My namesake got mentioned as a prominant person of power in Sigil. I'm happy.
Her Serenity was listed as (LN female, unknown race). I strongly object to giving Her an alignment, especially an alignment of LN. Neutral? Likely. LN? Heck no. I'm also not sure that I agree with statting Her as female either. We assume, but we don't know...
I can only hope that Planewalker intends to completely ignore anything completely against the original material that happens to show up.
The DVD thing is one thing, since you can at least 'reset' the cosmology fairly easily, but giving the Lady an alignment and a known gender is against everything ever written of her aside from, MAYBE, Pages of Pain, which itself never claimed to be the -actual- truth.
I can see the headlines now. "Strange text appears telling that the Lady is lawful, Xaositects in an uproar, most of them flayed."
First, everything in the book is subject to the whim of the DM and thus there is no need for an argument.
Second, I think the LN, female was the "best guess" as wizard doesn't appearently want to admit that they don't know ANYTHING about the Lady because that would go against their new policy of trying to give an alignment to important personas (dumb policy, I know but what do you expect from a company ruled by a brain in a jar) I think that they are careing less about what actually is, and more about what would make it easier to play a game with. This was not neccesarily for the best, but considering it as a game and the point of a game is to enjoy yourself means that it is fine to aler traits so long as they results in more fun, I mean, it IS a game and if the game is altered from reality, it matters not. You can just as easily change it back to what is if that makes your game more fun.
It's out already? Which stores are selling it? I've not seen it in Waldenbooks/B. Dalton or Barnes & Noble/Borders, so I'm curious as to where it was originally spotted....
Specialty game/comics shops always get books before the chain bookstores do. I got my copy at Collector's Corner in Midland, MI.
It's too early to review it or anything, but I like the "lore" section they have for each faction. This is all new stuff, adventure hooks and the like concerning the faction in question. Examples include the Doomguard Song of Dissolution and a rebellious group of Athar who believe even the Great Unknown is just a hoax masking the truth of reality.
There's a lot of black-and-white art used as filler in the margins which I recognize as also appearing in (3e) Fiend Folio. It's disconcerting.
They call Sigil a lawful neutral city. This is stupid, especially when they go on to say that the closest thing Sigil has to a police force (the Sons of Mercy) aren't terribly effective in limiting crime, while the Sigil Advisory Council lacks real political power. This is lawful?
That said, the Sigil section is lengthy and very well done. The Dana Knutson illustration is beautiful, and there are a number of large diagrams showing the lay-out of the city from a variety of perspectives, making things clearer than ever before (Yes, Sigil curves both ways!).
Dabus are mentioned, but not statted or described very well. Razorvine gets its due.
The sections on the City of Brass and Tu'narath are also good. Tu'narath seems, at first glance, to be mostly straight from the Dungeon adventure. It's noteworthy that the City of Brass is much, much bigger and wealthier than Sigil is. The City of Brass has a population of a million and a half, while Sigil is stuck at 250,000. That's half what In the Cage said it had, but this might be a temporary post-war thing. Sigil is two and a half times more populous than Union (Union is not mentioned in the Planar Handbook), but Union is three times as wealthy as Sigil and twice as wealthy as the City of Brass, as determined by its gold piece limit. Union and Tu'narath are aproximately equal as far as population goes, but Union is six times wealthier.
I don't know why I keep comparing cities to Union, which as I said is not mentioned in the Planar Handbook. Maybe someone is curious.
The Planar Touchstones seem pretty interesting. They're essentially planar adventure ideas for a wide variety of encounter levels and locations, which is good for those who have absolutely no idea what PCs should do on the planes.
We get five new kinds of energon: xac-yel (fire energy), xac-yij (acid energy), xap-yaup (electric energy), xong-yong (sound energy), and xor-yost (cold energy). The weird thing about them is the home planes they suggest: Gehenna, Limbo, the Beastlands, Acheron, and Cania, respectively. Wouldn't they be from the Inner Planes?
The unraveler is what was called the menglis in the PSMCIII. The ur'Epona is similar to the nic'Epona. We get an "entropic" and "vivacious" template for animentals native to the negative and positive inner planes. Elsewhales are essentially balaenas (from the PSMCII, and the Outer Planes Monstrous Compendium before that).
Bariaurs are medium-sized again. Time to revise the races document again, planewalker people!
New races: wildren (Beastlands), shadowswyfts (Shadow), spikers (Acheron), neraphim (Limbo), mephlings (inner planes), buommans (Astral). Old races: aasimars, tieflings, bariaurs. Powerful races as PCs: avorals, kytons, hound archons, jann, lillendi.
Lotsa new spells and equipment, and planar variants of base classes. What internet people usually call Abyssal Red Steel is called Abyssal Bloodiron here, a much better name.
The encounter lists are kind of confused, implying that yugoloths are only found in Gehenna and slasraths only in the Waste. Maybe that's the only confused part.
Thanks for the details on the other sections of the book Rip. *grin*
Cannot wait to get my fiendish little claws on it. *impatiently waits for amazon to ship stuff*
I'm not surprised with the 250k figure. Does that only include full time residents and not transients?
The gold piece value is disconcerting though. Sigil has Zadara the titan, Estevan one of the lords of the Planar Trade Consortium, my namesake (not quite at their level, but eh), and Jeremo the sodding Jester of the Ring-Givers. Seriously, Jeremo by himself likely could encompass the entire economy of the city as it's currently statted by himself.
I know that Jeremo and his faction don't get mentioned, but still he's there and wealthy as all getout...
Anything Indepy?
I assume so. But wasn't the population in In the Cage listed as 500,000 permanent, and a million with transients included?
(Checks) "Though the city has a population of more than a million, two-thirds of that are transient planars and primes."
Ah. So (more than) 333,333 permanent, 666,667 transient.
So not so different. And actually, with six factions moving their headquarters and who knows how many other refugees leaving the strife of the post-war period, I'm surprised the population hasn't shrunk more.
Nothing on the Free League that I've spotted.
Nope.
Nope.
the factions that do appear here are the Athar, the Doomguard, the Fated, the Mind's Eye, the Sensates, the Ciphers, and the Xaositects. The Sons of Mercy are briefly mentioned as the law enforcers of Sigil, but no details are provided. It's kind of strange that they didn't include the Guvners or the Bleakers or the Hardheads, since those factions are mentioned in the Manual of the Planes and the Hardheads play a big part of the background of the rheks from the Book of Exalted Deeds. But maybe they felt the seven that did get detailed were the best for adventuring possibilities. I would argue that Mercykillers, Anarchists, Hardheads, and Order Fratboys are just as good, though.
Dustmen and Bleakers, who strive to be uncaring or tend to be apathetic, seem somewhat harder to motivate within a faction context. Can anyone think of Dustmen ideas other than "help the vilewight/plague spirit/mohrg acheive the serenity of our ideals" or "help us dispose of this enormous corpse, or honor the wishes of the departed in cremating something immune to fire?" Bleakers are, of course, often altruistic, but often they aren't.
Hmm. Lemme try.
Dustmen:
1. Hunt down someone trying to avoid honoring his contract.
2. Trip to Thanatos to confer with the loremasters of the undercity.
3. Prevent Qaida or someone from taking over the faction.
4. Help Qaida or someone in helping to overthrow Skall.
5. Set some restless spirits to rest.
6. Find out what happened to a Dustman monastery that cut off all contacts to the outside world long ago.
7. Recover a spark of True Life.
8. Perform a marriage ceremony between a vampire and his mortal lover without letting the enraged family of the bride disrupt things.
9. Free entrapped souls. Destroy shadowfiends busily entrapping souls.
10. Destroy undead who are violating the Dead Pact.
11. Stop alchemist from creating ghouls powered by their own souls instead of negative energy.
12. Locate the reincarnation of a valued spiritual leader of the Dead.
13. Rescue Skall from his Maze.
14. Negotiate a treaty between warring vampire clans.
15. Help allied nation of ghouls in defeating city of illithids.
16. Convince the Lich Queen of the githyanki to honor the Dead Pact.
17. Convince furious githzerai that just because the Lich Queen is now honoring the Dead Pact doesn't mean the Dead should be considered the racial enemies of all followers of the Wizard-King.
18. Collect the components to become a lich.
19. Found a new monastery on the Negative Energy Plane.
20. Found a new monastery in Mount Celestia without having the archons declare jihad on it.
Okay, so the possibilities are endless there, but maybe the wizards of the coast people aren't so clever. Probably there were space issues.
Heh, wait until you see my write up of the Dusties with PrCs, feats, etc. See if you think they're boring and unmotivated then. :twisted:
Actually, I'm working on creating a NWN module that will introduce a little trip to the Abyss for some clueless Primes, and the first NPC they'll meet there will be a Dustman who's investigating a "misappropriation" or theft of petitioners. (The player hook being that he/she was a victim in a large scale ritualistic sacrifice and is now a semi-undead semi-petitioner, in the wrong plane - for favor of a would-be-power of a little known Abyssal lord)
I've been waiting for some PS 3e material for a while now. Come on Amazon, give me my book! So are there any changes with Dustmen or how petitioners work, in general?
Im not sure if I like the Planar handbook. No doubt a lot of work has gone into it but it seems to show a LOT of nothing. It gives a good description of Sigil with some pretty pictures but it really needed to go more in depth. And what about the rest of the factions? Personally I think WotC should have left well alone. What we are doing here is going to be vastly superior (as long as it all goes to plan).
Lets show em how its done shall we?
I am topping this off because I asked a question about it in another thread and interested to see if there are anymore replies to what people think about this product. I am going to try and get someone to delete the other thread. :oops:
Really? Those are...interesting choices.
Female: Sure, especially if any credit is to be given to Pages of Pain, which pretty darn definately established the Lady as feminine, though whether her having a gender actually means anything is detabable.
Lawful Neutral: The Neutral part makes sense (it's pretty much a must), Lawful, well, it's not impossible. Assuming you take Lawful Neutral to mean her law, and the laws that bind the Lady's own existnce being pretty much compulsory on her. ie. don't let yourself be worshipped as a god, only you can control the portals, I am the one and only ruler of Sigil, that sort of stuff. Mortal law might be considered so far beneath her as to be irrelevant. It doesn't mean the Lady has to act lawful by mortal (much less human) standards. Regardless, giving her an alignment has to be a mistake.
Unknown Race: This is actually kind of troubling. Even saying unknown implies that the Lady has a 'race.' Meaning she's a physical being of some kind, not a spiritual one, a godless god, or some other, non-normal existence (essence of Sigil, etc.). It seems too, well, mundane.