Slarecians

[Azazyll]

Has anbody read Echoes of the Past yet? I was wondering if it was any good. Usually I would wait for a review, but I'm tired of waiting for someone to review it.

And to give this thread more of a thread-ish feel, I think some discussion on how people are handling all of the recently released 3rd party publisher psionic products that have been put out of date almost before they could see use. S&S is a big one but certainly not the only one. Personally I'm thinking of the Ravenloft DMG, which just brought psionics into Ravenloft. It seems to me, and I have not yet read the new Expanded Psionics Handbook, that from what I've heard substantial revisions would have to be made. Fortunately, it looks like Cordell will be updating his products for Malhavoc, but still, what does everybody think? Keep using the old rules, use 3rd party rules, or modify everything yourself to fit the new book?

Hopefully that was coherent.

 

[reiella]

Has anbody read Echoes of the Past yet? I was wondering if it was any good. Usually I would wait for a review, but I'm tired of waiting for someone to review it.

And to give this thread more of a thread-ish feel, I think some discussion on how people are handling all of the recently released 3rd party publisher psionic products that have been put out of date almost before they could see use. S&S is a big one but certainly not the only one. Personally I'm thinking of the Ravenloft DMG, which just brought psionics into Ravenloft. It seems to me, and I have not yet read the new Expanded Psionics Handbook, that from what I've heard substantial revisions would have to be made. Fortunately, it looks like Cordell will be updating his products for Malhavoc, but still, what does everybody think? Keep using the old rules, use 3rd party rules, or modify everything yourself to fit the new book?

Hopefully that was coherent.

Mindscapes fits rather nicely with the XPH from what I understand as is. It's If Thoughts Could Kill that suffers more so under the changes.

Ravenloft, well I'm not sure, it depends on how much they put in. If they added any powers, those most likly will need to be reworked to be a "worthwhile purchase" by the aspiring Psion.

The same is true for R&R2 and Echoes of the Past. Echoes takes a bit of a hit in its Crunch section. And some in it's fluff. Specifically, the Soulknife application still works, but as a core class now, a DM will probably need to make some changes. Echoes still works greatly, most of it is fluff. The crunch just needs a little touch-up.

Summary of immediate issues I can think of :

Fluff campaign wise : very little work necessary, each of the psion disciplines still does what they did in 3.0, although savant is now kineticist, and not sure what if psy-met was renamed.

Psionic Combat: Gone, replaced with powers of the same name. They are effective as a form of psionic combat at a glance (of the leaks so far at least). It isn't omni-prevalent however, so it may result in a Flavor Campaign change. It also invalidates some 3rd party ideas (Resculpt Mind) and attempts to 'fix' psi-combat.

Character Stats : This are all borked. Full conceptual rework needed in most instances.

Magic Items : Powers gone and renamed, some mechanics may not really be as feasible anymore (anything dealing with additional talent benefit).

 

[Nightfall]

I haven't read that much of it, but from what I've seen Echoes takes a few hits, but otherwise it still stands up to what the X-PsiHB offers.

 

[DragonLancer]

It would have been better to wait just a little while for the X-PsiHB to come out before releasing it. Bit of a daft idea to release it just a few weeks before the revised psi rules come out.

Overall its a interesting book, providing you at least have Creature Collection 1 for the Slarecians. Even then, its going to need some work to fit it into a non-SL campaign. The history of the race and their foundings is very well thought out as is the crunch. A few more new monsters would have been nice though.

 

[reiella]

It would have been better to wait just a little while for the X-PsiHB to come out before releasing it. Bit of a daft idea to release it just a few weeks before the revised psi rules come out.

Overall its a interesting book, providing you at least have Creature Collection 1 for the Slarecians. Even then, its going to need some work to fit it into a non-SL campaign. The history of the race and their foundings is very well thought out as is the crunch. A few more new monsters would have been nice though.

Slight correction there. wait an indeterminate length of time for the XPH not only to come out, but to be added to the SRD, and then start your Mechanics Development "fresh" from that point.

The SRD issue will probably be around a month, but that means, the earliest mechanical development for Echoes would have been May.. Therefore, probably landing closer to December in release time.

In all, what hurts Echoes the most is the powers, and most references to power names (and the annoying lack of a location tag) that are now different.

 

[Gez]

Mindscapes fits rather nicely with the XPH from what I understand as is. It's If Thoughts Could Kill that suffers more so under the changes.

Unless, of course, you use the events in ITCK (the adventure) to justify the update from PH to EPH.

 

[eryndel]

It would have been better to wait just a little while for the X-PsiHB to come out before releasing it. Bit of a daft idea to release it just a few weeks before the revised psi rules come out.

Overall its a interesting book, providing you at least have Creature Collection 1 for the Slarecians. Even then, its going to need some work to fit it into a non-SL campaign. The history of the race and their foundings is very well thought out as is the crunch. A few more new monsters would have been nice though.

Just wanted to weigh in, being someone who's worked with S&SS in the past though not on this book. I don't really criticize their decision to release this now at all. I think a fair comparison to the Player's Guides can be made here. Surely this book was developed (author's submissions in) prior to hearing about the pending release of the X-PsiHB. Thus, the developer's decision then would have been either to release as is, or sit on the book for 9 months to bring it in line with the new psionics.

Now, is X-PsiHB even OGC, has WOTC said they will be including it into the SRD? I know this wasn't known several months ago but I haven't really kept up. Even if the book is OGC, effectively what would have to happen is the developer would sit and wait till the book came out, he'd then buy the book and, as quickly as he could, try to understand all the changes so he could correct his authors.

This same procedure was done with the Player's Guides but there are several key differences. One, it was clear that the core books for 3.5 were going to be available to all 3rd party distributors as opposed to the ambiguity with the X-PsiHB. Second, there was a list courtesy of WOTC privy to specific people in the industry (developers and editors and such) so they could talk with the people working on, and playtesting the new 3.5 edition. To my knowledge, no such list existed for the X-PsiHB (nor really should it.)

Now, even with this, the early Player's Guides did have notable places where they weren't in line with the changes of 3.5. These came about because there essential was one person who was in charge of catching all these mistakes. These went away by the later player's guides as the author's themselves now had access to the new edition and their submission could be immediately used as opposed to being completely revised.

Now, in my opinion, they did the right thing to wait on the Player's Guides; the classes are an incredibly intrinsic part of the game. Psionics, however, has always been an optional part of the setting; only one way of representing the enigmatic power of the slarecians. If they had of waited, we would likely have recieved a book near the end of the year which would have only a good attempt at being X-PsiHB compatible. The book would likely have been panned because of it.

Because in the end, the psionics part of it isn't a mandatory way of handling the powers of the slarecians, I feel they made the right decision on this one.

Werner

 

[Nightfall]

What Werner said. While I have used Psionics, I do feel they are pretty damn optional overall in a campaign setting, be a regular D&D campaign setting or just a d20 one.