Well, after about 8 months of on-and-off work, my homebrew campaign setting, Everlyn, is nearing the point where I'd feel comfortable running a game in it. It will continue to have more material added as time goes on, but I still feel a sense of great accomplishment. Anway, I'm posting here hoping to get some constructive criticism about the world and how I might improve it. Some changes are for flavor reasons, others are for balance reasons. The information on the setting can be found here:
http://everlyn.wikispaces.com/
Thanks,
MD
Welcome to the guild.
You've got a nice-looking site with good organization. I have not had time to read it all, but I'll cover what I've seen so far.
You've got a neat map (especially the mountains). What was it made with?
Your mana system, especially the elemental bonding thing, is pretty neat. I like the idea of wizards and sorcerers bonding sites. It seems a little funny that clerics/druids start with more mana than sorcerers but sorcerers end with more. I can only assume this is based on the idea that one class is designed to start weaker, and be rewarded for it late game? Most modern designs, including D&D, now dismiss that idea as poor design; characters should be balanced and fun to play at all points in the game. It's one reason you no longer see uneven XP charts between classes as you had in 2e.
Interesting choice to replace the paladin with the crusader. I don't know which is more powerful, but the Crusader is fresh, since it's from a new book, so I imagine it will be a popular choice.
You don't need a house rule that diplomacy/intimidate cannot control PCs actions. The skill descriptions of diplomacy says it only affects NPCs, and intimidate says it functions the same as diplomacy except for purposes of the demoralize opponent use. Also, you know using it in combat gives it a -10 penalty? I ask only because forbidding its use in combat with that penalty seems extreme to me.
I like your idea that sense motive works better on people you know well (though I could also see a counterbalance being you're less likely to believe your best friend would tell you a bald lie).
You've done a lot of work on races, which looks pretty good. Interesting that humans have different regional abilities. I think that can work well in this case.
I like your calendar, but I do have one concern. While the calendar may be relative to your world, your players live in this world. Setting a year length of different times is apt make them lose a frame of reference. The more time that passes, the greater the gap. In your case, one gains a year about every 10 years. Therefore if something happened 60 years ago (say a character's birth), from our perspective (as the audience) it happened 66 years ago. If it happened 1000 years ago, it's actually 1100 years ago. It's not a huge difference, but I'd avoid it.
You've got lots of details on your nations, which I think is helpful to players trying to build characters. I almost never like alignment, much less assigning prevailing alignment to nations. Others on this board disagree with me on this.
I like what I skimmed from the Cosmology. It sounds like each plane has one deity ruling it. Interesting innovation. Personally, I think one should either make up deity names or not. Using "Gaia" for one deity and "Alera" (you did make this up?) for another looks odd to me. On the other hand, Forgotten Realms occasionally does this same thing, such as with Tyr.
House Rules:
Quote1. Death by massive damage rules will not be used.
2. If a character rolls a natural 20 on an attack roll he threatens a critical hit and rolls again to confirm the critical. If the roll to confirm is also a natural 20, the character then threatens an instant kill. He rolls a third time, and if the third roll hits the targetâ,¬,,¢s armor class, that target instantly drops to -1 hit points no matter what their previous hit point total was. Note that both of the first two rolls must be natural 20â,¬,,¢s no matter what the critical range of the weapon is.
3. A characterâ,¬,,¢s negative hit point total before dying is equal to their constitution score, not 10. For example, a character with a constitution of 14 would be dying at -13 hit points and dead at -14 hit points.
4. Bonus experience will be given out for good roleplaying and staying in character. This can begin even before the first adventure if the player makes a good background story for their character.
5. Facing Rules: Facing is what it sounds like, which direction a character is facing in combat. Combat takes place normally with enemies in front of you, or on your flanks. If an enemy is behind you, you do not get any AC bonus from a shield you might be using. You may also not attack enemies which are behind you. Flanking is also more effective from behind. If being flanked from in front and behind, the enemy in front of you gets the standard +2 to hit, but the enemy behind you gets a +3 to hit. During your turn, you may change which direction you are facing once as a free action. You may also change which direction you are facing at the end of any move action (including a 5-foot step). Characters with the combat reflexes feat may change facing as many times as they can make attacks of opportunity each round. Creatures with no discernable front or back (such as oozes) do not face these restrictions. Creatures with senses that let them detect creatures behind them (such as blindsight or tremorsense) do not face the added flanking bonuses, but still have restrictions on attacking and shield use. Creatures with weapons at their backs (such as a dragonâ,¬,,¢s tail slap) may attack behind them, but still face the rest of the penalties. An animated shield may protect your back, but then does not protect your front.
1. Why? Have you had lots of problems with death by massive damage? If you were writing a completely new system, I'd understand not having such a rule. But the more you change, the more new rules your players must learn.
2. We played with this rule, albeit your's is slightly more tame than the version in the DMG, in one campaign. Such rules always favor the bad guys.
3. A pretty common house rule.
4. I used to do stuff like this. Then I discovered having everyone in the party always be at the same level is better for game balance and planning encounters, among other things. You may find there are other ways to reward game contributions.
5. Facing rules were not carried over from prior editions because they are clunky and less realistic than they seem. Combat in D&D is abstract, and moreover lasts for 6 entire seconds (a very long time in a fight). Facing rules presuppose someone is moving then stopping. They're largely an odd outgrowth of using a turn-based system. If you feel they really add a lot to your game, that's your prerogative, of course. They are best used in games that track events by the second, rather than the 6 seconds. That said, I only glanced at your rules, but if you're going to use facing rules, those look pretty good (vaguely remind me of 2e rule I saw in some book).
Good for you for having a history up. You've got lots of information already, so I commend you and again welcome you. All comments are intended to be constructive.
Thanks for the input, I always value constructive criticism as a way to improve my work. Anyway I wanted to respond to some of your comments so you can see where I'm coming from. As far as the amount of mana points per day go, the way I did it was this. The base number of mana points per day for each class came straight out of the Unearthed Arcana rules for spell points per day. For wizards and sorcerers, they got an extra 10% to make up for the fact that they have to spend gold or EXP to bond with elemental mana sites. The amount of mana they get per day automatically is half that number (the number to the left of the parentheses). The total amount they can have (including elementally bonded mana) is inside the parentheses. So if you add in the the mana they can have bonded, sorcerers have the most mana points of anyone, which is as it should be, since they could cast the most spells per day under the vancian system. Wizards would have had the same amount as clerics and druids, but the extra 10% gives them a slight edge.
I can see where you're coming from about the alignments for nations, however, the alignments listed are more of the prevailing attitudes of the current government than rules for the great unwashed, I guess that should have been more clear.
The death by massive damage rule was removed because at very high levels (at least in the games I've played in) it turns combat into a high stakes game of russian roulette. Basically, whoever rolls a 1 on their save first is dead.
The bonus XP for roleplaying is usually only small amounts, but I've found it helps get people more interested in staying in character and giving better descriptions of their characters.
The facing rules were instituted for realism. It just never made much sense to me that you could use a shield to block a sword swing from someone behind you. I tried to streamline them as much as possible, but if they get too clunky I'll just drop them.
Again, thanks for the helpful comments, and I hope this explains where I was coming from with some of my changes.