Swashbuckling Adventures (D20 7th Sea)

[Horacio]

I've seen it, Kap, but I still think the book is good.
And one of the prettiest d20 books ever...

 

[hong]

The Debater Feat requires four ranks in "Bull".

And to round out this feat chain, there should be a feat that allows your debating skills to affect large groups of people at a time.

It would, of course, be Mass Debater.


Hong "thankyew, thankyew" Ooi

 

[Blacksad]

Now you guys begin see what I was talking about!

Creatures of Rokugan has the same ratio of errata per page, Rokugan is close to that, and I think that the player handbook or the MM were close before errata.

Not an awfull editing, if you want some, you can look at evil, were information on the same subject is in two chapter, there is a chapter for prestige classes and feats, but you can find some in other chapter, etc.. Now that's an editing problem.

Swashbuckling Adventures has proofreading problems IMO, those can be solved by a file of errata, while the editing in Evil couldn't be solved, and it effectively down the usefullness of the product.

all of the above IMHO

 

[Psion]

Where shall I begin?

The first book in the series is Jhereg. I think the chronological order as written is Jhereg, Yendi, Teckla, Taltos, Phoenix, Athyra, Orca, and Dragon. However, Teckla and Athyra are sort of weak, and his first books are really the best.

Is my half-rank in english not sufficient to understand you?

You tell me. I liked the figthing style prestige classes in Way of the Samurai and in Swashbuckling adventures.

I thought you meant that OA, TQF, and WotS didn't do that

OA and TQF create all-new mechanics for fighting styles that give you a singular benefit for free or nearly so and (in the case of OA) make the fighting style less a matter of getting the proper tutelage and more a matter of happening to take the right combination of feats. This, IMO, is not good.

Learning fighting styles as a prestige class, OTOH, is the way to handle the situaion IMO.

 

[MeatHook]

I bought this book last week (I found it in the game store when looking for something else), and was immediately very enthusiastic: I've wanted to run a swashbuckling campaign for quite some time, and thought that this would be the source book that I'd need. (BTW, I play d20 games now, and have never looked into 7th Sea.)

But, the more I read, the less confidence I had in the balance of the classes and feats. Psion touched on some of these in his review, as have others in this forum. Here are trouble areas, in my opinion:

Too many prestige classes have a high Sense Motive requirement. For example, the Donovan Swordsman requires 6 ranks of Sense Motive. According to the text, this school represents the most popular style in Avalon, though a fighter/musketeer/pirate would qualify at 10th level at the earliest. Just how many 10th level fighters are there in Avalon? (BTW, I admire the authors for having included a school patterned after the teachings of George Silver, Gentleman.) My question is: was this the intention of the authors? Is this specifically to give a leg-up in swordsman schools to Rogues and Swashbucklers?

The Pirate core class is too powerful. Why would anyone choose to be a Fighter, when they could enjoy more skills, better saves, and as many feats as a Pirate?

The Unarmored Defense Proficiency feats are imbalanced. I understand that we want to encourage swashbucklers to run around without armor, but why would anyone in this world ever use armor in the first place? Taking all three levels of this feat, at 20th level you are granted a whopping +17 to your armor class. In core D&D, +5 full plate and a large +5 shield grant only +20, and limit your DEX bonus to +1. In general, and this applies to other feats in the rules, stacking specific, tactical advantages (like DEX bonus to AC and the Dodge feat) with vague, general advantages (like UDF), presses upon my ability to suspend disbelief. The textual explanation for UDF is, "You have a knack for protecting yourself when you are unarmored and your flesh is exposed to attack?" Isn't that what the DEX bonus to AC is for? And the Dodge feat? And (for that matter) Hit Points? I think there are enough historically-based motivations for a swashbuckling hero not to wear armor (doesn't work against guns, makes you sink if you fall off the pirate ship, not socially acceptable around town) without penalizing the armor-wearing chumps of the world. Naturally, my inclination is to restrict or eliminate the use of UDF in my campaign, but I'm not sure: did it come out in playtesting that the game won't work without it?

There are others, but it's getting late. Don't get me wrong: I think this book is a monumental achievement, warts and all, and I very much want to have faith in it. ("I want to believe.")

-MeatHook

 

[Rich34]

Snipping a bit ...

Too many prestige classes have a high Sense Motive requirement. For example, the Donovan Swordsman requires 6 ranks of Sense Motive. According to the text, this school represents the most popular style in Avalon, though a fighter/musketeer/pirate would qualify at 10th level at the earliest. Just how many 10th level fighters are there in Avalon? (BTW, I admire the authors for having included a school patterned after the teachings of George Silver, Gentleman.) My question is: was this the intention of the authors? Is this specifically to give a leg-up in swordsman schools to Rogues and Swashbucklers?

The Unarmored Defense Proficiency feats are imbalanced. I understand that we want to encourage swashbucklers to run around without armor, but why would anyone in this world ever use armor in the first place? Taking all three levels of this feat, at 20th level you are granted a whopping +17 to your armor class. In core D&D, +5 full plate and a large +5 shield grant only +20, and limit your DEX bonus to +1. In general, and this applies to other feats in the rules, stacking specific, tactical advantages (like DEX bonus to AC and the Dodge feat) with vague, general advantages (like UDF), presses upon my ability to suspend disbelief. The textual explanation for UDF is, "You have a knack for protecting yourself when you are unarmored and your flesh is exposed to attack?" Isn't that what the DEX bonus to AC is for? And the Dodge feat? And (for that matter) Hit Points? I think there are enough historically-based motivations for a swashbuckling hero not to wear armor (doesn't work against guns, makes you sink if you fall off the pirate ship, not socially acceptable around town) without penalizing the armor-wearing chumps of the world. Naturally, my inclination is to restrict or eliminate the use of UDF in my campaign, but I'm not sure: did it come out in playtesting that the game won't work without it?

-MeatHook [/B]

I thought the max rank in a cross-class skill was 1 per level? So a fighter (or pirate or musketeer) could get a Sense Motive of 6 by level 6. It would cost almost half their skill points, for an avg-int character, of course, but ...

I like the UDF feat trees personally. Most folks' AC stays about the same, since they don't wear armor and it's a magic-light world. However, their BAB increases with level. I would think that you would rapidly reach a point where the characters always hit.


My suggestions, if I were running a SA campaign:

I'd probably give the first UDF to everyone free. If I were feeling really generous, I'd give different classes different levels of the UDF tree - in other words, make it more like Spycraft or WoT, both of which also incorporate a defense mechanic. It might also make the fighter a little more appealing compared to a pirate

Most important NPCs would be multiclassed characters - Theah has that whole Renassiance thing going on, after all.

I do share your concerns, though. My impression is that it's harder to just look at a SA character and figure out what they'd be capable of, since the game gives away so many feats. It seemes like to wouldn't be hard to come up with a very specialized (and highly effective within that speciality) character - which is sorta odd, given that the background lends itself to characters who should be more well-rounded than that.

 

[Psion]

I thought the max rank in a cross-class skill was 1 per level?

Nope. 1/2 of what you max is for class skills. So you would have to be rankx2 - 3 level to have the prerequisite ranks, or 9.

Of course, this sort of thing comes up in D&D all the time... and the usual answer is multi-classing. No reason why you can't take a few levels of swashbuckler or rogue.

I still find the UDF feat trees sketchy.

 

[Rich34]

Nope. 1/2 of what you max is for class skills. So you would have to be rankx2 - 3 level to have the prerequisite ranks, or 9.

D'oh! That'll teach me to post before I finish my morning coffee.

 

[Cergorach]

The Unarmored Defense Proficiency feats are imbalanced. I understand that we want to encourage swashbucklers to run around without armor, but why would anyone in this world ever use armor in the first place? Taking all three levels of this feat, at 20th level you are granted a whopping +17 to your armor class. In core D&D, +5 full plate and a large +5 shield grant only +20, and limit your DEX bonus to +1. In general, and this applies to other feats in the rules, stacking specific, tactical advantages (like DEX bonus to AC and the Dodge feat) with vague, general advantages (like UDF), presses upon my ability to suspend disbelief. The textual explanation for UDF is, "You have a knack for protecting yourself when you are unarmored and your flesh is exposed to attack?" Isn't that what the DEX bonus to AC is for? And the Dodge feat? And (for that matter) Hit Points? I think there are enough historically-based motivations for a swashbuckling hero not to wear armor (doesn't work against guns, makes you sink if you fall off the pirate ship, not socially acceptable around town) without penalizing the armor-wearing chumps of the world. Naturally, my inclination is to restrict or eliminate the use of UDF in my campaign, but I'm not sure: did it come out in playtesting that the game won't work without it?

Now, i don't have this book (yet), but...

If i understand things correctly: At 20th level you get an armor bonus of +17, but you effectively give up the ability to wear enchanted armor, it costs 3 feats and it's for a swashbuckling campaign...

Personally i think that's pretty reasonable. 3 feats for getting such a high armor bonus can't be used for anything else. Armor (even magical armor) only costs money and can have other special abilities.

Are you going to give that fighter: power attack, cleave, great cleave and some armor. Or power attack, cleave, and Unarmed Defense?

 

[tetsujin28]

In 7thS, the only people who wear armour are those who have Dracheneisen, which is way cool (substitutes for magic use for those from Eisen), so having the rules discourage armour use makes sense.