Hello EnGame posters, this is my first post to this forum, I've read this huge thread and am pleased to participate in your discussion.
To Jim Pinto, I understand the desire to get feedback on a labor of love, and I congratulate you on an extraordinary product. The maps are beautiful, the book is heavy and pleasing to the hand, and after reading section A I'm immensely impressed and delighted with the high standards set for its content. Using the dire template on low level creatures to make them different and interesting to experienced players was very creative, and the story is quite engaging in the simple way that makes for highly successful role-playing. In one of your posts you had requested game info on the book and as I'm going to run the game I will post info here as I can about our sessions.
I've been running games for 26 years, and for the past eighteen months I've been running a 3.0 campaign which I'm bringing to burn out on. My players (friends who have been playing in my games for the past two decades) purchased this book for me and I'm going to start running it this weekend as it has rekindled the fires of my imagination. I've expanded a little on the introduction and posted some rules to my group mail list that I will repost here and I invite commentary or suggestions from those on the forum.
I am going to run with the idea that the Gods created the Dungeon, and that its been recently opened by an earthquake. In my version the gods searched for a world to create mortals upon and found Muerta. Already living upon Muerta were creatures of evil nature that would easily destroy or enslave any mortals that the gods seeded the planet with, so they created the dungeon to contain the evil of the world and locked it away. The Gods of Darkness demanded that evil be given its due, so it was designed so that one day the dungeon would be cracked, and the evil would be allowed a chance to seed Muerta again. Against this day, the Titian Breysus was sent to guard the entrance to the prison and teach the mortal races the purpose and history of its origin, and remind the peoples of the world that one day the evil would have the opportunity to emerge.
Thus the mortal races chose among them two champions of each race and kept them ready to enter the dungeon and slay the evil within when that day came. Decades aged to centuries, and centuries to millennia. Though Breysus remained to educate the mortals he was no longer taken seriously. Heroes, longing for epic deeds and action no longer awaited the opening of the Dungeon. The races forgot that the Titian and his charge still existed and no longer prepared for that fateful day, until it arrived.
An earthquake opened the prison, and though no supernatural evil had stalked the land since before the gods imprisoned them evil still flourished upon Muerta as we mortals are so good at creating our own horrors. Wars ravaged the lands, heroes perished in conflicts and the earthquake was not understood for what it was. Only a few esoteric priests of the various lands realized what was happening, and they sent representatives (the PC's) to seek out Breysus and ask him what the earthquake meant. That is where the game starts... the players will enter the dungeon and will seek to eradicate the evil within to spare the world of Muerta its horrors,
Here are the house rules I have devised. They are open for discussion with my group since we haven't started the game yet.
Game Rules Set: 3.0 with Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed
Rules Modifications:
1) Druids and Druid subclasses (Greenbond) are not allowed (they would be all but worthless in the Dungeon).
2) Wizards can add spells to their spell books with more ease in this game. (You might find a sorcerer easier to play though.)
3) Feats that allow magical item creation are not available.
4) Due to the confined nature of a dungeon, spells that inhibit movement are overpowered, thus spells such as grease, web, and entangle are not available.
5) All players will start the game with two characters (with only one in play).The races in Arcana Unearthed ARE available for play, but no race may be played that has a racial level modifier (tieflings, drow, etc), but you could play an Aracana Unearthed Giant for example.
6) No more than two representatives of each race may be created including Humans. This means that since there will be twelve characters (two each) only two of those twelve may be human, elves, dwarves, Giants, Litorian, etc.
7) Six races will be represented as the major races of the fantasy world you are playing in. You as players get to choose which races you want to have in the game which are going to represent the major races of this world. For example if Trey wants to play a half orc, and Marco wants to play a Giant then someone else is going to have a play a half orc and Giant respectively and those will represent two of the six major world races.
8) Your two characters may not share the same character race or base character class. There can be six fighters in the group if you want, but you may only play one fighter between your two characters. Keep in mind that each of the path books contains new BASE character classes as well as those in the Arcane Unearthed and Players Handbook that are available for play.
9) Character stat generation will be your choice of one of two methods (and you can generate stats of each of your characters differently). You may assign stats using 32 pts to generate your scores as per pg. 20 of the DMG. Or you may roll two sets using 4d6 per stat, choose the set you want to use and assign the scores as you like.
10) There will be no resurrection magic available in the game as spells that characters can memorize. Instead raise magic might be discovered as you adventure but will be incredibly rare. Being raised from the dead no longer carries a level loss penalty, but requires the sacrifice of magical items equal to 2000gp per level of the character raised.
11) We will be using a GP standard for this game.
12) Metamagic feats no longer incur a casting level penalty; instead any metamagic feat can be used at will 4x per day minus the level penalty it would normally incur (with a minimum of one use per day). Thus Heighten Spell which normally adds 2 levels to a spell could be used twice a day, whereas Quicken Spell which would normally add 4 levels to a spell may only be used once per day.
13) Banish Magical Might is not available in this game as a feat.
14) For ease of play, Clerics worship either the Good Gods, Neutral Gods, or Evil Gods, not specific deities. You MAY play evil characters in this game, but I advise you to consider that choice carefully. You may choose any two domains you would like to have EXCEPT the moral domains. Good Clerics may only choose good, Neutral may only choose Neutral, and Evil Clerics have access only to the Evil moral domain.
15) Each major race has two champions to send into the Dungeon, when a champion dies; unless he is resurrected he is dead. At that time the player may choose to activate a mystical connection to his other character and bring him into the game. Doing so renders the first character completely and irrevocably dead, even if at a later time he could have been resurrected. If both characters are lost in the game that player will have to find a character to play that is already in the Dungeon, which probably means he will be playing a monster! The mystical link between a players two characters serves to keep them at the same level, when one character levels up they both do.
16) Experience points will not be awarded in this game. Instead there are areas in the dungeon that you must uncover (some are secret and hidden so search carefully). When one of these areas is found and activated every person in the party will instantly level.
17) Every character enters the Dungeon equipped with two potions chosen from the minor potion list, and a masterwork item of choice.
18) If at any point every character from the original 12 is dead, the game is lost and the world will be plunged into darkness and evil for many millennia.
Thank you for your patience with this long post.
Twofalls