I am interested in a discord community

I suppose I have a lot more of an attachment to Jahzir because in my last Midnight campaign we were actually interfering with Jahzir's forces and at the end of our 2nd year playing it, he actually showed up and wrecked several members of our party in a single surprise Great Cleave attack. He would have actually killed our Ironborn Barbarian with a critical hit if he hadn't been the Midnight variant with the 1/2 damage ability. But yeah that's just a me.

Cheers for sharing the explanation, LB. I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other, especially since none of my PCs ever came close to encountering the Sword of Shadow or learning about his origin. Not sure what version I'll use in the future... I'll cross that bridge if/when it actually becomes relevant for my game.

This was their reasoning:

"We thought it was more meaningful if the Night Kings were each a manifestation of a different culture in the setting that stood against Izrador and was corrupted. We already had a Sarcosan Night King, so Jahzir, with his focus on martial prowess, was already a perfect example of Dorn warrior culture twisted and made evil. We just needed to change some small elements of his backstory."

So they intended to make Othaeron a Dorn rather than a Sarcosan to spread the Evil around culture wise. Not that it matters a whole lot, but they actually made him an Erenlander from the descriptions and emphasis they used.

I get what you're going for regarding Jahzir/Othaeron, but I see no indication of it being something that only the elves call him. It's written in the same way Jahzir's history is written. It's just a different name now.

This was most definitely a deliberate action by the guys at Edge Studio. Still not sure why they did it though, they have yet to answer my question on the Facebook page. But I sent a direct message this time so hopefully they'll answer.

Given what Luiniel has said about the background info for Jahzir/Othaeron essentially being the same... maybe "Othaeron Mortenbreth" is what the elves call him?

Hrmmm... no defender and no channeler, and a standard magic system?  Those are significant flaws in my opinion.  

The fact that magic is rare, difficult, and dangerous, is important to the nature of the setting. For them to say that spellcasting was impossible without a particular combination of class / feats / heroic path is just nonsense.

And to call the Defender a merely a fighter / paladin is utter silliness as well.  Did they even read the original books?

The wildlander has common features with the ranger, but there are significant differences too (magic being a major one).


-Fizz

Here's a conversation with some Q&A:

Q: Where's the Defender gone? One of the Core Classes in the 2E?!?

A: Things are changing, we have made some evolutions on the game 😉

Q: That was to be expected, but why is there no core class that defines the setting? why not put the pugilist in? instead I find some backgrounds. I don't really see how to build the Defender. the astirax are also missing. the magic system also seems to be standard even with appropriate classes. meanwhile there used to be only channelers (also a Core Claas). Even the 3.5 didn't reflect the atmosphere of the setting 100% back then bot those Changes are...will there be Heroic path like Null from the old Sorcery&Shadow?
Could you explain the evolutions?
The PCs are (in comparison) very competent and become more and more so in the course of their career (level up). Nevertheless, it has to be played in such a way that, whether as partisans, freedom fighters, etc., you can never "win" completely. The achievements may increase, but the world will continue to crumble and the evil will remain.

A: When we did Legacy of Darkness, we had a choice of trying to build a new magic system up from scratch, or by seeing if we could just use the existing rules. Old magic rules make spellcasting almost impossible unless you played a very specific combination of heroic path, class, and several feats.
That’s why we took out the Channeler and took the approach of enabling people to play « regular » mages. The Defender is just a Fighter/Paladin, and the Wildlander was very much just a Ranger.
Our goal here is to target an easy access game, and make the play more fluid to the players and the GM.

I have picked up my own hardcopy and perused some of it. I also did some looking around and on Facebook it seems like the guys at Edge Studios were answering a few questions people had regarding the book. Apparently the reason given for being so light on mechanics rules was to not completely overwhelm folks as a lot of people are new to the Midnight setting. They'll be releasing more of that in later books, at least that's the takeaway I got from there.

Why they decided to change Jahzir's name to Othaeron I can only guess at. Sarcosans still exist, so it's not a race thing. Lore-wise when compared to Legends of Shadow it's Jahzir's background. The only things that changed were that King Kari now had a son, in addition to his daughter, and they gave them names, Kormir, and Ayten, respectively. Othaeron was fine with the promise of marrying either the daughter or son to join the royal family. I assume it was to add inclusivity for inclusivity's sake.