On 3rd party books.

[Hazzardevil]

There are tons of 3rrd party books, books by Green Ronin mostly but other publishers too. A lot of people don't allow them or dislike them.

So why has everyone gotton so exited about the Dreamscarred Psionics? They're 3rd party too.

[Lateral]

3rd party books aren't all bad. Their quality varies widely, but honestly, so do 1st party sourcebooks. There's a lot of 3rd party material and much of it is dreck, but Dreamscarred Psionics is not. It takes psionics, which is already far more balanced than Vancian casting, and makes major modifications and minor tweaks which make it so that Dreamscarred psionics far outclass WotC psionics in both versatility and balance.

Basically, it's a 3rd party book that's better than most 1st party books. Also, I think it's free online.

[Hazzardevil]

I'm not arguing wheather they're good or bad, just unsure why people seem to accept it a lot more than Green Ronin's stuff.

[Boci]

Probably because complete psionics was such a let down. Green Ronin books, AFAIK, didn't fill any niche within 3.5 in the same manner, just had some good material that can be added to the game.

[cfalcon]

Partly I think it is because Paizo has taken a very "we don't want to hurt psionics" kind of standpoint- it's possible that they will never do psionic expansion, and dreamscarred works pretty well with the new Paizo power levels.

That's my big guess, at least.

[Lastgrasp]

Psionic Unleashed by Dreamscarred is pretty good 3rd party product. Looking forward to the next psionic book by them. Plus if I wanted to use psionics I didn't have to track down an OOP Expanded Psionic Handbook. Nice to have the ogl system in print. As for the Green Ronin stuff I only have the Book of Fiends HC which is well done. I know there a pathfinder freeport book but haven't gotten it.

Next 3rd party product I'm looking forward too is the Tome of Horror Collection. It's going be close to 1000 pages with update material from ToH I, II, & III.

[Jude_H]

I thought the Advanced Bestiary and Book of Fiends were fairly popular.

But they're not free like DSP/Pathfinder, and they haven't had the shelf time of WotC products, so it's not really a surprise that GR stuff is relatively unknown.

Edit: Ninja'd with what I'll accept as validation. Nice. :smalltongue:

[Lastgrasp]

Of the 3rd party publishers that I thought produce some decent work was Sword & Sorcery(the creature collections aren't bad, sometimes wonky stats but overall good ideas), Green Ronin, Malhovic Press(stuff by the man who created D20), AEG(the rokugan d20 stuff was pretty good, their one word titles from 3e had some interesting ideas in them but mechanics were off), Fantasy Flight Games(Midnight was a good setting), Necromancer Games(old school adventures, some nice source material like City of Brass), etc. Fast Forward Entertainment was pretty awful.

[Cog]

Another point in Dreamscarred's favor is that Bruce Cordell, one of the writers involved in 3.5's psionics, did work for them as well. When the book is literally written by the same guy, only having a d20 label on the front matters a lot less.

[Lastgrasp]

Well Paizo prior to pathfinder was 3rd party. Dragon Compendium(despite being Wotc material) is quite good. Also Shackled City Adventure Path is nice.

[ShriekingDrake]

Basically, it's a 3rd party book that's better than most 1st party books. Also, I think it's free online.

Anyone got a link?

[Cog]

There's an SRD here (http://dsp-d20-srd.wikidot.com/), though I don't know how much of that comes from what book(s).

[Lonely Tylenol]

I think one of the problems with third party material is that they're not as widely accessible, so you'd better bet they're not showing up around your table if nobody can get their hands on them. This problem is exacerbated in remote or rural areas. Take me, for example--I live on an island that has no bookstore (you heard me!), no game store, and no centralized hangout for gamers of any kind, anywhere. Short of piracy, your best bet for getting a book is Amazon, and even when we did have options available on the island, they were so small or shallow in scope that they barely touched on the basics--which means you can forget about getting third-party material.

Snooping around on Google for snippets of various third-party works, however, some seem to hit and some seem to miss. One of my friends showed me a book by Mongoose called Nymphology, which was absolutely horrible--even IF you buy into the idea that it's a parody. It made me want to cringe.

Green Ronin has some good stuff (though I only recently started snooping around with it recently, when I was making searches for a specific character), though I can see some balance issues coming about with some of it--the Fey Soul feat in their Bastards and Bloodline book just screams abuse on a high-CHA character, where it uses your CHA modifier instead of your CON modifier for determining hit point bonus every even-numbered level. If you're a Bard or Paladin, and your CON is low but your CHA is high, this can be a five-point swing (or greater!) every two levels. Particularly useful if you're a Paladin, since you don't even suffer from a weak modifier to your Fort save--meaning this feat gives a good payoff with no drawbacks.

[Cog]

...Fey Soul feat...
So... if you have a bad Con, and so you're getting lousy HP at half your levels, you get something that's roughly Improved Toughness twice? While not getting any new tactical advantages, not making any of your own output deadlier, and you're only shoring up a single defense? That really doesn't sound broken at all.

I've looked through that book a little. The main thing that stands out in memory was just how undeserved a lot of the LA assigned is, perhaps as much or possibly more so than in WotC material.

[Lonely Tylenol]

So... if you have a bad Con, and so you're getting lousy HP at half your levels, you get something that's roughly Improved Toughness twice? While not getting any new tactical advantages, not making any of your own output deadlier, and you're only shoring up a single defense? That really doesn't sound broken at all.

I've looked through that book a little. The main thing that stands out in memory was just how undeserved a lot of the LA assigned is, perhaps as much or possibly more so than in WotC material.

The situation that I encountered may have been exceptional--I'm helping to plot out progression for a character with crazy high CHA (22 unmodified at level 4) due to house rules and redistribution of some attribute points. The CON modifier is decent (14, +2), but if the DM were to let the player put Fey Soul on the character, which is looking to develop into a Sorcadin, there would be +6 or more on every even-numbered level for HP progression, plus CHA modifier on spell saves (Sorceress), plus CHA modifier to all saves (Paladin). There's no disadvantage to putting every subsequent attribute point into CHA, stacking onto the bonus provided by this feat as well as the class selection.

It's not broken, but it does shift the balance toward total dependence on the CHA stat for characters that depend on it, thus creating an imbalance.

[Axinian]

That feat sounds pretty cool actually. Honestly I dislike the MAD of having to have a high CON on every single character.

[Lonely Tylenol]

That feat sounds pretty cool actually. Honestly I dislike the MAD of having to have a high CON on every single character.

It is pretty cool! I'm going to see if the DM will allow it, but he won't, since he doesn't like third-party books... And here we've come full-circle.

I'm not going to pretend that it is balanced, however, because it tips the scales in favor of one attribute unnecessarily far for classes who can support that attribute. (Show me a feasible single-attribute CON build, or INT build first. Very narrow STR-based builds have been made, but almost always rely on CON. WIS is feasible, I guess, but having studied the X stat to Y thread, I can say CHA wins all--Battle Dancer 1 gives CHA bonus to AC, Paladin 2 to all saves, and a third level, or any method of attaining turning/rebuking, gives access to Divine Might for damage, Slippers of Battledancing give +hit/damage, Gauntlets of Heartfelt Blows give +damage, Snowflake Wardance gives +damage...)

[Axinian]

I'm not going to pretend that it is balanced, however, because it tips the scales in favor of one attribute unnecessarily far for classes who can support that attribute. (Show me a feasible single-attribute CON build, or INT build first. Very narrow STR-based builds have been made, but almost always rely on CON. WIS is feasible, I guess, but having studied the X stat to Y thread, I can say CHA wins all--Battle Dancer 1 gives CHA bonus to AC, Paladin 2 to all saves, and a third level, or any method of attaining turning/rebuking, gives access to Divine Might for damage, Slippers of Battledancing give +hit/damage, Gauntlets of Heartfelt Blows give +damage, Snowflake Wardance gives +damage...)
True. But might as well round all that out with HP, eh? :smallcool:

I guess the above is because the stigma with CHA is that it's "the useless stat." Useable only for a couple skills. This isn't really the case obviously, but that generally seems to be what I've seen.