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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SimonMoon5" data-source="post: 2191571" data-attributes="member: 5821">I just bought the pdf. Here are a couple of thoughts. (This is not a review.)(1) They admit that they're not interested in game balance, and boy does it show. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Still, I don't mind too much. Sure, there's a large PC race with like a +8 strength and only minor penalties, while there are also races that are near-human with not much of anything special.  I can live with that, since the original Talislanta was sort of wacky like that.(2) The magic system is wonderfully inventive. However, I'm not sure how "fair" (I'm trying to avoid the word "balanced") it is, compared to 3.0/3.5. For example, the simple version of a magic missile spell does a d6 damage (never more, unless you change it on the fly, in which case it can still only do 2d6 damage) and it also has a Reflex save. It's not trivial to cast because it *does* always hit (except for the Reflex save). And it's not a "Reflex half" spell. One save and you take no damage. Spells that might be effective in combat (like equivalent to a 2nd or 3rd level D&D spell) are very difficult (or difficult-looking) to cast, with casting DCs in the 30s (you need to make a skill check to succeed). (3) And most importantly, it seems that there's an important chunk or two of rules left out. Perhaps they will come out with a DMG, because that's what I need. For example, there are no item creations feats in the list of acceptable feats that one can take. This is reasonable, since you can't very well use "Craft Wand" when spells aren't categorized by levels. On the other hand, this means that there are no magic items in the rules... well, okay, there are a few trivial talismans and what-not... but there are no +1 swords, no cloaks of protection, no rings, no wands, no staves, no weapons, no armor, and almost no miscellaneous items. And yet, the rules do mention what items can be created by different schools of magic. Necromancers might create weapons that harm opponents. But how? Those rules aren't given to us. And, of course, this means that you can't *buy* the items you need (apart from a few useless trinkets), since there is no such list of items. So, that's a pain and it's what effectively makes the rules useless to me. Of course, other opinions may vary.(4) There are some typos. There are also what appear to be rules left over from a previous incarnation of the game, that make no sense in d20 rules. (Something like "Monsters summoned by such a spell will be Ability Level 7 or below.") And under some of the schools of magic, the rules say that certain abilities that casters have are spells that are listed below... but they're not listed below, leaving me to think that these were spells in a previous version of the game that got cut for this version. In other words, we're missing another chunk of the rules.And I've really only looked at the magic system and character races, since those were the reasons I bought this version of Talislanta. There may be some exceptionally good stuff in some of the other sections. I just haven't read them all yet.</blockquote>

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