Warlords of the Accordlands - Wow!

[DaveMage]

Other than the World's Largest City (if it is ever released), these may be the last fantasy d20 products we see from AEG.

 

[Ghostwind]

WLC is supposed to be released at Gen Con.

 

[Vraille Darkfang]

Monsters and Lairs
- 240 pages, two full color maps w/ full color interior art (really nice artwork too)
- 4 new monster subtypes (abyssal, bascaron, severed, and stormborn)
- Some entries contain detailed descriptions and maps of the listed creature's lair
- Some creatures from Monster Manual included but slightly modified to fit Accordlands.

I'm not seeing any glaring editing errors or stats gaffes that would interefere with the game or make it impossible to utilize, but I've also not read it cover to cover.

See Skeleton page 167. The rest of the entry is missing (Not a big deal as it seems to be a nearly identical to the MM versions).

Teratorn pg 178. The Environment entry reads "Temperate and Desert, Plains, and Mountains." (Looks like a 'Warm' got cut).

Core Beast pg 70. The 2nd & 3rd paragraphs say the exact same thing, just a minor difference in wording. It looks like both were left in until the editor could decide which he liked better & then both slipped through.

VoTaurr, Male pg 202. It's a LARGE creature with a Level Adjustment of +0! They even have it in the appendix as a viable PC race. (Yes, it does have 10' reach). I think they just plugged in a random number for Level Adjustment.

While these errors are very minor, it sets off all sort of red flags for me. I'm not usually the one to spot all the errors in a book (part of the reason I hang around here). Excepting some of Mongoose's worst & most of Fast Forward's Stuff, all those editing & mechanics errors don't jump out at me.

In the past, if I notice errors, it has to be pretty bad.

However,

I have tried to get better at spotting detail. Maybe I've just put a few more ranks in Spot.

Maybe I just finally rolled that Nat 20 on this book.

Or maybe there is something to it.

At first glance this book looks really good. But the combo of a few big editing gaffes, with a lack of rules knowledge (Level Adjustment, not the easiest thing to do properly I'll grant), just makes me wonder.

It also seems to lack a lot of Sub-Types that should be done. Namely Extraplanar vs Native & Sub-Type for Humanoids. But that could be entirely due to the Camapaign Setting.

Overall, I'm hoping somebody with a better eye than mine can give this book a big thumbs up, because a lot of potential is in here.

 

[kilamanjaro]

That's so... FastForward.

Sigh. Ah well. Are they conceptually interesting at least?

I do like most of the monsters. A high enough percentage to make the book worth buying with out regret.

 

[JustaPlayer]

Do you have it? Of the 3, this is the one that was still on preorder for me.

There are 4 books Psion. The one that hasn't been put to shipped status for me is World Atlas.

BTW, if anybody is intrested, Amazon has the Master Codex and World Atlas marked as retail $39.95 still. Those two books really retail for $49.95 so if you get in on the normal mark downs, you are gonna make out sweet on the deal.

 

[Waylander the Slayer]

I have received only the Campaign adventure book so far. A few observations:

- Not only is the book HUGE but the text is also very packed with small fonts.
- Most of the adventures are event driven with players ending up playing through different adventures depending on their choices.
- The entire stat block for creatures are reprinted in most cases, including listing out of the benifits due to creature type (undead, ghost etc.) and do take up a good amount of the text.
- I noticed some minor typos and one instance where a name was changed around on my first go through
- Overall the plots and story lines seem very good, so do the adventures.
- My initial impression is that some of the high level bad guys are underpowered and might be easy fodder for the PC's if not beefed up significantly.
- There is probably a few years worth of campaign material here.

 

[JustaPlayer]

A lot of 3.0isms seem to have slipped in to the book and quite a few CR are way too low. 8 HD monsters that cast spells as 8th level necromancers but are only CR 4, for example.?

That's so... FastForward.

Sigh. Ah well. Are they conceptually interesting at least?

I find that very disturbing. Supposedly it's 3 years late because they wanted to make sure it was up to 3.5 specs. Now there are still "a lot of 3.0isms."

Still, there is no way in hell it could be as bad as FastForward.

 

[DM_Jeff]

Warlords

>>While these errors are very minor, it sets off all sort of red flags for me. I'm not usually the one to spot all the errors in a book (part of the reason I hang around here). Excepting some of Mongoose's worst & most of Fast Forward's Stuff, all those editing & mechanics errors don't jump out at me.

I wrote around 50-60 thousand words for the Accordlands books and did a lot of general assistance, and I will try to help this thread as I can. My author copies are en route as I type this, and soon I'll have a frame of reference for discussion.

What I can say is seeing the names Mongoose (of old, anyway) and Fast Forward associated with these books is painful to read. Here's why.

Mongoose always used to say they didn't have enough people, or the manuscript printed wasn't the one edited, or some other excuse that always related to one thing: too few folks assigned to the task.

In Fast Forward's case they seemed to have two 'excuses': (1) they didn't know how the mechanics worked and (2) they didn't care too much.

In our case, this was not the situation. We had plenty of folks to work through it, we knew the material, and we cared, hoo-boy we cared!

That being said, I know the learning curve was very, very tough on our lead editor D.J., who spent holidays and weekends (as I understand it) rewriting and reworking monsters, the entire script which was turned in with 3.0 conventions, converting it all to 3.5 standards. Those monsters then passed under the eyes of the developers, and many folks like me for accuracy.

That said, if you find errors they must be typos during layout!

Seriously, there was a lot of care put into in the project. I'm hoping as folks read through it carefully you'll find errors similar to simple things found in every d20 book ever published, even WotC, and that the errors found so far do not speak for the set as a whole nor represent the quality or time put into the project.

-DM Jeff

 

[Psion]

There are 4 books Psion.

Yes, I know. I have 3 on the way... the 4th (Monsters) is on preorder for me.

Still, there is no way in hell it could be as bad as FastForward.

I doubt it myself. I trust the people working on this book more than that.

I just invoked FastForward because the "CR X creature that casts as 2X level caster" was a particular problem of theirs. (Well, one of many, but a rather obvious one, or so I thought at the time.)

 

[Vraille Darkfang]

What I can say is seeing the names Mongoose (of old, anyway) and Fast Forward associated with these books is painful to read. Here's why.
-DM Jeff

Which is why Red Flags are going up for me. It seems to be a much better book on its surface, but as I get farther and farther into it, more and more keeps jumping out at me.

(Some of this I now know for sure is due to me just being a more observent reader with a pretty good knowledge of d20 rules).


If you can help with answering my questions, it'd help.

1. VoTaurr, a creature that had a good chance of becoming a major player in my game. (Aside from the Silly LA:+0 for a Large Creature with Natural Weapons).

Males are listed as Monstrous Humanoids, Females as Humanoids. The Appendix in the back has both listed as Monstrous Humanoids. Which is correct? The Female Stat block seems to be for a........

Umm. My. That is really fubar'd. OK. The text says that the Stat Block is for a standard Male Monk & Female Cleric. OK. They each have 1d8 Hit Die. Appendix in the back says they are Monstrous Humanoids & as such gain 1 Racial Hit Die of Monstrous Humanoid. So.....

The sample Stat blocks should each have 2 HD (1 Racial, 1 Class), or else the 1 HD of MH got switched out for the class HD (like a Humanoid would).

Now, the Female has no mention of spells (a 1st level cleric with a 13 Wis should have some Spells mentioned somewhere in her stat block). The Male does, however have a +1 AC bonus due to his Wisdom (like a monk should). So has the Racial HD just been changed out?

Since everything else doesn't add up; Should the Male VoTaurr even be Large Sized? The females aren't (insert juvenile joke here). As a medium creature I could believe the +0 LA.

So.

Do you have access to the orginal 3.0 stats? From there I at least could make heads or tails of this.


PS. Under the Bascaron subtype. Just right along in the middle of the paragraph right out of the blue it goes: "Flavor, Background, Flavor, They are weak during the day, but at night they gain TWICE THEIR USUAL HIT POINTS AND CAN BE HARMED ONLY BY COLD IRON".

Don't ya think you might want to have that under a Bullet Point or something? Maybe its own little Trait Box? Maybe monsters with that subtype (such as the Brine Fiend) should mention that they have x2 Hit Points at night & you need to club them to death with a cast iron frying pan?

Or was the mechanic dropped & that just slipped through? Or does the Campaign Book have more detail about the Moon's effects?

At this point this book has just developed the "Time Out" Subtype.

Namely, I ain't letting any of this into my game until I give it a close inspection. Way too many serious goofs on just a once over for me to think there aren't more, serious errors in the CR system. Like the Unclean Spirit. a 3 HD Undead with a CR of 8. It's got some nasty abilities, but nothing to justify its 18 HP butt troubling an 8th level party.

At least it seems to have erred on the High Side. I'd rather my players walk all over a supposed fair challenge that wipe out half the party.

I'll try to sit down this weekend & give it a closer inspection.

For now, I'd tell people to go into a holding pattern (at least as far as the Monster Book is concerned).