Combining d20 Material to form Voltron?

[JoeGKushner]

So how many people actually use their different d20 books? For example, do you use the schools and fighting styles from Quintessential Fight and as a different path, those from Path of the Sword?

Do you use the organizations in the various Path of books and put them with the various organizations in say, Tome & Blood or other products?

Do you mix the feats from Mongoose book of Ultimate Feats and AEG's own Feat book?

Do creatures from the Creature Collection rub elbows with those from the Tome of Horrors and the Bestiary?

Do you find that the sum is greater than the individual books or do you find it very time consuming to add the various rules and details?

 

[Anubus]

I use everything that I like, whenever I can. That is to say that if I find something I like in a d20 book, and it works in my current campaign, I'll use it.

When it comes to things like the fighting systems, I generally try to make my players aware that such things exist, and if they want to use them, woohoo!!!! If not then whatever. Generally though I find them too time consuming to find when I'm in a mad rush to create that NPC that I kept pushing off. Hopefully E-tools (V2?) will have stuff from 3rd parties available, and then those kind of things will find alot more use in my NPC's.

The biggest things for me is by far monsters though. I love monsters, and thus monster books, I don't even want to guess at how many I have. I'll use monsters from many different sources in the same encounter, or have humanoids at war with one another. When I'm looking for monsters I always have a certain element I'm looking for, CR, environment, social organisation, something, so if a monster book can help me find what I'm looking for, the more the merrier. For example the Monsternomicon made a great accessory for my Mechanis (MotP) related adventures.

 

[Wycen]

I use whatever I like and am allowed to use.

For example, one current character is a half ogre from Savage Species, using the Primitive Spellcaster feat, from Races of Faerun, (or is that SS as well?), plus he just took a level in Totem Warrior from Arcana Unearthed.

 

[garyh]

I've been working on creating a homebrew setting that combines plot, world and game-mechanical elements from Arcana Unearthed, WarCraft and Core 3.5.

Essentially, some WC/Core races flee their home continent (a la WarCraft III) and instead of landing on Kalimdor, they land in either the realm of the Diamond Throne (gotta wait till the book comes out to decide) or a hombrew continent with AU races, class, magic, etc.

Not sure if I'll run it as a PbP on the boards or for a real-life game. Or, you know, if it'll ever actually get finished at all. But I've got hight hopes!

 

[Teflon Billy]

• The Core Books
• Seas of Blood (Mongoose)
• Feats (AEG)(Individually subject to DM Approval)
• From Stone to Steel (Monkeygod)(Subject to appropriateness to Culture/Time Period)
• Any of Bastion's "Red Spine" books other than Arms and Armor (Subject to DM approval/appropriateness

)

 

[Aaron L]

Dammit, now I want d20 Voltron!

 

[Aaron L]

Why was this moved?

 

[Psion]

Usually what I'll do is pick whatever book I think is best on a given subject, and give that book "prime" status. I'll idea mine from other books, but filter in only the stuff that works together.

For example, I feel that Path of the Sword is better than Quint Fighter (but I don't use EITHER books "schools/styles"), but I use Quint Wizard and only cherry pick from Path of Magic and Spells & Magic.

It is a bit of work and the whole is better than the sum of its parts, if only because, it seems to me, most publishers do one thing right in a book on a given subject and then goof something else up... so I take the best components and Frankenstein them.


Another approach I am warming to, as I get away from my "anything goes" homebrew and delve into spinoff games, is to pick 2-5 supplements that address a similar theme from different angles and make them the basis of the game. For example:

- I considered using Treasure Quests: Tombs & Crypts for the backdrop of a game and am using FFG's Path of.. books for their Legendary classes for an epic feel.
- For my "primal world", I am trying to make it primarily driven by stand alone setting supplements and fusing the whole together. For different sections of the world, I am using Bluffside, Necropolis, Freeport and other setting supplemts for various sections.
- In my Asian-themed subsetting, I grabbed Oriental Adventures and CBG's Beyond Monks and delicately seasoned it with hints of Rokugan, Jade & Steel and Mahashapra in different regions. (If I were to revisit it, From Stone to Steel would be a natural addition.)
- In my current Second World game, I of course use the Second World Sourcebook as a basis, but will be throwing in bits of Urban Arcana, Blood & Fists and Blood & Guts to describe some intereactions with First World Earth. On the Second World, I will be using Arsenal and Factory for machinions out of Tokyo, Sorcery & Steam for Europe, and Nyambe for Africa.

 

[haiiro]

I shy away from putting too many add-ons into my game, but I'm open to it if someone is interested in exploring something specific for their character. There's so much versatility built into the material I already have that I generally don't see the need to add in optional rules, paths, subsystems and so forth.

As far as highly modular elements go -- monsters, spells, magic items et al -- the more the merrier. I'll try anything to keep D&D veterans on their toes, and the more sources I can draw from the more likely that is.

 

[trancejeremy]

My main campaign is sort of a sci-fi/fantasy cross over - sort of Star Ocean (the video game) combined with Stargate. Only instead of androgynous Egyptians, Michael Moorcock style elves. And the Ancients that build my stargates were out of HP Lovecraft.



So I use

Call of Cthulhu d20 (guns, some of the monsters)
Deadlands d20 (core classes, magic system, guns, critters)
Weird Wars: Blood on the Rhine (core classes, guns)
Traveller 20 (some of the core classes)
Blood & Space (some of the core classes)
Fading Suns d20 (classes, social feats)
Quintessential Witch (most the stuff in the book, actually)
Sov Stone d20 (the core classes)
Occult Lore (the core classes, plants)
Darwin's World (gear. It's got a lot of cool equipment in the book)

As you might tell, I really like lots of core classes, though I usually end up tweaking them a bit. (I have my own character generator that I wrote, so I can fiddle with them and print them out pretty easily)


For adventures/settings, I've used a lot of the avalanche press stuff (as the stargate in my campaign is more like the one on that episode of Star Trek with Joan Collins, it goes back through time as well as space and planes). My Players have managed to save lots of people from the sack of Constantinople, a lot of Vikings from Greenland, and the lost colony of Roanoke by bringing them back through the gate. Atlantis wasn't quite so lucky.

And I dropped a lot of cities and adventure locales in it:

Freeport (one with all the New York/Don King/Pokemon/Hippie references removed), the ones from 7 cities, various Necromancer games uber modules, like Tomb of Abysthor (which is much easier if your players have grenades, BTW), Briarton, Thumble, Unhallowed Halls, some Kalamar stuff dropped in, too.

(I want to use Bluffside & Necropolis, but they just don't fit my world very well)

I'm not real big on splatbooks, so I don't really use them.

I don't use a lot of monsters, either. I've gotten by with just using the MM and various demon/devil books. The one I've probably used most is Horrors of the Weird West for Deadlands d20.

Now that I got Airships, I'll probably use that. But it's a bit more primative than I had expected, so I'll have to try to modernize it some. Probably using Factory, somewhat.


Anyway, wouldn't d20 Mecha cover Voltron pretty well? (If that's out yet).