PH 7th Printing Changes

[Telhawk]

Okay. I picked this up because a) I fell in love with the cover (standard edition), b) I wanted to see if there had been any alterations and/or adjustments made to the rules/descriptions, and c) the price was definitely in the manageable range. Having gone through the book in no particular sequence of order, or completely (at this stage), a couple of points come to attention:

It appears that the weight values for at least a couple of the armour types have been changed. E.g., studded leather, which was previously rated at 25 lbs., and therefore inaccessible to barbarians who wanted to use the primeval instincts class ability. Studded leather is now 20 lbs., and thus a primeval instincts candidate. Just wondering: why the change? I certainly agree with it - allowing a barbarian a full +3 on armour class just because he/she has some metal worked into the leather ain't what I would call a deal-breaker, and I would certainly have house-ruled barbarian characters to be able to use such without penalty - but I was wondering what line of thought had led to this change.

Second, in the 5th printing, the EPP for monks goes up a straight 200,000 from 10 to 11 (Spinal Tap-style), jumps up to 500,000 from 11 to 12, then drops back to 250,000 from 12 to 13 and up. There's not a whole heck of a lot the monk gets from going to 11 to 12; no AC improvement, primary/secondary attack adjustments, or movement increase, and he/she simply seems to get the delayed death strike ability, along with, of course, standard HP and BtH improvements. Pretty much all classes seem to experience this kind of discrepancy with level advancement, especially from 9-10 and 10-11 (suppose it's the final push required before class maturity or something like that), but none so markedly as the monk. Is there a particular reason for this, or is it a typo that just didn't get caught between printings? It's certainly simple enough to change the 11 to 12 range to 750,001 - 1,000,001, 1,100,001 or thereabouts, and then maintain a 250,000 XP per level post-12, but again, had been wondering if this was something (relatively minor, true) that had fallen through the cracks.

Otherwise, enjoying the heck out of the new book (although I will say that I preferred the classes listed by Prime Attribute rather than alphabetically; meh, t'aint no difference), and will make further posts on questions/comments/compliments. Looking forward very much to M&T fifth printing, Tome of the Unclean, and Troll Lord Games continuing to move onward and upward.

[Captain_K]

every revision fixes errors and inserts new ones.

xp for all classes doubles most levels (roughly) then at the end becomes linear.. why I do not know.

[Telhawk]

every revision fixes errors and inserts new ones.

xp for all classes doubles most levels (roughly) then at the end becomes linear.. why I do not know.

Agreed - the only rationale I can work up is that the levels in question represent the "name" levels in AD&D; therefore, a serious "push" in terms of xp is required in order to meet that point, otherwise there'd be (logically) countless individuals with "name" status in the game-world. Although (especially depending on specific class) it can obviously take a long time to crack that barrier, I don't have a particular problem with the concept because it's pretty much universal. If the monk alone were saddled with this kind of requirement - and, true, that class does have a considerably bigger bridge to cross than many others at that point - then I'd be ringing the Not Fair bell. However, with the long road pretty much applied evenly - if not distributed evenly - to all classes, I can say "Fair enough," and let it go. Only question remaining is exactly why the xp jack-up is so severe, relatively speaking, but I'm prepared to do the "Meh, whatever," bit and keep playing as is until serious existential problems (if they ever do) become evident.

[Captain_K]

I stopped using detailed experience and do game by game simple points... keeping the class separation, but basically groups stay together. Many go to simple event advances.

[RedDragon]

Do you find that using event-based leveling works with C&C? I ask because the XP needed for a level amongst the classes is highly varied.

[Captain_K]

Red, You're right, my simplified method is in a past Domesday... it keeps the class levels at ratios intended.... going to event based would need to allow the classes to not ALL level at the same time... you'd need to do the math have some events not level them all.