Top Ten Reasons to Buy Sandstorm

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Which brings me full circle in pointing out that the emphasis of both the religion section and the book as a whole will likely be on content that's useful for adventuring in a wilderness setting, not on detailing pseudo-Egyptian/African cultures.

Yes, and now I'm full circle in agreeing with others that it'd be nice if the book also touched on, say, the cultures of the American Southwest.

The Egyptian pantheon, as much as I'm an Egyptophile, is very cliched for D&D. New ideas would be preferable to continued regurgitation.

 

[Felon]

And I guess that noone on those planes would use cold abilities. Right? I mean what use would an ice elemental have for cone of cold? It's not going to hurt ANYTHING on the plane of ice. So every ice elemental has cone of acid instead. And specialises in acid magic.

See - that to me is a tragedy far outweighing the supposed "bad game design" of 4 feats.

Sean Reynolds once posted on the topic of Piercing Cold. He pointed out that most of the problems come with the way designers hand out certain attributes to monsters way too freely, like darkvision or--as relevant to this topic--energy immunity. Skeletons and other "fleshless" creatures are assigned cold immunity quite liberally, even though bones, stone, and metal can all shatter if they get cold enough. Giving them a high cold resistance would be more apt, but for whatever reason (simplicity or sheer laziness) that wasn't done.

And that is why I agree with you in this instance. The feat allows some remedy to a bad design element put in place long ago, and is otherwise intractable.

It is also worth noting here that Piercing Cold still does not allow cold to damage a creature with the cold subtype. There would be no freezing of ice elementals, ice constructs, or frost giants. It would be the creatures whose immunity could be considered somewhat questionable (like skeletons) that would be affected.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I like Arabia and the American Southwest, sadly this makes me worry more as now my appetite for both has been wheted and I'm certain that there won't be enough in this one product to sate both.

Still, since it looks like we won't see an Arabian or Anasazi Adventures book in the spirit of Oriental Adventures I will happilly take what I can get.

It's kind of weird that what felt like such an awesome idea with Frostburn seems to sort of fall apart when I contemplate how much larger the cultural possibilities are with almost every other form of climate.

 

[Ryltar]

Name one that is as simple. All I can think of is creating a similar feat which causes half of the cold damage from your spells to be some other type of damage. Which is also in frostburn.

No need to resort to energy substitution. Off the top of my head, what you might do is design a feat which lets you turn [elemental, i.e. cold] damage into [piercing / slashing /bludgeoning], as per the type of spell. "Missiles" might become razor-sharp icicles instead. Other spells might break loose blocks of ice to crush your opponents, who then will not care if those blocks of ice are cold as heck or not . Of course, you'd have to be careful with a feat like this, but I don't think I'd have a problem with allowing something similar in a game which revolves around one elemental theme or climate only.

Thematics is important to how the game plays. Mechanics are too. Both are far more important than some ephemeral concept of "bad game design", especially when it's applied in the form "I don't like it, so it's bad game design".

See, this seems to be where we disagree. I think that anything that uses a sloppy or un"realistic" ingame explanation just to fix some rules problem is "bad game design", because if they wanted to, they'd have come up with a) a better explanation that fits into the context of the setting or b) a better rule.

And I guess that noone on those planes would use cold abilities. Right? I mean what use would an ice elemental have for cone of cold? It's not going to hurt ANYTHING on the plane of ice. So every ice elemental has cone of acid instead. And specialises in acid magic.

I think that almost all creatures that are native to these planes are equipped with enough abilities that are not dependant on an enemy's resistance to get by. No need for energy substitution there, but it's not too far off to assume that at least the more intelligent spell users might make use of it. Elementals are just "energy given form and purpose", though. They'll start beating you up and not worry if you are actually cold resistant or not .

 

[somekindofjerk]

I like Arabia and the American Southwest, sadly this makes me worry more as now my appetite for both has been wheted and I'm certain that there won't be enough in this one product to sate both.

Still, since it looks like we won't see an Arabian or Anasazi Adventures book in the spirit of Oriental Adventures I will happilly take what I can get.

What I'd find rather helpful woukd be a sourcebook comprised of write-up on such desert cultures such as the american southwest, arabian/persian, saharan africa, egypt, gobi desert, astralian aboriginal--even so far as american great plains, mongolian steppes and some other 'high-desert' cultures for the sake of breadth. Heck, I'd go for how western cultures handled adapting to desert climates for insight on how to play out an attempt at colonizing a desert wilderness. Each chapter could have sidebars on PRCs, pantheons, quest hooks, and unique items from each culture, and how fantasy creatures could fit into the setting, while the main text would be focused on the culture and not pulling new rules out of the air. This wouldn't be to replace Sandstorm (haven't picked up Frostburn, but I'm sure it and Sandstorm are fine and nifty) but to further add to it.

Now, as for subraces, we've got plenty as it is. Rather than sending a new batch down our way, why not just give us ideas on how to adapt the ones already given in the core books, or perhaps those given in the "Races of X" books. i.e wild elves as the tundra dwelling barbarian branch of the species, gray elves hiding away in ensorceled desert monasteries, deep dwarves living far below where geothermal energy protect them from the extreme temperatures of a tundra climate, mountain dwarves living deep under the mountain away from the desert heat while trading with better adapted (physically/technologically) hill dwarves' surface settlements (and thus the other races), nocturnal drow raider tribes, etc. (and give suggested feat progresions to further differentiate from their temperate cousins). I feel this would get much more mileage out of what's already published.

(Yarr, that turned out a bit more ranty than planned. )

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Hmm, I seem to be the only one who really didn't like Frostburn. There's only been 2 things I've ever used from it. One of my friends decided to be the race of primitive humans that I'm forgeting the name of right now and take snowflake dance.

Other than that, the book has not seen a use in any of the 4 D&D games I played in. And we use...everything. It's just that none of our games take place in any icy places or have any visits there. Plus, as was pointed out before, the monsters in it seem to lack originality. All of them were "take a monster from the MM and add the word ice before their name".

I'm really hoping that Sandstorm will be better. Hoping, because I'm hopelessly addicted to buying new books and I'm going to buy it the day it comes out regardless.

I just want there to be desert THEMED spells and feats and PrC that are still useful outside of the desert. I found that almost everything in Frostburn said "this <spell, feat, PrC> is useless...but if you you happen to be in a frostfell region, you gain tremendous power". To me, it would be more useful if I could create characters who come from these regions and reflect the unique flavor of these regions without having all of their powers rely on the fact that they happen to be in those regions.