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Message: <blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 1051487" data-attributes="member: 10201">And, on the flipside, D&D has always *claimed* to be fairly "generic", refusing to acknowledge its fairly strong implicit setting assumptions.  So, frex, D&D3E may claim to be for everyone's D&D-genre campaign, but i'd say it isn't.  D&D3E doesn't really handle Midnight, either (i'd say tossing half the classes and ripping out pretty much the entire magic system to be replaced with something else constitutes "not compatible").  I'd have real trouble using out-of-the-box D&D3E (or 3.5E) for the setting i developed around the AD&D1/2 rules, frex.  I'd have less trouble using AU for this setting.  And, let me just jump on the bandwagon to say that i think AU is better at being "D&D" than D&D3/3.5E is.  D&D3E is trying to straddle an awkward line: it wants to preserve the implicit-setting elements while being generic.  IMHO, you have to go one way or teh other.  AU embraces the implicit setting (albeit a slightly different one).  I'm currently working on a fantasy D20 system that excises as much of it [implicit setting] as possible.I disagree.  This is just as much a replacement for the D&D PH as the Everquest or Spycraft core books are. There's no reason you can't use this either for a Diamond Throne campaign, or as the toolkit for a homebrew setting. It's certainly no more limiting in the latter regard than D&D3.5E is.I certainly intend to use it as is, but probably not with the Diamond Throne. I'm not enamored enough of D&D3E to buy the books (or, actually, to put up with playing it, really--tried it for 2 years, and it got worse the more familiar with it i got).  AU, OTOH, is like Spycraft: it has me wanting to play, or even run, a game, despite not caring for class/level systems, the huge variability of the d20, the combat-centric mechanics, or the relative unimportance of skills.More importantly, i haven't seen this much D20 stuff worth stealing outside of Spycraft or Dynasties & Demagogues.  Given access to the OGC, i'll be reusing a *lot* more stuff from this than from the D20SRD.Second this: previously, i've been very hit-n-miss with Monte's stuff.  Some, i love (his new bard and the spellsongs).  Some is just too, well, "D&D3E" for me. AU, i *love*.  Only minor quibbles so far: every race except humans get racial levels, and yet every one of them in the description says, "Unlike humans and some other races..." they can take racial levels.  It just seems both silly and overblown--the only non-human race that can't take racial levels is pre-metamorphosis faen, and since sprytes are the same race, and can....  I think it would've read much more cleanly if it just said "[insert race name here] can take racial levels." Period.Also, i'm a bit disappointed that runethanes cast "regular" spells, in addition to their runes.Oh, an actual question i haven't figured out for sure:I take it that taking the Runechild "race"/template gives you ECL +1, and he just says it in a slightly convoluted way?  Or is it actually that your XP totals behave as though you were ECL +1, but your total character level is unchanged (as the text seems to be saying?)</blockquote>

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