Top Ten Reasons to Buy Sandstorm

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Do they have the Painted Desert? Saguaros? Gila-Monsters ?

A Dire Gila Monster would be cool. There's one in an old Conan comic (they call it a dragon), and it's really scary.

 

[Arcane Runes Press]

I wish they'd make better previews.

The Frostburn preview was really bland, but I enjoyed a good deal of stuff in the actual sourcebook.

I'm really hoping the same applies here.


As it stands, just from reading the preview, I'd never buy Sandstorm, because nothing grabs my attention. Fortunately, my wife can check out books from her store for free - it's because of that I own Frostburn, and I'm hoping for the same thing here.


And personally, I'm all for the war camel. I like the visual it gives me.

Patrick Y.

 

[Shemeska]

Ah the bitter tang of failed expectations...

Frostburn was much better than I expected, and I was hoping that Sandstorm would hit the same measure of quality. However I'm doubting that, given two things in the preview:

Eventually, adventurers gain the ability and the desire to travel the planes, enabling them to brave the perils of lava-filled regions of the Elemental Plane of Fire, Baator's hoary layer of Stygia, or any other plane of heat and sand.

Wow. This one makes me wonder. So whoever is sitting here listing out hot places on the planes goes and picks the one layer of Hell that is the posterchild of cold and wet. Alright I think, maybe they might have been talking about Set's domain in Stygia; afterall that's certainly hot and sandy. One problem. Even given that, whoever wrote that apparently doesn't understand the meaning of 'hoary', and hells they just wrote a book on cold places that used that dang word every other page.

For God's sake, don't use a word if you obviously have no idea what it means. Please please please tell me that this isn't in the published book because it doesn't bode well for quality control here, or barring that it doesn't bode well for a professional author not researching the material that they're talking about.

However, magical black sand is a vile peril, whether on the scoured surface of Minethys in the Tarterian Depths of Carceri (where the Plane of Shadow overlays the Elemental Plane of Earth) or in lands cursed by foul magic.

Umm... yeah, elemental and transitive planes overlapping a deep layer of an outer plane that has absolutely nothing to do with them. This isn't a hard concept guys, the outer planes and inner planes are manifestations of radically different concepts, and they don't touch each other willy nilly. However, that said, I might be willing to assume that the stuff in parenthesis were the result of some bad editing, with a removal of [, and] from the parenthetical material, and not ignorance on the part of whoever wrote it.

 

[Ryltar]

The problem is that without that feat, there should be no cold mages in the frostfell, because tactically it's far inferior to being, say, a fire mage. Or if the DM has put in some "fire spells don't work well in the frostfell", an acid mage. Same goest for the desert - when half the monsters you meet will be immune or resistant to fire and heat, a fire mage seems a really stupid choice.

Yeah, but as others have already stated - making a fire mage (or cold mage, or whatever) viable by just making things work that shouldn't work by the "basic rules" in the way of just adding stuff on top of them, that is what I consider bad game design. There are other ways to do this - if you absolutely have to. What is wrong with an elemental-themed mage to suffer from his specialisation from time to time? Would you expect a cone of cold to work in Stygia, or on the Elemental Plane of Ice, or (insert whatever you like here)? I certainly wouldn't, which is one way to make up for the fact that your run-of-the-mill enemies will not be immune to cold damage and the added benefits that such a specialisation might provide.

Finally... I do not think that confer means what you think it means. I think you were perhaps after consider.

No, actually I think it does ... haven't looked it up, but usually "confer X" in this context is abbreviated with (cf.) and means "compare said things to X" or "look this up under X for further information"..

Pants: I know, basically you're right. One shouldn't pass judgement that early. But it has been the same for me now with every single Races of ... book, and the elemental-themed books seem to continue that trend: the previews look bad, and the final book (which I have always looked at thus far) is looking equally boring to me. I have no reason to expect otherwise from Sandstorm. YMMV .

 

[MerricB]

Wow. This one makes me wonder. So whoever is sitting here listing out hot places on the planes goes and picks the one layer of Hell that is the posterchild of cold and wet. Alright I think, maybe they might have been talking about Set's domain in Stygia; afterall that's certainly hot and sandy. One problem. Even given that, whoever wrote that apparently doesn't understand the meaning of 'hoary', and hells they just wrote a book on cold places that used that dang word every other page.

hoar·y ( P ) Pronunciation Key (hôr, hr)
adj. hoar·i·er, hoar·i·est
- Gray or white with or as if with age.
- Covered with grayish hair or pubescence: hoary leaves.
- So old as to inspire veneration; ancient.

Nothing about cold at all.

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

No, actually I think it does ... haven't looked it up, but usually "confer X" in this context is abbreviated with (cf.) and means "compare said things to X" or "look this up under X for further information"..

cf.
abbr.
Latin. confer (compare).

Cheers!

 

[Starglim]

hoar·y ( P ) Pronunciation Key (hôr, hr)
adj. hoar·i·er, hoar·i·est
- Gray or white with or as if with age.
- Covered with grayish hair or pubescence: hoary leaves.
- So old as to inspire veneration; ancient.

Nothing about cold at all.

Hence, hoarfrost, because it's white and whisker-like. Still doesn't relate to heat, sand or Stygia, though.

 

[Shemeska]

hoar·y ( P ) Pronunciation Key (hôr, hr)
adj. hoar·i·er, hoar·i·est
- Gray or white with or as if with age.
- Covered with grayish hair or pubescence: hoary leaves.
- So old as to inspire veneration; ancient.

Nothing about cold at all.

Cheers!

In usage it refers to frozen or ice covered, derived from 'hoarfrost'. And even if you use the original definition of, albeit a fairly obscure word, it still makes little sense in context unless the otherwise wet and frigid layer of Stygia has started growing a beard. It's a screwup on whoever wrote it, regardless of how much optimism* you might be inclined to look at it with.

*and in this case I mean to say, 'murderously frustrating optimism'

 

[JoeGKushner]

I'll be interested to see what they do with the planar touchstones myself.

 

[Felon]

Egyptian dieties were explicitly mentioned as being included.

Sure, but again, as in Frostburn, we're probably talking about small, utilitarian descriptions that give clerics the basic info needed to play a cleric of an Egyptian god. Osiris's domains, Horus's favored weapon, etc. We'll get a new domain or two, and that'll be the sum of it.