Races of War

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User3
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Re: Races of War

Post by User3 »

The last paragraph of the aasimar flavor text is cut off. The Legendary Strategist is called a Legendary Commander in the flavor text and its "A World of Opportunity" ability is cut off. Expert Tactician's 16+ ability is missing.
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Re: Races of War

Post by Username17 »

DC wrote:The barbarian proficiencies seem to be in error.


Fixed.

DA wrote: From Aasimar: They aren't just for being dudes with Devas as ancestors, the same game stats represent characters who


Fixed.

From Fighter: Move silently but no hide?


That's right. It's to minimize the overlap between Fighters and Rogues. Or something. Mostly it's just to make Fighters think outside the box a bit.

Problem Solver: "meets the prerequisites for use it for a number" missing and.


Fix'd.

PzAz04Maus wrote:I'll not go into specifics, but most of the combat stuff, particularly dealing with BAB, seemed too simple.


The goal is actually smooting out some of the more complex stuff so that it can be done in a reasonable amount of time at the gaming table. The goal is not just to make those maneuvers good but also good for the game. It's a tough line to walk. But eliminating the opposed checks isn't something I think is a bad idea at any level.

DA wrote: The Samurai's Horde Breaker ability refers to "fighter bonus feat", you ditched that term.


Fixed.

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: The Death Knight Reaper gains no proficiency with armor or weapons.


Fixed.

Truncated.


Fixed.

is missing its +16


Fixed.

Modesitt wrote:Do you mean 'may take two Immediate Actions each turn' or 'He may take two Immediate Actions, but only when it's not his turn'?


Those two statements are the same as per the definition of Immediate Actions. However, since it was obviously confusing, I "fixed" it.

Trapmaker: There should be SOME sort of limitation here, such as 'As long as they remain a mile of him'.


Sure.

Character Backgrounds: Should there be a one-per-char limit?


Sure.

That first period should be a comma.


Eh? Sure.

Bullrush: " you may move your opponent back a single 5' square for evey 2 points your check exceeds the DC." every, not evey


Fixed.


General comment: The feat Mounted Combat goes 4/9/14/19, Not-Armor goes 4/9/13/18, Real Armor goes 4/8/13/18. Was this deliberate?


No, that's a typo. All the Skill feats should go 4/9/14/19, and all the armor should go 4/8/13/18. I'll deal with that when I flesh out the armors.

-Username17
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Re: Races of War

Post by Username17 »

DC wrote:
When do you plan on adding enough [Skill] and [Metamagic] feats to make the 'new' feat power level playable?


Probably a lot of the Skill Feats (maybe all of them) are getting into Book of gears. Other feats will continue to drop in later products.

Any chance that you could toss up all the non-flavor variant rules on an organized website, like you had your FFd20? Or at the very least, would you let someone do the same, to make it easier to run a game?


Like a Frank and K SRD? That seems... pretty reasonable. I hadn't given it much thought. I have no objections to that happening of course.

I don't suppose you could do all the other classes (but no campaign background) and just post them first, so people could play them right away, could you?


Probably not. Actually writing game mechanics is much slower than writing fluff text beecause it involves constant recalibrating to the Monster Manual. Also, the game mechanics we choose always try to match to the fluff text, so the fluff (in addition to being much faster to write) is also much more independent. That's why WotC has basically stopped writing mechanics altogether - the fluff can be released at a much faster schedule in a much more stand-alone fashion.

-Username17
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Re: Races of War

Post by MrWaeseL »

Frank wrote:Legendary Strategist
We can do this.

Every group of people has a leader. Some leaders go on to fame in history as total bad asses. That's the Legendary Commander right there.


Legendary Commander in the summary should be Legendary Strategist.
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Re: Races of War

Post by Fwib »

I again bow before the creative prowess of Frank and K
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Re: Races of War

Post by DP »

I feel bad that my only contribution has been negative since in general I really like the material. Especially the new combat mechanics and the new multi tiered feats.
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Re: Races of War

Post by User3 »

Very nice. You've yet again kept the quality high despite the huge amount of material.

Elves as wizards' bitches, historian dwarves, yakuza/samurai goblins, marginalized orcs...Perfect.

It does seem like wizards get a lot of the credit, though. In fact, it seems as though the most powerful members of most races are, very specifically, wizards rather than being sorcerers, priests, psions, or other kinds of spellcasters. Is this because wizards really do make the best overlords, aside from priests, and you're trying to phase the priests out? Or is there some other reason, like the trasmission of knowledge as arcane writings? Or am I just reading way too much into it?

As it seems like Gears is most likely to be out next, here is a suggestion: Check out Stanislaw Lem's "Mortal Engines." The first short stories in it read as fables/fantasy stories, focused entirely on humorous construct-like beings.

I for one would like to at least see one of the Electroknights detaled as an iconic character.

Then again, in the world of free internet-based publishing, I should be willing to put my money where my mouth is and do it myself. I, however, lack the insight in game design that Frank and K possess.

Anyway, it's a great book and I suggest it to anyone, particularly someone who wants to run an odd/humerous campaign or is reading aloud to children. I'd post some but I unloaded my copy on a cousin.
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Re: Races of War

Post by User3 »

Oh ya, and the "max dex" on clothes did seem a bit strange to me. Armor check penalty I understand, but it this supposed to be a rationalization for those skimpy outfits we so often see in fantasy literature?

Also on the topic of armor, with all these new abilities is it 'normal' for a knight to cary around sacks (of holding) or different types of armor to he can choose the suit best suited to where he will fight? Or is it intended to provide iconic abilities that accentuate the unique style of a character?
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Re: Races of War Notes

Post by Crissa »

Literation error: You are so tough.
Spelling error: fundamentallack

Coup de Grace: Optional rules for characters at or below 0 hp dying at the end of combat instead of during need to interact with this. Keeps the unconscious until the end of combat, or someone spends a minute (or ten?) rousing them?

Now there'a waaay to many armors. How the heck do I choose? The tops of the tables need to repeat when the table is that long, repeat in every block, please.

...And how exactly did this solve the 'four armors we care about' problem? Where's Dwarven Mithril which is different than Elven (perhaps it's more like plate than chain?)

Armors don't specify if they use the Combat, Magic, or what was it? cycling of abilities to level.

Brigandine also was known as hidden armor - armor that was tougher than it looked, or was mixed with Camouflaged or Fancy clothes.

And there's no centaurs. I still want a 0-level centaur. Tho most of the classes are not centaur-oriented here...

-Crissa
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Re: Races of War

Post by Crissa »

Re: Triumph of the Necromancers: Endless Night

Go, Solar Boy, go! Play with real sunlight in realtime battles with monsters!

Otogi!

-Crissa
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Re: Races of War

Post by Draco_Argentum »

With the ranged weapon feats they often say if the crit is 19-20 big it up. I imagine thats because auto threat abilities on those are worth less than on x3 ones. What about the poor old 20/x2 weapons?
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Re: Races of War

Post by Draco_Argentum »

Okay, my feeling on the races is that Dwarf > Hobgoblin > Half Orc. Goblins are somewhere near dwarf if they lance and near half orc if they don't.

Drow are kinda odd. In the dark they're good stuff, they can see further than most people. In the light they're weak. Thing is your party will often carry a light source around for the benefit of the humans. So even when you should be good you'll often not actually be good. Not so sure about these.

Aasimar/Tieflings. IMO the aasimar are just better. +2 to a skill just isn't as good as -2 to a stat.
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Re: Races of War

Post by RandomCasualty »

Some of the knight orders are crazy out of balance.

Bane knights are like total crap. Setting crap on fire is pretty much a waste of time as it only does 1d6 damage. Only real use you could come up with this ability is disarming a guys weapon and then setting it on fire, but even that sucks.

Chaos knights are totally nuts. +5 natural AC is incredibly uber.

Dragon knights are basically crap. You get a +5 suit of armor for free, but honestly, so what? You're better off buying it and taking the natural armor increase from being a chaos knight.

Elemental knights are more or less garbage. Yeah you get plane shift at will, but plane shift is a terrible teleportation spell anyway (as it arrives off target), and as a save or die it will likely suck since it's going to be charisma based I assume. Immunity to stunning is really the only good power they've got.

The fey knight is decent, but not great. It's more or less like an always on stoneskin, but eh... not really impressed but not total suck either.

Great Knight is alright if you wanted to whore sunder or disarm, not great for much else.

I'm not even sure what the Hell knight's ability is supposed to do. What does "finds most repugnant" mean exactly?

The imperial knight is kinda okay, just for the magic circle effect. The rest is fairly minor.

Still all in all, I'd take the +5 AC increase over everything. +5 stackable AC boost from a single ability is crazy go nuts.

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erik
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Re: Races of War

Post by erik »

RandomCasualty at [unixtime wrote:1155023901[/unixtime]]Still all in all, I'd take the +5 AC increase over everything. +5 stackable AC boost from a single ability is crazy go nuts.


You really think so? 25% harder to hit, yeah, that's good. Sometimes. Considering how hard it is to have AC high enough to matter, and that it does squat to touch AC, it isn't that uber. It a level 2 spell effect made permanent for crying out loud. The Dragon Knight at least gets a level 3 spell effect made permanent. Most all of the orders are getting something on par with that (except Hell Knights, poor bastards). Bane Knights are frickin immune to fire and all the nasty things one can breathe (or die from not breathing). I can imagine driving DMs insane via setting fire to things as a swift action.

Is +5 natural armor better than being able to teleport across planes defensively either to survive someone else's aggressive plane shift, or to simply flee (hold hands everybody, time to get the fvck out!), or offensively (Burn on the elemental plane of burning, mutha sucka!)? Dubious. I'd rather take my chances plane shifting a t-rex or monstrous vermin than mixing it up in melee when forced into a closet with them.

If you wanna critique the Chaos Knight for over-awesomeness, then perhaps you should consider:
With the powers of Giant Frog, they can Giant Frog.

That power is off-the hook!

I really like every single Knight except Hell Knight, since an always-on divination like that is going to frustrate the hell out of the DM. I mean, shoo, that's likely better than an alarm spell. *Ding* someone who really hates cats just stepped into my 60' radar zone! *Ding*

Now on with the editing:

A Knight must not accept undo assistance from allies even in combat.

"undue"
(unless we're talking time travel, which would be a cool stipulation)


Expert Tactician [Combat]
You benefit your allies so good they remember you long time.


Apologies if that was intentional

Elusive Target [Combat]
You are very hard to hit when you want to be.


Dangling preposition, -1 point.

Great Fortitude [Combat]
You are so tough. Your belly is like a prism.


I am so lost there.

Juggernaut [Combat]
You are an unstoppable Juggernaut


I can't imagine the restraint required to refrain from:
Juggernaut [Combat]
Don't you know who I am?


TWFing wrote:+11: You may Feint as a Swift action.


Insert "While fighting with two weapons"?

That's what I gots for now.

I really like the background rewards. I really like just about everything really, but it's the little nice touches like that that I can both easily incorporate into campaigns, and also hadn't thought of.
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Re: Races of War

Post by Save_versus_Stupid »

One question frank - Isn't rewriting all the classes more work than just balancing magic?
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Re: Races of War

Post by DP »

It is less work than rewriting al the monsters I'd guess
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Re: Races of War

Post by RandomCasualty »

clikml at [unixtime wrote:1155032948[/unixtime]]

You really think so? 25% harder to hit, yeah, that's good. Sometimes. Considering how hard it is to have AC high enough to matter, and that it does squat to touch AC, it isn't that uber. It a level 2 spell effect made permanent for crying out loud.

Not quite. I didn't read it as a +5 enhancement bonus to NA (that'd be like barkskin). I read it as a literal +5 increase to NA (whcih is totally stackable with well... everything, including barkskin).

I'm not sure if this is what Frank intended (which is one reason I point it out specifically), but as written, it isn't barkskin, it's a totally stackable +5 increase to your NA. If you wanted it to replicate barkskin, it would be "You gain a +5 enhancement bonus to Natural armor".
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Races of War

Post by User3 »

Catharz wrote:Oh ya, and the "max dex" on clothes did seem a bit strange to me. Armor check penalty I understand, but it this supposed to be a rationalization for those skimpy outfits we so often see in fantasy literature?


Right. I expect to see statistics for a Chainmail Bikini by these lines. The question is, does it qualify as (Top)Heavy armor?
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Re: Races of War

Post by User3 »

Battle Hardened: At 3th level, a Raging Barbarian’s mind has been closed off from distractions by the depths of his bloodlust and battle fury.


Should be 3rd

Also, isn't the Samurai's ability to dispel by comparing an attack roll agains the spells DC a little too good? Thats automatic by 10th level, trivially.

Instead, perhaps have him make a caster level check using his attack roll (or maybe only his BAB so he's not better at dispelling than a caster is). This way casters have a prayer of actually having spells function.

-squirrelloid
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Re: Races of War

Post by User3 »

RandomCasualty at [unixtime wrote:1155059348[/unixtime]]
clikml at [unixtime wrote:1155032948[/unixtime]]

You really think so? 25% harder to hit, yeah, that's good. Sometimes. Considering how hard it is to have AC high enough to matter, and that it does squat to touch AC, it isn't that uber. It a level 2 spell effect made permanent for crying out loud.

Not quite. I didn't read it as a +5 enhancement bonus to NA (that'd be like barkskin). I read it as a literal +5 increase to NA (whcih is totally stackable with well... everything, including barkskin).

I'm not sure if this is what Frank intended (which is one reason I point it out specifically), but as written, it isn't barkskin, it's a totally stackable +5 increase to your NA. If you wanted it to replicate barkskin, it would be "You gain a +5 enhancement bonus to Natural armor".


I think the armor ability is actually better. You can now grab +1 magical armor with +9 in abilities, and still have a +5 enhancement. awesome. Heavy Fortification Soulfire armor never sounded so good.

-squirrelloid
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Re: Races of War

Post by DP »

I don't understand for the life of me how a +5 enhancent bonus is better than a +5 to natural armor. True you can get +1 soulfire heavy fortification armor and it becomes +5 heavy fort/soulfire armor for a gain of +4 but that is still worse than a 'stacks with everything' +5 to natural armor. Second the frog fancier can still get magic vestments cast on him for a +5 bonus to his +1 heavy fort/soulfire armor. I think the armor ability is objectively worse.
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Re: Races of War

Post by DP »

one other thing some of the prestige classes from tome of necromancy are incompatible with the changes made in this book. For example death king requires power attack and expertise which are no longer feats. And (less problematically) the boneblade reaper requires evasion which your monk no longer has and improved unarmed strike which I can't guess what it would look like under this system. Also the bone blade reaper interacts with stunning fist which monks may or may not get depending on the feat.
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Re: Races of War

Post by User3 »

DP at [unixtime wrote:1155067813[/unixtime]]I don't understand for the life of me how a +5 enhancent bonus is better than a +5 to natural armor. True you can get +1 soulfire heavy fortification armor and it becomes +5 heavy fort/soulfire armor for a gain of +4 but that is still worse than a 'stacks with everything' +5 to natural armor. Second the frog fancier can still get magic vestments cast on him for a +5 bonus to his +1 heavy fort/soulfire armor. I think the armor ability is objectively worse.


Given that i'm playing in a campaign where clerics are banned, and given that Frank and K have yet to show us what theyre doing to clerics, i think you overrate the availability of spells. A lot.

And +5 natural armor isn't even impressive compared to what polymorph can do. Which also stacks with barkskin.

Not that i disagree that the natural armor bonus should be typed, but its hard to evaluate how good it is without a complete system. Whereas i imagine the magical armor system isn't going to change drastically (though it might), i'm sure the cleric isn't going to be recognizable.

-squirrelloid
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Re: Races of War

Post by RandomCasualty »

Guest (Unregistered) at [unixtime wrote:1155072371[/unixtime]]
And +5 natural armor isn't even impressive compared to what polymorph can do. Which also stacks with barkskin.


Frank already rewrote the polymorph chain in the Dungeonomicon, so the issue of gaining uber natural armor through poly isn't even really a factor anymore since ubermorph is gone.
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Re: Races of War

Post by erik »

I'm just of the mind that even an unnamed +5 bonus to AC (but not touch AC) is good, but is not super awesome. There are plenty of critters who are hitting you regardless of your AC, and plenty of touch attacks out there, and plenty of spells which totally bypass AC. It is a tempting bonus, but not hands-down a winner. The Dragon Knight is even superior depending upon whether Shields fall under Armor that is granted the +5 enhancement bonus.

Gotta go,

- Erik

p.s. Just noticed in the Elemental Knight "atune form" should be "attune form".
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