Joshua Dyal said:
The real questions is; what does it offer to folks who already own the original Midnight book (and didn't have any binding problems?)
I haven't it up yet, but was looking through it at the store.
For one, though I am paranoid about it since I had the experience of having two copies of the first book deteriorate, the binding seems stronger. The book feels heftier, and is printed on much better paper.
All the material from the 1st Ed. is included, plus most of the material from Against the Shadow (the player supplement). They've reworked the wildlander, defender, and channeler classes. The wildlander gets his abilities in tiers....so a Tier 2 ability depends on you having the Tier 1 ability it depends on etc. One of the abilities they can now choose to select is Animal Companion...but it's not a given unless you want to go that path.
Channelers have more abilities....every few levels you can choose an ability, dependent upon which path you're on (ie. hermetic, spiritual, charismatic). The spell schools have been changed...it's harder to use invocations as apparently each costs 2 spell points more than the level...so magic missile is 3 points. This makes the evoker type mage far less likely, and makes players dependent on the other magic.
There's a whole barter system in there now.
The races have all been reorganized....ie. for the elves, it shows the base elf abliities, then for each subrace, it shows the abilities they have that differ from the main elf abilities.
There is a lot of information about the Legates and the order of shadow now....subgroups, ranks, tests, all sorts of stuff.
They've got reworked rules for channeling rituals, herbs and several other things that make those systems work way better.
They've got a section that details how the various types of monsters in Midnight are affected.....so Fey, Elementals, and Outsiders all get the spirit template, becoming incorporeal. Fey can manifest their solid forms in nature areas. Outsiders are bodiless spirits trapped in the world (think of the movie Fallen), who can gain their traditional abilities by possessing other beings....be they sentient humanoid, animal, or plant. The longer they possess a form, the more that form becomes like their original shape. So, you could have a balor that is a spirit, or another balor that has the physical form, because it possessed an NPC 500 years ago, and slowly mutated his body....like in the Diablo II video game.
There are clarified rules on a lot of things aside from that.
Also, the book is reorganized. The material makes a more logical progression and is divided into different books. The first section is for players and has general world info and character creation rules etc. The later sections include magic and how it works, sections on the geography/culture/descriptions of cities etc., a section on monsters, etc.
Overall, the book is pretty worth. I haven't DMed Midnight yet, but am on the verge of starting a game, and I think the book seems pretty sweet.
My only complaint is one that is admittedly subjective....I'm not entirely a fan of all the new art in the book. But aside from that, thumbs up!
As to Crothian's question....all the material from the first book is in there, though in some places edited etc. However, they've also included most of the material (though not all the flavour text) from the Against the Shadow supplement, *and* added about 40,000 more words of brand new stuff. In addition, the book has the advantage of coming out after the "feel" and "history" of the setting have settled somewhat through the addition of new books, a vibrant fan community etc., so the entire effort feels more cohesive, if that makes any sense. Even though the first book was pretty good, this one feels more like "everything you need to run the game is in here" than the first book did.
I have some changes I'm not a fan of....like making evocations even harder to use than they are.....but that's just a personal thing. It'll likely lead to a more gritty feel to the game, players having to be smarter, and more of an eldritch feel to magic....less flash and bang, more rituals, more using divinations, subte illusions and transmutations, etc. Others, like what they've done with Outsiders, Fey etc. seem really cool, very flavourful, and easily ported into another setting.
Some material has apparently been taken out....a few of the heroic paths from the first book, though they've added in most of those from the Against the Shadow book, so it balances out.
Banshee
