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Savage Species or Player's guide to the Planes?

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Sun, 2004-08-29 19:36
#1
bonemage
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Savage Species or Player's guide to the Planes?

I already have the Manual of the Planes for 3rd edition. I also own the entire 30 book collection of Planescape 2nd edition. Well in any case I am getting ready (again) to run my first Planescape campaign this fall I was wondering which of the two supplements would give me better supplements for the characters particuarly in character creation but also considering other extras.

I wanted a little hand on expanding the number of races the players can choose from being that they will be adventuring on the planes. I hear many of the races in Player's guide to the planes were reproduced from Savage Species. In any case which if I had to choose would be best to pick up first. Also any other good 3.0 or 3.5 supplements that might help my planescape game out. (I already own 3.0 PHB, DM, Monster, book of vile darkness, deities and demigods, and the manual of the planes.)

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Mon, 2004-08-30 08:01
#2
Clueless
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Savage Species or Player's guide to the Planes?

Savage Species - it's got plenty of good races and the rules on how to make more of them - wherease the Planes book has a handful of species - some ok, some... crud. And a lot of stuff that's neigh unuseable or simply stupid in the context of a Planescape game (Like the last 30 some pages).

I'm not entirely sure I trust the Savage Species rules on race creation - but they're decent enough - and if I recall there's some good feats for winged critters in there. As always when homebrewing - feel free to bend the rules to make the race match better and not be over or under powered.

As for other books: Beyond Countless Doorways
(Yeah - it might not be canon PS - but it's still, from what I understand *very* good inspirational material for a planar campaign.)

Mon, 2004-08-30 15:08
(Reply to #2) #3
bonemage
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Savage Species or Player's guide to the Planes?

Yeah I just may pick that up but I will certainly get Savage Species and the Fiend Folio first. But I like the idea of the planescape designers reunion and I will buy it sometime this fall. Laughing out loud

Fri, 2004-09-17 15:47
(Reply to #3) #4
Shemeska the Ma...
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Savage Species or Player's guide to the Planes?

What Clueless said. Savage species, though it's 3e as opposed to 3.5 has had utility to me in my own game. Lots of the feats and templates in there have been a decent source of inspiration, even if some of the 'monster race classes' may be open to questions. Plus that I got an autographed book from WotC during last year's UnCon can't hurt.

(And I'm in the demiplane creation contest at UnCon this year too... http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=309128

Planar Handbook was a mix of 'ok' and 'I could personally write better stuff than this if I was doped up on painkillers and alcohol'. The material on Sigil was largely good, though giving The Lady an alignment of LN was seriously questionable. The material on Tunarath and the City of Brass was pretty good as well. All 3 cities however had the same flaw... it was dry as Minethys...

The last 30 pages of book, the Planar Touchstones, are perhaps the single worst implimented idea in all of 3rd edition, hands down. It assumes that you need to hand out powerups to PCs to give them any reason to planewalk, like planar versions of fireflowers and yoshi eggs to powerup and win the game. *sigh*

The PrCs are decent, but some of the 'lore' sections for each faction make me wonder if the author for that section bothered to actually read all of 'The Factols Manifesto'. Some of it is good, some of it isn't.

The Monster section was a mix of good and crud. Dharculus = awesome. Menglis (renamed Unraveller) was ok, but the concept was altered a bit. Energons for elemental energy types living on outer planes = WTF?

Mon, 2005-08-01 09:50
(Reply to #4) #5
Thanatos Syl
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Savage Species or Player's guide to the Planes?

Weren't the energons originally the Xeg-yi and Xag-ya from the original Fiend Folio? Also, I believe that 2e did have negative energy elementals, for some reason I'm thinking that was in Return to the Tomb of Horrors. Can anyone refresh my memory or at least tell me if I'm right here?

Mon, 2005-08-01 12:18
(Reply to #5) #6
ripvanwormer
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Savage Species or Player's guide to the Planes?

'Thanatos Syl' wrote:
Weren't the energons originally the Xeg-yi and Xag-ya from the original Fiend Folio? Also, I believe that 2e did have negative energy elementals, for some reason I'm thinking that was in Return to the Tomb of Horrors. Can anyone refresh my memory or at least tell me if I'm right here?

You're right, but I believe The Inner Planes retconned this to some extent, saying the "elementals" were actually constructs created by the demilich Acererak instead of naturally occuring negative planar phenomena.

Fri, 2005-08-05 00:36
(Reply to #6) #7
Almighty Watashi
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Savage Species or Player's guide to the Planes?

First time I saw fiend folio, I thought "what a stupd bunch of monsters". Later I started digging through planescape monster compendiums and now FF is an irreplaceable addition to my campaign (not that I actually own it or anything Laughing out loud). All i need to do is to see the DiTerlizzi version of every monster and suddenly it becomes cool and everything Cool

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