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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9203809" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 91/150: Mar/Apr 2002part 9/12Chasing Shadows: Like last time, they have several pages of fluff to set the tone before getting down to the mechanics. This is near identical to that in chapter 9 of the D20 Modern corebook, so the important thing is spotting the differences. The descriptive parts are slightly longer, but the bit about Department 7 is missing, so evidently they haven’t got around to naming it yet, although the framing of making your characters secret agents paid by the government to hunt monsters is still one of the options presented. Then there’s the list of big rules changes. We already saw a couple in the preview a few pages ago, but they’re also using Armor as DR rather than stacking with your defence (another thing they’ll change in the final version) plus the addition of Action Points, removal of multiclassing penalties and broadening of the alignment system into a whole bunch of allegiances. But these won’t stop you from raiding your D&D monster manuals and using them against the players as is. So the big takeaway here is that they originally intended the rules to be a bit further away from regular D&D than they wound up settling for in the final product, quite possibly as a result of the feedback they got from previewing them here. That definitely makes me more interested in seeing what the letters pages will be like in the next few issues. Hero Generation: So here we have the 5 core classes. One for each ability score except constitution, which was written but cut for space, since they mentioned it in the teaser earlier. But there are substantial differences from the final versions so it’s time to go over them with a fine-toothed comb. Most immediately obvious is that these are 20 level classes with distinct progressions of abilities rather than 10 level ones which alternate between picking a talent and bonus feat each level, making them less of a toolkit and more something you could theoretically stick with for the whole campaign. Action points are gained at a rate of 1d4+1 per level rather than the set but escalating number they’d go with in the end. We’ve already seen that they’re going with vitality & wound points, but all the classes only get 1d4 points per level, which I’m pretty sure is a copypasting error rather than their intention even at this point during development. Similarly, all of them have medium BAB progressions, showing that this definitely needed another editing pass before going to press. The bonus skill points from being human are not automatically factored in, plus Fast & Charismatic heroes have 2 points per level less than the final version. Save progressions are weird, with multiple nonstandard ones that gain approximately 1 per 3 levels, but with different starting points. Similarly, defence bonuses always increase at 1 per 3 levels overall, but who gets good or bad initial numbers is completely different, with Strong heroes getting the best and both Charismatic & Dedicated ones still being better than Fast heroes. I guess they were thinking more in terms of matching the classes that get heavy armor proficiency in D&D than who would diagetically develop the best skills at dodging. Despite appearing on the classes last issue, reputation scores aren’t listed here yet, which means that’s another thing that might well have changed due to feedback here. Overall, these versions of the classes probably wind up weaker, although they do gain a few more powerful class features from their D&D counterparts at higher levels that were left out or only available to advanced classes in the final version. It does make for very interesting reading seeing just how much was still in flux at this point.</blockquote>

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