendance details the evolution-level costs and such, since they are detailed in the AE book).

 

[Robert Ranting]

As I said, except evocation. Note that in AE, the best "Save or suck" spells, including Resilient Sphere, and Chains of Vengeance, are of the evocation school.

That said, evocation is a bit over the top in AE, as opposed to being the redheaded stepchild of 3.5. Everywhere I go online I run into people who patronizingly tell me that evocation is the weakest of all the schools in 3.5, and frankly, it is nice to have a game where that patently isn't the case.

Also, while I can come off as a "Gung-Ho Fanboy" for AE, I realize that the game has it's problems, and I have a significant list of houserules I have been using in my own games, especially when it comes to Magisters. Anyone interested can check out my wiki here volkheim / Magister

I also rather intensely despise the Dracha, Sprytes, the Runic and Psionic spell templates, and various bits of Transcendence, but I try not to dwell on these, especially when I am trying to convince someone that buying the books is a good idea...because really, the good outweighs the bad, and I genuinely want others to see the good in a product that has given me as much fun as AE has.

As a final note, the OGL bits of the AE races and classes are available online, if you search for the Akashic Record Wiki. The kicker is that the website leaves out just enough information that you can't really run the game without the core book (For example, it gives you the class charts, but when it comes to racial levels, the wiki does not list the individual SLAs, or the specifics on how the dracha breath weapon works, etc.)

Robert "No Game is Perfect" Ranting

 

[Obryn]

Oh yeah, I am a big fan of AE myself, and I didn't mean to imply otherwise. I just plain couldn't keep up after a while... At 12th level, I couldn't get groups of enemies together who would pose a challenge both to the spellcasters and to the non-spellcasters... who sadly became kind of the supporting cast. I also got bogged down in prep-work, because there are just about zero electronic aids available for it... Even the incredible Custom Spellbook Generator seems to have disappeared. I wanted something like Heroforge, but it was sadly not forthcoming.

I would love to run it again someday, but I would really need to do something about the magic system. It reads so elegantly, and it's honestly brilliant, but it's far, far too easy to break with just one or two feats. This is nothing new for a Monte Cook supplement - he always gives arcane spellcasters all the goodies - but it can become problematic. I also don't know if I'd go past 10th level...

Still, the setting, the races, and the classes are insanely cool. So much more interesting than vanilla 3.5, IMHO. I strongly, strongly recommend it - but I want to make sure that people getting into it have a good conception of what's actually involved with the spells, rather than the press. And especially that they shouldn't buy any claims that spellcasting is somehow weaker than it is in 3.5 based on the removal of a few spells and the nerfing of some others.

-O

 

[Knightfall]

Nah, that's not really an option. The races and classes are only available in the AU book and the AE book (though a scant few have been previewed on Malhavoc's website to some degree, and one or two are found in other books, such as the Totem Speaker base class in Transcendance; it's sort of a druidic mediator class, that sprang up after the return of the dragons, trying to maintain balance and peace between the dragons and giants, nature and civilization; they are sort of a cross between Totem Warriors and Greenbonds).

How well would the AU classes work with the standard v.3.5 classes?

Since I'd be using the AU book to enhance my own 3.5 homebrewed world, I'd want to be able add some of the classes to World of Kulan. It sounds like the magic system isn't something I'm likely to use for Kulan but I've heard good things about the martial classes in AU.

 

[Obryn]

Some of them would fit right in, but some are clearly beefier.

Warmains are basically Fighters+, and might out-compete them in your game. Then again, I think they are less powerful than Warblades from Bo9S, so if your fighters need a boost, go with these guys.

Magisters, see my post above. I've heard of one in a regular 3.5 game, but I don't know if it was powergamed to any degree. I have my doubts, obviously, but it might work. Still, this is the most problematic class for me.

Akashics are generally Rogues+ but don't get as hefty a sneak attack. I think they could work alongside regular 3.5 classes, but I'd keep an eye on them.

Greenbonds are Clerics/Druids+. They don't have the animal companion or the shapeshifting, but they have lots of spells, easily expanded spell lists, and a lot of crazy healing abilities. I think one could play well with others, actually, but I'd keep an eye on their feats & templates.

Unfettered, Mageblades, Witches, Runethanes, Totem Warriors, Totem Speakers, Champions, and Ritual Warriors are probably usable as-is without much modification at all. You might run into a problem where your Unfettereds' ACs get pretty high, but I never found that to be the case in my own games.

IMO, YMMV, etc.

After checking out the AU/AE classes, you might even decide you like them better than the regular 3.5 classes. They cover all the adventuring bases, just in a different way than 3.5's classes do.

My suggestions:
I'd advise keeping the AU/AE spell lists for AU/AE characters, but maybe limit access to templates (say, X times per day in addition to their components). Also, as a practical matter, you can solve several problems with AU/AE spellcasting by limiting the casters to one use of each specific spell per combat. It's clearly gamist, but you'll have to do something!

-O