opinions on Sovereign Stone D20

[Sir Osis of Liver]

I saw some of the soveriegn stone D20 rulebooks the other day and was wondereing if they were any good?

A friend read the first novel and liked it, and I love larry Elmores art, but would like to make sure i don't waste my money on a bad product.

 

[Gentlegamer]

I second that! I'd like to know if Sovereign Stone is any good as well. Can anyone inform us?

 

[trancejeremy]

Well, have you read the reviews for it on this site? ( the www.d20reviews.com part of this site)

I like it a lot, personally (I gave it a five). The rulebooks are a bit expensive, but pretty high quality.

 

[trancejeremy]

Here's the link to my review. You can get to the other review(s) of it pretty easily from it as well.

http://www.enworld.org/d20reviews.asp?sub=yes&where=active&reviewer=trancejeremy&product=SOVS


Oddly enough, despite it being by Larry Elmore, there's not that much Elmore artwork in it. And somewhat odder, the only scantily clad women in the book are orks

 

[Ace]

I like a quite a bit.
There are several interesting differences between Sov Stone and regular DND

First there are very few prestige classes instead they use varient core classes FreX

In addition to fighter there is soldier (a formation oriented fighter)
archer (powerfull) and a cavalryman class I can't remember the name of.

Second, the races are different Mongol Dwarves (no Joke!) Pirate Orks, Samurai Elves and many different human cultures

Third the magic system is based on elemenal spells. You do not memorize them instead you roll a D20 add mods and if you get a high enough number the spell goes off. Also in certain circumstances you can roll again in suceeding arounds so given time a medium level mage can get off some awesome spells.

Another cool thing, the magic supplement has a spell design system so you can exactly and fairly balance PC spells.

F

 

[kenjib]

The book seems to have a lot of rules and very little information on the actual world and the people that live there.

 

[mythusmage]

My Take on Sovereign Stone

Well written, well designed. Done by people who like what they're doing and wish to share a good thing with folk.

It's a good setting. Both as a fantasy setting, and as a world setting. The races are given a unique slant, and placed in a dynamic world. Mongol dwarfs and seafaring orks. And the taan.

Just got the taan sourcebook. Not your usual evil race. The taan are given the treatment, culture, religion, lifestyle. This is how race sourcebooks should be done. While certainly an evil race by most folks measure, the taan are presented as a people, and not merely sources of XP.

So, yes, I would recommend Sovereign Stone overall. And not just for the Larry Elmore art.

Alan

 

[Kichwas]

The book seems to have a lot of rules and very little information on the actual world and the people that live there.

I agree with this statement.

Official response to telling this to the Sovereign Stone staffers seems to be that they wanted the core books to be the only books that needed rules.

From here on out most of the stuff you see for Sovereign Stone will be 90+% setting and 10-% rules.

This was the pattern they did follow before the game moved over to d20. So maybe they will stick with it in d20.

THat said; the best way to understand and put in context what information is given in the d20 core book is to read the novels. There are 2 out so far and they will really help to bring the world to life.

Even though the first one takes place 300 years before the current date. It's about events that shape the way the world is now. As well the cultural information in it fills in a lot of blanks and hammers home just what they really mean from the descriptions in the source book.

After reading the novels you have a very different opinion of the races than just 'samurai elves', 'pirate orks', and 'mongol dwarves'.

(By the novels the Elves and Orks in particular if the game used DnD alignments would probably be LE elves and CN with good tendancy Orks.)


Rules wise the information in the book really works. It's well balanced and while some would say there's no need for all those new 'fighter variant classes' you could cast the same accusation at the people who made all those new classes for OA. With the same level of justifiability.

In both cases you don't NEED the new classes; but they're not pointless either. They really add flavor.

One difference is that with the exception of the magic classes all of the new classes in Sovereign Stone could be slotted into a 'standard DnD game' with perfect ease.

The magic classes though use an entirely new magic system. To slot them in you'd have to slot that in as well.

That magic system seems to work. But the spells go off very slowly and can be a bit less powerful than most DnD players are used to.

In a playtest I did the mage I used got in one spell during an entire battle because it just took that long to make the spellcasting roll...

But the spell did take out a PC in one hit. With subdual damage.

However while they cast spells slower they have no limits to how many they can cast; which really helps to make the character feel more magical. As long as you don't fail fort saves and go under from hit point loss while casting you can keep going.

 

[Tsyr]

Some comments from me, as the resident semi-fanboy for Sov Stone.

Varient Classes: Another thing that should be mentioned is the fairly strict line between magic and melee... gone are the days of a handful of melee classes becoming spellcasters as a matter of course.... IE, no paladins, rangers, bards, monks... (although I actualy put the Monks in as an enforcer class in the elven Wyred, most of them are lawful neutral and a few lawful evil... for that matter, I also allow elves to take the Samurai core class from OA if they like, but that's really just an optional rule for flavor and provides no tangible game effects one way or 'tuther). Even "spell-like effects" basicy don't exist. I guess you could make a point that Sov Lords and the like are sorta "paladin-ish", but given there are only a specific number of them at any one time...

Elves. Someone said it best a few months back... Actualy, I think it was Arcady... and I'm paraphrasing... "I'd rather be confronted with an armed elf who was trying to kill me, while naked and unarmed, than sit down to tea with a smiling elf". The book doesn't really explain elven culture as well as it could... nor dwarven, for that matter, though it got closer. Read the first novel. The first novel itself could actualy stand-alone as sorta a "history book" type read, as it's set in the past and explains the formation of certain groups of power in the "modern" world.

The Pec'Wae. Tired of kender, hobbits, and tinker gnomes? Not quite desperate enough to pull out Athasian Halflings? Try a new "short guy" race. A race of nature lovers with an almost native-american culture in some respects.

The magic system. So much has been said about the magic system. IMO, I wish Wheel of Time's magic system had been closer to this one. Slotless, manaless casting. Casting magic tires you out (represented by Subdual Damage), but there is no "hard" limiter on casting. Spells can take a while to cast, though. And then there is always the void... the fifth element that never mixes with others, and exacts a price to use.

Religion. The gods are very real, at least in some sense, but nobody gets spells from them like a cleric does... unless maybe you want to say that ALL magic is given by them... But religion has a much more "earth like" feal... There isn't daily proof of the gods existance, gods don't walk the earth, etc.

Thus far their product lineup has been promising as well... the main book, codex of magic, and the Taan sourcebook have all been quite good (or so I've been told on Codex of Magic anyhow... my attempts to secure a copy have been fruitless).

Anyhow, yes, I would recomend picking up Sov Stone. If nothing else, you will get a ton of new rules you can use for just about any game you wish... some cool new core classes (I love the Stalker class... and it's a class that really couldn't be done through existing feats, like, say, the archer could. Same with the soldier.), a great new magic system, some new races (including human varients), new monsters, etc. And that's just from the core book.

 

[Tsyr]

Actualy, I wouldn't say the Ork's are pirates... they are more like the seafolk from Wheel of Time. Sorta like gypsies, actualy.

They are traders and nomads, and while they do have a "home" on a continent to the south, the majority of them spend their life on the sea.

If you liked Dragonlance or Wheel of Time in the slightest you will probably like this setting... It's got a lot of the big-names from those days on board (Wies, Hickman, Perrin, Elmore), and it shows... but it also resembles Wheel of Time in some respects... certain races and cultures, the magic system (incuding it's own varient of the Taint in the Void...), and the black-n-white nature of Good and Evil in the setting.

This isn't a setting for those who enjoy moral relitivism in all things. Good and Evil are forces with a capital letter in the world. Sure, you can debate the evilness of Void... but at the very least most people do consider it evil. You can debate about elves. You can debate about a lot of things. But in the end, Good is good and Evil is evil in the world, as stupid as that sounds. Good and Evil have champions in the setting... the assorted lords... (Strangely, the evil lords were actualy created out of love, in a way... you have to read the first book to understand the history, though)