Personal AU Reviews (KM, JeffB and Kitsune here)

[drnuncheon]

I love the talents. Perfect for the 'you're a natural at this'. The only thing I don't entirely like is that two-weapon fighters/double-weapon fighters are pretty much locked into taking Ambidexterity as their talent, which is going to put a damper on moving to that weapon path later in the game.

I'm not sure what you mean about unbalanced racial modifiers, though - the only one I can see that might be unbalanced is the giants, with +2 Str, -2 Dex...but Dex and Str are close enough to equal, and the giants have slightly less in the way of other racial abilities. (And as for the race levels giving only +1, they're no different balance-wise than you getting only a +1 every 4th level.)

The religion stuff is all in the racial descriptions. A priest isn't a character class - he could be anything from a Greenbond to a Warmain. I particularly love the faen's predilection for divine revelations of new deities when under stress.

The class I felt that was missing the most was the rogue, too. Sure, the Akashic fills the 'highly skilled' niche, but a burglar shouldn't need to access the mystical 'racial memory' and belong to a guild just to be able to pick a lock. (OK, you could do some of that with an Unfettered, so that's not as bad.)

One thing that utterly threw me, though: one of the skills Monte dropped was Profession! I realize that many characters never took it (their profession being 'adventurer') but I would have thought it was important for NPCs, those PCs who didn't come from an adventuring background, and as a sort of 'catch-all'. Right now, magisters and runethanes make better sailors than the unfettered, and that just seems wrong to me.

Anyway, I'm definitely looking forward to running something using AU...I just haven't figured out what yet.

J

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

The quibble here lies in things 'left out.' Namely, there's no religious figures at all...which could be okay, but it made me feel like the setting as a whole was missing religion, and that nearly obliterates my suspension of disbelief, personally.

I'd been intending to pick up AU already, but that quote is enough to make me run out to the store before I finish breakfast. I am *so* sick and tired of settings where the gods walk the earth and meddle in the affairs of man.

Nothing turns me off quicker in a game than when a DM starts waving the deus ex machina wand around willy-nilly, and a low-religion setting (as opposed to a low-magic setting?) makes any sort of divine intervention the awe-inspiring event that it should be. I'm all for religious institutions as far as political or social influence is concerned, but I'd be quite happy to leave out the 'my god can beat up your god' stuff.

 

[Dinkeldog]

For those that didn't notice, I merged Kitsune's review in with JeffB's. I'll probably keep merging in different people's reviews into the one thread so we don't all suffer from AU exhaustion, but it would be even better if people put their reviews in here rather than starting new threads.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Nothing turns me off quicker in a game than when a DM starts waving the deus ex machina wand around willy-nilly, and a low-religion setting (as opposed to a low-magic setting?) makes any sort of divine intervention the awe-inspiring event that it should be. I'm all for religious institutions as far as political or social influence is concerned, but I'd be quite happy to leave out the 'my god can beat up your god' stuff.

This may seem a strange question, but how does AU effect your DM still doing this? Unless you've got some strange DM that only follows what's in the book, most GMs are going to keep GMing the way they like.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

This may seem a strange question, but how does AU affect your DM still doing this? Unless you've got some strange DM that only follows what's in the book, most GMs are going to keep GMing the way they like.

Plus, AU gives more power to the DM. There are more judgement calls for a DM to make. Which is a good thing, but not in the hands of a DM who is poor at making judgement calls on the fly.