Gez
First Post
Before the errata, beasts were fantasy animals without supernatural powers. Now, they are just animals with a better hit die.
The decision to have beast's intelligence be always 1 or 2 was not an errata, but a rule change. They didn't corrected a bug, they arbitrarily changed the game for no discernable reason. What happened to the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" motto ? On the other hand, there's a lot of actual errata that was not adressed (like an explanation of the Nightwing's transformation bite, for example, or a description of this Improved Control Shape feat).
Why I dislike the dumbed down beasts ? Well, because nothing prevented beast from having animal intelligence, but nothing forced them to neither. They could be smarter than usually, and this was good. Magical Beasts were beasts that were magical, and beasts were animals that didn't have normal-looking anatomy or were smarter than usually. Additionally, I planned to use beast for some creatures for which an Int score of 1 or 2 don't give them real justice. Intelligent animals like Dolphins or Chimpanzee, for example. Heck, in AD&D 2, Dolphin were as intelligent as human and even had clerics for their own deity (Trishina, a LG goddess) ! They should probably be made as magical beasts now. And I'm somewhat against having real-world creatures considered as magical beasts... Finally, the last reason I dislike it is because this new ruling makes bogus lots of existing material that was perfectly fine before. Since the Magical Beast don't have the same HD, BAB, skill and save rating as the Beast, we have to either dumb down all former beasts to their new animal-like state (and recalculate skill points, by the way), or switch them to Magical Beast and recalculate everything ! Argh ! It was a plot by WotC to create errors in third-party publisher books or what ?
Frankly, I see no reason to force beasts to be that so-narrow category between animals and magical beasts. The beast of yesterday is today's nonmagical magical beast. Anyone who read this sentence should realize this is silly.
And frankly, if Rothé, two-headed vipers and winged snakes (and even Tressym ! blasphemy !) are animals (see the FRCS), what is the point of Beast ? Fantasy animals ? No, since fantasy animals are animals, like the rothé, mutant snakes and tressym prove it. Intelligent animals without supernatural capacity ? No, since they're denied the right to be intelligent. Nothing really worth to be its own category ? Yes, that's exactly what they are. Grr.
Frankly, some of the beasts' interest and challenge was precisely in their cunning and intelligence, not necessarily bright, but often better than that of a bear (simple bear trap: tie a rock to a rope, hanging on a branch, put honey on the rock; a bear will come, and when trying to eat the honey, he'll push the rock, who will come back to his face, and feeling attacked, the bear will puch the rock harder and harder, until he k.o. or killed himself from the returning rock's blows...).
In the update to the errata, I hope this new restriction will be removed.
The decision to have beast's intelligence be always 1 or 2 was not an errata, but a rule change. They didn't corrected a bug, they arbitrarily changed the game for no discernable reason. What happened to the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" motto ? On the other hand, there's a lot of actual errata that was not adressed (like an explanation of the Nightwing's transformation bite, for example, or a description of this Improved Control Shape feat).
Why I dislike the dumbed down beasts ? Well, because nothing prevented beast from having animal intelligence, but nothing forced them to neither. They could be smarter than usually, and this was good. Magical Beasts were beasts that were magical, and beasts were animals that didn't have normal-looking anatomy or were smarter than usually. Additionally, I planned to use beast for some creatures for which an Int score of 1 or 2 don't give them real justice. Intelligent animals like Dolphins or Chimpanzee, for example. Heck, in AD&D 2, Dolphin were as intelligent as human and even had clerics for their own deity (Trishina, a LG goddess) ! They should probably be made as magical beasts now. And I'm somewhat against having real-world creatures considered as magical beasts... Finally, the last reason I dislike it is because this new ruling makes bogus lots of existing material that was perfectly fine before. Since the Magical Beast don't have the same HD, BAB, skill and save rating as the Beast, we have to either dumb down all former beasts to their new animal-like state (and recalculate skill points, by the way), or switch them to Magical Beast and recalculate everything ! Argh ! It was a plot by WotC to create errors in third-party publisher books or what ?
Frankly, I see no reason to force beasts to be that so-narrow category between animals and magical beasts. The beast of yesterday is today's nonmagical magical beast. Anyone who read this sentence should realize this is silly.
And frankly, if Rothé, two-headed vipers and winged snakes (and even Tressym ! blasphemy !) are animals (see the FRCS), what is the point of Beast ? Fantasy animals ? No, since fantasy animals are animals, like the rothé, mutant snakes and tressym prove it. Intelligent animals without supernatural capacity ? No, since they're denied the right to be intelligent. Nothing really worth to be its own category ? Yes, that's exactly what they are. Grr.
Frankly, some of the beasts' interest and challenge was precisely in their cunning and intelligence, not necessarily bright, but often better than that of a bear (simple bear trap: tie a rock to a rope, hanging on a branch, put honey on the rock; a bear will come, and when trying to eat the honey, he'll push the rock, who will come back to his face, and feeling attacked, the bear will puch the rock harder and harder, until he k.o. or killed himself from the returning rock's blows...).
In the update to the errata, I hope this new restriction will be removed.
!
