Avalanche Press - Celtic Age
Just picked this one up and skimmed some sections on the train ride home. I must say I like what little I've seen, though I have a quibble or two about some rules for the Celtic Druid they have in there.
It's a very scaled down version of the D&D Druid, I get the feeling that this source book is going for a really low magic world - it's more about atmosphere and about being as close to the real legends and history of Celtic society as possible. They also have a magic system that uses a pool of what amounts to spell points, but they call it "Understanding." Essentially the Druid gets 5 points of Understanding per level and various spells cost various amounts. Also you only have access to certain spells at certain levels like before, but the lists are set up a bit differently (not worth explaining here).
My main problem with the system as written, there seems to be no bonus to your magic pool based on Wisdom (again, I only skimmed the book, but it doesn't seem to be in there...). The incentive to have a high Wisdom as a Druid doesn't seem to be supported by the rules. This is particularly distressing because this pool of energy you are drawing from is called "Understanding!!" Shouldn't that imply that Wisdom affects your Understanding pool? I would propose that Druids should get 1 + WIS Mod Understanding points per level. That way, a Druid with an 18 or 19 WIS gets the same 5 Understanding / level suggested under this system. Presumably, having higher Wisdom means you have greater innate understanding, thus should get more out of your learning as you level up. Raise you WIS to 20 and you get 6 Understanding per level.
I wonder if the rules they set down were actually playtested? I noticed in the very brief credits section they had the authors, layout, art direction, illustrators, etc., but nothing about playtesters. Strange...
Other then this problem, the book seems to have great atmosphere, a lot of info about Celtic culture and using that in game. These were all things I was looking for. Really, the book is 1/2 a tract on Celtic culture, the rest being rules interspersed with more Celtic culture stuff (explanations of classes and gods, etc. really fall into both catagories in this book).
Would like to hear from some others who've looked at this book. What do you think about my suggested rule alteration (assuming I didn't miss something that's in there already).
Oh well, May will be well worth the wait, I'm sure.
