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Asbestos
2009-01-21, 02:35 AM
By bouncing around RPGnow I came across a little publisher known as Alluria (http://www.alluriapublishing.com/). As near as I can tell they're a very young company whose current focus is on producing unique and interesting races for use as PCs (or NPCs) in D&D 4e. I purchased the Obitu (http://www.alluriapublishing.com/obitu.htm) and Entobian (http://www.alluriapublishing.com/entobian.htm) pdfs for something like... 2 dollars a piece, just cheap enough to qualify as impulse buy material. So far I'm pretty happy with my purchase and really hope to play one of these guys in the future. Of course I will have to make some minor houseruling... but nothing too major and nothing that will fundamentally alter the races. I'll post a full review later, but I thought I'd pass on that I'm apparently a chump for purchasing the Entobian pdf for 2 bucks (even though I think its well worth it, something about these little guys just screams awesome to me) as Alluria has this offer (http://www.enworld.org/forum/publishers-press-releases/249069-alluria-publishing-special-discount-entobian-pc-race.html) up at Enworld.
Now, the Entobian, even revised, still has some minor glitches (most of which look like cut and paste errors, I think the whole company is like 7 guys so... I think I can forgive this, especially considering how quick they are on their updates) and its rules for moving through difficult terrain need some serious clarification, but that could be because I'm bad at math... Regardless its still a damn interesting little race full of possibility and well worth the pittance that it costs. It and the Obitu, which I'll talk more about later, have caused me to take a liking to this little upstart publisher and I'll be keeping an eye out for future products from them.

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edit: Realized that I probably sound like a shill, but really... I'm just a shill for 'the little guys', 3rd party publishers really don't get enough love and could use some attention.

RTGoodman
2009-01-21, 02:52 AM
Thanks for the heads up! I won't download these immediately, but I've got their site bookmarked to check back periodically to see what else they come up with.

A review (or at least a quick overview) would be nice for these - I like bug-people so the Entobrians might be cool, but I'm... hesitant about the living undead Obitu. I can understand vampire/half-vampires, liches, and stuff like that, but what seems to be basically a living skeleton seems kinda silly in a "Jason and the Argonauts" sorta way.

KKL
2009-01-21, 03:43 AM
Ugh, those two pdfs are terribad, don't even bother with them.

Matthew
2009-01-21, 07:50 AM
That reminds me, Expeditious Retreat Press now have four items (http://www.xrpshop.citymax.com/4E.html) for D20/4e. Anybody taken a look at them?

Asbestos
2009-01-21, 11:15 AM
Thanks for the heads up! I won't download these immediately, but I've got their site bookmarked to check back periodically to see what else they come up with.

A review (or at least a quick overview) would be nice for these - I like bug-people so the Entobrians might be cool, but I'm... hesitant about the living undead Obitu. I can understand vampire/half-vampires, liches, and stuff like that, but what seems to be basically a living skeleton seems kinda silly in a "Jason and the Argonauts" sorta way.

Well, they aren't really skeletons... its weird, they're more like anti-vampires. As in, a vampire bites a dude, he comes back as a vampire... a vampire bites an Obitu and the vampire contracts an infection that eventually turns him into an Obitu (if he fails his endurance checks). The Obitu has a pretty strong resistance to disease, so he should be ok, though I guess there is technically nothing preventing him from turning into a vampire himself, except perhaps the disease in his blood that kills undead. Anyway, Obitu are living breathing things. The disease they carry basically turns a medium sized undead's endoskeleton into an exoskeleton. The 'bones' house the Obitu's muscle, organs, and blood vessels. Were this 3.x they'd probably be listed under 'aberrations' because of the quasi-parasitic nature of their existence.

Anyway, in terms of feats and such, they're pretty balanced. The Obitu should be easy enough to incorporate with some minor adjustments. For instance, the Triple Jointed feat is terribly worded and should only give a +2 to Reflex defense against grabs, rather than escapes. One of the people that works for Alluria confirmed this for me over at EnWorld. Also, the Quickstrike feat only allows basic melee attacks, again confirmed over at EnWorld. DMs might also want to restrict the Obitu Infection disease since, technically, an Obitu player could run around injecting his blood into zombies in order to raise an army of 'children'.

The Entobians are gregarious bug people that love to eat and get drunk, but only with other races, they apparently find their own people boring. More interesting however, is how the mechanics of the race change throughout the course of an adventuring career. They start heoric tier as small, immature larvae with bonuses to dex and cha, a neat little racial power, some very modest natural weapons, and a very confusing boost to movement when in difficult terrain. Anyway, when you reach paragon tier, your Entobian character is faced with a choice; stay a larva or undergo metamorphosis and change into something totally different. Metamorphosis gets rid of the larva's racial power and racial stat bonuses and replaces them with new powers and new stats, which is certainly unique. You can also opt to remain a larva forever but to increase from small to medium size. At Epic tier, if you resisted the urge to undergo metamorphosis throughout all of paragon tier, you can undergo a special metamorphosis that allows you to mix and match 2 of the small sized paragon tier forms into a new medium sized form. When doing this you divide the stat bonuses of those forms by two and then sum them up, this can lead to having your +2 dex, +2 cha replaced with +1 str, +1 dex, +1 wis, +1 int. Or pretty much any other combination, but you will never have +2 x, +2 y if you go this route, at best you'll have +2 x, +1y, +1z. When doing this you just pick two of the four ability modifiers available from the two forms and apply them (but you can't pick two that affect the same stat, so for a Coleophite/Eluite you could have +2 str/+2 wis, +2str/+2con, or +2 con/+2 wis, but never +4 str)


Ugh, those two pdfs are terribad, don't even bother with them.

Well, they have updated/revised them both since they were initially released, and in fact the Entobian pdf was revised last night. Having both the original and revised copies of the Entobian pdf (the revised version was free to me since I already had the original) I can say that they really did quite the overhaul on the race. That being said, there are still a couple of tweaks to work out. Here's a list of the homebrewing I suggest for the revised Entobian.

Midlegs: The movement bonus through difficult terrain is like, 2e type wording. Easiest way to say it might be "add 1 to your movement speed when you first enter difficult terrain during your move action".
Silk Spray: Think that the 'immobilized (save ends)' bit is a little too much, so I'd change it to 'immobilized until end of creature's next turn'
Big Spinner: Tack on "Change silk spray from 'immobilized' to 'immobilized (save ends)' Possibly overpowered to start with, but not overpowered for a feat.
Taken care of in an update.

All of the Paragon tier transformation granted powers that replace utilities/encounter powers: These are now just plain ol' racial powers and don't replace anything.
Hard Shell: Move action.
Moscanite: Power should grant fly 5 (hover)
Acid Spit: Think that Con as the only option to attack is a bit lame, change this to 'Str or Con or Dex' but still have it do 'X + Con modifier' so... kind of like the Dragon Breath racial power.
Electric Burst: Oddly, considering the change I made to Acid Spit, I don't see a need for a change here. If you're trading up +2 dex and +2 cha for +2 str and +2 wis... then you'll probably have str or wis as your primary stat anyway.
Updated.

I mean, may seem like a lot, but none of that really alters the character in any way, beyond making them more balanced/usable. Seriously though, at 50 cents (see link in my opening post) this is worth picking up.


That reminds me, Expeditious Retreat Press now have four items for D20/4e. Anybody taken a look at them?

I haven't... yet.
See below.

Asbestos
2009-01-21, 04:51 PM
That reminds me, Expeditious Retreat Press now have four items (http://www.xrpshop.citymax.com/4E.html) for D20/4e. Anybody taken a look at them?

Alright, now for a real answer to this. I snooped around and found a preview (http://www.yourgamesnow.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=2416) for their 'Advanced Player's Guide', which seems to be their flagship 4e product. The rest of the 4e stuff they have seems to be adventures/similar supplements, rather than the crunch heavy APG. Anyway, having read through the preview, and some of the writer's comments, I can now actually say something about the product.

First off, the price seems to range from 12-24 dollars depending on the website (which is odd) which makes it just enough for it to not be an impulse buy for me right now. Anyway, the APG is all about providing 4e stats and support for things that were 'left out'. For instance, there's a new type of Halfling, the 'Shire Halfling', which is for all of those who prefer Tolkien-type hobbits to the Kender-like incarnations in 4e. The other two races presented are Earth Gnomes, presumably more like the olde tyme gem mining gnomes of editions past rather than the sneaky fey creatures of 4e, and the Orc-blooded, which based on the cover art for the book, are Half-Orcs.
The classes presented are, according to a post at EnWorld (http://www.enworld.org/forum/publishers-press-releases/237974-expeditious-retreat-press-acquires-advanced-players-guide.html) by the book's writer,
"options that haven't appeared yet, including variations of the bard, monk, barbarian, and druid classes. These versions of these classes are intended to feel, at least in part, like those of older editions, making campaign conversion easy--and to work with, rather than compete against, versions of these classes that Wizards of the Coast may produce in the future"
What I find to be the best part here is that, unlike in Goodman Games' "Forgotten Heroes (http://www.goodman-games.com/4400preview.html)" book, the classes presented in the APG have their own, unique names, and apparently their own shtick too. So instead of having to choose to play the WotC druid or the 3rd party druid, you can choose to play the Nature Priest. What's the difference? Well, the FH Druid is way similar to the standard druid in a lot of respects. Basic druid fare of Wildshape, an animal companion (the Beastmaster Ranger's companion is far superior, btw), etc. Meanwhile the Nature Priest, while still a controller, has a totally different feel. Nature Priests have an elemental focus that makes it actually meaningful what sort of elemental 'theme' they follow with their powers and they also promise to have conjurations of animal/totem spirits coming out the wazoo. They, unlike both druids, have no base wildshape at all. My guess is that after the PHB2 comes out they'll seem like Shamans that went Controller rather than Leader. Unlike the Forgotten Heroes book (sorry Goodman Games) which will basically become obsolete once PHB2 comes out, I'm considering picking this up and adding it to my library, if only for the bit of nostalgia it evoked in me while reading the preview (ha, Shire Halflings).

Asbestos
2009-01-22, 09:21 AM
Here's a list of the homebrewing I suggest for the revised Entobian.

Midlegs: The movement bonus through difficult terrain is like, 2e type wording. Easiest way to say it might be "add 1 to your movement speed when you first enter difficult terrain during your move action".
Silk Spray: Think that the 'immobilized (save ends)' bit is a little too much, so I'd change it to 'immobilized until end of creature's next turn'
Big Spinner: Tack on "Change silk spray from 'immobilized' to 'immobilized (save ends)' Possibly overpowered to start with, but not overpowered for a feat.
Taken care of in an update.

All of the Paragon tier transformation granted powers that replace utilities/encounter powers: These are now just plain ol' racial powers and don't replace anything.
Hard Shell: Move action.
Moscanite: Power should grant fly 5 (hover)
Acid Spit: Think that Con as the only option to attack is a bit lame, change this to 'Str or Con or Dex' but still have it do 'X + Con modifier' so... kind of like the Dragon Breath racial power.
Electric Burst: Oddly, considering the change I made to Acid Spit, I don't see a need for a change here. If you're trading up +2 dex and +2 cha for +2 str and +2 wis... then you'll probably have str or wis as your primary stat anyway.


Crazy. Been only a couple of days and they addressed pretty much all of those 'issues' that I had. The thread for discussing this stuff with the developers is here (http://www.enworld.org/forum/publishers-press-releases/248849-alluria-publishing-alluria-overhuals-products.html). The couple of things that haven't changed is likely just a case of differing opinions between myself and the people over at Alluria, but as of now, the race (and its feats) are likely more properly errated than the PHB. It makes me wonder though, why WotC can't do this with its books (in pdf form obviously) when they make up the erratas. I mean, Alluria has probably revised this product 3 times since I created this thread and yet... WotC... The biggest problem remaining, for me at least, is the movement of these little guys through difficult terrain. Here's the original snippet:


Mid-legs: Your mid-legs give you a +2 racial
bonus on all balance related checks, and
you may move 1 square faster in difficult
terrain. In addition, you get Mid-leg Attack as
an at-will power

The first revision:

Hexaped: Gain a +3 racial bonus to all Athletics checks
to Climb, and all Acrobatics checks to Balance.
In addition, while moving through difficult terrain,
your Distance Multiplier is 5/8 in mostly difficult
terrain, and 7/8 in extensive difficult terrain.

And the latest:

Hexaped: Gain a +3 racial bonus to all Athletics checks
to Climb, and all Acrobatics checks to Balance.
In addition, while moving through difficult terrain,
your Distance Multiplier is 60% in mostly difficult
terrain, and 90% in extensive difficult terrain

*scratches head* I am the only one having problems with this?

But, since its pretty much the only 'flaw' (in my view) left staring me in the face, I guess I can live with it and just house rule something around it, maybe even just say they can shift through difficult terrain like elves to keep things simple.

Inyssius Tor
2009-01-22, 09:51 AM
Sixty percent? Five eighths?

...yeah.

I think I'll pass. That wouldn't fly in 3.X, and times have changed since then. It's a shame, that; I liked the idea.

Asbestos
2009-01-22, 12:48 PM
Sixty percent? Five eighths?

...yeah.

I think I'll pass. That wouldn't fly in 3.X, and times have changed since then. It's a shame, that; I liked the idea.

Exactly, I think my original plan of "add 1 to your speed the first time you move into difficult terrain during your move action", while clunky, still makes a bit more sense. As would allowing them to shift into difficult terrain. Either of those houserules works fine. I still have hope that they change it to something more workable like that by the time they release the compilation.

It seems like an old, pre-3.x even, edition hold over to me, sort of like Adamant Entertainment's 4e 'Linotuar' which occupies a 1x2 square area... its like asking for facing rules to come back.