Kingdoms of Kalamar And Your Thoughts

[Nachofan99]

Alright so, it's neat that KoK appears to be a sort of "untouched virgin paradise" of old 3.X material that seems ripe for plundering and pillaging seeing as how there is no more official D&D stuff being printed.

What are the thoughts of the community on the assimilation of the KoK source materials into optimization and Min/Maxing?

Is this setting sort of like "Dragonlance" in terms of treatment, or more like "Dragon Magazine" or more like "No way" in terms of useage/availability?  As a DM, would you let your players use it?  As a player, would you like to use it?

I see a few neat things that are definitely worth noting, but would like more feedback before suggesting or starting an "Optimization Index: KoK Style" (Obvious innuendo is obvious!)

[dna1]

As far as I know, there is a couple different things that people grab from that. Of course like anything else its subject to DM approval.

I cant seem to remember what I really liked in that book atm, but Im certain there was something pretty cool in there.
LoL sorry this isnt more helpful 

[Nachofan99]

There are a lot of feats that are pretty darn good.  The question is, where do you rate the availability and useage of such a source?

[Azrael]

I allow all material that's officially D&D (i.e. the has the official seal in the top middle of the cover), anything else is 3rd party. So technically Kalimar is official.

Best things I use from that book are feats like...

Irresistible spell (+4 LA) - Basically makes your spell require no save. Combine this with dweomerkeeper's ability and you can apply no save and no SR to any spell (assuming you are something like a wizard and have some incantrix levels, or some other method for lowering the LA of metamagic).

Miser with Magic - Really good if you are a wizard...particularly with those 9th level spells.

Child of the Earth - If your optimizing your saves who wouldn't want to add con bonus to all saves.

Unerring Strike - Basically the opposite of power attack. Also allows you to combine it with power attack and a two handed weapon to get your level as a bonus to damage on all attacks. I like playing a frenzied berzerker with this and (at 20th level) getting +80 damage on all attacks!

Channel Positive Energy - This is absolutely ridiculous, you can immobilize one or multiple creatures, send them to extradimensional spaces, put them to sleep, give them a ton of negative levels, etc....all with NO SAVE allowed.

[dna1]

Irresistible spell (+4 LA) - Basically makes your spell require no save. Combine this with dweomerkeeper's ability and you can apply no save and no SR to any spell (assuming you are something like a wizard and have some incantrix levels, or some other method for lowering the LA of metamagic).




That was what I was trying to remember! Yea, totally broken, but totally awesome

[Bard]

Irresistible spell (+4 LA) - Basically makes your spell require no save. Combine this with dweomerkeeper's ability and you can apply no save and no SR to any spell (assuming you are something like a wizard and have some incantrix levels, or some other method for lowering the LA of metamagic).




That was what I was trying to remember! Yea, totally broken, but totally awesome

I seem to remember it was errata'd into giving +10 to the DC of the spell when the 3.5 Players Handbook came out (Players Guide to the Sovreign Lands or something like that)

[Libertad]

Irresistible spell (+4 LA) - Basically makes your spell require no save. Combine this with dweomerkeeper's ability and you can apply no save and no SR to any spell (assuming you are something like a wizard and have some incantrix levels, or some other method for lowering the LA of metamagic).




That was what I was trying to remember! Yea, totally broken, but totally awesome

Oh yeah, I haven't really gotten into Kalamar, but I remember hearing about the craziness of that feat!

[The_Mad_Linguist]

IIRC, the way it works is that the first two or three books are WotC official, and the rest aren't (indicated by the presence/absence of the logo).

The biggest problem with using material is that there are about five different places that rules fixes/conversions/errata are located.

That said, once you find all the misc patches, the material is quite well done, they've got interesting mechanical tidbits, and there are certain parts of the flavortext (particularly the holy books section) that are extremely well done.

Miser with Magic - Really good if you are a wizard...particularly with those 9th level spells.

It's been altered so you get around one spell of your highest level with the feat per day, which is pretty fair.

Channel Positive Energy - This is absolutely ridiculous, you can immobilize one or multiple creatures, send them to extradimensional spaces, put them to sleep, give them a ton of negative levels, etc....all with NO SAVE allowed.

See the update.  Saves/turning checks were added to virtually all of them.  And note that you only get one of those.

[Optimator]

I thought it was 3rd party...  time to look it up!

[Azrael]

It's been altered so you get around one spell of your highest level with the feat per day, which is pretty fair.

Yeah I never really bothered to look at the errata. I thought all the errata was 3rd party anyway. At least irresistible spell works, my favorite spell to use it with is flesh to ice. Basically instant kill unless they have SR that you cant beat (with things like true casting thats difficult), have immunity to transmutation, or block/interrupt/get out of the way somehow. Uses up a 9th level spell slot (unless mitigated) but its worth it...especially since you can basically kill things like the tarrasque in one round (not that he's all that tough anyway).

Wings of Flurry is a good one as well.

[The_Mad_Linguist]

The errata is made by the original designers, so I'd say it's got equal officiallness.  Officialosity.  Official netbattlers. 

'No save allowed' was pretty balanced when originally implemented, due to the lack of any metamagic reducers available to PCs at the time, and the only save-or-die usable with it before epic was Phantasmal Killer.

As is, +10 to DC is still pretty good with current splats.

[Azrael]

I suppose, but I am forced to ignore non-official errata That's what the errata project is for, and it will certainly be banned in tier 2 play when I come out with my tier handbook.

[zook1shoe]

i dont like to poor printing quality of them

[InnaBinder]

I've run it before, and really like the way it handles the world around the players, relative to most other published worlds.

The explicit additional uses of Turn Undead were a lot of fun, IMO.

The pre-errata Miser With Magic didn't cause serious issues at my table, but my players were pretty low-op oriented.

The "anti-feats" (I think they're called) were a precursor to flaws, and pretty much need to go die in a fire.

[littha]

I thought it was 3rd party...  time to look it up!

Look up the World of Warcraft D20 stuff too then... official wizards stuff.

Then again I suppose its just another campaign setting.

[zook1shoe]

I thought it was 3rd party...  time to look it up!

Look up the World of Warcraft D20 stuff too then... official wizards stuff.

Then again I suppose its just another campaign setting.

actually thats only d20 OGL stuff, not officially licensed stuff

[littha]

I thought it was 3rd party...  time to look it up!

Look up the World of Warcraft D20 stuff too then... official wizards stuff.

Then again I suppose its just another campaign setting.

actually thats only d20 OGL stuff, not officially licensed stuff

It has the dungeons and dragons logo on the front.

[zook1shoe]

oh.... well i was looking at the Sword and Sorcery version. whats the publisher of that one?

[littha]

looking it up at the moment but considering that logo is owned by wizards I would expect them to have published it.

[zook1shoe]

i found it.... it was just called Warcraft

gimme a sec to check it out

EDIT: yeah it is officially licensed for that book anyway

but the newer World of Warcraft book(s) by S and S is not