Need a short summary: Oriental Adventures 3.0

[klofft]

Hi all.

I'm trying to decide if OA is of any use to me. I'm not using Rokugan, I only have one small "faux Asia" country in my homebrew and I don't have any feelings that the versions of the Samurai, Shugenja, Ninja, or Wu Jen from the Complete books suck. Taking all that into account, is there still enough worthwhile material in terms of options and ideas?

Thanks in advance.
C

 

[Nyaricus]

Here's the Review Section of EN World, Page "O" (for Oriental Adventures) with 5 revews of it.

Cheers!

 

[klofft]

Thanks. But I don't need a review; I've read reviews. I'm looking for opinions for its value in a 3.5 game that is not set in an oriental setting. Is it still valuable?

 

[billd91]

If you're not doing a faux Asia sort of thing, then why bother? I like OA and plan to use it with the right culture and area of my campaign, but not much of it makes sense in a culture that isn't, in some way, a sort of faux Asia or at least has similar social structures.

 

[Nyaricus]

If you're not doing a faux Asia sort of thing, then why bother? I like OA and plan to use it with the right culture and area of my campaign, but not much of it makes sense in a culture that isn't, in some way, a sort of faux Asia or at least has similar social structures.

Well, since you need not reveiws of this fair product, go with this advice.

And get rid of the Monk class, while you're at it. I hate that class

 

[Graf]

Ok.

You don’t seem to like the answers that you’re getting. So lets back up a bit and see what we can say.

OA is a brilliant, but confused book. It’s a set of rules, a setting, monsters, spells and classes that are contradictory by design. It was widely hailed as a brilliant book and didn’t win an Ennie because it wound up in the wrong category. (IMHO obviously)

The question you need to answer is:
1) Am I happy with the oriental part of my setting now?

2) Are the areas where I’m not happy going to be in OA?

OA has lots of great ideas, monsters, and weirdness. Even if you find Rokugan irritiating (and I do) it’s a novel setting that manages to get closer to the sort of fantasy-punk (samurai-punk?) you see in anime popular in the West than in any other setting that I’m aware of.

But its not like you –need- to have OA to have an authentic oriental-flavored setting.
If you have a strong image about the kind of setting that your world is going to be then it’s a question of crunch.

OA is a little-bit-of-everything book; in 3.0 it was must-have for the innovative mechanics. Due to its innovativeness at the time many of its best ideas have been shamelessly reprinted elsewhere (Taint, the base classes, spells, PrCs, etc) or else superceeded (basically the same list above).

So you have most of the best crunch elsewhere already.
If you’re looking to add OA-flavored weirdness (a.k.a. fluff) then you might be better off going out and getting something really weird or else more specifically targeted.

Not sure if that helped or not.

 

[Graf]

To be more specific:
No.

You don’t need to have OA to in order to make an acceptable “oriental area” in your game.

 

[klofft]

First, to clarify, I wasn't complaining at all about the answers I was getting.

Second, special thanks, Graf. This is the info I wanted. Based on the fact that I didn't need the setting material, was there worthwhile crunch-factor that could be used generically elsewhere? The answer appears to be no, which is great to know.

Thanks everyone!
C

 

[DeadlyUematsu]

My problem with both versions of Oriental Adventures has always been this: I could have already ran something oriental with just the core. In both books, the only items I ever found constantly useful were the monsters.

 

[Psion]

I'm trying to decide if OA is of any use to me. I'm not using Rokugan, I only have one small "faux Asia" country in my homebrew and I don't have any feelings that the versions of the Samurai, Shugenja, Ninja, or Wu Jen from the Complete books suck.

Well, there's a popular local sentiment that the CW Samurai sucks. One that I share.

Taking all that into account, is there still enough worthwhile material in terms of options and ideas?

Do you have any interest in emulating wuxia flicks, or do the ideas of the Shadowlands and taint appeal to you? Aside from the core classes, the book has some interesting wuxia-esque prestige classes (like the blade dancer). If you have images of players pursuing nimble acrobatic assassins through city streets, or facing off with tainted blood sorcerers, there's some good stuff in there.