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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jhaelen" data-source="post: 4197394" data-attributes="member: 46713">I think it's an excellent setting. The background, the races, and the disciplines (= classes) are all very flavourful. It's a very magical setting (similar to Eberron: low-level magic is plentyful, high-level magic almost unheard of).Races are pretty well balanced by granting them different karma dice (think: action points).The Disciplines aren't as well balanced, unfortunately. This is mainly because some talents (= powers/maneuvers) are obviously more powerful than others. They're also quite focused which may become a problem if your party consists of less than the ideal number of 5-8 characters.However you can alleviate the problem with 'multiclassing'. It's actually possible to learn an unlimited number of different disciplines - provided you will find someone willing to teach you.Human also receive a racial talent to learn talents from other disciplines.The game mechanics are very pleasing in a mathematical sense but take some getting used to when applied in the game: Basically, when your talent rank increases you'll roll different dice. I.e. you start with a d4, next rank you get a d6, and so on until after a d12 you get 2d6. Since you get a reroll if you roll the highest number on a die the system is both open-ended and exactly represents your chance to succeed. The end result also determines a degree of success.The combat system is easy to use but still offers interesting tactical options.I think the magic system itself is pretty easy to use. You can learn any number of spells but only prepare as many as you have magical matrices. Prepared spells can be used over and over and preparing a new spell can be done on the fly (with a chance of failure) or after a 10 minute period of rest (without chance of failure).The part that is difficult to understand is the astral space and how it affects magic.While the spells are mostly very flavourful and fun, their balancing is terrible. The differences in power of spells at the same level is sometimes appalling.Artifacts ( = magic items) are brilliantly done. They formed the basis for D&D's Weapons of Legacy. You have to investigate their background, make quests and invest resources to bind them to yourself making the items more powerful in the process. I've yet to see a better system!Monsters are pretty interesting and unique to the setting. The only problem is a very low number of medium-threat creatures. There's lots of relatively weak ones and lots of very dangerous ones, most notably the Horrors. Horrors (think: cthulhu/mythos creatures) are central to the setting and remind me a lot of the Solo monsters in 4E: They get multiple attack and spellcasting actions each round to be a threat for large parties. They also typically have several Horror powers that work very well as plot hooks (including the ability to mark characters to make them eligible targets for other powers over extremely long distances without a time-limit).To sum it up: A very fun system that is full of groundbreaking ideas and easily on par with earlier editions of D&D. One of my big hopes for 4E is that it will be like Earthdawn only with proper balancing.</blockquote>

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