Cloud Warriors
Mar. 30th, 2010 11:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroOne of the books I picked up at I-Con was Cloud Warriors, a D&D3.5 supplement for aerial combat written by Skip Williams and published by the (as far as I can tell) now-defunct Fast Forward Entertainment. It's definitely in the realm of "It's a fun use of $7, but I wouldn't have gone out of my way for it."
I own a number of third-part D&D supplements, most of them by Fast Forward or Goodman Games. In general, they put out a decent book--they obviously care about grammer and copyediting, possibly more so than White Wolf did during the mid-years of Old WoD. And I give a huge amount of credit to whoever decided all of the tables in the book that you'd need to reference on the fly should be reprinted as an appendix. Can't find a table? Flip to the back, there it is. (After running a campaign using my 2E D&D books, I realize that easy-to-find tables deserve their due.)
The problem, though, is that there are so many tables, and so few easy, standardized rules. There's a page-sized table of movement penalities for various wind conditions, cross-referenced by the wind direction and size of the creature in question. There are long, long lists of possible complications to aerial travel and combat, but they mostly boil down to static DCs that anyone optimized with the rules from this book could beat 95% of the time, and anyone made without these rules would fail 95% of the time. Basically, if you want to fight while using a flying device or riding a flying mount, you need to take a new skill and a couple of feats, plus already have concentration and balance as class skills.
The new prestige classes are pretty much what you expect from 3rd-party, poorly-playtested classes, in that the fighter and rogue classes are only useful in the very specific situations of the book, and the wizard class gives massive bonuses and full spellcasting progession. I'll give them credit on the "jetpack builder" class, though it isn't clear if you have to spent XP to get the higher-level jetpacks as you gain levels or not.
They introduce a pile of new magic items which really don't deserve the space, because they're all just "this item lets you fly, and maybe does some other stuff too". Bracers of Defense that let you fly. Dagger+2 that lets you fly. Candle of Evocation that lets you fly. Better to have cut that entire section and flesh out their two new "antigravity materials" which can be used to build flying machines and floating castles. Every splatbook has six new "existing sword that can also cast an additional spell" items. Give me more details on gnomish Leviatium-powered armor instead.
And there's a section with rules for taming monsters to use as flying mounts, with the specific taming checks for each one, including demons and dragons. The entirity of this section should have been a table of character level vs. appropriate mount, and "Rules for taming: If your GM wants you to have this mount, you will be able to tame it. If he doesn't, you won't."
Though this book's biggest saving grace comes when descibing aerial societies/possible encounters. Someday, when the players least expect it, a game I'm running will feature an elite order of mind flayers riding flying manticores.
I own a number of third-part D&D supplements, most of them by Fast Forward or Goodman Games. In general, they put out a decent book--they obviously care about grammer and copyediting, possibly more so than White Wolf did during the mid-years of Old WoD. And I give a huge amount of credit to whoever decided all of the tables in the book that you'd need to reference on the fly should be reprinted as an appendix. Can't find a table? Flip to the back, there it is. (After running a campaign using my 2E D&D books, I realize that easy-to-find tables deserve their due.)
The problem, though, is that there are so many tables, and so few easy, standardized rules. There's a page-sized table of movement penalities for various wind conditions, cross-referenced by the wind direction and size of the creature in question. There are long, long lists of possible complications to aerial travel and combat, but they mostly boil down to static DCs that anyone optimized with the rules from this book could beat 95% of the time, and anyone made without these rules would fail 95% of the time. Basically, if you want to fight while using a flying device or riding a flying mount, you need to take a new skill and a couple of feats, plus already have concentration and balance as class skills.
The new prestige classes are pretty much what you expect from 3rd-party, poorly-playtested classes, in that the fighter and rogue classes are only useful in the very specific situations of the book, and the wizard class gives massive bonuses and full spellcasting progession. I'll give them credit on the "jetpack builder" class, though it isn't clear if you have to spent XP to get the higher-level jetpacks as you gain levels or not.
They introduce a pile of new magic items which really don't deserve the space, because they're all just "this item lets you fly, and maybe does some other stuff too". Bracers of Defense that let you fly. Dagger+2 that lets you fly. Candle of Evocation that lets you fly. Better to have cut that entire section and flesh out their two new "antigravity materials" which can be used to build flying machines and floating castles. Every splatbook has six new "existing sword that can also cast an additional spell" items. Give me more details on gnomish Leviatium-powered armor instead.
And there's a section with rules for taming monsters to use as flying mounts, with the specific taming checks for each one, including demons and dragons. The entirity of this section should have been a table of character level vs. appropriate mount, and "Rules for taming: If your GM wants you to have this mount, you will be able to tame it. If he doesn't, you won't."
Though this book's biggest saving grace comes when descibing aerial societies/possible encounters. Someday, when the players least expect it, a game I'm running will feature an elite order of mind flayers riding flying manticores.
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no subject
Date: 2010-03-30 03:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-31 12:25 am (UTC)A friend of mine, radiumx, is trying to recall the name of a comic, in this livejournal entry (http://radiumx.livejournal.com/245491.html). care to give a look and see if you recognize it?
(edited to add: I look again and see it's a webcomic. but still, you might know, who knows)
no subject
Date: 2010-03-31 02:08 pm (UTC)