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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Scurvy_Platypus" data-source="post: 3735878" data-attributes="member: 43283">Criticisms:I do want it to be clear that this _isn't_ the most perfect product out there and everyone should rush out and buy it without thought. I really like what it does, and I think it's solid. But here's some of the negatives I've got with it so far....The organization feels a bit off to me. I find myself flipping back and forth to find bits. The index helps, but it's still a bit scattered. I haven't been able to figure out how exactly I'd organize it differently, but it's occasionally annoying.Spelling. Yeah, there's some bits that have slipped through. Blind Sight seems to be one of those things that caught them a couple of times. In the Everstone book, they make reference to "Blind Site" at one point. In the Companion, an extremely (in my opinion) funny mistake was made where it's called Bling Sight.Class construction. This is a pet peeve of mine with a lot of games. I really wish it was more transparent how something was made. You'd think that back engineering Everstone would be easier, since it's a BESMd20 powered product, but you're only partially correct.For example, it says all the spells were made using the Magic Attribute. Maybe it's because I've got the Stingy Gamer's Edition, maybe it's because it's 3.5, but I'm not quite sure I see how. For example, the Shadow Magi gets Teleport as a spell. 3 CP per rank to buy, and 3 EP per rank to cast. The rangers are Rank 1: 1 mile. Rank 2:10 miles. Rank 3:50 miles. Rank 4: 100 miles.Looking at the Teleport attribute: 5 points per rank, a Teleport Skill check if you're going more than a fraction of the maximum distance, and the Ranks are 1:1 mile, 2:10 miles, 3:1,000 miles, 4:10,000 miles. Energy cost?Well, it looks like the cost is supposed to be half of however many points were spent to buy the Rank in the attribute. That's groovy and all, but the Teleport spell doesn't match up that way.In fact, in theory the Magical attribute cost 4 CP. That then gives you 10 CP to spend buying Attributes that are magic. So for 4 CP I could buy a Rank 2 magical Teleport that cost me 5 EP.Ah, but wait... the Shadow Magi pays 3 CP & 3 EP per rank. So looking at that, one could guess that maybe they simply said it'd be worth 2 CP per rank, but since there's no skill check being made, bump the cost by 1. And the energy they reset the cost slightly making it more expensive.Is that true? I've got no bloody idea. I could see it as a line of reasoning, but it's just a guess.I'm fine with making up my own stuff and deciding what seems reasonable and all, but the way they say it, it _sounds_ like you could reverse engineer what they did and wind up with what it looks like under BESMd20 and I'm not sure that you really can.The book makes a few missteps since it's based on BESMd20, and leaves out bits and pieces. For example, Experience Points. Look at the critters in Everstone, and there's no XP value. Searching through the book, I don't see anything said about how much XP to hand out for doing anything. Is it supposed to be per session? Per monster killed? No clue. I have to go into my BESMd20 book (Stingy Gamer edition pg 84) and find Character Advancement to see what they say. Of course I could go with the default way of handing out XP that D&D uses, I could do some sort of per session award, I could even do the Chi/Rho method from Grim Tales. Everstone really should have said something about it, since they're looking at being a standalone game.The Attributes. Maybe this is a strictly personal preference thing, but I don't think they really needed to duplicate all the Attributes like they did. Just about every class gets Charge Bloodstone for example. Instead of repeating the full listing of what the Attribute does every time it comes up in each class, they should have simply listed the Attribute name and how many ranks the class can buy.The reason why I don't think this is a strictly personal thing is because there isn't a consolidated list of Spells and Attributes. You can look in the index to find them that way, but I don't want to have to remember that the Border Marshal is where Two Weapon fighting is listed (among others). I'd like to just be able to go to a section of the book, and then flip through the alphabetical listing.I don't know, maybe the costs on the Attributes vary depending on the class taking it, in addition to class restricting how many ranks you can buy. I don't have the patience to compare each and every entry to check.There's incomplete bits of information scattered all around. Their plan was that they were going to expand on it and fill in the blanks in future supplements. You can make some inferences, but it would have been nice if they'd take the time to at least explain what they're talking about instead of using it as a teaser to buy product that never was released.For example, the Adone. You can infer that they're human looking since they keep trying to infiltrate the Magi Guilds and they're caught by mind scans/magic (page 25 Magi Training). But there's no real description of them other than that and the fact that they've got some sort of demontech that also apparently uses Bloodstones.No mention either what exactly these Magi that are skilled in reading minds are actually doing. I don't see a listing of anything like that in any of the spells. Sure, I could import d20 spells of one sort or another. Does Everstone have psionics? Maybe that's how the mind stuff is being done, but again it's not clear.What about the Shone? No clue. We know they went up against Hollow Lords and won, and that's about it.Talking about the Library, they mention that Golems are armed with "Slumber Guns". No actual mention of them in the book. I decided I'd run them as being Blaze Pistols that do Stun/Subdual damage. Poking around in the Everstone message archives of the Yahoo group, it turns out that's basically what they are. Again, it's not something hard to come up with, but I can't help but feel I shouldn't really _have_ to if they're going to take the time to mention it.Energy Points. They take the same line that BESMd20 does in mentioning that they can be used in other ways as well such as altering dice rolls or game events. And then just like BESMd20, they fail to actually say _how_ to use them in this way.That irks me. Energy Points have the potential to be used as Action Point, along with fueling abilities, spells, and rune strings. That's really cool. So why don't they actually _say_ what they think an EP is worth for doing something like that? They're clearly going for an action packed approach with Everstone. EP is a simple enough resource for a player to manage, giving them a fiddly bit to play with and use in different ways for their character, why not actually go that one little step further and say, "A reroll is worth Xnumber of Energy Points" or "A player may also spend [x number] of Energy Points to gain a bonus of [Y] to their dice roll. "I'm going to try and figure out a way of rolling some sort of Action Point benefits into Energy Points, but once again I feel that they could have taken the extra step and simply done it at the outset.World info. In addition to those specifics I mentions above... you know I look at the partial snapshot of the continent they have where Everstone is located, and then I look at the map of the Everstone Valley, and I can't make the two of 'em really match up. I _think_ I know where Everstone is, because it's the only place that makes sense, and yet it's not quite clear how it actually fits there. Maybe it is just a tiny valley nestled inbetween all those mountains, but that doesn't quite jive with what they say. And the Everstone map just confuses things more. A bit better of a match up would have been nice, as well as an actual map of the bloody continent. You don't have to give me a world map of Lannith, but at least give me a map of where all of this stuff is initially happening.These are the big ones that occur to me. I'm sure there's other things that will rub other people wrong, but these are the ones that get me.Edit: I really do like Everstone though, both in the version of BESMd20 rules they use, as well as the world background. I just didn't want it to seem like I'm some fanboy that's unware of the flaws or worse yet, trying to conceal flaws. It's got rough edges, but it's easy for me to move past 'em. The enthusiam of the game and the effort that's gone into it really makes up for alot of the shortcomings. I'm also willing to give 'em a break since they managed to put out such a fine first product. The world is engaging and looks like a lot of fun, and there's all sorts of opportunities for different kinds of games. And I _really_ like what they did in terms of taking BESMd20 which looked like it had a lot of potential, and actually doing something solid with it.Everstone slims down a number of things in D&D/d20 that I don't really care about, and opens it up and makes it much more flexible, while still retaining a clear class structure.</blockquote>

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