Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 halsfield Jan 22, 2009 1:30:34	If this is in the wrong spot i apologize but i think this fits here. I've been out of the D&D game since about advanced edition (2.0) and played only maybe one or two adventures out of 3.0 before moving on to games like neverwinter nights before eventually stopping all d&d gaming entirely and havent really played or looked into d&d stuff since then until a week ago when i heard 4e was out (yea i know im pretty late =p) my question is probably pretty easy to answer, but i couldnt find a real answer anywhere(checked these forums, google, and looked through the products list) because everything on the subject assumes you know about scales of war. Is scales of war a campaign setting? or something else? i first saw scales of war with the background options on the beta character builder i just recently downloaded but i don't understand what that is offering or what scales of war is. Is it the new eberron(aka the setting WOTC wants as the 4e generic campaign) just like forgotten realms used to be(and i guess kinda still is)? or is it something inside forgotten realms im not aware of? or something completely different? I'm asking mainly because i really like the "born under a bad sign" background option, but if it doesnt fit into our forgotten realms campaign setting i don't think our DM will allow it(and rightly so). thanks in advance. edit: i also just noticed in the beta builder auspicious birth and born under a bad sign, the bonuses are the same (they allow you to choose your highest ability score to use to make your starting hp instead of con), is that intended or a misprint ?
#2 Novacat Jan 22, 2009 1:44:56	Is scales of war a campaign setting? or something else? i first saw scales of war with the background options on the beta character builder i just recently downloaded but i don't understand what that is offering or what scales of war is. Google is your friend. It's an adventure path, just an adventure module published in multiple parts in the online Dungeon magazine. Is it the new eberron(aka the setting WOTC wants as the 4e generic campaign) This is not true at all, and I'm not certain why you would even think that. just like forgotten realms used to be(and i guess kinda still is)? or is it something inside forgotten realms im not aware of? or something completely different? Eberron is nothing at all like FR. Eberron is a setting that's radically different from the standard Swords and Sorcery style of settings. I'm not a fan of Eberron, personally, so I'll let someone more familiar with it explain the details, but long story short, it's steam-punk with dragons. I'm asking mainly because i really like the "born under a bad sign" background option, but if it doesnt fit into our forgotten realms campaign setting i don't think our DM will allow it(and rightly so). It's probably not intended for a Forgotten Realm setting, but that doesn't mean it won't work in it. I'm not familiar with the online character generator at all, so I couldn't say.
#3 halsfield Jan 22, 2009 2:43:50	Google is your friend. It's an adventure path, just an adventure module published in multiple parts in the online Dungeon magazine. This is not true at all, and I'm not certain why you would even think that. Eberron is nothing at all like FR. Eberron is a setting that's radically different from the standard Swords and Sorcery style of settings. I'm not a fan of Eberron, personally, so I'll let someone more familiar with it explain the details, but long story short, it's steam-punk with dragons. It's probably not intended for a Forgotten Realm setting, but that doesn't mean it won't work in it. I'm not familiar with the online character generator at all, so I couldn't say. im not sure you read my post the whole way through but you kinda answered my question so thank you. I guess what i need to ask now is what is an adventure path? Is it describing a new world? Is it just altered rules for any campaign to use with adventures? If it is the latter i could easily justify using it in forgotten realms, but if it is the former then i could not. If you read my post you would see i used google and couldnt find anything about scales of war that was not "hey join my scales of war adventuring group!" or "new scales of war backgrounds here!" i was also not saying forgotten realms = eberron, however forgotten realms was the "core" campaign setting for dnd once upon a time and they gave rules , monsters, and overall the setting characteristics to new players. Eberron took over that role either in 3.0 or 3.5 as the setting that WOTC focused on the most and used as their "core" campaign setting.
#4 kouk Jan 22, 2009 5:24:31	An adventure path is the fancy name for "a series of adventures that are related," or a prefabricated campaign. Scales of War is like a novel's title; it represents a series of adventures that are published over time in the online Dungeon magazine and continue an overarching plotline. Sort of like "Against the Giants" was a series. The Scales of War campaign is set in the default "points of light" setting. It's not really a setting like Eberron or Forgotten Realms, just sort of a generic hodgepodge of things so it's easy for DMs to add whatever they want. Almost no information is to be had about the world, not even a name of the continent. Any background fluff you find in the core books is related to that pseudo campaign world. If you wanted to set Scales of War in Forgotten Realms, or Eberron, you could do that by changing some names and finding locations that would fit with the storyline. But to answer about the backgrounds: they were in an article in online Dragon Magazine said to support characters in the Scales of War campaign. They don't actually do anything specific for Scales of War (which was a huge criticism of the article when it came out), they are just optional background rules that DMs can use or not. Several DMs allow you to choose either the Forgotten Realms Player's Guide backgrounds or the Scales of War backgrounds because in general they are sort of comparable. So, I'd just ask your DM about a particular one and see if he would allow that instead of the normal regional background bonus.
#5 the_black_hand Jan 22, 2009 9:29:49	This is not true at all, and I'm not certain why you would even think that. He may have thought that because when he did a google search it kept on popping up with Scales of War and Forgotten Realms and Eberron just like that. Eberron is nothing at all like FR. Eberron is a setting that's radically different from the standard Swords and Sorcery style of settings. I'm not a fan of Eberron, personally, so I'll let someone more familiar with it explain the details, but long story short, it's steam-punk with dragons. He wasn't asking if Eberron was an exact copy of Forgotten Realms, he was asking if Scales of War was a campaign setting. Inferring that he knew Eberron was a realitively knew campaign setting, and that Forgotten Realms was an older and more established setting.
#6 arkhail Jan 22, 2009 16:13:24	I'm not a fan of Eberron, personally, so I'll let someone more familiar with it explain the details, but long story short, it's steam-punk with dragons. It's not steam-punk at all. A simple "I don't really know much about Eberron" would have sufficed.
#7 halsfield Jan 23, 2009 2:06:48	He may have thought that because when he did a google search it kept on popping up with Scales of War and Forgotten Realms and Eberron just like that. He wasn't asking if Eberron was an exact copy of Forgotten Realms, he was asking if Scales of War was a campaign setting. Inferring that he knew Eberron was a realitively knew campaign setting, and that Forgotten Realms was an older and more established setting. i explained exactly why i said everything i did in my 1st reply. Thank you Kouk for actually answering my question in detail. That was exactly what i was looking for and you actually appeared to have read and understood what i was asking. You answered the question about what an adventure path was, whether or not i could add it to a forgotten realms campaign (answers seems to be up to the DM), and gave me a lot of extra helpful information. If i could give you forum points like some communities offer i would give you the max. It sounds like i should get the dragon magazines that have this information in them so my DM can read them and possibly add them to our setting (we're currently running a custom campaign setting which uses forgotten realms as a basis). In our current campaign we have taken a portal from forgotten realms into a realm unknown to forgotten realms because it allows the DM a lot more freedom while also having a basis for races/classes/paths/backgrounds/etc and it sounds like scales would fit into this perfectly if i talk him into it. Do you know if the born under a bad sign and auspicious birth backgrounds are supposed to have the same benefits? they both give the same bonus in the beta character builder but that could definitely be an error or intended. Thanks again regardless, you've been very helpful.
#8 mycroftb Jan 23, 2009 10:48:53	I don't know much about the background bonuses in the character builder at all. I think half of them came from one of the two 4e Forgotten Realms books, and the other half came from an optional Scales of War specific article in one of the digital magazines. As for the Scales of War adventure path itself, you can point your DM to the adventure path archive to check them out. The first three, Rescue at Rivenroar, Siege of Bordrin's Watch, and The Shadow Rift of Umbraforge, are freely available, and combined take the characters from level 1 to level 6. The concept of an adventure path is to take characters all the way to level 30. You can check out more of the magazine content at the magazine issue archive; Dragon 364-367 and Dungeon 155-158 are freely available, and might give you and/or your DM a good idea whether you'd like to subscribe to Insider and get more, including the whole Scales of War adventure path. Of course, it's always a good idea to check with your DM before implementing any new powers or options from sources they don't have access to, including these background things.
#9 rikiji Jan 23, 2009 12:33:51	It's not steam-punk at all. A simple "I don't really know much about Eberron" would have sufficed. While I can see your argument, Ebberon definately has many common elements of steam-punk. The difference is more theme than setting. As a short description, it's a good starting point.
#10 kouk Jan 23, 2009 14:12:57	Auspicious Birth and Born Under a Bad Sign do appear to have the same mechanical benefit in the article, yes. The article was in Dragon 366. If you download them, get the complete issue as sometimes the complete issue has updates and fixes. If you click on the bottom "button" on the cover picture you can get the whole thing.