[Earthdawn] Earthdawn nub advice

General questions, debates, and rants about RPGs

Moderator: Moderators

Post Reply
Silent Wayfarer
Knight-Baron
Posts: 898
Joined: Sun Jun 21, 2009 11:35 am

[Earthdawn] Earthdawn nub advice

Post by Silent Wayfarer »

I've always wanted to play Earthdawn, but never got the chance to until recently. I'm curious as to what are the high-powered options. Assuming I want to be good in combat, which are the smart routes to pursue? Or does Magic > all like in Shadowrun?

I've also heard that human Versatility is terribly broken...
If your religion is worth killing for, please start with yourself.
User avatar
Ancient History
Serious Badass
Posts: 12708
Joined: Wed Aug 18, 2010 12:57 pm

Post by Ancient History »

Human Versatility can be very broken, because you can learn talents from other classes, and the more classes you know about the easier it is to nab a high-circle talent at a low-circle rank from an obscure class; Journeyman is this squared. Magic is powerful, though there are a lot of moving parts to it and getting it to be broken in the right way generally involves short-circuiting those (blood matrices, grimoire casting, etc.)

It's been a while since I've done any ED hacking however; I vaguely recall Swordmasters had some ricockulous talents, and if you get some of the supplements there were rules for buying high-circle talents at lower-circle which made it easy to win fights. (General rule: low-circle is cheap and effective, high-circle is expensive and never-playtested.) Blood charms (especially living crystal armor) were generally an easy power-up if you had the Durability talent.

Man, we need to do an ED OSSR.
User avatar
Lokathor
Duke
Posts: 2185
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 2:10 am
Location: ID
Contact:

Post by Lokathor »

It also of course matters which edition of Earthdawn you're playing, because they're all really similar except for a ton of small changes here and there. (Like early drafts of Pathfinder compared to 3.5, or 3.5 compared to 3.0.)

Like AH said, early on grabbing the right Skills and Talents together can turn you into a melee monster, later on spells start to get a lot better. Of particular note is that some of the "powerful high-circle Talents" can just be purchased as Skills right from the start, which is where some of the hijinks come from. Casters are good enough early on that you don't totally suck or anything if you start as one. Human Casters can go totally nuts with spell selection. Though there's fluff reasons why mages "probably won't" teach you other kinds of threadweaving via versatility, so that's even more dependent on GM oversight than normal. As with most 90s PRGs, your main options are start and small grow big, or start medium and then don't go too much farther.
[*]The Ends Of The Matrix: Github and Rendered
[*]After Sundown: Github and Rendered
Silent Wayfarer
Knight-Baron
Posts: 898
Joined: Sun Jun 21, 2009 11:35 am

Post by Silent Wayfarer »

I believe we're using Earthdawn 3e, but the GM doesn't want a lot of humans running around.
Last edited by Silent Wayfarer on Tue Jun 03, 2014 6:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
If your religion is worth killing for, please start with yourself.
Orca
Knight-Baron
Posts: 877
Joined: Sun Jul 12, 2009 1:31 am

Post by Orca »

Human Versatility can be useful when playing a martial-type, but it shines most at letting you play a couple of magical classes at once. The spell lists tend to have holes in them so a nethermancer gets a lot out of wizard spells or vice versa.

A windling warrior can get a couple of actions a round more often than not IIRC with Wind Dance.
Silent Wayfarer
Knight-Baron
Posts: 898
Joined: Sun Jun 21, 2009 11:35 am

Post by Silent Wayfarer »

I'm considering a windling archer, but given the windlings' natural STR of 4 and windling bows' base damage of 3, I feel I might be gimping myself if I went that route. On the other hand, flight and +physical defense seem good...
If your religion is worth killing for, please start with yourself.
Orca
Knight-Baron
Posts: 877
Joined: Sun Jul 12, 2009 1:31 am

Post by Orca »

I think there's some archer abilities which use karma, which would be good given a windling's d10 karma die. The problem is that using them a lot will slow down your advancement - you might be trading excellence now for excellence later depending on just how many legend points you get and on how much combat there is in your game.

There's probably reasons the archer who made it into the legends (aka who was played by a designer) is a troll.
User avatar
Lokathor
Duke
Posts: 2185
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 2:10 am
Location: ID
Contact:

Post by Lokathor »

In 3e all races have a d6 karma die.

But yeah, Windlings usually need to use magic classes to keep up. They're totally cool and all, but not good on physical attacks.
[*]The Ends Of The Matrix: Github and Rendered
[*]After Sundown: Github and Rendered
Silent Wayfarer
Knight-Baron
Posts: 898
Joined: Sun Jun 21, 2009 11:35 am

Post by Silent Wayfarer »

All right, so a few build ideas.

Elven Archer
DEX 19/8 (12 AP)
STR 13/6 (3 AP)
TOU 12/5 (5 AP)
PER 14/6 (3 AP)
WIL 14/6 (3 AP)
CHA 10/5 (+1 AP)

Physical Armor: 0
Mystic Armor: 2

Physical Defense: 10
Spell Defense: 8
Social Defense: 6

Death Rating: 34
Unconsciousness Rating: 26
Wound Threshold: 9
Recovery Tests: 2/ Step 5

Initiative: Step 8
Movement: 7
Karma: 4
Carrying Capacity: 110
Racial Abilities: Low-Light Vision

Talents:
Missile Weapons 3
True Shot 3
Karma Ritual 2

Skills:
Artisan (Carving) 1
Craft Weapon 2
Climbing 1
Hunting 1
Knowledge (Creature Lore) 2
Lock Picking 1
Silent Walk 3
Speak Language (Common, Sperethiel) 2
Read/Write Language (Common, Sperethiel) 1
Elven Warrior
DEX 19/8 (12 AP)
STR 13/6 (3 AP)
TOU 14/6 (9 AP)
PER 11/5
WIL 14/6 (3 AP)
CHA 09/4 (+2 AP)

Physical Armor:
Mystic Armor: 2

Physical Defense: 10
Spell Defense: 7
Social Defense: 6

Death Rating: 36
Unconsciousness Rating: 28
Wound Threshold: 10
Recovery Tests: 3/D12

Initiative: 8
Movement: 7
Karma: 4
Carrying Capacity: 110
Racial Abilities: Low-Light Vision

Talents:
Avoid Blow 3
Melee Weapons 3
Wood Skin 2

Skills:
Artisan (Rune Carving) 3
Great Leap 2
Knowledge (Military Organizations) 2
Maneuver 2
Missile Weapons 2
Speak Language (Common, Sperethiel) 2
Read/Write Language (Common, Sperethiel) 1
Obsidiman Warrior
DEX 16/7 (15 AP)
STR 19/8 (1 AP)
TOU 16/7 (3 AP)
PER 13/6 (5 AP)
WIL 14/6 (3 AP)
CHA 07/4 (+2 AP)

Physical Armor: 3
Mystic Armor: 2

Physical Defense: 9
Spell Defense: 7
Social Defense: 5

Death Rating: 39
Unconsciousness Rating: 31
Wound Threshold: 11
Recovery Tests: 3/D8+D6

Initiative: 7
Movement: 5
Karma: 3
Carrying Capacity: 230
Racial Abilities: Increased Wound Threshold, Natural Armor

Talents:
Avoid Blow 3
Melee Weapons 3
Wood Skin 2

Skills:
Artisan (Rune Carving) 2
Wound Balance 3
Knowledge (Military Organizations) 2
Missile Weapons 2
Read/Write Language (Common, Obsidiman) 1
Speak Language (Common, Obsidiman) 2
Unarmed Combat 2
Troll Warrior
DEX 16 (9 AP)
STR 16 (2 AP)
TOU 16 (5 AP)
PER 14 (7 AP)
WIL 14 (3 AP)
CHA 09 (+1 AP)

Physical Armor: 0
Mystic Armor: 2

Death Rating: 39
Unconsciousness Rating: 31
Wound Threshold: 11
Recovery Tests: 3/D8+D6

Initiative: 7
Movement: 7
Karma: 3
Carrying Capacity: 160
Racial Abilities: Heat Vision

Talents:
Avoid Blow 3
Melee Weapons 3
Wood Skin 2

Skills:
Artisan (Rune Carving) 2
Wound Balance 3
Knowledge (Military Organizations) 2
Missile Weapons 2
Read/Write Language (Common, Troll) 1
Speak Language (Common, Troll) 2
Unarmed Combat 2
If your religion is worth killing for, please start with yourself.
SubversionArts
1st Level
Posts: 37
Joined: Tue Nov 11, 2014 9:44 pm

Post by SubversionArts »

FYI....

Apparently the kickstarter for Earthdawn 4th edition has finally released a pre-release pdf of the player book. I'm not a backer, so I don't have access to it.

Their August 2014 release date went wooshing by with no word on their KS until October that the layout and text was finalized and only waiting on some remaining pieces of art. (Which is pretty much the same thing they said around August prior to GenCon). Same reason for the delay was given again in December, along with some personal issues that contributed, I guess. But apparently with the new year, someone got shamed enough into giving the backers something significant, so it's out there now.

Despite very low expectations, I'm looking forward to this anyway, and am curious about what other Den members think.
User avatar
Lokathor
Duke
Posts: 2185
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 2:10 am
Location: ID
Contact:

Post by Lokathor »

The "biggest" changes i saw in the 4e preview material on the blog is that they dropped the success level chart, and you just get +1 success level for each 5 points you beat the DC by.

also, you don't pay for Karma Ritual and Durability any more, they're just automatic with your circle (which also is a much stronger incentive to up your circle, because in 1e/2e/3e there's only minimal reasons to bother once you get to 2nd circle, as compared to how much people want to level up in dnd).
[*]The Ends Of The Matrix: Github and Rendered
[*]After Sundown: Github and Rendered
Post Reply