10/16/2010 5:26:21 AM
Derek Holland
Posts: 366
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I got it in the mail yesterday and read or scanned most of it.
Good
Color, small font, Todd has very much improved as an artist
Nice new races- humanoid chameleons, winged mice (the size of mice), deep fey, lunars (both now in PF) and bat/wolf humanoids that use drugs to learn the true nature of the universe
The 3 prestige races are much like the original. Vampires, lycanthropes (though called werran) and ancients. The last are any race that use goddust like Dune's spice and have telepathic and empathic abilities.
Rules for survival in the dark- vision, absense of sunlight and mental effects. I think they would work very well in any setting where people going into the deeps for extended periods. Sort of like Wildwood's hunting rules.
Nice selection of animals and plants (love the homing frogs), weird locations and peoples.
Bad
Some of the text is letters in tiny font.
Very dark and not just because of the vampire nation. And no, pun not intended. One of the PrCs is for slavers and has an ability "mind rape". Blech.
Naked men and women in the art. I am not a prude but this isn't tasteful art and is meant to be shocking rather than inspiring.
No stats for some of the most interesting NPCs listed. The dragon and super vampires (so old they don't look humanoid any longer) especially.
No adventure.
But the worst is the retconning. There are a couple sections that made me wonder what the authors were thinking of. I found only two, one minor and one that left me speechless for a few moments:
The core of the Forge is a maze to the prison of the Bound God (DOF page 6). Suddenly it is molten rock (OE page 9).
Seeds and natives have full access to gods from other planes and the ability to come and go from the Forge (seeds need to get their keys first but are then free) (DOF pages 113-114). Now the Forge is flypaper and never lets anyone go and cuts everyone off from the gods (OE page 108). It is still mind boggling.
Is it worth buying for an Oathbound fan, hell yes. Pathfinder fans, that depends on how much you want the survival rules and a fairly fleshed out setting.
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10/17/2010 5:38:03 AM
Derek Holland
Posts: 366
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Some other oddities.
The minor one is the difference between Eclipse and Wildwood. In WW, the edges of Eclipse are barren stone and Haiel avoids the area (sort of like the Gloomskein in Arena).
Pages 16-17 mention how saltwater in the Sea is difficult to make fresh. It even mentions out desalination on a mass scale sucks the life out of spellcasters (?!?). Yet there is a 2nd level spell and a magic item in the book that can be scaled up easily to provide freshwater to a city for fairly cheaply.
Page 186 mentions how urgoda are humans. Huh? They are mammals with beaks and chicken feet.
Page 183 has a paragraph about how Create Food and Water spells and how people can't rely on them for more than a month straight because people are natural. A few problems there. 1) Those humans and other races taken to the Forge are mostly divinely created. 2) Create Food and Water is a divine spell and I doubt that the gods would allow their power to wane in such a manner. 3) So what if Create Food and Water works? That will just increase the number of predators as they prey on the casters and those they benefit.
edited by Derek Holland on 10/17/2010
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10/17/2010 10:08:15 PM
Greg Dent
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Posts: 195
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Thanks for your take. I appreciate you listed the good stuff first! Upon reading this though, it strikes me that there's some areas of confusion that I can help clear up.
First of all, keep in mind that the sourcebook for this campaign setting is Oathbound Seven, not DOF. I know... kind of lame to point out since we are so late with it, but the setting has been revisited in a number of ways. When you get that book it'll make more sense; it's not just the same old stuff cut and pasted into a new book, it's a reframing of the setting. We didn't change the basic premises, but a lot of the things we hid or held back in the original are made clear.
Some Details:
1. The core of the forge is molten rock, like any planet. That's unavoidable due to the intense pressure. The prison in the centeris indeed maze-like, as are the citadels. Worth noting is that the seven did not create the wellspring and the helix, the magic of the oath created this as a mechanism to continue to cool the prison once the Forge was formed. The text you are referring to in the first book is somewhat metaphorical in nature.
2. Seeds have never had access to their gods. They just assumed they did because their spells continue to work. The raw magic of the forge provides the power for their spells. You could pray to a potato and cast spells on the Forge if you were fervent enough and really believed in the power of the potato. This has always been the case, but it wasn't made clear in the original book. Some of the later books did not have this and several other of the fine points right as they were never written down and the later authors did not ask to talk to Todd or I to try to understand the world we had created.
3. The key of binding still exist in Oathbound 7 and work much the same as before. You can leave if you work hard enough at it. It should be noted that such keys are exceptionally rare and hard to get, and the existence of a simple portal one could step through would still draw visitors. The keys are far more of a game device than a real factor in the history of the Forge. Actually gathering the pieces to a key could take years.
4. There's enough room up there for there to be a mixture of terrain types.
4. Desalination Skins: We'll just have to agree to disagree with you on how well those scale. Certainly the wizards used as slaves to desalinate water are not the most powerful of the bunch either.
5. Urgoda: TYPO! Should be "Humanoid", not "human", sorry. That one slipped by me because in the same paragraph, Todd originally wrote that they were "Crud hunters" instead of "Crude". I was distracted by laughter. Jeff and I even talked about forming a band called "Crud hunter".
6. Create Food: See #1 above. Todd and I actually have major problems with the "Something from nothing spells". I don't see magic as something totally outside of nature that has no rules or limits. It's more like a force that we don't fully understand yet. In any case, spamming one's god for food over and over again isn't a good way to make one's god happy. At some point he's going to give up on you and move on.
Thanks for your input. I think Pathfinder geeks will enjoy Oathbound Seven. It's got a lot more of the game content and a lot less fluff. Also, there is an adventure for Eclipse, we just figured it fit better on line instead of in the sourcebook. We will be putting adventures up soon enough, but we have limited resources at the moment, and can only do on thing at a time.
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President, Epidemic Books
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10/17/2010 11:43:59 PM
Greg Dent
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Posts: 195
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Oh, one last thing to add... if you are the DM, it's your setting, so feel free to change whatever bits you don't like. We do with our games. That's the advantage of a pen and paper game over a video game!
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President, Epidemic Books
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10/18/2010 2:46:19 AM
Derek Holland
Posts: 366
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Thanks for the quick response, Greg! Before I get into it, note that I really do like most of the book. It is a great addition to the line.
(About changing the setting) I know. I played around with the idea of a steampunk Anvil, making the domains into their own little planets and a few other extreme changes to the Forge.
My problem with #4 is more of "sucking the life out of spellcasters" than the desalination itself. How does a spell, esp a 2nd level spell, suck the life out of anything?
And as for #6, arcane spells may be outside of nature but divine spells? Gods are existance. They define reality so calling their power unnatural is odd to say the least. And what is different from calling one for healing spells ad nausem vs creation spells?
And page 60 needs some errata. The first sentence (or more) was cut.
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12/25/2010 5:38:43 AM
Derek Holland
Posts: 366
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So what are the lines that are missing from page 60?
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1/3/2011 1:33:15 PM
Greg Dent
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Posts: 195
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Derek Holland wrote:
So what are the lines that are missing from page 60?
Only one line. Turns out it is actually there, but the font didn't get set to white, so its unreadable on the black background:
To speak in his favor, I must say that Annoxus has changed much over the years. At first, the boy took over my role with madness
[continued on page 61]
and glee, as one might play a game of the imagination—without limits.
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President, Epidemic Books
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1/4/2011 6:34:15 AM
Derek Holland
Posts: 366
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Thanks!
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1/10/2011 4:13:35 PM
Greg Dent
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Posts: 195
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If you find any other errata, I added a thread in the OB General forum you should post it at. We'll be updating our ebooks periodically to correct errors.
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President, Epidemic Books
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1/25/2011 4:36:58 AM
Derek Holland
Posts: 366
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greg wrote:
2. Seeds have never had access to their gods. They just assumed they did because their spells continue to work. The raw magic of the forge provides the power for their spells. You could pray to a potato and cast spells on the Forge if you were fervent enough and really believed in the power of the potato. This has always been the case, but it wasn't made clear in the original book.
It just hit me- then how do spells like commune work?
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1/26/2011 12:05:50 PM
Greg Dent
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Posts: 195
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Derek Holland wrote:
It just hit me- then how do spells like commune work?
From Oathbound Seven, page 337:
Divine Intervention
Gods cannot enter the Forge, so any spell requiring direct divine intervention to function automatically fails unless the caster is a follower of Belus or Abbydon. Fortunately, few if any spells actually require the direct presence of one’s deity.
Though casters may be separated from their gods on the Forge, the magics they weave and the favors they ask for are somewhat universal in nature, and the raw energy of the Forge picks up the slack. Divine spells on the Forge are actually fueled by the Forge itself, and not by any distant deities (though some would argue otherwise). Consequently, a number of spells involving information have limitations.
The secrets of the Forge may never be revealed by any divination or deity. Spells such as augury, commune, contact other plane, and divination do work here, but will not ever reveal any of the secrets of the plane (information pertaining to the Oath or the Seven and their citadels). Also, specific details known by distant remote deities may not be known by the Forge, and answers to some questions may be hazy or non-specific.
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Anyway, that's the official explanation. What's cool about a pen and paper game as opposed to a computer game, is that if you are unsatisfied by that answer, you can change it in your game.
As to why we did it that way, it's just what seemed to make the most sense given the conditions of the Oath. We could just have easily said it didn't work at all, but we didn't want to kill the game mechanic, just make it fit into the setting.
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President, Epidemic Books
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2/10/2011 5:54:29 AM
pajarito
Posts: 1
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Just got my Oathbound Eclipse book here in spain. Wonderful artwork, even better than the oathbound artwork from the old books. To be sincere, I haven't had time to read it.
On the first sight has a lot more content than what I expected. I just hope that new adventures will come up.
the shipping service overseas was good and very fast and Im very satisfied with it.
keep rocking epidemic!
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2/11/2011 4:22:37 AM
ToddM
Administrator
Posts: 44
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hey greg and i are hard at work on the adventure its a lot more art and maps and work than we expected but it should all be done towards the end of next week and online for download free, thank for the props on the look of the book hope you like my writing as much.
todd
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