See what's "In the Works" for February and beyond

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Mmmm....Ex. PsiHB looking tastey.

 

[Plane Sailing]

At the bottom of the piece it seems to suggest that there is a new Eberron article on that part of the site, but I can't find it as at the time of posting this message - anyone else see it?

 

[tetsujin28]

And the cover for Eberron is still really ugly.

 

[Mercule]

The bit that strikes me most favorably is the option to play Level Adjustment races with 1 HD at 1st level. Perhaps it is a little strong penalty (not the number, but rather the amount of checks to which it applies) and it could be better if the DM just lessens some of the racial abilities instead, but it could work very well IMHO. However, I think it would have made much more sense to add this variant to Unearthed Arcana, which is indeed the "book of variants"...

We've used the Negative Level solution to LA races since 3E came out (seemed intuitive to us). One of the players created a Half-Dragon right out of the shoot and it worked quite well there and in the other couple of instances we've needed it.

If anything, Negative Levels still leave the character overpowered. The aforementioned Half Dragon/Dwarf was a Sorcerer who was the #2 melee combatant in the group (behind the human tank).

 

[Hjorimir]

Could one of you post up the mini pics? WotC is blocked on our Firewall. /sigh.

Thank you.

 

[Li Shenron]

We've used the Negative Level solution to LA races since 3E came out (seemed intuitive to us).

Well, it wasn't intuitive to me since I haven't thought of it before

If anything, Negative Levels still leave the character overpowered.

I guess it depends on which are the bonuses or special abilities that make the resulting LA. A race which compared to the standard PHB ones but who had a net +2/+2 in two abilities (for example Str and Dex) would probably be considered already a LA +1, but those bonuses would be already cancelled by -1 in attack rolls, skill checks, saving throws, spells DC at least; and there would be -1 also in other skills and saving throws and caster level checks for spellcasters. There are probably some players who would easily found some exploitable races of course.

In the case of your Half-Dragon Dwarven Sorcerer, you would have had 3 negative levels! That means -3 to all attacks (but +8 to Strength still results in a net +1 in melee), to all skill/abilities check, to spells DC (lessened by 1 from the +2 Cha), to its natural armor bonus (resulting in +1), saving throws (Fort lessened by 1) and caster checks. In the following 3 levels the penalties decrease but his class levels and HD remain the same. Doesn't still sound too powerful to me, but I may be wrong.

Anyway thanks for telling how it worked in your experience

 

[Kae'Yoss]

No mention of psionic combat modes anywhere.

It speaks about a mind thrust power. Something with 3d10 damage. It isn't spoken about as psionic attack mode.

 

[Kesh]

Yeah, I get the impression that all the attack modes have been turned into regular powers now. Which is what they should have been to begin with.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

From the 3.0 PsiH

A psion can manifest a certain number of 1st-level and higher powers per day based on his available power points, but he need not prepare his powers in advance-he just pays the power point cost of a power to manifest it.

According to this quote, psychic warriors in 3.0 prepared their powers?

The text in the wilder class is just boiler plate text taken straight from the PsiH. It hasn't changed because the text doesn't need to be changed. However, I agree that putting that boiler plate text in a preview was a mistake, since it's started all kinds of negative speculation.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

My method of dealing with 1HD races with level adjustment is a lot like how they did it in the recent Savage Progression article, in that the character starts out as a "lesser" version of their race, but can gain race levels giving them the ability of their level adjusted counterparts.