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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ryltar" data-source="post: 5446430" data-attributes="member: 19393">@ MojoRat & Volaran:The reason for said changes was that the group as a whole felt some of the standard PF rules would detract from the setting. Ravenloft is all about horror and mystery; it's an athmospheric setting first and foremost. One in which the characters are not so much in control of their destiny as they are (quite often) pawns of larger forces, e.g. unwittingly doing something that furthers the interests of one of the Darklords et al.That being said, we felt that it would not work well if the GM - for example - tried to describe a spooky athmosphere as the party explored a certain graveyard in a certain village, then dramatically introduces shambling forms coming out of the darkness or breaking out of their coffins ... and then the cleric channels energy and destroys them all in one action. Bye, athmosphere, it sure was nice meeting you.Or, picture one of the classic Ravenloft tropes, the characters being told by person X to do something for them that seems beneficial to their cause, but that turns out to bite them in their backsides later on. If you allow the Inquisitor's class abilities, or the Zone of Truth spell, or any similar ability in this situation, you can forget about this plot, as any self-respecting player would have that ability active when talking to a 'important' and possibly shady NPC.Same thing with the other changes. When you start a Ravenloft campaign as a player and you haven't been living under a rock for the past few years, you know that 90 % of the enemies you are about to face are either a) evil, b) undead, c) demons, or any combination of the three. Now imagine the ranger starting the campaign with undead as his favored enemy - instant bonus damage in nearly every fight. Or the paladin's smite evil: it's designed in the same way as the ranger's favored enemy, insofar as that is intended to give you a boost in some of the fights against specific enemies; it's not part of class balance to have them working as a (factual) flat bonus active almost all the time.Now, we are aware that banning certain abilities leaves said classes "below" standard power level. That is why we have introduced certain benefits, such as maximized out-of-combat healing (very powerful). I can only say that with the way we run our game, it has served very well to preserve the setting's athmosphere, and I haven't heard any of the other players complain once that they felt their characters were now powerless as a result. In fact, the few times that Smite Evil et al. do work, it's a much more satisfying feeling.I hope this helps to understand the reasoning behind the changes a little bit <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />.</blockquote>

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