Re: Races in Space

In <URL:news:local.spelljam> on Fri 13 Oct, Olander wrote:
> You might find this article interesting:
> http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dd/20060721a

Thanks for the reference!


> Its about redesigning the Ogre Magi to take advantage of the rules for its
> theme, rather than being a straight transliteration from previous versions
> of the game.
> 
> Kinda like the gamer version of 'Engrish'.

Interesting to read that, though a bit annoying and depressing.

I've found the Ogre Magi to be very useful, from a number of
points of view, and a redesign like this means that I can't use
it as a reference point in the same way.  And, I have to re-think
where I have made use of it as a monster; I've used it as the
basis of more than one magical assassin or spy.

Changing its regeneration to fast healing is particularly
annoying, as OM and Troll are the two iconic examples of
different forms of regeneration that it is useful to refer to. 

Fast healing also doesn't have the casual 'death resistance' that
regeneration has, meaning that OM will die much more easily to
unskilled just lucky opponents.

I wonder if WotC took the trouble to do a search on how many
things referenced Ogre Magi, and hence depended on them?

Historically in DnD I believe the OM introduced the Cold Blast,
and the wand and spell came later - now the redesign drops that
in favour of Lightning Bolt!

The fun was always catching a party of adventurers in overlapping
Cold Blasts from multiple OM!

(I've had more than one of my characters die that way...)

I'm not really interested in using a single OM as a gang boss of
groups of ogres, though I've seen it used that way by other DMs
to considerable success.

I'm much more interested in them as things which look human but
aren't, and have all sorts of surprising powers.  That is what I
would consider to be their theme.  I find the idea of them as
just boss ogres boring.

Looking back to their origins in Japanese mythology I assume they
were supposed to be some sort of Oni or Dai-Oni (though they are
a bit underpowered for the later, which can be little short of
demi-gods).


The cross-reference to them making serious changes to the use of
Polymorph and related spells (as they think them too powerful for
their level, and open-ended) is something that I will have to
look out for - this could have some really major consequences.


> On 10/13/06, Dreamer <dreamer@??????.?????.??.uk> wrote:
> >
> > In <URL:news:local.spelljam> on Thu 12 Oct, Max wrote:
> > > > Are there any rules out there for playing a young/immature
> > > > version of a race that has racial hit dice, with less than the
> > > > full set of hit dice?
> > >
> > >   Or you could try Goodman Games 'The Deluxe Book of Templates'
> > > which has several templates for immature, degenerate or diminished
> > > versions of a race.
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> > Looks interesting, but somewhat outside my budget, at the moment.
> > [grin]
> >
> > Just as an example, we had rules pre-3rdEd for Ogre Magi PCs,
> > which only became mature and equivalent to the standard monster
> > on reaching Level 7/7 Fighter/Magic-user:
> >
> > http://www.romsys.demon.co.uk/frpg/dnd/race/ogremagi.htm
> >
> > 3rdEd SRD Ogre Magic have 5d8 HD and and +7 LA, which seeing as
> > we gave them 7d6 HD pre-3rdEd (7d4 averaged with 7d8 (or 7d10
> > under AD&D)) probably comes out about the same.

-- 
Dreamer
dreamer@??????.?????.??.uk
http://www.romsys.demon.co.uk/