Arcana Unearthed: Pro's and Con's

[volcivar]

I thought he was going to author them for me so that I don't have to. I expected him to provide new options

And therein lies the problem. I think you read into Monte's statements:

Death
People should die. Harsh but true. If the magic of the game makes it so that people never die (because they are so easy to heal, cure, or raise), not only does the setting get really weird, but the feeling of accomplishment for success diminish right along with the consequences for failure. Arcana Unearthed has the means to raise the dead, but they are not as common or simple as in other games.

This says to me that in AU death will be more frequent, more costly, healing/cures will be less effective. I did not see any "new concepts" mentions here. He promised new stuff on other fronts.

put the DM in the director's seat of how (and if) a character makes it back from the other side

Since the cure/res/heal spells are all generally 1-3 levels higher, it requires a caster to be at least 2, if not 4 levels or so higher to do similar things in a typical DnD world.

How many 13+ level casters are hanging around in your world? Simply placing the spells at higher levels is basically all that was really needed. What were you expecting. A soul-bartering exercise? Or something else which requires even MORE Dm adjudication?

Placing them in the teens makes it very easy for the DM to say:

Sorry, there are no casters of sufficient level in this town. Simple.

What else could be done to make these things more rare short of simply cutting them out of the game. I do not think Monte meant this in his quote.

 

[Monte At Home]

Although it's a little bit against my better judgement to jump in here, let me at least clarify why I think death is more than a speed bump in AU (which is how I'd classify it in D&D).

There's no 5th level raise dead. Revivication isn't a replacement for it by any means.

There's no way to avoid the level loss.

There is no way to bring someone back with no part of his body left.

There is no way to bring someone back who has been dead a long time (more than 20 months).

(Both of these last two together mean no more "let's bring back the long-dead hero that we just heard about even though we don't even know where's he buried.")

Raise the dead has to be cast seven times on seven consecutive days to work. This is not a "jump back into the adventure" spell. This is a "haul the corpse back on his shield if we can manage it" spell.

There's a whole type of character (unbound) that can't be brought back at all.

There's an effective maximum number of times a character can be brought back to life.

In my campaign, this all totalled to make death a real ordeal--something really to be feared. And that's was my goal. I never want to create a game where there was no resurrection. I just didn't want people shrugging off death.

 

[haiiro]

The tweeks to several skills like tumble are WONDERFUL. Artwork is good save for the one artist (the one who likes black undefined images).

Monte's excellent low-key PR campaign (through his design diaries, etc.) is what piqued my interest in AU. That and owning -- and liking, and getting plenty of use out of -- all of his Malhavoc stuff to date is what got me to head for his booth first thing and GenCon to make sure I got a copy.

Having spent a good amount of time with the book, however, it's the little stuff (like what Godzilla mentioned) that's held my interest. I didn't buy it to start up an AU campaign, I bought it to mine for ideas and steal bits and pieces from for my FR campaign. I can take or leave most of the classes and races, but tweaks like Sturdy and the Tumble changes are portable and very much up my alley.

As far as the art goes, a lot of it could be better but it doesn't bother me all that much. AFAIK, David Hendee's work is what's gotten the most complaints thus far -- and while I don't like most of his stuff, he's also responsible for one of my favorite pieces of gaming art ever: the illo on p. 91 in AU. IMO, there's nothing laughably bad in AU -- unlike some of the stuff other d20 publishers have turned out.

Overall, I'm getting what I wanted out of the book. I'll definitely check out the rest of the line, but the setting-y stuff I'll most likely pass on. And even though it's completely irrelevant, I love the shiny/matte cover.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

So, some other Pro`s and Con`s:
Pro:
Several new races, new classes, and a new magic system.
I already have several character concepts in mind that I really would love to play.
Many of the classes have imaginative concepts that I really would like to explore.

Con:
It will probably be impossible to incorporate the AU concent into any of our existing campaigns, but most the time, there is no reason for it - we all already have characters there...

Mustrum Ridcully

 

[Felon]

Placing them in the teens makes it very easy for the DM to say:Sorry, there are no casters of sufficient level in this town. Simple.

Already covered that too. Prreserve the body (at least a part of it) and get some metropolis where you can buy the spell. Teleport's still 5th-level.

What else could be done to make these things more rare short of simply cutting them out of the game. I do not think Monte meant this in his quote.

Already covered that. See above post. Yes, they do require more everyone, including the DM, to play a more active role.

Although it's a little bit against my better judgement to jump in here, let me at least clarify why I think death is more than a speed bump in AU (which is how I'd classify it in D&D).

Thanks, I do appreciate it!

In my campaign, this all totalled to make death a real ordeal--something really to be feared. And that's was my goal. I never want to create a game where there was no resurrection. I just didn't want people shrugging off death.

OK, I'm pretty much done at this point. Thanks again for stopping by

 

[Dinkeldog]

Con:
It will probably be impossible to incorporate the AU concent into any of our existing campaigns, but most the time, there is no reason for it - we all already have characters there...

Of course there's a reason: NPCs.

 

[Dinkeldog]

Does the phrase "Hot lesbian Drow dominatrix" ring any bells?

Doesn't that belong in the BoEF thread?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Of course there's a reason: NPCs.

Well, not really a reason - only if I really want to integrate such a character. But it would be little problem in my Dragonstar Campaign to do so, I agree. Sometimes I regret that I have no real aliens in that campaign, only D&D Fantasy creatures...

But anyway, every campaign comes to an end, and then the question comes: What can we do now, having experimented with most interesting "classis D&D" character concepts?

My Dragonstar Campaign will come to an end in a few months, than I will have to decide (well, actually, i have to decide it earlier) what to do... Arcana Unearthed is quite probable. And the rest of my group also has campaigns that might come to an end or be interrupted.

If there will be some more adventures (preferably from 1st to 20th level) for AU, then chances become even higher that one of us will pick AU up to master it. And I would love it if it wouldn`t be me, because I would prefer playing an AU character

Mustrum Ridcully

 

[Ezrael]

I really don't understand the argument that you can't use the Akashic class because you don't have a concept like the Akashic memory in your game. First off, it's not like it's an especially hard concept to introduce (collective unconsciousness doesn't strike me as a big game breaker) and, if you really hate the idea, just don't use it. Define Akashics as savants who just have insanely good memories and excellent intuition. If you only use magic in your game, they could be in touch with ancestral spirits; if you have psionics, they could have low-level psychic abilities.

There you go. Akashics without the Akashic record. Wasn't even hard to do. The *rules* are eminently divorceable from the setting presumptions, if you so choose. Giants don't have to be in charge. Mojh don't have to be transformed humans. Sibeccai can be the result of DNA alteration. It really doesn't take any time at all to make these changes. Hell, in my campaign the setting is Eocene earth, humans don't exist, and Kobolds are all born with the genetic ability to remember everything their ancestors knew (so they have genetic memory, another possible explanation for Akashic powers I forgot earlier) and thus almost all will take a level in Akashic. So I don't understand the argument that because there's setting baggage you can't use a race. If that were the case, nobody but Greyhawk could use the PHB elves, because they have specific setting baggage that's not the case in the Forgotten Realms.

I don't mind the layout. It's not especially fancy, but except for being on colored paper, the Monster Manual shares more or less the same two column layout. The PHB does, too. Toren Atkinson and Sam Wood are among my favorite artists (Wayne Reynolds being my current favorite working in D&D, would I have loved to see some of his stuff here? Yes. But it didn't happen, and I still like the book.)

I'm not slagging anyone for their opinion: if you don't like the book and don't want to use it, that's cool. Your game and all. I just don't understand the idea that the layout is bad or that setting information makes the races unplayable.

 

[drnuncheon]

I think some have strong inter relation baggage built into them. I feel the the AU races actually tie me down with MORE preconceived notions than the PH ones do.

I don't see how any of that can't be pulled out, though, just like you could easily remove, say, the dwarf/elf antagonism. Especially if you're not using the default setting, you're going to have to rethink the racial relations anyway.

For example, the akashic requires presumptions about collective knowledge of such that would clash with any existing game I have ever been in. If you want to say this is just a campaign specific thing, then fine. It is just a campaign specific thing. But I think it is much more than that, because it is not simply a matter of adding on to a campaign, rather the campaign has to go otu of its way to some extent to adapt this concept.

Sort of like the D&D Vancian magic system, eh? Another system with presumptions about magic that clash with just about any existing fantasy setting. The only reason the akashic record doesn't seem to fit is because it wasn't a default assumption at the beginning of the game. Maybe you're lucky like Piratecat and going to play the same campaign for 10 years, but most people restart with new games after a while...

But anyway, I don't see how the akashic record concept would clash with most settings - not when you've got spells like tongues, find the path and legend lore. Spells like that could have been developed (perhaps unknowingly) to tap into the record. You could even make Tenser's transformation such a spell, calling on the memories of great warriors of the past.

The Akashics themselves could be an isolated sect/temple/monastery somewhere in the Flanaess or Faerun - living in the archetypical secluded mountain valley, keeping apart from the world. Maybe they even use some kind of akashic effect to keep the memory of their existence out of the record so that they are not easily found.

So, now we've got a deeper explanation for some spells (better than "uh, it's magic"), we've got a new location to explain our character class, and we've got some plot hooks - why did this monastery choose now to send people out into the world? Or do they know about this akashic-trained person who has left? Has he been sent out to learn? Did he escape? And I can't believe that such a scenario wouldn't fit into most "standard" D&D worlds.

Now here I really disagree. First, if you are talking about replaceing then you are mandating removal of an existing piece. To me this rules out the idea of compatibility. (It may be compatible with everything else, but not the existing magic system, well then it is not compatible).

Actually, I said that it could replace or it could exist side by side. I wasn't "mandating" anything.

The magic system was designed to be an alternate system. There's no way to do an 'alternate system' yet have it be the same as the existing system (or if you did, it would defeat the purpose, wouldn't it?).

Other books have done this - Sovereign Stone and Midnight come to mind, as does Elements of Magic and almost the entirely of the Mongoose Encyclopedia Arcane series. Are they not "compatible" with D&D because they have a different magic system? I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that. They might not be compatible with a specific campaign - but 100% compatability with your specific campaign is not what was promised (and even the core rules don't deliver that.)

What would a variant magic system have to do to be "compatible" in your view? Or is that just an impossibility?

But I am convinced that it is reasonable to accept that a not insignificant portion of the gaming community will find the built-in preconceived notions and debateable balance points in AU to bring the promise of total compatibility into question.

Oh, come now - I can't think of a single product from any publisher that didn't have some "debatable balance points". By that line of thinking we should be debating the "total compatability" of Savage Species, the ELH, and half the stuff in the splatbooks.

J