Some Random Questions...

General ACKS Forums ACKS Core Rules Playtest
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I know I’m rather late on this, but I’d like to put in my votes for some of these ideas.

  1. I think the Bladedancer is best as lightly armoured, swashbuckling-y sort of fighter.
  2. c,d,e. I prefer having just general information about the borderlands or wilderness areas, as well as the areas between cities or settlements.
  3. Centaurs, Lizard Men and Gnomes are all great. Ogres/Giants/etc. or the like might be interesting as well. I’m of a “more is better” thought on this front - I think it’s easier to ignore stuff you don’t want to use than to try and cobble together working rules after the fact. With that said, I prefer the full blooded races to the half-orc/half-elf/etc., types. Though it might be interesting to have proficiencies that indicate you have heritage of a certain type.
  4. Druid please! I don’t know why so many people seem to dislike them, but one of my players was really disappointed that there were no Druids (specialized Clerics just don’t cut it for her). I also think their late game play would be interesting - creating a grove instead of a temple, etc… Barbarians are also cool - setting up a viking-type domain could be fun. As with races, I prefer to have more options rather than less, as it’s easier to just ignore the classes you don’t want to use.
    Anyway, just my thoughts. Even if the core books was the only one published it would still contain more awesome than most entire product lines do - you guys have all done a great job!
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  1. Would love to see an entire package of beastmen with associated classes. Goblin strangler, troll shaman, troglodyte hexcaster, etc., with appropriate strongholds and proficiencies. (With gnomes as their secret masters, ideally.) It might be interesting to break out “human” into more variety - maybe primarily cultural (Phoenecian sea-kings, Pictish wild-men, etc.) with a modified general proficiencies list but the same basic classes, or maybe something more dramatic, like Cimmereans or Kushites treated as different races with unique abilities. There’s all sorts of possibilities for mini-book expansions here.
    Didn’t one of the early not-quite-D&D-yet games treat wizards as a separate race, throwing around fire not through spells but as a racial “they’re wizards, they can do that”? I seem to recall hearing about that, but never played anything that ran them that way.
    This would have been a much simpler question if race was a single class. I like having more options, certainly… and yet, classes were never representative of every aspect of a culture, just those parts you’d want to bring into a dungeon with you. Ah well, path not taken.
  2. I’m obliged to say Necromancer, but you can already build a decent necromancer from the base mage, so unless there’s a Zaharan race that includes an “Affinity with the Dead” bonus… shrug
    If you did Druid close to what historical sources we have - well-educated judge-priests of high social standing - that would be a nice change from the feral loners of D&D, but again you can build that pretty well from the cleric… so maybe a feral loner class is a good idea. With clerics getting the animal spells and mages getting the plant spells (mostly), there’s definitely a wilderness-caster niche waiting to be filled; add animal types to the languages they can learn, wilderness bonuses like the Explorer, and so on. Sounds like an elf thing to me.
    I think that additional classes might best be handled in the context of a larger bundle of culture. It would be nice to see more class options for the elves and dwarves (despite that lingering race=class fondness), but without knowing more about how they live, it’s tough to say what those classes should be. (Dwarven Drunken Master!)
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And Monks. Monks are cool.

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A few quick notes:

  1. The class suggestions are great. I will definitely take note of these when we create the bonus classes in the Player’s Companion.
  2. We playtested the new lighter armored bladedancers and they were tons of fun.
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I definitely want to see halflings classes. They’re just as iconic to D&D and high fantasy as dwarfs and elfs are IMO. Maybe something like a burglar class and some kind of ranger class.
Other races I’d like to see covered would be the gnome (illusionist/thief, druid) and lizard man (barbarian, shaman). I do think centaurs would be rather too limited to be a good pc choice. They would have a real tough time in a dungeon environment.