So I'm trying to run an Ancient Greek-themed D&D3.5 campaign and I picked up Green Ronin's Trojan War setting. I really liked how their AMAZING Testament setting worked, in terms of the Piety rules (replacing alignment) and the simple mass combat rules and the general feel. However, after closely reading Trojan War and comparing it to Testament, some things are bugging me. I'm going to get really into the nitty-gritty here, so if you haven't read it (as I imagine most people haven't), please forgive me for pointing out flaws in a three-year-old (2004) product.
* I know it's a third-party setting, so this sort of thing happens, but the new classes aren't very well-balanced compared to existing ones -- the Magician is notably weaker than the Wizard or Sorcerer and the Dedicated Warrior sucks compared to the Barbarian or Paladin.
* In the Priest class, which actually is fairly good in some ways, priests cast spells by "making a caster level check against DC 20 + spell level". So a 1st level priest has a 1 in 20 chance of casting a 1st level spell? I can vaguely see that this might not be a typo, but am I missing something? :/
* There is a 1st level spell called "Adjust" That "instantly resizes a piece of unattended clothing or armor to fit you perfectly."
* There is a 3rd level divine spell called "Bounty" which allows the caster to "sense the direction of a supply of nourishing food and beverage within range of the spell." I should mention that Create Food and Water is STILL on the Trojan War modified spell list. A 3rd level spell which Creates Food and Water. Easily removed, but kind of an oversight. Don't you think.
* The rules for armor are ridiculously complicated (breaking armor down into its component parts -- sounds nice, doesn't work well in practice) and the differences between the different types of armor are nonsensically trivial. For 10 gp you can buy either a linen *or* canvas cuirass (breastplate) -- which are both COMPLETELY IDENTICAL except that one weights 5 lbs. and one weighs 8 lbs! :/ Oh, and the armor costs are absurdly low considering the setting; about 220 gp for a full suit of ancient greek bronze armor (+9 AC), whereas in "Testament", which is supposed to be essentially the same technology level, a bronze breastplate (+5 AC) costs 2,000 gp. I can see no option but to totally ditch all the insane, unbalanced Trojan War armor rules and try to mock it up using the Testament armor rules.
* I actually kind of like the Trojan War Piety system, where you must perform specific deeds to increase your Piety, rather than letting it slowly accumulate week by week, as in the Testament setting. However, let's look at what deeds give you Piety, shall we? "Offering thighmeat to a god before a meal" gives you 2 points of Piety. "Sacrificing a hecatomb to a god" gives you 4 points of Piety. What's a hecatomb? A hecatomb is ONE HUNDRED CATTLE. So offering the thighmeat of ONE cow gives you half as much piety as A MASS SACRIFICE OF ONE HUNDRED COWS. Basically I have to completely go through this chart and redo all the values for it to make any sense whatsoever.
* The rules for "Divine Boons" (p.142) ask you to roll on the "Divine Mood" chart, which has NO FUNCTION other than to provide a straightforward bonus or penalty to your NEXT roll on the "Boon Request Result" chart. Basically an extra roll for absolutely no reason.
* In the "Divine Displeasure" rules (p.143-144), it says that if you go on a quest, your Divine Displeasure total is reduced by half. Then it offhandedly mentions that it's possible to get your Divine Displeasure total to zero. Uh -- how are you supposed to get your Divine Displeasure back to zero when the only mechanic for "reducing" it is to divide it in half? :/ So now I have to house-rule this too?
* While I'm at it, this is really a matter of opinion and this is something I can instantly house-rule, but the mechanic of having a flat -2 penalty on everything for Divine Displeasure is much less fun to roleplay, either from a DM or player's perspective, than the penalty system in Testament, where players instead receive cumulative Curses of the DM's choice from a big ol' juicy curse list.
What the heck, Green Ronin. What the heck, Aaron Rosenberg. There are some good things in this book, but... I guess what I'm saying is, I want to be able to play your frickin' supplement with minimal elbow grease, so please, TELL ME I'm missing some appendix page full of rules errata. :/
For that matter, I wonder how many threads you could fill pointing out unbalanced things and rules irregularities and lack of proofreading in third-party D&D supplements. But hey... I complain because I love. (Maybe.)
* I know it's a third-party setting, so this sort of thing happens, but the new classes aren't very well-balanced compared to existing ones -- the Magician is notably weaker than the Wizard or Sorcerer and the Dedicated Warrior sucks compared to the Barbarian or Paladin.
* In the Priest class, which actually is fairly good in some ways, priests cast spells by "making a caster level check against DC 20 + spell level". So a 1st level priest has a 1 in 20 chance of casting a 1st level spell? I can vaguely see that this might not be a typo, but am I missing something? :/
* There is a 1st level spell called "Adjust" That "instantly resizes a piece of unattended clothing or armor to fit you perfectly."
* There is a 3rd level divine spell called "Bounty" which allows the caster to "sense the direction of a supply of nourishing food and beverage within range of the spell." I should mention that Create Food and Water is STILL on the Trojan War modified spell list. A 3rd level spell which Creates Food and Water. Easily removed, but kind of an oversight. Don't you think.
* The rules for armor are ridiculously complicated (breaking armor down into its component parts -- sounds nice, doesn't work well in practice) and the differences between the different types of armor are nonsensically trivial. For 10 gp you can buy either a linen *or* canvas cuirass (breastplate) -- which are both COMPLETELY IDENTICAL except that one weights 5 lbs. and one weighs 8 lbs! :/ Oh, and the armor costs are absurdly low considering the setting; about 220 gp for a full suit of ancient greek bronze armor (+9 AC), whereas in "Testament", which is supposed to be essentially the same technology level, a bronze breastplate (+5 AC) costs 2,000 gp. I can see no option but to totally ditch all the insane, unbalanced Trojan War armor rules and try to mock it up using the Testament armor rules.
* I actually kind of like the Trojan War Piety system, where you must perform specific deeds to increase your Piety, rather than letting it slowly accumulate week by week, as in the Testament setting. However, let's look at what deeds give you Piety, shall we? "Offering thighmeat to a god before a meal" gives you 2 points of Piety. "Sacrificing a hecatomb to a god" gives you 4 points of Piety. What's a hecatomb? A hecatomb is ONE HUNDRED CATTLE. So offering the thighmeat of ONE cow gives you half as much piety as A MASS SACRIFICE OF ONE HUNDRED COWS. Basically I have to completely go through this chart and redo all the values for it to make any sense whatsoever.
* The rules for "Divine Boons" (p.142) ask you to roll on the "Divine Mood" chart, which has NO FUNCTION other than to provide a straightforward bonus or penalty to your NEXT roll on the "Boon Request Result" chart. Basically an extra roll for absolutely no reason.
* In the "Divine Displeasure" rules (p.143-144), it says that if you go on a quest, your Divine Displeasure total is reduced by half. Then it offhandedly mentions that it's possible to get your Divine Displeasure total to zero. Uh -- how are you supposed to get your Divine Displeasure back to zero when the only mechanic for "reducing" it is to divide it in half? :/ So now I have to house-rule this too?
* While I'm at it, this is really a matter of opinion and this is something I can instantly house-rule, but the mechanic of having a flat -2 penalty on everything for Divine Displeasure is much less fun to roleplay, either from a DM or player's perspective, than the penalty system in Testament, where players instead receive cumulative Curses of the DM's choice from a big ol' juicy curse list.
What the heck, Green Ronin. What the heck, Aaron Rosenberg. There are some good things in this book, but... I guess what I'm saying is, I want to be able to play your frickin' supplement with minimal elbow grease, so please, TELL ME I'm missing some appendix page full of rules errata. :/
For that matter, I wonder how many threads you could fill pointing out unbalanced things and rules irregularities and lack of proofreading in third-party D&D supplements. But hey... I complain because I love. (Maybe.)
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