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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TerraDave" data-source="post: 4062835" data-attributes="member: 22260">Monte Cook put a <a href="http://www.montecook.com/cgi-bin/page.cgi?montejournal" target="_blank">blog post </a> up on this...denying its his "3.75"...(and saying some other interesting things):Book of Experimental Might This book is going to be released in pdf at DriveThruRPG and RPGNow tomorrow morning. If you haven't been following, it's sort of a one-shot foray back into releasing Malhavoc products just for fun. My day job is still the novel (2nd draft is going very well). This book is the result of some experimenting I've done with the rules for my home campaigns. Hence the name. It's not, as some people have said, my "3.75 edition." And here's why: If you're going to do a whole revision to a game you approach it very differently than you do with a supplement. A supplement institutes changes and additions but changes only what is absolutely necessary for the additions to work. With a new edition or a revision, all bets are off, and everything's fair game. The game is a mass of interconnected pieces. When you change one, you have to be aware of how that affects all the others. With a supplement, you want the impact (the "footprint," if you will) to be absolutely no bigger than it needs to be. With a revision or edition, it doesn't matter how much you change (to a point), you just need to be aware of all the ramifications. It's also not any kind of indictment on the current rules, of which I'm still very proud and very happy with. It's just me playing around with things. In a way, it's like Arcana Evolved in that way--it's a different way to do things, not a condemnation of the existing way. When I wrote about greenbonds and warmains in AE, it wasn't because I didn't like clerics and fighters in the core rules. The book has a lot of variant rules, but it really hinges around two concepts. One is that there are 20 spell levels, corresponding to character level. This is both a big change (because it has a lot of ramifications) and a small one--because once you learn how simple it is to convert back and forth, it's easy. Basically, you just double the existing spell's level, and if it's a weaker spell, you subtract one from the result. So fireball is now a 6th level spell. This book, of course, does that work for you, providing a framework from the core rules. However, in so doing, I found I had to flesh out the spell list with new spells. The book contains a number of spells from Complete Book of Eldritch Might, Book of Hallowed Might, and AE (converted to core rules). I know some of you have those books, but not everyone does, and I always want the system to be complete. Plus, I created a lot of entirely brand new spells. Lastly, I changed some core rules spells and presented all new versions of them, just because after all this time I think a few of them needed a little work. The other concept the changes center upon is to allow characters to go longer without needing to rest. To that end, recovering hit points is a bit easier, and spellcasters have so-called "disciplines" that grant them minor powers that are not expended the way prepared spells or spell slots are. In other words, once the wizard casts all his spells, he's still got a few things to do. As an interesting added effect, this also means that a cleric need give up none of their spellcasting resources in order to heal his friends. If you're playing d20, I hope you'll check it out. I must say, it's been kinda fun to stick my toe back into game design. One last thing. While this will be available as a pdf on Thursday, next week sometime we're planning on playing around with lulu.com for a print version. So if you really prefer print to pdf, look for that announcement next week.</blockquote>

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