Savage Species- is there something wrong with me!?

[Henry]

Let's please eliminate the sniping, ladies and gentlemen.

As the old saying goes, a kind word turns away wrath.









And for the record, I agree with 1 thing Sholari said - the more feats and special abilites developed for the game, the harder it is to keep everything in balance. It's still the job of the discerning GM to know if optional material included in one's game will imbalance it. And the Savage Species guide is no less optional than anything else outside of the big three books. Heck, it's no less optional than the stuff IN the big three books.

 

[jester47]

hear hear brotha!

Aaron.

 

[buzzard]

Well, for criticizing someone about making assumptions... you are making some mighty big assumptions there yourself, pal. As one of the minority is critical of some things being taken too far are 3rd edition, that doesn't necessarily mean that it predisposes me to 1st edition either. The point I am trying to make is that if you have enough power races, prestige classes, power feats, etc., there _are ways_ to break the system because the game designer can not anticipate every possible combination. Now that in itself isn't too bad because I can just find another group for a player that tries to do these things... as I have done twice already. There are a lot of very good things about the 3rd edition system, but there is such a proliferation of munchkins like yourself in the game now than I have ever seen in any previous edition.

Ahh, I'm a munchkin? Interesting. You have a fear of new things because they potentially can be abused, and I'm a munchkin based on your fear. Your analysis continues to be utter nonsense.

If you had managed to comprehend my initial point, you would have seen that there is very little in Savage Species which wasn't already present dating back to the DMG. Monster races are old hat. If you were wearing some form of blinders which guaranteed your ignorance, well fine, but it was already there. Savage Species does, in fact, clarify and, most likely, power down the monster classes.

You appear to have a generic fear of supplements. Have you read Savage Species? I'd say the odds are sharply against it. While there is no shortage of overpowered stuff available in 3rd Ed (though usually from Third parties), SS does not happen to be an example.

In any case, claiming that 3rd edition has more munchkin than 2nd edition is fatuous. I've never seen munchkins like in 2nd edition. So much of the system was broken that it isn't even funny. Worse yet came Skills and Powers. I witnessed one session of a game of that and quit in disgust.

As for the 1st edition comment on my part I suppose it would be as valid for a 2nd edition point of view. But the claim of a 25 in a stat being significant demonstrates an anachronistic viewpoint vis a vis the rules. That viewpoint appears to also be unfammiliar with the 3rd edition rules set.

buzzard

 

[WizarDru]

Let's please eliminate the sniping, ladies and gentlemen.

As the old saying goes, a kind word turns away wrath.

Ooh! Ooh! Post the kitty! Post the kitty!


(Hey, wait a minute, a member of B.A.D.D.? Why haven't you gone here? Just saying, is all.)

 

[Vocenoctum]

Which means you're not creating the MM monster any more. You're basically designing a new class with a funny shape. That defeats the point of making a class that recreates a monster, doesn't it?

Righteo.
For the record, I like what you did with the Monster Classes, and they fit the ECL system. I just think some of the races would be better represented in different ways.

Remember, Options, not Restrictions! (or, however that goes)

 

[I'm A Banana]

Well, until I can whip up that lil' something...here's how I'd rationalize it for the de facto cosmology:

When a critter gets to the point where it can transform into a greater critter, the process it goes through is so revolutionary that it spends ALL it's XP to get to that new creature, and emerges fresh as a 1st level critter. It has to work it's way back up the system, starting from scratch, all over again. A Vrock is *potentially* more powerful than a little kitten, but he needs to build up his Vrockitude. His earlier incarnations as lil' mc Dretchy don't have any bearing on his current status.

So their advancement in one form doesn't matter in the slightest.

Or perhaps they need to use the Rituals to transform? I haven't looked at that chapter too closely yet, so I don't know if those could be used...but it seems to make a certain sense.

ANYHOO, I'll go back and make sure my fiend-species are right again. ^_^;

 

[Sholari]

Okay, I'm going to tone down the rhetoric and make a couple points. All these new races, prestige classes, etc. aren't so horrible in and of themselves. Of course as DM I can chose not to use them. But the direction the industry is heading in I am seeing more and more of them in modules and other DM resources incorporate them. I buy modules to save time... but when I start having to make all sort of modifications to modules just to use them, they lose that value for me. I'm crossing my fingers that not all the game companies will go down this path.

Point two, the Magic syndrome. Magic the Gathering started off as a really well designed game. Over the years in order to make more money WOTC started selling sucessive lines of new and more powerful Magic cards. After enough new lines of cards the game became less about skill and more about whoever was willing to blow $3000 on a collection. In essence, as a system the game lost its balance. Granted you could always argue with that person who had spent all that money on all those cards not to use certain cards but they had a clear incentive to be stubborn about things. The game is now a shadow of what it used to be. I see a similar trend with 3rd edition D&D. Maybe Savage Species isn't the culprit but there is definitely an escalation in power. All you need to do is put a 1st edition fighter up against a 2nd edition fighter up against a 3rd edition fighter. Hands down the 3rd edition fighter will win. Is edition 3.5 going to take this yet one step farther? Is there a point where you draw the line or should we all start playing god characters? I think there is at least a certain subset of D&D players that want to see a game world that is willing to preserve the balance more.

Finally, the game has become more about playing a half-dragon/half-troll wizard/dragon disciple/archmage/psionic adept than it is about roleplaying. Its become all about what the characters get and the mechanics of how they advance, than playing a three-dimensional character and telling a story. I am sure not everyone is this way, but I just haven't seen as much quality of roleplaying being produced by many third edition players.

 

[Spatula]

All you need to do is put a 1st edition fighter up against a 2nd edition fighter up against a 3rd edition fighter. Hands down the 3rd edition fighter will win.

I can make a 1st lvl 1E fighter triple-specialized in the longsword. Better yet, make it a drow fighter, wielding two longswords. That'll win hands down vs any 1st lvl 3E fighter. Possibly 2E as well, although I never saw the Options books and there were so many supplements with rules all over the place, so I couldn't say for sure. Hmm, a 2E 1st lvl half-giant fighter with a 24 STR (+6/+12?) and d10*2 HP, specialized with the 2H-sword, should do it. Let's give him a kit while we're at it...

Finally, the game has become more about playing a half-dragon/half-troll wizard/dragon disciple/archmage/psionic adept than it is about roleplaying. Its become all about what the characters get and the mechanics of how they advance, than playing a three-dimensional character and telling a story.

Depends on the players. This was true in earlier editions as well, as it happens. I guess you just lucked out WRT who you played with "back in the good 'ol days..."

 

[Guilt Puppy]

Regarding stuff you don't like for flavor (ie Vrocks advancing): Easy to ignore. Flavor varies from campaign to campaign. They should stick to the standard to a certain degree, but not to the point that they omit options that people might like to have.

Oh, that's that "options, not restrictions" thing. Wow. I like that.

As a DM, I'd probably not let my players use a big portion of what's in the book, most of the time... I can't honestly picture what an Air Elemental PC would be like, and unless a player convinced me it would really be interesting beyond the stat-block, it's not gonna happen. Does that mean they should have cut that out? No. Because when one of my players does convince me an Air Elemental PC would be interesting, I have that option.

A lot of griping was done over inconsistent ECLs for monster races. This book seems to solve this, with few balance issues (the Half-Ogre maybe should have been +2, but let's not go too deep into that.) Further, a lot of people (myself included) were bothered by the fact that some monster races weren't playable at mid- or even lower- levels. I want to play a Mind Flayer because they're fun, and I have no problem dropping some race abilities if it lets me do that... In some cases it may stretch versimilitude, but how-much-is-too-much is again going to vary from game to game. Again, don't use what doesn't fit.

Yeah, this is a boon to a certain kind of munchkin -- not the strict power-gamer, but the sort of person who plays a character just for cool weirdness factor, without respect for versimilitude. You know, the Half-Dragon Kua-Toan Monk/Rogue/Assassin/Deepwood Sniper ("Character background? ... He got kicked out of his pond. And Seeks Revenge.")... Even if that's balanced, how do you DM for a creature (or party of creatures) that makes so little sense?

Of course, in some games that may come close to making sense, or, if it's hack-and-slash, it just doesn't need to. It's nice to have those options are supported. It's nice to have some different, more role-playing or story oriented options supported as well (I've had an itch to run a PbP game centering around evil outsiders seeking redemption for a while now... Makes no sense in the normal D&D canon, but it could be damn interesting, and it's nice to have the crunch available to know you can put together things like this.)

Flavor is not just fluff. But sometimes you need solid mechanics to support that flavor... Especially if you're concerned about balance. SS doesn't outline much flavor, but it gives enough useful, balanced rules that you can try out some flavors you'd miss out on otherwise. It would have been nice if they could have included cultural flavor, and that sort of thing, to accompany the mechanics: Knowing something about gnoll society is useful even if I don't like the gnoll rules, and having some balanced gnoll rules is useful even if I have my own ideas about how gnoll society should be. But then, there's as much about all that in the Monster Manual as I would expect them to fit in a book like that: Larger write-ups would eat into the rules.

If I have to choose between home-brewing my own flavor and home-brewing my own mechanics, I'll stick to flavor any day. Balanced mechanics are beyond my realm of knowledge.

In short, AFAIC this book is everything it needs to be, if not everything I'd like it to be. And that is OK.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Yeah, this is a boon to a certain kind of munchkin -- not the strict power-gamer, but the sort of person who plays a character just for cool weirdness factor, without respect for versimilitude. You know, the Half-Dragon Kua-Toan Monk/Rogue/Assassin/Deepwood Sniper ("Character background? ... He got kicked out of his pond. And Seeks Revenge

Hey, thats a Loonie, not a Munchkin! Read the 4 types of gamers thread!

Kahuna Burger