Arcana Unearthed: Pro's and Con's

[RobNJ]

Point the first: Art is irrelevant in a gaming book. Content and ideas are. Art is distraction and a way to easily recognize what page a particular piece of text is on. If you complain about it, you are wrong.

Point the second: If you paid attention to either the marketing of the book, or its title, you would know that it is an alternate Player's Handbook and, as such, it must of necessity reprint enough SRD material to make it a complete Player's Handbook on its own.

If you do not understand, accept, and embrace this, you are wrong.

Point the third: This game is meant to be played on its own. Ignore anything you hear about it being completely compatable with 3.x. Since you are a D&D player, you will concentrate way too much on small rules points, not accept that if you don't let your panties get too twisted over the small stuff it is compatable, and instead will work yourself into a frothing lather over slight statistical inequalities and ignore the vast story and flavor improvements this book offers.

You should play this on its own or if you insist on infecting it with played out elves and dwarves, then don't whine, and work out the modifications on your own. If you fail to do so, you are wrong.

If you care about whether or not it's taking something away from the Rogue that all classes in AU can do magical trap detection or that the wizard is outmatched because if you do enough math you will find out that the magister is able to output more damage per round on average, you should put the book down and back away slowly. It's not meant for you. And you're using it wrong.

Received and Ultimate Wisdom, Summated: Arcana Unearthed is better than your favorite book. It's the new kid in town and you're not welcome anymore. Go. Shoo.

P.S. If you do not agree with all of the above, your sole purpose on this thread is to make yourself feel special by bucking some perceived fanboyism. Your desparate, keening need to be special and different and unique is blinding you to the best book published for D&D since 1963. You are not a unique snowflake.

(Note: the preceding has been an exercise in satire meant to illustrate things about the discussion so far--but that doesn't mean that every word of it isn't absolutely true.)

 

[BryonD]

Re: spoiled spoiled spoiled = wrong wrong wrong

BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH

See my reply to this exact same statement in the other thread.

Bottom line, you are wrong because in the specific case of AU Monte himself repeated numerous times that it WOULD be exactly what you are blaming people for expecting.

Gee, how unfair of us.

 

[d4]

i've been trying to decide for a while now why i'm not interested in AU. i've been following the design diaries on Monte's site and the threads here, but i've decided that i'm not going to get the book. (in fact, i came to that decision at least a month or so back.)

i think i agree with what King Stannis said in an earlier post -- i'd be much more interested in AU if it was a more generic variant Player's Handbook. instead, it appears to have a quite strongly implied setting woven into it.

i know that core D&D also has a quite strong implied setting behind it. it's just that i prefer D&D's assumptions to AU's.

i like elves and dwarves and goblinoids and halflings. i don't like dog-men and cat-men and psionic races and tiny fey PCs. i like paladins and clerics and sorcerers and rogues and all they imply. i don't like akashics with their racial memory deal or oathsworn gaining power through their oaths or truenames holding power over someone.

so it's not that i don't think AU is a brilliant work of game design (which it obviously is), it's just that it's not to my taste. it is much easier for me to tweak core D&D to be how i envision fantasy than it would be to tweak AU.

so due to that, unfortunately, AU is simply not worth me picking up.

 

[Felon]

I commented on this in another thread, but since I don't see anyone bringing it up, I'll toss it out here too to see what you guys think.

Monte had an article in his design diary called "Things That Magic Takes Away". It's really what sold me and my skeptical friends on AU. The problem is, I don't think AU lives up to it.

In particular, these are the two statements I take issue with:

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.

Interesting Scars and the Results of Combat
Going into a fortress and finding the commander to be a grizzled old veteran with a big scar running down his cheek a patch over one eye and a limp is a scene full of flavor. But with magical healing in the game, how can you justify such things? In Arcana Unearthed, magical healing works differently, and serious wounds -- like the loss of an eye, for example -- are much harder to repair. Now, I don't take this as far as having a lot of complicated and graphic critical charts or anything. It's much more a flavor issue. If you put in an NPC with a peg leg, the players don't say, "Why didn't he just pay the few thousand gold for a regenerate spell?"

Having looked through AU, I am crestfallen to find not only a Raise the Dead spell, but a lesser and greater version of that spell. OK, they're a couple of levels higher than their D&D counterparts, but there's a Revivification spell that's the same level as the PHB's Raise Dead. It only raises a character that's been dead a few minutes (or hours with the heightened version) but that's good enough to ensure that you won't be bidding any fallen comrades farewell if you have a 9th-level character standing around with it memorized. Death's clammy hand is not all that hard to rebuke in AU at all, and the consequences for failure or self-sacrifice are nothing permanent or irrevocable. It may be a bit more expensive to bring someone back to life, but it is safe to say that in Arcana Unearthed characters are not signicantly harder to cure, raise, or heal than in D&D.

Oh, and as for that grizzled old veteran with the peg leg? The one to whom we're not supposed to say "why didn't you just pay the few thousand gold for a regenerate spell"? There is a Regeneration spell in AU, and to my calculations (caster level x 80) it only costs 1200gp

My friends, love or hate the rest of AU, that's just blatant false advertising.

 

[DiFier]

Last game session My DM showed me his new AU. My first thought while paging trhough it was wow it is a little hard to figure out where things are. but as I kept reading I was very impressed with the content of the book. The classes are great. The races are pretty cool. (I think it is just easier to imagine yourself as an elf or dwarf ect cause of tolkien and other fantasy rather than a sexless dragon person or a dogman.) I was so inspired by my first read through that I deceided 2 day later to get a copy for my self. (I had headr a little about AU and I like other things that Monte has put out but I had no plans on purchasing it.) I spen much of sunday reading it . I'm even moe impressed. I think the only dispointment is that Diamond throne hasn't been released yet and I was so intrigued by Au that I wanted more.

As For The art. I am very impressed I even like the blotchy guy. Come on people not everyone is Jim Lee. and not everyone should be. I love seeing unique styles of art. I think that the art helped make the book have a darker gritter feel. which I think this would is gonna have rather than High (tolkien) fantasy.

 

[volcivar]

Revivification spell that's the same level as the PHB's Raise Dead

Incorrect, the poor sod is only temporarily alive (1 rnd/lvl or 1 hr/lvl heightened). One must also cast Stabilize Soul (7th level spell).

So one must have a 13th level caster in the group to keep people up during combat. But at the cost of a Con point. And it is not permanent. Also, to keep him up permanently requires stabilize soul, which is a complex 7th level spell, that requires a 13th level magister or a 19th or 20th level mage blade or witch or runethane. Also the raised character has only 1 hp/hit die. Not fully resored.

Raise the Dead (lesser) is a 7th level spell. Raise the dead(greater) is 9th level, and is much different than True Res as the character is not fully healed. And there is ALWAYS level loss. Also the coast is 3500gp (lesser) or 7000gp (greater). Nothing to sneeze at.

Regeneration is an exotic spell. So only greenbonds of at least 15th level (and casters who spend a feat) will have access to it. It will be generally less available. How may 15th level greenbonds are in the campaign? Significantly less than the number of 13th level clerics in a typical DnD campaign.

Low level healing spells are not nearly as effective as a clerics cure X wounds spells. Some do subdual damage (transfer wounds - lesser). Some do d6's instead of d8s. None of them are as effective.

So only if you don't understand how the magic system or the spells in AU work, then it may appear to be much the same. In fact it is not. It requires characters to be higher level, and the costs are much dearer. Loss of con, loss of level none of which can be avoided, and the Con loss cannot be repaired.

 

[Maraxle]

Oh, and as for that grizzled old veteran with the peg leg? The one to whom we're not supposed to say "why didn't you just pay the few thousand gold for a regenerate spell"? There is a Regeneration spell in AU, and to my calculations (caster level x 80) it only costs 1200gp

My friends, love or hate the rest of AU, that's just blatant false advertising.

Well, 1200gp isn't small change to anyone other than an adventurer. Somehow I doubt the captain of the local militia, or some guy who works down at the dock, has that kind of cash lying around. Notice that Monte said "NPC" and not "PC" in his paragraph.

 

[Aulayan]

After having read the book cover to cover...I seem to be in the minority in this opinion.

But I don't think the Diamond Throne setting is any more forced on a reader than the Greyhawk setting is with the PHB. In fact, less so because of no Gods being specified or anything like that. It'd be easy to make a whole new setting with this rulesset.

It'd be entirely easy to throw out the backgrounds for each race and class and replace them if you have to. And usually that's something you do when creating your own normal D&D homebrew.

-Alan

 

[Dinkeldog]

I think people that don't want to like the book will find reasons to not like it. Similarly, people who do want to, will find reasons to like it. I may even fall into the latter category.

Other than that, I find many of the arguments here superficial. Art, raising the dead (like that's always not been in the DM's purview), setting connectedness (consider the Greyhawkers that feel betrayed because the setting implicit in the PHB weren't tied more strongly to the rules, and then consider the number of people that have no intent of using Diamond Throne for the setting of AU-inclusive campaigns) and the like seem more like excuses. But that's okay. There's no reason everyone has to agree to like any given product.

The only thing I ask is that when threads come in the future asking for advice on using AU or integrating AU into a campaign that if you have nothing positive to add that you let the thread pass you by. "My advice is not to use AU," by the way, is not positive.

 

[Felon]

Incorrect, the poor sod is only temporarily alive (1 rnd/lvl or 1 hr/lvl heightened). One must also cast Stabilize Soul (7th level spell). So one must have a 13th level caster i the group to keep people up during combat. But at the cost of a Con point.

Raise the Dead (greater) is much different than True Res as the character is not fully healed. And there is ALWAYS level loss. Regeneration is an exotic spell. So only greenbonds of at least 15th level (and casters who spend a feat) will have access to it.

So only if you don't understand how the magic system in AU works, then it may appear to be much the same. In fact it is not.

These are all good points, but I did not say it was the same. I said it wasn't signicantly harder to cure, raise, or heal characters than in D&D. Curing death and scars still just boils down to spending money, and not even a great deal of money as indicated by Monte's "spells-for-hire" system (caster level x spell level x 10).

Well, 1200gp isn't small change to anyone other than an adventurer. Somehow I doubt the captain of the local militia, or some guy who works down at the dock, has that kind of cash lying around. Notice that Monte said "NPC" and not "PC" in his paragraph. [/B]

Not sure what your point is. Poor characters in standard D&D also can't afford a Regenerate spell. To reiterate, Monte said that if the players meet an NPC with a peg leg, the players don't say, "Why didn't he just pay the few thousand gold for a regenerate spell?" In fact, it doesn't even cost a few thousand gold pieces.

Obviously, Monte was trying to point out how AU is different from D&D in that there are harsher consequences for actions in AU. That isn't the case. Are you suggesting that he was merely commenting on how hard life is for an NPC works down at the docks?