Swashbuckling Adventures - yay or nay?

[Banshee16]

And neither exist in Theah. Also, there's nothing stating that monks or spellcasters can't purchase the unarmed defense feats, as well.

And for the record, SA does 7th Sea better than 7th Sea ever did. It's not the nitty-gritty game that GURPS Swashbucklers can be (a personal favourite), but it's a great supplement.

I think what he was getting at was that the unarmored defense feats let spellcasters and monks get high ACs without being required to wear armor, and that this defeats one of the mechanical balances in the game, which is that spellcasters and monks are supposed to have worse ACs than warriors.

And if a wizard started getting armor proficiencies, and wearing plate armor, he'd have really high arcane spell failure rates.

However, I think being required to use 3 feats to get those high ACs is self balancing, and I haven't found, so far, the Defense score in the Star Wars and Wheel of Time games to be a problem. For all intents and purposes, whether you have a defense score or unarmored defense feats, it's basically the same thing....your AC goes up as you rise in level, irrespective of armour worn.

I fail to see why this is unbalancing when done by one company, which requires 3 feats to do it, but balanced fine when done by another company that gives the bonuses away for free.

Banshee

 

[Blacksad]

Their is only two very unbalancing feats, those that allow to increase the dice on sneak attack (the first let you use d8 instead of d6, the second d10).

One unbalanced class: the pirate (fighter feats, better saves, and a few other bonus, two good saves), though as a NPC only, it's fine CR wise.

Some unbalanced prestige class, but those are advised as NPC-only.

Half of the weapon have either a too big crit range, or a too many/big damage dice. But I think that the weapons needs errata.

 

[tetsujin28]

unbalanced weapons

Seems to me they were done just fine. There are no "bargain basement" magical weapons on Theah, other than those made of dracheneisen, so instead you can buy expensive masterwork weapons (e.g., Soldano blades). The supernasty crossbow requires you to join a prestige class in order to make one.

 

[Blacksad]

except that the rapiers, short swords, bows are kept with their normal damage and prices, and that some good weapons in SA are cheaper than worse weapon reserved for a nation/class/etc...

 

[TheAuldGrump]

I give it a rousing Yea! with the caveat that it is balanced against itself, not D&D. As I use it for Theah this is not a problem at all. The prestige classes are decent, and taking all those unarmored defense feats puts most of them out of reach at 5th level. Also, there is a lot of social interaction that a combat god will perform very badly at if he sets himself up for combat only.

The mass battle and ship battle rules look good, though I haven't actually used them yet. (The PCs seem leery of huge battles for some reason...)

The Auld Grump, who left one of the PCs hanging from the chandeliers chain last session, just beginning his swing from the balcony...

 

[tetsujin28]

The only truly unbalanced prestige class I can think of is the Necare Assassin for Sophia's Daughters. Sit down and do the math, and you'll come up with a hellacious amount of damage that the little things can dish out.

 

[Xandar]

D20 SA & online game

I'm looking for some additional suggestions for rules to augment the D20 SA guide as well as the 7th Sea gaming systems.

I've recently started work on a 7th Sea online game (http://www.treyvan.com/~swash) which will use the SA rules as a baseline and then branch out to import some of the 7th Sea D10 R&K system. I'm sure there will be faults with it that I'd like to add other rules from otehr systems for. Any other suggestions? Especially with regards to specific issues that you see with the D20 SA books as they stand currently.

-X

 

[Corinth]

This point bears repeating: Swashbuckling Adventures is not meant to be used with D&D, no matter what the books may say; it's a d20 game unto itself, just like Spycraft, and it must be treated as such.

 

[Blacksad]

The book do use material from the PHB, the rapier, bow, and many weapons featured in Theah use the stats in the PHB and aren't reprinted, which produce some inconsistencies with the weapons in the book, the fighter class isn't changed and you get the Pirate class, which is better in almost every way than the fighter (though the other classes seems well balanced with the fighter).

I don't think that it is a d20 game like spycraft, as far as I know with spycraft you need the PHB for the advancement rules and that's all, with SA if you don't have the PHB, you won't be able to play (or you'll miss many skills and feats, they aren't unimportant IMO).