Some complaints and some praise
messy
Member Posts: 35
1. Why is Minsc a ranger? Not only does he not have the required wisdom, but he was given rage as a bonus. Just make him a barbarian.
2. Why do Minsc’s avatar and paper doll have hair? He’s one of the most popular, memorable characters in the series and his portrait clearly shows a bald head. If time can be spent putting Boo in Minsc’s quick item slot, giving him a unique bald avatar and paper doll seems reasonable.
3. Why can’t elves be druids? They live in the forest, for goodness sake. This is more a complaint of the second edition D&D rules.
4. Why is the sorcerer’s casting attribute intelligence? It doesn’t seem that making it charisma (to make the class a true preview of third edition D&D) would’ve been difficult.
5. What’s with the dragon names? Firkraag, Adalon, and Draconis are much cooler than Thaxblahblahblah or Niziblahblahblah.
Having said all that, it’s remarkable that I still think and care about these things despite not playing the games in over ten years.
Coo!
2. Why do Minsc’s avatar and paper doll have hair? He’s one of the most popular, memorable characters in the series and his portrait clearly shows a bald head. If time can be spent putting Boo in Minsc’s quick item slot, giving him a unique bald avatar and paper doll seems reasonable.
3. Why can’t elves be druids? They live in the forest, for goodness sake. This is more a complaint of the second edition D&D rules.
4. Why is the sorcerer’s casting attribute intelligence? It doesn’t seem that making it charisma (to make the class a true preview of third edition D&D) would’ve been difficult.
5. What’s with the dragon names? Firkraag, Adalon, and Draconis are much cooler than Thaxblahblahblah or Niziblahblahblah.
Having said all that, it’s remarkable that I still think and care about these things despite not playing the games in over ten years.
Coo!
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Comments
2. Game assets are expensive.
3. The reasoning for that rule is that to be a "druid" you have to be a part of a druid order, and they only accept humans and half elves. It's the same reasoning used for paladins. Other races could in theory learn druid-like abilities, but unless you've got your membership card you're not a "druid". Literally it's the "it's only Champagne if it's from the Champagne region of france, otherwise it's just sparkling grape juice" line and it's stupid as hell.
4. The sorcerer's spellcasting attribute is not intelligence. They in fact have no spellcasting attribute at all. They cast purely based on their character levels. Implementing charisma based casting may or may not have been easy but it would've cost time and money one way or another and I guess it didn't make the cut.
5. Not entirely clear on what your question is here.
Why do we get supercool names for some dragons but unpronounceable gibberish for others?
Thank you for your reply. 😊
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Draconic_language
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_dragons
I bet Firkraag, Adalon or Draconis are not their real names. In draconic language their names would sound more like Nizdramaniiyt. They are living among lesser sentient species to whom their shorter names are easier to pronounce.
Edit: The good example could be a shadow dragon Shimmergloom that is known from the Companions of the Hall book saga. His real name is Haerinvureem, but among other sentient species he was known simply as Shimmergloom. Another good examples are an insanely powerful red dragon Imvaernarhro, who is widely known as Inferno or a dracolich Daurgothoth, who is one of the leaders of the infamous Cult of the Dragon, who is often reffered as The Creeping Doom.
Like is "Gem" a cool dwarven name? Or is it more like when white parents name their adopted asian daughter "Lily".
Either could work for a character with charname presumably being named by Gorion, but they still feel different.
Of course historically Druidism is a human religion, I'm not sure if there are any real world examples of exceptions to that!
But in 2E rules Druids are listed as an example of a specialty priest. That is a cleric adjusted for a particular faith. The suggestion being that other faiths, other priesthoods, might have similar specially modified sorts of clerics. But the core rule books then stopped at Druid, and no other examples were given. The Cleric Players Handbook (an optional set of rules from a rule set that emphasized optional) did offer some help. But it was still up to the individual DM to do the heavy lifting.
As the "official" 2E game setting, Forgotten Realms can be expected to follow the core rules more closely than most human DMs ever will. Obviously some exceptions are made, both for balance and implementation reasons (and limitations that maybe made more sense in 1996 than they do today). They took a very easy way out for most clerics, and made only a handful of tepid kits that change the core class very little. But Druids are in the core books, so Druids were included. Mechanically Druids ARE a type of cleric, in core rules cleric magic is all drawn from a divinity's "spheres of influence". So the difference between a generic cleric and a Druid comes down to what spheres of influence they are drawing their spells from.
FWIW, in my own 2E PnP game, I created specialty clerics for every priesthood and disallowed the "generic" cleric (I know of other DMs who did something similar). My game's Pantheon was drawn from Greek Mythology. So I have clerics of Ares who can wear any armor and use any weapon, clerics of Apollo who can use bows but not wear armor, clerics of Aphrodite who, well, don't use or wear much of anything at all...
And while I disallowed Druids outright (no divine power there in my world), I have clerics of Artemis who happen to look a lot like 2E Druids. Each priesthood cast spells drawn from their deity's spheres of influence. This is also an easy way of showing different levels of power between the deities; a powerful deity may have access to all the most useful magic, while a lesser power may grant their followers very little. For adventurers it might be worth remembering, the blacksmith in town might find all sorts of utility from the temple of Hephaestus, but healing isn't really their thing. Athena might offer all sorts of useful combat and healing related powers, while Demeter is more useful if you want your crops to grow. Eh, I think it makes for a more varied and interesting setting.
And I'm not saying any of that to say "this is how it ought to be!" Just, the DM designs the setting and decides how the rules will be applied. Don't like the decisions of the Bioware DM? Tough. Deal with it or get a mod. And yes, that means the DM is the ultimate god of their world.
I always wished we had proper specialty clerics for all the faiths of Faerun. That would be fun! A specialty cleric might or might not be very useful to an adventuring party, a well designed Cleric of Lathander might be interesting to play around with. But that's what PnP is for. Bioware and Black Isle made the best decisions they could for the games they designed.