Need a short summary: Oriental Adventures 3.0
- Thread starter klofft
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frankthedm
First Post
I was not too keen on how the book defaulted to the L5R backdrop. To me it felt like having half the fluff with the rest of the background in another book. A slightly more historic setting would have been to my liking.
Hell, I'd love a 3.5 version using Kamigawa.
Hell, I'd love a 3.5 version using Kamigawa.
Do you like Rokugan? Plenty of people don't, but I find it has grown on me over the years, so much so in fact that I went out and bought the Rokugan campaign setting as well. In fact, it forms the basis for my "Samurai in Space" futuristic True 20 campaign.iwatt said:
The problem with buying Oriental Adventures for the fluff is, as people have said, its a very confused book. It starts off in the usual way, with races and classes and equipment, but goes on to state that most of it is not suitable for Rokugan.
Then the Rokugan campaign setting expands on the Rokugan stuff, but also contradicts some of it - for example, the Mantis are a minor clan in OA, but have achieved major clan status in the RCS.
I'd almost recommend getting the Rokugan campaign setting instead, but I think it might turn out to be an exercise in frustration, as I'm not sure how much you actually need OA to make sense of it.
Alternatively, you could go for the non-d20 Legend of the Five Rings book. I imagine its got plenty of fluff in it, all of which is in the same place.
sniffles
First Post
Because WotC bought the property from AEG.Nebulous said:
Speaking of a revised OA, it's already been updated to 3.5 in an issue of Dragon. Issue #318, I think.
I like some of the prestige classes, the maho-tsukai concept, and the monsters. I'd dearly love to play an Oriental campaign myself, but none of my fellow players are interested.
Arkhandus
First Post
I'm guessing they just wanted something different and new (to D&D anyway) when they chose to use Rokugan for Oriental Adventures instead of Kara-Tur. Likely the folks who were going to work on the project were really into Legend of the Five Rings and wanted to use its setting. Or maybe they figured that they'd sell more copies of OA if it were being supported by AEG's supplements, since WotC didn't plan to support it themselves.
If you want OA for the setting/flavor, just buy AEG's Rokugan book instead. It's much more focused on the setting of L5R, and reprints/replaces several bits of rules material from OA anyhow, whereas OA is more a grab-bag of assorted stuff for various kinds of oriental setting.
OA still has some useful and interesting stuff when choosing not to use the Rokugan setting. Several good prestige classes (blade dancer, ninja spy, singh rager, tattooed monk, witch hunter, etc.), some neat and useful magic items (shaman's bones armor, flying phoenix sword, nekode of spider climbing, courtier's obi, eight diagram coins, flute of the snake, porcelain mask, wilding clasp, etc.), the Iaijutsu Focus skill, a handful of neat martial arts feats, martial arts mastery abilities, a good Monsters chapter, and some Taint-rules-related stuff not in 3.5 books (to my knowledge; the basic Taint rules are reprinted in Unearthed Arcana I think, and a variant of them is in Heroes of Horror IIRC, but the extra bits like maho-bujin and akutenshi aren't, I think).
That said, it obviously isn't much use if you don't plan on using any oriental region of your chosen campaign setting very often. Very little in Oriental Adventures is useful outside of oriental campaign regions, though you could certainly use the monsters and a few prestige classes elsewhere (giant toads and yetis are entirely appropriate elsewhere, as are the bear warrior, shadow scout, and witch hunter, as well as possibly the eunuch warlock and singh rager; other monsters and PrCs may be a bit less likely to fit well).
Wizards of the Coast isn't gonna make a Revised Oriental Adventures. And can you imagine if they did? Just look at how they mangled and munchkinized the Psionics Handbook into the Expanded Psionics Handbook and Complete Psionic...... The 3.0 PsiHB only had one or two broken powers far as I know, and only if the DM wasn't using the assumed average nuumber of encounters per day and such. A little tweaking, weakening, and expanding would have made a fine Revised PsiHB, but nooo, what we got was the Expanded And Unprecedented Crystalpunk Munchkin Psionics Handbook.
Wizards is going to keep making their environment-based books, their 'races of' books, their 'complete' books (what a horribly false name for them, too), their 'heroes of' books, and possible additions to the 'tome of' and 'codex' books (likely a Fiendish Codex II and maybe III, maybe some Planar Codex books or Celestial Codex books (although quite unlikely), a Tome of Magic II perhaps, possibly a Tome of Battle II, probably a Tome of Adventure or somesuch, etc.). And of course, a few more Eberron and Forgotten Realms supplements. If we're lucky, Wizards will finally make another Greyhawk book or some manner of real Planescape support (not the meager scraps they toss in Manual of the Planes, Planar Handbook, etc.). It's doubtful that they'll provide any Oriental Adventures support, or any more republished settings (besides that Ravenloft book they're making, IIRC, but then, Ravenloft was already supported for a while by another publisher with 3E). Further psionics support is doubtful, though there may be a few scraps for it in some of the last few 3.5E books put out before Wizards decides 3E is too bloated and wonky and stagnant, moving in to cash in on 4th Edition (more like a 3.95 edition I'd bet, but we can always hope they'll put more effort into it and be innovative again like they were for 3.0's release).
If you want OA for the setting/flavor, just buy AEG's Rokugan book instead. It's much more focused on the setting of L5R, and reprints/replaces several bits of rules material from OA anyhow, whereas OA is more a grab-bag of assorted stuff for various kinds of oriental setting.
OA still has some useful and interesting stuff when choosing not to use the Rokugan setting. Several good prestige classes (blade dancer, ninja spy, singh rager, tattooed monk, witch hunter, etc.), some neat and useful magic items (shaman's bones armor, flying phoenix sword, nekode of spider climbing, courtier's obi, eight diagram coins, flute of the snake, porcelain mask, wilding clasp, etc.), the Iaijutsu Focus skill, a handful of neat martial arts feats, martial arts mastery abilities, a good Monsters chapter, and some Taint-rules-related stuff not in 3.5 books (to my knowledge; the basic Taint rules are reprinted in Unearthed Arcana I think, and a variant of them is in Heroes of Horror IIRC, but the extra bits like maho-bujin and akutenshi aren't, I think).
That said, it obviously isn't much use if you don't plan on using any oriental region of your chosen campaign setting very often. Very little in Oriental Adventures is useful outside of oriental campaign regions, though you could certainly use the monsters and a few prestige classes elsewhere (giant toads and yetis are entirely appropriate elsewhere, as are the bear warrior, shadow scout, and witch hunter, as well as possibly the eunuch warlock and singh rager; other monsters and PrCs may be a bit less likely to fit well).
Wizards of the Coast isn't gonna make a Revised Oriental Adventures. And can you imagine if they did? Just look at how they mangled and munchkinized the Psionics Handbook into the Expanded Psionics Handbook and Complete Psionic...... The 3.0 PsiHB only had one or two broken powers far as I know, and only if the DM wasn't using the assumed average nuumber of encounters per day and such. A little tweaking, weakening, and expanding would have made a fine Revised PsiHB, but nooo, what we got was the Expanded And Unprecedented Crystalpunk Munchkin Psionics Handbook.
Wizards is going to keep making their environment-based books, their 'races of' books, their 'complete' books (what a horribly false name for them, too), their 'heroes of' books, and possible additions to the 'tome of' and 'codex' books (likely a Fiendish Codex II and maybe III, maybe some Planar Codex books or Celestial Codex books (although quite unlikely), a Tome of Magic II perhaps, possibly a Tome of Battle II, probably a Tome of Adventure or somesuch, etc.). And of course, a few more Eberron and Forgotten Realms supplements. If we're lucky, Wizards will finally make another Greyhawk book or some manner of real Planescape support (not the meager scraps they toss in Manual of the Planes, Planar Handbook, etc.). It's doubtful that they'll provide any Oriental Adventures support, or any more republished settings (besides that Ravenloft book they're making, IIRC, but then, Ravenloft was already supported for a while by another publisher with 3E). Further psionics support is doubtful, though there may be a few scraps for it in some of the last few 3.5E books put out before Wizards decides 3E is too bloated and wonky and stagnant, moving in to cash in on 4th Edition (more like a 3.95 edition I'd bet, but we can always hope they'll put more effort into it and be innovative again like they were for 3.0's release).
My take on it is that OA was one of the first rate crunch books of 3.0. Lots of cool new classes, (Including the Shaman and Sohei, which have never been reprinted, despite being argueably the most innovative of the new classes) Prestige Classes, Feats, monsters, spells, races, Fighting Styles, Iajutsu, Taint...
However, great swathes of the book have been ported over to 3.5 already, so while there's still a few gems to be found, it's not as value fortified as it was before being plundered by the Complete books and UA.
Flavor wise, it's quite confused as it's not divided into clear "Rokugan" and "other" sections, and because the Non-Rokugan fluff is pretty much random cool stuff rather than an attempt at any sort of coherent setting. This is well illustrated by the section that discusses how to use OA to create a faux India setting. It's more of a "OA setting tookit+Rokugan" than anything.
However, great swathes of the book have been ported over to 3.5 already, so while there's still a few gems to be found, it's not as value fortified as it was before being plundered by the Complete books and UA.
Flavor wise, it's quite confused as it's not divided into clear "Rokugan" and "other" sections, and because the Non-Rokugan fluff is pretty much random cool stuff rather than an attempt at any sort of coherent setting. This is well illustrated by the section that discusses how to use OA to create a faux India setting. It's more of a "OA setting tookit+Rokugan" than anything.
