Review of Castles & Crusades

[Krieg]

Did I got right? There are no bestiary of any sort in the C&C PHB? I thought they were trying to produce a book comparable to the D&D Rules Cyclopedia, which not only included a bestiary but also mass combat and domain rules, as well a short introduction to the Mystara setting.

That was the original plan, but Troll Lords decided that time constraints and hitting the $20 price point were of greater concern.

Advertising blurb SNAFU aside $20 is a heck of a value for what C&C does contain.

 

[Akrasia]

....
Advertising blurb SNAFU aside $20 is a heck of a value for what C&C does contain.

Best straightforward description of the PHB yet.

 

[Von Ether]

Get's the big ol' "meh" from me.

Glad you guys and gals that own it are digging it, though!

Based on what I have seen and heard, it pretty much just trades one kind of complexity for another, and one kind of awkwardness for another.

Perfection remains outside our grasp...

We got rid of feats, but then traded off 8 core classes for 13 core classes. Since I see standard PrC class abilites as "specialized feats," and being advised that coverting PrCs and such is simply a matter of making feats into class abilites, I don't see that feats have really vanished, they only been locked into various archetype concepts.

I'm still on the fence deciding if this is the switch in complexity that I want.

As an aside, no one has mentioned during their ideas on conversion about the XP tables. Which one do you use for converted classes or new classes?

 

[Mythmere1]

I don't see that feats have really vanished, they only been locked into various archetype concepts.

I'm still on the fence deciding if this is the switch in complexity that I want.

As an aside, no one has mentioned during their ideas on conversion about the XP tables. Which one do you use for converted classes or new classes?

I think your comment about feats is right on the money, except that feats have vanished in the sense that the mechanism of gaining feats is no longer an imbedded aspect of the combat classes. The classes are balanced without feats, so you can either choose to use them for future advancement or not. Our group actually added feats back in as our first house rule: 1 at 3rd, then at 6th, etc.

I don't think there's a good rule for how to handle converted classes and experience tables. There are more ways to "balance" C&C classes than in 3E, since you can use the level progression as a tool, but it doesn't make it any less of a black art to create new classes than it is in 3E. I have used the same method I used for monster CR in 3E - find what's closest to the concept and try to keep the "power level" about the same.

 

[Mythmere1]

Wow, you must be psychic! You already know what my main complaint is.

I'm going to do my best to move beyond the editing/layout issues, though there really is no excuse for some of it. Don't get me wrong, though - it seems like an eminently playable, fun game.

I could say more, but I'll save it for my review.

No psychic powers required on that one . The layout and editing are awful. But after I playtested it, I realized that I had to separate the game from the production values. I figured that someone reading a review is more interested in how the game plays than in the quality of the package. And since a lot of the game's benefits come from intangibles like pacing and "feel," they aren't immediately obvious while reading.

 

[Breakdaddy]

Nice review, thanks for sharing! We are having a great time playing C&C right now, and I am itching to bust out some of my old modules to run this group through. I am almost always the GM, but there is one other GM in our normal play group and he will be running a C&C Dragon Mountain game in the future. Looking forward to this!

 

[MonsterMash]

There is also an extensive review on RPG.net (not that anyone from here would ever go there )

 

[Breakdaddy]

There is also an extensive review on RPG.net (not that anyone from here would ever go there )

Yeah its a pretty good review IIRC.

 

[Von Ether]

I think your comment about feats is right on the money, except that feats have vanished in the sense that the mechanism of gaining feats is no longer an imbedded aspect of the combat classes. The classes are balanced without feats, so you can either choose to use them for future advancement or not. Our group actually added feats back in as our first house rule: 1 at 3rd, then at 6th, etc.

I don't think there's a good rule for how to handle converted classes and experience tables. There are more ways to "balance" C&C classes than in 3E, since you can use the level progression as a tool, but it doesn't make it any less of a black art to create new classes than it is in 3E. I have used the same method I used for monster CR in 3E - find what's closest to the concept and try to keep the "power level" about the same.

I know this puts me in a very small minority, but I see the "black art" to creating "new classes" in 3e is in feat selection and multiclassing. LOL! One of the niftiest things I saw in a 3rd party product was sidebars that showed how a player could acheive similar results via multiclassing core classes compared to the custom PrCs introduced in the book. (The race books by Bad Axe Games.) Funny enough the sidebars were billed as "Well if your GM says, "no" here is how you can do it anyway.

I mean it's nifty to have others come up with new PrCs and core classes, but I indeed seem them as optional thanks to flexible multiclassing. Hence, my lack of urgency. Until some typos are fix and there's some multiclassing rules in place, CnC is not my cup of tea yet.

 

[Mythmere1]

I know this puts me in a very small minority, but I see the "black art" to creating "new classes" in 3e is in feat selection and multiclassing. LOL! One of the niftiest things I saw in a 3rd party product was sidebars that showed how a player could acheive similar results via multiclassing core classes compared to the custom PrCs introduced in the book. (The race books by Bad Axe Games.) Funny enough the sidebars were billed as "Well if your GM says, "no" here is how you can do it anyway.

I mean it's nifty to have others come up with new PrCs and core classes, but I indeed seem them as optional thanks to flexible multiclassing. Hence, my lack of urgency. Until some typos are fix and there's some multiclassing rules in place, CnC is not my cup of tea yet.

I agree that there's pretty much no need for new classes in 3E - the feats and skills make it possible to create an incredible variety within the existing classes. PrC's are a different matter, since they've usually got new class abilities.

In C&C, since the feat/skill flexibility isn't there, I think there will be a raft of optional core character classes created in the net community to reflect many of the "nuances" possible in 3E. This was already the case in the first and second editions of D&D, and it will build out player choice without sacrificing the simplicity of archetypal classes.

But I hear you on multiclassing. There are lots of ways to handle it if the players starts out multiclassed, but using different xp progressions for different classes makes it hard to establish a good system for multiclassing if the character is already beyond first level. I'm still waiting to see how that's done.