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Would the Masque 3.5 sourcebook be of any use for someone who is running a standard Ravenloft game? Are there any good rules or classes that could be of use?

Masque of the Red Death 3.5? Just trying to get some clarification.

If you are talking about MotRD 3.5, as published by White-Wolf, avoid it. It was such a jumbled mess of classes, special rules, and other things that even fans-turned-writers like John W. Mangrum had their names taken out of the credits. It's just that bad. There's a netbook here on the FoS that is far superior.

High Priest Mikhal wrote:Masque of the Red Death 3.5? Just trying to get some clarification.

If you are talking about MotRD 3.5, as published by White-Wolf, avoid it. It was such a jumbled mess of classes, special rules, and other things that even fans-turned-writers like John W. Mangrum had their names taken out of the credits. It's just that bad. There's a netbook here on the FoS that is far superior.

OIC, well thank you.

You're welcome. Just doing my best to steer people away from that trainwreck. And it had such potential, too.

Honestly, I didn't find it as bad as Mikhal did. Even if the crunch is a mess, the fluff is interesting at least. The original boxed set is superior, but if you can't get a hold of that, I've seen far worse products than the MotRD 3.5 hardcover. The idea of "Masques" on creatures was a great one for Ravenloft, if nothing else.

Gothic Earth PC Classes is what you are looking for in the Library.

I haven't played GE in a while, but except for the crunch, I remember really enjoying most of the stuff in the 3.5 book. I would say it's worth it.

It was once we sat down and tried to play that we realized how broken some of the rules were.

SO... I sat down and ''fixed'' it. (''Fixed'' here is used in the most humble manner btw.) I corrected what I felt needed correcting and extrapolated on some stuff. So some of this stuff is rather subjective.

Please let me know if you like it. Very curious.

And of course, I'll have to convert this to PFRPG one of these days...

Patrick

Gothic Earth PC Classes is what you are looking for in the Library.

I haven't played GE in a while, but except for the crunch, I remember really enjoying most of the stuff in the 3.5 book. I would say it's worth it.

It was once we sat down and tried to play that we realized how broken some of the rules were.

SO... I sat down and ''fixed'' it. (''Fixed'' here is used in the most humble manner btw.) I corrected what I felt needed correcting and extrapolated on some stuff. So some of this stuff is rather subjective.

Please let me know if you like it. Very curious.

And of course, I'll have to convert this to PFRPG one of these days...

Patrick

I think original post was more asking how useful having a masque take place dumping characters out of ravenloft (temporary or not) but with the overlay happening like with MOTRD, not MOTRD in particular.

If you're wanting to source-mine it for primarily rules, I'd say avoid it. There's a lot of needless repetitions of class tables that are essentially the same, and many of the classes do essentially nothing. The divine spellcaster classes' spellcasting mechanics are nonfunctional, muddling the 2e spheres system with the 3e spell domain system.

Some of the skills could be of use. However, there is a lot of duplication of skills, and several of the new skills have incomplete descriptions. There are a couple of interesting feats in the mix, but most of them are of the +2 on two different skills type feat or help with remembering a type of sensory stimuli.

The Masques and Lairs of Evil rules could make good additions to Ravenloft campaigns. There are also few good ideas among the new monsters.

I really appreciate your efforts.

I run 2nd edition AD&D... But I just started a standard Ravenloft campaign using the character classes and kits from the Masque of the Red Death boxed set. Not all of the kits are appropriate for a "regular" Ravenloft campaign (e.g. athlete), but after reviewing them (using MotRD kits not only from the boxed set, but Dragon Magazine, and Polyhedron as well), I found that most fit right in or are readily adaptable.

The campaign I started is for a solo player (with the occasional NPC companion), so I have to make some adjustments to fit a campaign with just a single PC. But so far the MotRD class and kit work just fine. The player made a Tradesman with the Scientist Kit (specializing in Archeology).

My reasonings for using some of the rules from MotRD with the standard Ravenloft setting was to run a campaign where the characters were not defacto adventurers, but rather more "ordinary" (albeit more powerful) citizens of the realm (the PC started in Ravenloft, as a native of the Domain of Dementlieu). Something more akin to traditional gothic horror stories with either just a few, or but a single protagonist.

It's an experiment to be sure (especially because it's with a single PC). But I think that MotRD rules can easily work with a full party of PCs. And I think that if one is starting the PCs out as natives of Ravenloft, then the classes from MotRD fit better than regular D&D classes.

But that's just my opinion... YMMV of course.

Welcome, Digital Elf! Glad to see you found a way to make it work. Sounds like a cool idea. I had similar thoughts in 3e and offered my PCs an extra level if they took a level of NPC class (expert, adept, etc.). If nothing else, it gave them a springboard for character concepts that were more "everyman" than the usual fantasy classes.