BRCS FAQ

[Raesene Andu]

A couple of weeks ago someone requested a FAQ about the 3E Birthright Campaign setting be made available. I'm willing to start writing this up, but need to know one thing...

What are your questions? What is it exactly that you would like to know about the upcoming BRCS?

So if everyone would like to send in your questions, I will put them to the rest of the development team and then write up the answers and get Arjan to post them where everyone can read them.

[ConjurerDragon]

Questions to 3E:
Why are there no limitations to divine magic (like in 2E priests had
major access to some spheres, minor to some and none to others). Why not
simply use domains for these limits instead of spheres?
war=combat? divination=knowledge or such
Else the special flavour of priests where one could not DETECT LIE and
the other not MAINTAIN ARMIES is gone...

Why is the FROST and ICY BURST bonus creatable by a caster 2 levels
below the one to create FLAMING or FLAMING BURST? The damage is the
same, the bonus is the same (+1 or +2)?

Why is nowhere mentioned to what NAVIGATION and SEAMANSHIP checks
translated into in 3E (yes I read the respnses here on the list, but
there was nothing in the 3E manual?).

Why has "black strike fencing" been dropped as a specialty? Yes, it is
mentioned as the combination of several feats - but everyone can learn
them and in the beginning they were meant to balance the disadvantage of
the lighter armoured brechts against the heavyarmoured anuireans...

If a Wizard/Cleric has to take "Cast Battle Spell" or even "Cast Realm
Spell" as feats to be able to do what he could in 2E, why does a Rogue
does not have to take the "Guild Manager" feat to create Trade Routes?

The Crossbow damage has been boosted from 2E to 3E PHB - why has the
special Birthright advantage of Crossbows (they were more lethal and
more accurate than normal 2E crossbows) not been mentioned?

How can it be that a bloodline of say 8 (weak) in 3E gives a
DISadvantage to certain things? e.g. Unreadable thoughts adds the
bloodline modifier to bluff - a scion with a weak bloodline can bluff
less good than a person without a bloodline? Why not say negative
modifiers are not added?
bye
Michael Romes
***********
Raesene Andu wrote:

>This post was generated by the Birthright.net message forum.
> You can view the entire thread at: http://www.birthright.net/read.php?TID=1014
>
> Raesene Andu wrote:
> A couple of weeks ago someone requested a FAQ about the 3E Birthright Campaign setting be made available. I`m willing to start writing this up, but need to know one thing...
>
>What are your questions? What is it exactly that you would like to know about the upcoming BRCS?
>
>So if everyone would like to send in your questions, I will put them to the rest of the development team and then write up the answers and get Arjan to post them where everyone can read them.
>
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[Eosin the Red]

I think you got the wrong idea. The BRCS is the official group that is
converting 3e to Birthright. The documents you refer to are the 3.08 and
previous versions of Dooms conversions. This is an FAQ about an unreleased
document.

Later
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Romes" <Archmage@T-ONLINE.DE>
To: <BIRTHRIGHT-L@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM>
Sent: Monday, October 07, 2002 11:57 AM
Subject: Re: BRCS FAQ [2#1014]


~~~~Snipped ~~~~~~

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[geeman]

At 06:57 PM 10/7/2002 +0200, Michael Romes wrote:

>The Crossbow damage has been boosted from 2E to 3E PHB - why has the
>special Birthright advantage of Crossbows (they were more lethal and more
>accurate than normal 2E crossbows) not been mentioned?

In addition to several other astute questions, MR here raises an
interesting point. What stats to folks out there in the BR community give
to crossbows in 3e? 3e crossbows, of course, are significantly more
powerful than 2e crossbows, but does anyone take that a step further?

Gary

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[Raesene Andu]

Ah yes, the BRCS rules haven't been released yet, you are referring to Travis Doom's conversion manual in the downloads section. The rules in the BRCS will not be the same as that work.

What I'm looking for are questions about the current project, the BRCS. I have a few allready, but still looking for more.

[Starfox]

Gary <geeman@SOFTHOME.NET> wrote at 02-10-07 22.56:

> In addition to several other astute questions, MR here raises an
> interesting point. What stats to folks out there in the BR community give
> to crossbows in 3e? 3e crossbows, of course, are significantly more
> powerful than 2e crossbows, but does anyone take that a step further?
>

We let crossbows cause auto-criticals on any threat roll that is also a hit
within 30 ft. That way, anyone with a crossbow has at least a 5% chance of
inflicting a critical hit - which makes them pretty dangerous militia
weapons.

Also, we allow crossbows to scale freely in size. That gives quite a variety
of crossbows:

Hand crossbow: T: 1d4, S: 1d6, M: 1d8 - short range, one-handed
Light crossbow: S: 1d8, M: 2d6, L: 2d8 - medium range, quick to reload
Heavy Crossbow: M 1d10, L: 2d6 - long range, slow reload

As can be seen here, the heavy crossbow is a really poor weapon and
generally considered obsolete

We also made the Hand Crossbow a martial weapon (at least for Ainureans),
and it is qute a common cavalry weapon - check the illustration on the
cavalry war cards.

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[doom]

On Mon, Oct 07, 2002 at 01:56:43PM -0700, Gary wrote:
> In addition to several other astute questions, MR here raises an
> interesting point. What stats to folks out there in the BR community give
> to crossbows in 3e? 3e crossbows, of course, are significantly more
> powerful than 2e crossbows, but does anyone take that a step further?

I`m of the opinion that the BR designers snuck in the crossbow rule in
an attempt to "correct" the major problem that crossbows had in 2e D&D
(basically, that they did not accurately represent the lethality of a
crossbow as a weapon). It seems to be to be a very good 2e house rule
that made it into print as a campaign rule. I don`t think that there
is any rationale which supports the belief that Cerilian crossbows are
in some way superior to crossbows in use by the rest of the 3e multiverse.
3e "fixed" this problem by makeing crossbows a more threatening weapon
overall.

________
/. Doom@cs.wright.edu

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[Mark_Aurel]

As another note, it wasn't just in Birthright that crossbows were revised - the exact same rule appeared in Combat & Tactics; the crossbow thing was a general revision in "late 2e," I think. For that matter, C&T contained much of the roots of the 3e combat system - though some of the mechanics within show the weaknesses of 2e very well, such as how you had to handle opposed attack rolls in 2e - yuck.

Now, as for crossbows in 3e - I think they're ok as they are. The way the weapon rules work actually fairly reflects that historically, bows were more effective when used by someone well trained in their use, whereas crossbows were far easier to learn, and packed more punch per shot, but fired slower. Introducing a special ability for crossbows that lets them ignore armor, like in 2e, isn't necessarily that hard to do, but it would make them a martial weapon in terms of balance, and it would add another little load to combat. Having to check armor or natural armor bonuses, and then apply the bonus will slow combat down a fair bit. Something simpler, but similar, might be a +1 or +2 damage bonus to opponents within 30 feet. Again, though, that would push crossbows up a notch as weapons go.

Of course, if you apply a rule like that, what about all the other weapon-specific bonuses found in Combat & Tactics? You should logically apply those, or something similar as well, since the obvious purpose of the original 2e crossbow rule was to more accurately reflect their historical role, and make them better balanced. In 3e, they are balanced, and the stats already seem to fit the historical or fantasy role. I see no need to burden down the system with too many weapon-specific rules.

[Eosin the Red]

This topic of PrC`s does bring up a good issue for the FAQ.

1.. Will the conversion offer a list of BR appropiate PrCs and perhaps a few of the teams own devising?
2.. Will the conversion be compatible with Dooms 3.08 conversion?
3.. Will the new BR PHB include a 7th stat or will it find some other way to deal with Bloodlines, such as templates?
4.. Will the book detail a sufficient number of NPCs to set the power scale in BR [The 2ed books, I feel did not do this very well. They needed about 5-8 more regents and about 10-12 non-regents.]
5.. Two seperate but related questions:
1.. 3E assumes a much higher default magic level than is appropiate to BR, how does the team plan on addressing this?
2.. How will Stat inflation be handled? In 3E, a 16th level wizard by default has a 25 INT, which seems a little overboard for BR
6.. Realm spells and battle spells in 2E were dealt with an non-standard mechanic. How will the 3E BR PHB address these uber powerful spells?
7.. Speaking of spells - will the new BR PHB have a list of appropiate spells for the campaign? If so does it stick entirely to spells provided in the PHB or does it also you OCG content from 3rd party providers?
8.. What, if any, are the repairs done to fix gaffes in the 2E system (i.e. Some have mentioned that the GB was undervalued.).
9.. 3E seems to be skill point light - many later d20 systems games by WotC have increased the skill points per level. Having said that, will the BR PHB stick with the PHB skill points or will they increase the amount per class? Will the feat: skill focus provide a +2 or +3 to a specific skill?
10.. What part of the new BR PHB does the team feel really shines? What parts do they think could be better? What sections invoked the most disention among the team?

I could probably think of others but those seem like questions most of us would like to know about.

~~Randy Madden a.k.a Eosin the Red

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[Raesene Andu]

Thanks for the questions. I'll to have the answers to these and other questions written up and posted of the forum by the middle of next week sometime.

If anyone else has questions, please post them here, or e-mail them to hoss@chariot.net.au by the end of the week.. Thanks.