Ravenloft is utterly fantastic as a setting, my second favorite to run behind my homebrewed one, and it's absolutely going to be easy to update it to 4e. As mentioned earlier, it's one of the few settings I could really put Warlocks in and have it work, and I'd love to see how Warlords work in it. I'm not so sure about having Dragonborn in it, but Tieflings would work great if they're not too common.
Will Ravenloft require a significant revision to make it work?
- Thread starter Sitara
- Start date
ZombieRoboNinja
First Post
I don't know why everyone's so worried about whether Necromancer will be a published class when the RL campaign setting for 4e comes out... you guys do realize they can put classes (and paths and feats and spells) in the book, right?
Green Knight
First Post
bgaesop said:
Well, as I pointed out before, one could always use the Dragonborn mechanics, but make them Caliban, instead. That's what they did with Half-Orcs and it worked out just fine. The same could be done with Tieflings (That wouldn't be a half-bad idea using both Dragonborn and Tieflings as the basis for the Caliban. That'd allow for a whole lot of variety between one Caliban and another).
Another way Tieflings could be brought in is as the children/grandchildren/descendants of the Fiends running around. There aren't a whole lot of them, about half-a-dozen, but that's enough to justify one or two Tiefling PC's. Nevermind that one of those Fiends, the Gentleman Caller, is out trying to produce as many kids as possible. Half the Tieflings in Ravenloft are probably related, thanks to him.
Green Knight said:
You know, not every race/class/feat/monster in core needs to have a place in Ravenloft, or any setting (save Eberron, perhaps, with its 'everything in D&D has a place' design goal). It's utterly incomprehensible to me that people would think this was the case.
Green Knight
First Post
Stogoe said:
True enough. But the Caliban are already a player race in Ravenloft. And seeing as how Half-Orcs aren't goingto be in the upcoming PHB, they're gonna need some other race to fill in for them.
Darrius Adler
First Post
They may rework Ravenloft from the ground up. Remove some domains, add others, start fresh without too much reliance on past items. (And along with it removing the time line inconistancies) Its very easy to add things to Ravenloft as needed.
Irda Ranger
First Post
That sounds like a really poor idea. RL is much more than some kind of afterlife "shadow of the real world" plane. It is vibrant, alive, and evil.TerraDave said:
I was thinking that RL would make an interesting "demi-world" (like the Shadowfell or the Feywild, but independent and more limited in scope) which can be reached via any number of gateways in the real world (or the Feywild or Shadowfell). If the Feywild and the Shadowfell are "reflections" of the real world, then RL is a "snapshot" of a certain time and place that was split off from the real world and has since taken its own path ... towards evil. Sort of like the Star Trek episode Mirror, Mirror.
Raveloft is to the Prime Material what the Abyss is to the Elemental Tempest: a Plane within a Plane, and Evil.
EDIT: One thing that Ravenloft will need is some good rules for swashbucklery and firearms. Some of the realms in Ravenloft are much more "modern" than the D&D standard settings.
Green Knight
First Post
With the current cosmology, my guess is that Ravenloft exists in the Astral Sea. The Shadowfell, while bearing some similarities to Ravenloft, isn't an appropriate fit. The Astral Sea would be much better, as you can stick pretty much anything in the Astral Sea (From deific heavens to the Nine Hells). Or maybe Ravenloft is a mix of the two? A chunk of material composed from the stuff of the Shadowfell deposited onto the Astral Sea?
And yeah, some good rules for firearms would be nice. Starting with not making them Exotic Weapon Proficiencies. If they're available in a setting, then they should be Simple, Martial at best. They also need something to make them comparable to bows. Iterative attacks are out, sure, but there'll still be ways of getting more then one attack in a round, which bows can take advantage of, but which firearms can't. Bows can also benefit from a high Strength. So firearms need something to make up for those two deficiencies. Maybe Feats which allow one to do a greater amount of damage with each shot, to represent improved accuracy with the firearm? Another idea would be to make Firearms roll against an opponents Reflex Save, rather than his AC, to represent Firearms being able to punch through armor. Just a couple of thoughts, there, with the caveat that I don't know much about rennaissance firearms (Did they punch through full plate? Who knows. I'm just throwing out ideas on how to balance them with bows).
And yeah, some good rules for firearms would be nice. Starting with not making them Exotic Weapon Proficiencies. If they're available in a setting, then they should be Simple, Martial at best. They also need something to make them comparable to bows. Iterative attacks are out, sure, but there'll still be ways of getting more then one attack in a round, which bows can take advantage of, but which firearms can't. Bows can also benefit from a high Strength. So firearms need something to make up for those two deficiencies. Maybe Feats which allow one to do a greater amount of damage with each shot, to represent improved accuracy with the firearm? Another idea would be to make Firearms roll against an opponents Reflex Save, rather than his AC, to represent Firearms being able to punch through armor. Just a couple of thoughts, there, with the caveat that I don't know much about rennaissance firearms (Did they punch through full plate? Who knows. I'm just throwing out ideas on how to balance them with bows).
