Savage Species- is there something wrong with me!?

[Belen]

Hey all,

I purchased Savage Species last week. I instantly regretted the purchase when I got home. I had expected the book to be somewhat similar to the old Humanoids Handbook, but I was in for a shocking suprise.

Instead of mundame monsters that I would actually allow people to play such as flind or wemic, I saw monsters that were completely over the top! What GM in their right mind would ever allow an air elemental PC!

Yes, it could be a good GM reference to make monster BBEG to work against the PCs, but never in my right mind would I allow a person to play such a character. I just cannot understand why the book is full of overpowered, unbelieveable choices for PCs. I could count the mundane monsters on one hand. Why did I need to see an example of every elemental?! Could they not have detailed ONE elemental type and made room for some actual races that a PC could use in a campaign!?

I am 26 and I feel old. It feels like WOTC is turning DnD into another round of Magic. How could they ever have thought that the races in Savage Species would be something that a GM would allow players to use!?

Am I too old and disconnected from what people really want these day? It certainly feels like it. That book is great for munchkins, but I want something that could be useful for mature groups. This book is worse than BoVD!

Dave

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

To take a specific example from your post...what exactly is wrong with an air elemental PC? What ECL is it, and what powers does it have that players might not have at that level?

I'm thinking it's main powers are a) high flight speed, perfect b) immunities c) um...

Surely it can't be THAT bad?

 

[Zander]

Dave,

I completely agree. When I found out here at EN World what monsters would and would not be in SS, I decided not to get it. I went to my FLGS on Saturday. They had SS but I got another D20 product instead (Slayer's Guide to Undead by Col Pladoh published by Mongoose).

I think the 3.5 MM will contain what we want and I'm looking forward to it for that reason.

~~~~~~~~

Hello Matt!

 

[francisca]

Hey all,
--snip--

What GM in their right mind would ever allow an air elemental PC!

--snip--

Dave

Dave, I'm with you. No way, no how, at least in my current setting and with my current group.

That said, I think it's a matter of taste. Some groups really enjoy playing more exotic creatures. Clearly, Wizards is trying to support them. (I was going to say "cater" to them, but that seems a bit harsh to me.) I for one, drew the line at the Awakened 26th level Druid Sperm Whale that appeared in Dungeon magazine when ELH came out.

You might find AEG's Monster or FFG's Monster Handbook more to your liking. They seem to be more in-line with what you are looking for.

--speculation--
maybe that's why savage species is more exotic, as they didn't want to overlap?
--specualtion--

As always, I wait for reviews to pop up here before I buy anything.

 

[francisca]

I think the 3.5 MM will contain what we want and I'm looking forward to it for that reason.

Boy, that would be nice! I was hoping for more than just the half-ogre in the PHB, but as long as I get some sort of pointers to use the info the the 3.5MM, I'll be happy.

There is a group of Hobgoblins in my homebrew that are great candidates for PCs.

 

[Eridanis]

I am 26 and I feel old. It feels like WOTC is turning DnD into another round of Magic. How could they ever have thought that the races in Savage Species would be something that a GM would allow players to use!?

I'm 32, and I'm glad I bought the book. To answer your question, the team probably stuck by the mantra of "tools, not restrictions," and decided to include as many monster classes as possible, rather than deciding that no one would want to play a certain race, like air elementals in your example. I'm sure that if they had only done two dozen or so, we would have, instead of this thread, a complaint from someone else that monster XYZ was left out. You can't please all the people all the time. And I'm sure that in the proper campaign and with good players and DM, an air elelmntal is a fine character choice. (I, for one, would love to play a pseudodragon some time - a race that was left out of the book, but can be easily built with the guideliunes provided with the book.)

That said, I don't completely agree with all of the ECLs and such - but Rule 0 is a handy thing, and the prestige classes, spells, and the half-ogre alone made this a worthwhile purchase for me.

 

[Tonguez]

Instead of mundame monsters that I would actually allow people to play such as flind or wemic, I saw monsters that were completely over the top! What GM in their right mind would ever allow an air elemental PC!
Dave

So are you saying that Flind and Wemic are NOT in the book?
That is disappointing news

hmm so exactly what monsters are NOT in SavSpecies?

 

[Belen]

I cannot be certain as I do not have my 2E material near me, but I did not see ANY monsters from the old Humanoids Handbook. The most mundane monsters in the book were:

Minotaur, Illithid, Half-Ogre


Dave

 

[mmu1]

I can definitely relate to that feeling... My current group tried playing an evil campaign with monstrous PCs recently as an experiment, and stopped after one session. It was fun thinking those characters up, but the party ended being a damned circus, with too many special abilities PCs just weren't meant to have. It was grating for us, and much too hard on the DM.

It especially gets on my nerves when trying to find a group to play in - so many people are in a rush to include every single supplement in their games even though they a) Don't know the core rules well enough, never mind the dozen additional books they're using and b) Don't have any foresight when it comes to game balance issues - that it gets damn hard to find a DM that really knows what he's doing.

Which is why I end up DMing most of the time

 

[Aeolius]

I, on the other hand, picked up Savage Species and feel this book is indispensable. Granted, my campaign is set beneath the surface of the sea; standard PH races have to either be highly modified, or ignored completely, to fit into the game.

From my perspective, SS gives me ECL values for many aquatic races, new undersea weapons, PrCs, and templates. 3e stats for hippocampi, merrow, and scrag are revealed. And what's not to like about emancipated spawn?

Yes, I would allow a PC to progress as a water elemental. After all, half-elementals, genasi, and elemental savants have already been detailed.

To top it all off, support from the book's authors has been phenomenal, on WotC boards. An aquatic template was cut for space, but was posted shortly after the book's release, by one of the authors. Nearly a thousand posts in ten days, over there. Clearly, folks want to talk about this book.