Timewaster's Guide Archive

Give me a little credit, I do know a thing or two about real swordfighting.  Just saying that adventuring equipment is a bit overpriced.  Full plate is 1,500 gp, coverted to 217,500$.  That is more than even a good job pays in a year, but even in the middle ages, a year's wages of a blacksmith (who made decent money) supposedly could fully equip a knight.  That would be armor, weapons, and mount.

So when I'm packing around my greatsword, that is worth 50gp in DnD.  Which converts to over 7000$, a lot more than I actually paid for it.  Of course, I would be a tougher challege to get it compared to someone armed with a wallet full of cash and a walkman.

This book has a new mechanic of sorts called tricks.  You can have 1/2 your character level in total tricks, and each one costs 2 skill points to learn and can be used once per encounter.  For example, one trick is acrobatic backstab, you need 12 ranks in tumble to get it (which costs 2 more skill points to buy the trick).  Then, once per encounter, you could tumble through someone's space (IIRC, that is a DC 25 tumble check, +2 per extra person threatening you).  If it works, then they are flat-footed against your next melee attack (meaningyou could sneak attack them).

There are also these new kind of feats with a [Luck] descriptor.  They each grant an extra 'luck reroll' per day, one of them actually gives you 2 extra luck rerolls, and something you can use your 'luck rerolls' on.  So one feat might let you spend a luck reroll to reroll certain kinds of skill checks, or reroll a saving throw, and then you spend your luck uses on those abilities however you like.  There is one that lets you turn a natural 1 on a saving throw (auto-fail) into a natural 20 (auto-succeed), but you can only use that one once per day, even if you have more luck uses than that.  There's a similar one for an attack roll too.

There are some multiclassing feats that are pretty good, ie lets you multiclass monk and ninja, and you add those class levels together to determine your ninja ki pool and monk unarmed damage.  The prestige classes are okay, I think the most interesting one is Combat Trapsmith, it lets you make and set traps during combat.  Main problem with it is I don't think the traps are powerful enough, even the best ones only do like 5d6 damage (reflex half) or duplicate a 2nd level spell.

There isn't many new magic items, but there are new alchemical items and poisons.  There are also a few 'living items', ie a bottle with a super-brite firefly that you can use as a torch (but you have to keep him fed and such).

There is also a bunch of advice stuff, like how to run a 'scoundrel' game and how to make scoundrel characters, etc.  The making scoundrel advice isn't too bad really.

I don't think there was any specific details, at least that I remember.  But I think they were focusing a lot on the post-apocalyptic stuff and less on the actual story/characters.

They are probably going to make a Shannara movie, they are talking about it on Brook's website I think (like guessing what book they'll do, etc).  Also heard they were thinking about doing Magic Kingdom For Sale, I think someone bought the rights to do it, but I haven't heard anything else since.

I saw Eragon and right after went back and saw Apocalypto.  I think Apocalytpo was better, but it also creeped me out; I liked it though.  Eragon is something I wouldn't mind having on dvd and rewatching every now and then.  If anything, it was a bit too short, probably would have been better with some more time for character and story development.  Also, the dragons are real smart like in D&D and can understand people talking, they can also talk to their dragonrider telepathically, but I don't think they can just talk out loud to anyone.  I think it deserves a sequel, if they improve on the faults of the first one.

This book is probably better than Complete Arcane, but I haven't finished reading it let alone used this stuff in a game.  Main fault I think is it kind of suffers from power creep.  Of course the power creep goes both ways, just look at MM III and IV.

The reserve feats are probably alright, but its hard to say because at-will abilities can always lead to abuse.