AU - first impressions?

In his defense, he made a valid comment: Psion seemed like power creep, and he said it. I think he's right that it definitely seems like power creep, but is balanced elsewhere (as explained earlier).

I think that people analyzing the rules without the ownership is a fine thing as well: the whole point of this thread is to discuss the rules with a purpose of informing others about what we think of the book.

(edit: That paragraphs misses another point I thought to make: discussing rules without the books is something that went on montecook.com for a long time: people liked a bunch of the things, but discussed, and argued about things that seemed sketchy. Obviously someone with the book is in better shape to figure out how things flow together as a whole, but that shouldn't preclude people from the discussion.)

In either case, there's no reason to make this a meta discussion about Doc Moriarty, so back to discussing spells and hero points and classes oh, boy!
 
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I actually found my copy at my friendly local Waldenbooks on Friday. I swear that I find more interesting stuff there before it's supposed to come out than I do at all at the FLGS.

I've had a bit of time to read through it, and here are my impressions so far:

1. I'm not overly fond of the races. No particular reason - they just don't float my boat. Nor am I fond of the default campaign setting. Again - this is just an asthetic preference. Some people will probably find it to be just what they were looking for.

2. On the other hand, the Champion is going to replace the Paladin class in my campaign *immediately*. Since my campaign is alignment-less already, it fits the role of "holy warrior" quite well. The great thing is that it'll work for all gods, not just the "good" ones. In addition, I'll echo the sentiment that the "customizing this class" sidebars are really, really helpful.

3. The magister fits my vision of a wizard better than the traditional wizard. The arcane focus of the staff just strikes my fancy. However, I'm not completely sure it'll mix properly with standard D&D - that'll take some more thinking.

4. I like the spell templates. It really provides a nice way to customize spells without having to create all new ones.

That's it so far. I haven't had a chance to read much beyond that.
 


Maraxle said:
I hope this isn't too far off from the main topic:

What parts of it are OGC?

In his Design Diary at GenCon, Monte said that technically the whole book is OGC, but you have to apply for a special liscense (which is free, you just have to ask first) in order to use the whole book as OGC.
 




I think it's 4d6 drop one, although of course, free to use your own methods.


Interesting note: Since the XP chart isn't SRD, Monte had to make his own, which is basically 1,100 * current level + 1 to level. I thought at first that this was just picking a different number to satisfy legal demons, but a playtester said that in addition to that, Monte considers the core classes slightly more powerful than 3e classes, but not noticably so, such that it seems like it's okay to either ignore it and use the PHB chart, or drop as the book does, a -10% penalty on AU classes.

Or, of course, if you don't use EL/CR, and don't mix 3.0/AU then it really doesn't matter.
 

Re: Combat

gordonknox said:


How would you characterize the AU combat system?

Is it much different from 3.5?

Pros, Cons?

gk

It appears pretty close to the 3.0 system. It explains attacks of oppurtunity in greater, clearer detail but lacks the diagrams.

It also goes through and describes each of the various actions you can perform in detail.

In general it looks like that is a general trend for the entire Playing the Game chapter (which includes combat plus misc. other actions). It describes things in expanded detail including what type of action it is (standard, move, free, etc.) and whether or not it draws an attack of oppurtunity.

The few changes I did notice are that the staggered state of damage is now from 0 to your negative constitution modifier and that your are unconcious up to your negative constitution.

There is also something called Hero Points that allows you to do some pretty major stuff. The standard effect is to add 1d20 to any one roll, but there are other things you can do with it to.
 

DocMoriartty said:

Because all fo the threads in this forum are open to posting as long as you follow the rules. Have a problem with negative comments?

You know, I don't particularly like hockey. But I don't go up to people talking about hockey and continually tell them about how I don't like hockey, and how it is a stupid sport (even though I have never watched hockey in my life and only know about it second-hand).

If I did, I would be considered an ass.

Food for thought.

J
 

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