AU - first impressions?
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- Start date
Apok
First Post
Got my copy yesterday and I'm thouroughly enjoying it. As far as the magic system is concnerned, I like alot more than D&D's Vancian system. The sheer level of flexability you get when casting is incredible, especially when you consider all the feats that let you modify your spells on the fly.
I admit I wasn't terribly impressed with most of the new races. In fact, the only two I really liked were the Giants and Faen. The Sibeccai, Litorians, and Mojh just seemed to be anthropomorphic "filler" designed to take the place of your more traditional fantasy races. Of course, if your into the whole "cat-man" and "dog-man" thing, you'll probably dig them. The concept of each race having racial levels so that they can augment their natural abilities is a great one and I definitely think it should be used more in the future. The Verrik are... well, different, but you could just as easily swap them out with Githyanki or Githzerai as a playable PC race.
The class section is definitely my favorite. Almost every class made me think, "damn that's cool!" Lots of flavor and interesting concepts, though I think Monte definitely triumphed with the Witch and Akashic classes. My biggest complaint was the fact that the Warmain and Unfettered classes, while good, are rather blah when compared to the others. Not saying that they are unbalanced or weak, just not very "sexy." Also, given the choice between playing an Oathsworn and a 3.5 Monk, I'll take the Monk.
The chapter devoted to feats is about what you'd expect, lots of familiar feats and lots of cool new feats. Monte, bless him, avoided the temptation to make a bunch of "+2 to Two Skills" feats and just made a single feat that could cover all of 'em. Go Monte! The various ceremony feats exist primarily to give your character cool special abilities like Opportunist, Defensive Roll, etc. There are also Talents, which are basically feats you can only take at 1st level. Ambidexterity falls under this category, as do a few others that give you some pretty nice benefits.
The spells chapter is one which I haven't fully had time to go over yet. It's a big chapter and most of the spells in it are different than your typicall D&D fare. The fact that every spell has a normal, diminished, and heightened effect is excellent. It's just one more thing that enhances the overall flexability of AU's spell system and gives the player's more options to play with.
Overall, I think the book is top notch, though I don't know if I would play or run it strictly as written. For example, there really isn't a class that functions as a direct corollary to the Bard, so I would probably do some quick modifications to fit him into the AU spell system. I would probably also convert the Ranger and Monk classes over just to have a couple of "generic" classes in the mix. While the AU classes are great, some of them carry alot of roleplaying baggage which might make it difficult for some people to really dig the class. Fortunately, this is an easy thing to fix, so it's all good.
If anyone has any questions regarding AU, feel free to ask.
I admit I wasn't terribly impressed with most of the new races. In fact, the only two I really liked were the Giants and Faen. The Sibeccai, Litorians, and Mojh just seemed to be anthropomorphic "filler" designed to take the place of your more traditional fantasy races. Of course, if your into the whole "cat-man" and "dog-man" thing, you'll probably dig them. The concept of each race having racial levels so that they can augment their natural abilities is a great one and I definitely think it should be used more in the future. The Verrik are... well, different, but you could just as easily swap them out with Githyanki or Githzerai as a playable PC race.
The class section is definitely my favorite. Almost every class made me think, "damn that's cool!" Lots of flavor and interesting concepts, though I think Monte definitely triumphed with the Witch and Akashic classes. My biggest complaint was the fact that the Warmain and Unfettered classes, while good, are rather blah when compared to the others. Not saying that they are unbalanced or weak, just not very "sexy." Also, given the choice between playing an Oathsworn and a 3.5 Monk, I'll take the Monk.
The chapter devoted to feats is about what you'd expect, lots of familiar feats and lots of cool new feats. Monte, bless him, avoided the temptation to make a bunch of "+2 to Two Skills" feats and just made a single feat that could cover all of 'em. Go Monte! The various ceremony feats exist primarily to give your character cool special abilities like Opportunist, Defensive Roll, etc. There are also Talents, which are basically feats you can only take at 1st level. Ambidexterity falls under this category, as do a few others that give you some pretty nice benefits.
The spells chapter is one which I haven't fully had time to go over yet. It's a big chapter and most of the spells in it are different than your typicall D&D fare. The fact that every spell has a normal, diminished, and heightened effect is excellent. It's just one more thing that enhances the overall flexability of AU's spell system and gives the player's more options to play with.
Overall, I think the book is top notch, though I don't know if I would play or run it strictly as written. For example, there really isn't a class that functions as a direct corollary to the Bard, so I would probably do some quick modifications to fit him into the AU spell system. I would probably also convert the Ranger and Monk classes over just to have a couple of "generic" classes in the mix. While the AU classes are great, some of them carry alot of roleplaying baggage which might make it difficult for some people to really dig the class. Fortunately, this is an easy thing to fix, so it's all good.
If anyone has any questions regarding AU, feel free to ask.
Storminator
First Post
Apok said:
I think you can build a pretty respectable Bard from multiclassing AU classes. Akashic/witch or akashic/mageblade would do very well.
PS
Olorin
Into the West
Song Witch
Someone on the Malhavoc message boards is working on some variant witches, one of which is a Song Witch. Looks promising... a Song Witch/Akashic would make a good sound-focused all around type character.
http://pub102.ezboard.com/fokayyourturnfrm29.showMessage?topicID=562.topic
Someone on the Malhavoc message boards is working on some variant witches, one of which is a Song Witch. Looks promising... a Song Witch/Akashic would make a good sound-focused all around type character.
http://pub102.ezboard.com/fokayyourturnfrm29.showMessage?topicID=562.topic
JoeGKushner
Adventurer
woodelf said:
I hope everyone can heal! Can you imagine having to get repaired or something!
Oh, you mean casting spells to heal.
Well, D&D isn't the only game by a longshot to seperate things into the damage/heal factors and it seems to work pretty well.
Having said that, bards, clerics, druids, rangers and paladins do have healing spells so that leaves out sorcerers and wizards which leaves pretty much 5 out of the 7 spellcasters with some healing ability.
Plane Sailing
Astral Admin - Mwahahaha!
Since nobody has particularly mentioned this, some other points I've noticed on my initial skim through.
Ceremonies. The implied setting puts a lot of store on ceremonies, and many important or powerful feats require a ceremony with the presence of appropriate friends to complete. I like this.
Truenames. Characters need truenames to get some feats, to be affected by some good spells (so you want your friends to know your truename) and also some bad spells (so you *don't* want your enemies to know it!).
The Wounded Land. OK, Not directly, but I seem to remember seeing Stephen Donaldson the author with a mention somewhere on the credits page? And thinking about it the Thomas Covenant books included friendly giants, the bloodguard who remind me of the oathsworn, the wizardy-guys who used staffs... I wonder if Monte was attributing a degree of inspiration? Just guessing.
I like the fact that it has no alignment and no detect evil style magics. You have to suss out people and their actions for what they are.
I like the unified spell list and the variety in casting. Another thing that nobody has mentioned yet is "power components". Anyone with the dosh can pick up and use special very-expensive material components to improve a spell. Nice flavour. If you see the arch-magister raise an emerald in his fist as he starts casting, you might want to duck!
Cheers
Ceremonies. The implied setting puts a lot of store on ceremonies, and many important or powerful feats require a ceremony with the presence of appropriate friends to complete. I like this.
Truenames. Characters need truenames to get some feats, to be affected by some good spells (so you want your friends to know your truename) and also some bad spells (so you *don't* want your enemies to know it!).
The Wounded Land. OK, Not directly, but I seem to remember seeing Stephen Donaldson the author with a mention somewhere on the credits page? And thinking about it the Thomas Covenant books included friendly giants, the bloodguard who remind me of the oathsworn, the wizardy-guys who used staffs... I wonder if Monte was attributing a degree of inspiration? Just guessing.
I like the fact that it has no alignment and no detect evil style magics. You have to suss out people and their actions for what they are.
I like the unified spell list and the variety in casting. Another thing that nobody has mentioned yet is "power components". Anyone with the dosh can pick up and use special very-expensive material components to improve a spell. Nice flavour. If you see the arch-magister raise an emerald in his fist as he starts casting, you might want to duck!
Cheers
The scales have fallen away from my eyes (or something)
I can't really explain how enthusiastic I am about this book. I had basically given up all remaining love my heart had for D&D (for the second time, actually, came back for 3E and then became disillusioned again). But reading this thing has rekindled an enthusiasm for the game that I never thought would come back. In a day of reading I have 2 pages worth of ideas for a campiagn, and I'm not done reading all of the first class entry.
Flexibility, flavor-first, good engaging writing, ideas that make you go, "God, why didn't I think of that?" The list goes on and on.
I think it's summed up by the way I put it to a friend of mine: This is how D&D should be.
I can't really explain how enthusiastic I am about this book. I had basically given up all remaining love my heart had for D&D (for the second time, actually, came back for 3E and then became disillusioned again). But reading this thing has rekindled an enthusiasm for the game that I never thought would come back. In a day of reading I have 2 pages worth of ideas for a campiagn, and I'm not done reading all of the first class entry.
Flexibility, flavor-first, good engaging writing, ideas that make you go, "God, why didn't I think of that?" The list goes on and on.
I think it's summed up by the way I put it to a friend of mine: This is how D&D should be.
Lalato
Adventurer
A lot of folks seem to be gushing over AU. While I think AU is definitely deserving of said gushing... I don't think people are giving enough credit to the game that spawned it: DnD.
I have both 3.5 and AU. I like both of them. They're both good, but in different ways. Personally, I like the fact that I now have such a diversity of good material to pick over.
I only got into 3e DnD in the last 9 months. I found it to be very good. I have always enjoyed playing what are now the traditional DnD archetypes. I'm pretty sure I'll never get tired of playing them.
That said, AU offers some new and alien archetypes. It is important to note that these archetypes are alien because I hear these nagging questions from myself and others... "Well, how do I play a [insert traditional DnD archetype here] in AU?" There are very few direct analogs between DnD and AU. Does that mean that one or the other is better? No, but they are different. Does that mean that one is more flavorful than the other? No, they're just different.
Now after all of that... My group is converting to AU, but we're tacking the Psionics Handbook to it. Why? call us kooky, but we like the PsiHB... and it's an integral part of our current campaign.
My character is 3.5 Ranger2/PsiWar2. There are no direct correlates for Ranger in AU. This made my conversion difficult, but not impossible. Based on the history of my character I realized that the following progression made sense, but also gave him enough Ranger cred that it might actually work...
Level 1 = Unfettered
Level 2 = Wolf Totem Warrior
Level 3 & 4 = Psychic Warrior
It's a bit of an odd progression, but it made sense for the character. Do the first two levels really make a Ranger? Not exactly, but they do make a very interesting Ranger-like character. I'm happy with the results.
I'll found out this Sunday whether I like playing this new "Ranger" better than my old Ranger. Either way, I like the archetypes from both systems.
--sam
EDIT: grammar
I have both 3.5 and AU. I like both of them. They're both good, but in different ways. Personally, I like the fact that I now have such a diversity of good material to pick over.
I only got into 3e DnD in the last 9 months. I found it to be very good. I have always enjoyed playing what are now the traditional DnD archetypes. I'm pretty sure I'll never get tired of playing them.
That said, AU offers some new and alien archetypes. It is important to note that these archetypes are alien because I hear these nagging questions from myself and others... "Well, how do I play a [insert traditional DnD archetype here] in AU?" There are very few direct analogs between DnD and AU. Does that mean that one or the other is better? No, but they are different. Does that mean that one is more flavorful than the other? No, they're just different.
Now after all of that... My group is converting to AU, but we're tacking the Psionics Handbook to it. Why? call us kooky, but we like the PsiHB... and it's an integral part of our current campaign.
My character is 3.5 Ranger2/PsiWar2. There are no direct correlates for Ranger in AU. This made my conversion difficult, but not impossible. Based on the history of my character I realized that the following progression made sense, but also gave him enough Ranger cred that it might actually work...
Level 1 = Unfettered
Level 2 = Wolf Totem Warrior
Level 3 & 4 = Psychic Warrior
It's a bit of an odd progression, but it made sense for the character. Do the first two levels really make a Ranger? Not exactly, but they do make a very interesting Ranger-like character. I'm happy with the results.
I'll found out this Sunday whether I like playing this new "Ranger" better than my old Ranger. Either way, I like the archetypes from both systems.
--sam
EDIT: grammar
Last edited:
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