Arcana Unearthed: Pro's and Con's

[Hardhead]

1) the races don't port over because they don't exist in this world and there's no room for them. i've already specifically defined which races exist and will not add new ones willy-nilly.

So, you don't buy Monster books for your campaign? OK, that's valid (in fact, I think too many campaigns add monsters all willy-nilly). But that puts you in the vast minority. Most people pick up a book with new critters and see what they can use in their campaing. More races may be a problem for you, but most people won't think twice about adding them, I think.

2) Akashics are right out because their is no concept of a "racial memory" or "collective unconscious" in this world.

Fair enough.

3) Oathsworn are out because this world does not have the concept that people can gain power from oaths.

Monks gain supernatural powers with no arcane powers or divine intervention. Oathsworn do the same, they just channel this supernatural energy into causes. I don't see how Oathsworn in any way contradict D&D assumptions.

4) Truenames do not exist in this world, so parts of the magic system would need to be altered.

That's true, but to be fair, *most* of the spells do not involve truenames. And you can't expect *everything* to port.

5) in my world, people do receive divine magical powers from gods and spirits. thus clerics, druids, paladins, rangers, etc. make sense in this world. since AU lacks a distinction between arcane and divine magic, i'd either have to add one myself, further mutating the magic system, or have only divine casters use the PHB system -- and using two so different magic systems IMO would make things overly complicated and be possibly unbalanced.

I think the simplest way to use UA with regular D&D is treat it like Psionics. Just say "UA characters use the UA magic system, D&D characters use the D&D magic system." It's no more of a stretch to D&D than adding Psionics, IMO (less, in fact, UA is more like D&D magic than Psionics).

6) in my world, arcane spellcasters do not focus their power through a staff, sword, or any other implement, thus crossing off the magister and mage blade classes.

Well, that's hardly common. A *lot* of spells in the PHB have focuses. It may be a problem for you, but most people won't blink twice at it. And besides individual spells having focuses, some classes do too. For instance, the Spellsinger from Tome and Blood has lots of magical abilities that require a longsword as a focus, and I doubt many people would disallow the Spellsinger from their campaigns on those grounds.

7) in my world, people do not gain abilities by devoting themselves to some abstract concept, thus champions most likely would not work. i could develop a system where i had defined abilities for champions of each diety, but i'd prefer not to have to do that much work. in core D&D, all i need to do is pick out a couple of domains for clerics of each god and i'm done.

You don't have Paladins, who are essentially Champions of Law and Good? Or do your Paladins have to follow a specific diety? If so, do they have different abilities depending on diety? All Paladins following NG, LG, and LN (for example) dieties seems much more vague than saying Champions of the Light worship Rao (and add a list of other generally good gods), Champions of Death follow Kelemvor, Vecna, ect. Or maybe you've removed Paladins entirely. These are all valid choices, but none of them are "standard" D&D.

8) runes do not hold any magical power in my world (being simply a system of writing, and not the only one at that), thus runethanes are out.

So you've removed spells like Sepia Snake Sigil? And you're definitly not playing in FR, which makes heavy use of Runes (they have a whole PrC dedicated to it, and special rules about wizards having unique runes that are divinely protected from fakery). Again, a rune-less campaign is valid, but not common by any means.

It sounds like you have a *very* specific campaign world that deviates substantially from the D&D standard. In that case, no offense, but you shouldn't really expect another variant system to be compatiable with yours.

 

[ascendance]

This thread has really proved one thing to me:

No matter how much you like a product, somone else will have a hate-on for it. And that person will usually sound like a blithering idiot, who mouths (to you, who loves the product) pointless objections.

I was that person for Dragonstar after all.