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True changelings? Can they polymorph into objects? :)
Nope, but they can mimick other races and individuals with uncanny ease. Shapeshifting into objects is a neat idea though. Maybe we'll play with that as a web content release!
I see a feat chain coming from this. Maybe do it as Gas / liquid / solid then shape shift into anything or a Animal / mineral / vegetable then shape shift into anything. Just some thoughts.
Nope, but they can mimick other races and individuals with uncanny ease. Shapeshifting into objects is a neat idea though. Maybe we'll play with that as a web content release!
Please do!^^ A player race with such characteristics is one of my most wanted issues!
I just purchased Dwellers in Dream and have been enjoying a good read. I definitely see some new additions for our local game (although the high RP values for some of the races may give our primary GM pause - it might have been better to be a bit more conservative for races specifically designed to be used by players). Great flavor, in any event, and lots of good options. I found one goof, though, on page 53. The Benefit text for the Giantshaper feat makes no sense, seeming to have been copied from the Camouflage Flesh feat. I assume that feat allows the Changeling to take Large form, based on the flavor text, but, of course, there is no way to tell if there are any other rules details that stem from this (i.e. ability score changes, duration limits, etc.).
Now the races in this pdf use the ARG guidelines to create races and make it very clear how they were crafted and utilize the guidelines – the thing is, if the foundation of the rules-building you construct on is flawed, then the resulting construct will necessarily be flawed as well. And this is exactly what we have on a basic level here – the races, not even the 9 RP-race, can be considered perfectly balanced in context with the base-races or those generally found among 3pps out there. And there’s the issue – the other races are even stronger, and not necessarily because they need to be – they all have at least one genius idea/concept going for them, but are bloated by unnecessary spell-like abilities and minor skill bonuses that bloat their RP-builds farther than they’d need to in order to drive home their uniqueness.
Another issue would be that, essentially, they are slightly geared a bit too much towards specific rules for my tastes, but that pales in comparison with another issue – the races are not only not balanced with regards to the core-races, they also are not balanced among themselves, featuring quite a discrepancy in power-levels between each other, thus making an all-fey campaign also problematic. And that is when only taking the imho broken ARG Race-builds into account.
And then there are the feats. The feats are completely and totally all over the place. Apart from glitches here and there, we can encounter a STAGGERING discrepancy in power-levels here that range from minor skill bonuses in specific circumstances to absolutely SICK feats that are so broken, I won’t even start venting. Where a talented DM can salvage the races and tone them down to work in a context with regular races, upon introduction of the feats into the equation, any semblance of balance is completely and utterly shattered.
This is a completely and utterly depressing book for me to review – since even the broken feats carry a part of a concept in each and every instance that makes these races stand out and feel unique – but honestly, I feel like they would have been better off as racial paragon-classes to better balance the races. They are high-concept and per se glorious ideas – only terribly flawed in their execution.
So…is this a bad pdf? If you’re looking for player-races that are not utterly broken? Yes, then this is a 1 star-pdf for you. I maintain, though, that a capable DM who can judge their power and fracture that into the equation of CR-calculation might still get something out of this pdf – for this explicit purpose, this might be considered a 3-star file. My final verdict will fall in between the two, at 2 stars.
Endzeitgeist out.
Reviewed first on Endzeitgeist.com, then submitted to GMS magazine and Nerdtrek and posted here, on OBS and d20pfsrd.com's shop. I hope More Malcontent will see a return to the form I've come to love from TPK Games offerings.
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I guess if you are not a fan of the ARG, then this wouldn't be something you'd enjoy. No hurt feelings here, and we are going to seek to make the next batch more toned-down with respect to level adjustments, just so more GMs will allow them in play.
The good thing about the ARG is that it allows races that are truly fantastic to be treated as such. This line of books really does follow in Savage Species and ARG territory, so I see how your opinion could be biased.
I will take a look and see about the feats though. Most of them have a number of prerequisites to take before you can accomplish something crazy (and cool). I'll take that all into consideration though for the next book though. As always, thanks for the feedback! We appreciate anyone who takes the time to give their opinion on our books.
To make this perfectly clear - I didn't rate this down because it adheres to ARG-standards - I rated it down because e.g. the brianborn can easily get rid of weaknesses, because much of the RP is not consumed by abilities, but skill-bonuses (that imho are not necessary) and most of all, because the feat-balancing is all over the place. Had these races been balanced among themselves or at least not suffered from the skill-bonus/spell-like ability bloat, I would have rated this differently. If I took only the basic races, archetypes and settlement-info as provided, I'd consider this probably 3-4 stars, probably closer to the former. But with the feats - ouch. And this book is not considered an NPC sourcebook, but a PC-race book and as such, I had to judge them versus the core races.
I'm really glad you're not hurt/disappointed - I really tried to emphasize that this book still has something going for it and fluff-wise, I'd immediately buy fey modules sourcebooks from you guys.
All the best and thanks for being professional!