Planewalker Chapter 2 3E comments

I just got done going through Chapter 2 on Plane walker here. This is the chapter on Planescape races if anyone was wondering or out of the loop.

I thought overall it looked pretty solid except for two minor complaints.

First of all there seems to be a majority of these races which if I am not mistaken are supposed to be "common" PC choices are extremely distrustful of those outside their own race... I mean I can see a few of these in a supplement of player races but it seems to me if you are a DM wanting to work with these races primary and want a semi cohesive party you really have to search to find races that would help the party actually stay together. Whereas most races there with things like the Bladelings seem like the outsider character at best. In campaigns where you have a lot of role-playing and desire a semi tight knit group you really have to search for races that would work.

The second complaint is it seems a lot of these are high level starting character races though I may be way off on this one being I am not entirely caught up on 3rd edition workings. There aren't as many of these as there are "loner" type races as I have mentioned above but certainly enough to catch my attention. Again I may be way off on this as I was surprised by the starting cost of many of the races in Savage Species (which I still haven't gotten around to buying) when I was involved in creating a group of characters a few months back.

I was pondering this second issue and I was thinking maybe if it was organized a bit different. My idea was perhaps the races that aren’t entirely hateful or distrustful of everything not their race could be in one section and have the others in a second section. But the more I think about this idea the more I dislike it but I thought I would mention it and maybe someone would have a better idea or modification on the reorganization thing.

All in all I thought the section was really great the detail on all these races was wonderful. I thought the sections on the types of Denizens in the planes (primes, planars, proxies etc.) was great. I also thought the using other Races section and Prestige Races section were excellent. The regional thing for home planes was pretty interesting something I think most people would skip however that is the type of thing I love in my campaign. I might have added something like it if it wasn’t included but with it in there I am certain to use it!

I focused on the negative aspects mainly because why focus too much on the good? They are already quality and I would rather make detailed comments about things I didn’t like so that they can possibly be improved. So please don’t read too much into that I loved the work and I just want to help improve sections I had some questions with.