Review: The Lunar Scrolls

The Lunar Scrolls a third-party supplement intended to provide you with a moon-themed package to both sides of the screen, written by Silent 7Seven. It runs 34 pages and a little over seven bucks. Admittingly I’d never heard of the company until a few days ago, but in a nutshell Silent 7Seven touts themselves as a company that tries to push the envelope as it were outside of the established boundaries on 4th Edition products.

With that out of the way, its time to check out the product to see if they deliver. The cover immediately put me off a bit. I think its a pretty poor piece, suited more for a novice Deviant Art(ist) than an actual product rendition. Likewise, the interior art where it exists is pretty low quality. That being said, you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover (even though I often do), so I skipped past it and started browsing the pdf for delicious content.

This is a comparatively small supplement with a lot of big ambitions that will appeal to both players and DMs, and I applaud Silent 7Seven for their efforts. I havent bothered to check and see if the elements included are balanced against everything else: in general if something doesnt interest me I’m not going to use it, and the same can be said for my players. If they like it and it ends up being too much, its a fairly easy matter of pushing things back a notch.

Anyway.

For the players, you get four “paragon classes” that apply to the four class roles (defender, leader, striker, and controller), feats, equipment, and lunar rituals. For the DM, you get more monsters.

The paragon classes function like multiclassing, in which you burn up to three feats to gain new powers and abilities that replace existing powers in your arsenal. Personally, I dont think that its necessary to use the term “paragon” to refer to powers and abilities that can only be gained through feats: if anything people might become confused by the double-use of paragon.

The paragon classes run the gamut of okay to cool. The crescent striker conjures up immaterial blades that you can throw and daze creatures if you take a dive to your damage output, and as you progress through the feat tree can eventually do a totally badass leap attack that hits a Close burst 2, which reminds me of my barbarian days in Diablo 2.
Each paragon class also has a related paragon path obviously requires feats from the former and does its best to improve the powers you got from all those feats you spent. Sticking with the crescent striker, at level 11 you can burn an action point to activate the daze effect from your blades without suffering a penalty to damage, and enemies that damage your illusory duplicates take Wis modifier damage.

Since I almost exclusively play leaders (a combination of choice and paranoia), I also checked out the moonleader. The entry feat doesnt do much: you can use Lunar rituals and once per encounter can also grant an ally a +1 bonus to AC that you heal. The bonus is specified as a “moonshield” bonus, which rubs me the wrong way since it would be better/more consistently pegged as a power or untyped bonus. Adding new types just seems a bit excessive and uncessary, especially when they are so specific.
That, and the second feat grants you the ability to swap out two powers (level 3 or higher attack, and a level 6 or higher utility), flying in the face of all Multiclass feats that we’ve ever seen.
Is this something I would actually take? If I actually had a change to try out a shifter shaman, it would certainly be on the list. Its thematic, new, and adds a crapload of stuff to make a protecting spirit shaman even more durable. Of course, I tend to take things for thematic purposes in the stead of min/maxing or power gaming, so your mileage might vary.

The concepts, story, and much of the content are actually pretty good. I was very pleased with the opening bit about the lunar power source and it how it might relate to existing power sources: good stuff to get the gears turning.
My primary complaints concern the wording of some of the powers, feats and magic items, as well as the creation of new types of bonuses and terms when frankly they werent necessary at all. Understand that this isnt a mechanical issue, but more about product consistency with stuff Wizards pushes out.
On the whole, its a very decently written supplement and about what I would expect when you tread into unfamiliar territory. Good on its own, but I think it will appeal best to people who really dig the primal power source (like myself) and perhaps star-pact warlocks, and with a small amount of work/houseruling you can polish the content here to really make it shine.

Scions of Punjar: Session 3

(Another short session) At the end of the last session the party was headed back to the city of Punjar. Armed with the knowledge that they would most likely be facing undead the group decided to hire, if possible, a cleric or paladin etc. They made their way through the streets of Punjar on a warm, humid and rainy afternoon, finally arriving at the Bazaar of the Gods – a small section of the city comprised of various tent shrines and ramshackle temples. Through the use of an urban skill challenge the party managed to find a small unassuming temple dedicated to the Raven Queen. The group was confronted by a scarred old man and and was able to hook up (skill challenge) with a shifter avenger who had been working and living at the temple who was more than interested in the idea of taking out undead.

They made their way to the mausoleum discovering that it was indeed the family crypt of the Dev’shir family. Upon entering the main room of the mausoleum, which served as a chapel, the party discovered two rooms on the east and west walls that each served as tombs. In these rooms they found about 16 undead each, standing in rows of 8 almost like an infantry, some skeletons and some recently dead – zombies. Much of the Dev’shir family ancestry had been risen as undead. After dispatching these undead tha party moved on to the double doors on the north wall of the chapel. It was here they noticed that the doors themselves had been craved like a gnarled trunk of a massive tree, with the branches extending out onto the walls. On the branches were bricks inlaid in the wall with the names of the members of the Dev’shir family – obviously a family tree. Upon closer inspection they found the branch noticed that belongs to Lady Dev’shir had 2 blank bricks underneath her name which looked out of place. The party figured out that this was a piece to what was becoming an interesting puzzle.

The party entered the double doors and found another tomb, noticing that one of the graves had been disturbed, spying a body lying in the corner of the room. While inspecting this an apparition, a young woman half-burned and wearing what appeared to be a dress made of flames, appeared behind them and began to attack, while screaming for them to stop disturbing her. Antioch’s character, the tiefling bard Talibah, stepped up with a diplomacy check and rolled high. The group learned that she was Dugesia, the daughter of Lady Dev’shir, and that she had been burned alive but could not remember how. They also learned that she has heard many voices in the tomb, one a familiar female voice. Talibah convinced her that the group was hunting the people that had disturbed her and Dugesia begged the group to place her body back into the tomb properly. Once this was done the tormented ghost of Dugesia Dev’shir faded away.

Jester stated that he believed that it was Lady Dev’shir herself that was behind all of this mess and led the party back to the Dev’shir manner. In the middle of what was a rainy night the party stormed into the Dev’shir manner, knocking out a startled butler in the process. Lady Dev’shir, lantern in hand, dashes down the stairs in response to the noise and sees the party she had initially hired. Telling them to calm down she invites the group into the dining room and pours herself a drink, everyone else too cautious to drink anything.

Confronted with the evidence of the mismatching bricks in the family tree she seems surprised but explains to the party that she had 2 daughters, Lakaisha and Dugesia. The firstborn Dugesia being the smart well-behaved daughter and Lakaisha the, well you know, the typical black sheep. In a fit of rage one day after learning that a marriage to a very unlikable minor noble has been arranged for her and the fact that Dugesia was being groomed to take the reigns of the Dev’shir estate Lakaisha murdered her sister. One day while Dugesia was grooming her favorite horse in the family stables Lakaisha locked her in and set it ablaze. Enraged by this the family quietly has her committed in another city miles away. This was the last Lady Dev’shir has heard of her only remaining daughter.

Convinced of this and only one option remaining, the party decided to set out for the abandoned windmill in the morning.

Review: Scarrport, City of Secrets

Scarrport: City of Secrets (with two r’s) is part of Reality Deviant Publishing‘s line of Campaign Cutout products, which are in a nutshell campaign-neutral plug-n-play elements that “anyone can use”. These things are great in concept, but if the concept doesnt work then no one cares. What with me being very leery of 3rd-party products, I was hesitant when Red Jason threw it my way, but I was pleasantly surprised with the whole package.

Mostly, this is a big book detailing a big city. Its got a heavy emphasis on the swashbuckling and steampunk genre, which go together about as well as peanut butter and chocolate. I dont see a lot of products that cater to either style of play when it comes to fantasy games, and considering that 4th Edition is almost a year old it adds many desired elements to the game. For some reason while browsing through the pdf it evokes China Meville’s Perdido Street Station and The Scar, which I think a lot of people would say is a very good thing.

Dropping Scarrport into an existing campaign is as easy as finding or drawing two rivers that intersect, so the entry bar is set very low. The city is very well fleshed out with a lot of NPCs, adventure hooks, and excellent-quality maps. The writing style fits the tone of the supplement, creating a vivid city. However at 116 pages you get quite a bit more than just a port city: it also comes with a new class, three races, more loot (including guns), and monsters (including steampunk robots).

The elementalist is a fully-fledged 30-level striker that keys off of the elemental power source. While they dont explicitely state what the power source does, its not hard to figure out: they command one of the four basic elements, similar to a geomancer in Final Fantasy Tactics. You attune yourself to an element, which can affect how your forces (elemental powers) work. For example, earth-based elementalists deal bonus damage if they dont move, and fire-elementalists deal bonus damage if there is a source of fire nearby.
For some reason, I would expect an elementalist to rely on Constitution, Dexterity, or even Charisma for their primary attack stat, but at least they use Con and Dex for their secondaries. I suppose it helps them not overlap with the sorcerer.
Add to the mix are some elementalist paragon paths and even a pair of epic destinies and you have a very complete package, here.

Of all the races I was surprised that I actually liked the otterkin at all. They’re pretty much what you would expect (anthro-otters), and are really good at ganging up on people and literally slipping away. My first character would probably be an otterkin rogue unless Josh picked it up first (British accent and all).

My favorite of the monsters are by far the steampunk creatures, which are big robots that have a chance of malfunctioning if they roll nat 1’s and 2’s. Its interesting to see creatures with “flaws” that go beyond having vulnerability to various damage types. Is it balanced? I have no idea, but its evocative and cool.

The equipment section is a zany repetoire of various devices, many magic but also a hefty chunk that fall into a “steampunk” category. Gremlin armor increases your height if you are Small, while power armor gives you an attack bonus to Strength-based attacks (once per day). There’s new stuff for each body slot, as well as mechanical mounts and watercraft vehicles.
There are guns, which are superior weapons with limited shots and not much else. I’m a bit underwhelmed by them and have no idea why anyone would take a gun considering the cost to buy and maintain one (they get attack penalties if you dont clean it every extended rest). Frankly I would give them the brutal and/or high crit properties as an easy-enough houserule, if for no other reason than to make them balanced. The two-handed guns each deal 1d12 damage, but dont have any properties aside from taking up precious actions to reload.

I only have two major criticisms. The first is that some of the art is bad, but on average its decent or really good. Of larger concern (and complaint) is that racial feats were lumped right after each respective race instead of in a consolidated feat section. This is mostly a nitpick, but a consistent format in Wizards of the Coast books.

That being said, neither of those are any reason to not get the book. On the contrary, it would serve as a very good source for running a thematic campaign. I would recommend it for, if nothing else, the new equipment and class. However, its got a lot of good stuff packed into it. Easily worth the money whether you go pdf or physical book.

Review: Wilden Playtest

And here I thought that the PH3 playtest would be the monk. Oh well, at least its interesting.

Wilden are based loosely on a race in Races of the Wild called the killoren. I had to actually look this up because I had no fucking clue that they ever existing in 3E and couldnt find any hard information on them via the interwebs. In a nutshell they seem similar to the wilden, but look like green cat-ish people (though they are described as looking like half-elves, I’d say the Grinch is more accurate). Anyway, I didnt read the entire racial entry because A) I’d overlooked them entirely when I did play 3E, and B) its 3E.

Wilden are plant/fey critters that have sprung from the Feywild to help protect nature, kick ass, and hug trees (depending on which racial power you activate) against incursions from the Far Realm. As such they are very ideal for primal classes, but also apparently work well with the invoker.
Their schtick is that they get one of three racial powers per encounter, but unlike the drow you have to set it up after each extended rest. So, its flexible, but not as flexible. Your appearance changes depending on which is set, which is an interesting feature. Their bodies also “move through the seasons” as they age, starting with spring and ending with winter, so that a young wilden is rich and green, while an old one is thin and withered-looking.

All in all, I like the concept and backstory for them. Its given me a good starting point for a sequal to Songs of Erui that will involve primal spirits and aberrants from the Far Realm. My main gripe is that none of my players had access to this before we started, so cannot give it a whirl and see how it works out in practice. I guess its a good excuse to run another delve so I can swap out my dwarf shaman for a wilden one.

DDI: May Issues

You can find next month’s table of contents here. There’s a bunch of free Monster Manual 2 excerpts up until the 18th, when they shift gears and start pitching us Eberron Campaign Guide goodies.

For Dragon, the article on Game Transparency sounds interesting, for a title, but I’m more interested in the monk playtest which will come out on the 11th. I’m pretty meh about the Celestian Order, but then I have no idea what it will actually entail. However, there is an Ampersand article on the same day, and they are usually packed with awesome. Oh well, even if I only like those two bits from Dragon, its still a good deal more than what I cared for in the past, so its easily worth the subscription (discounting the Character Builder). Aaaand then it wraps up with a playtest for Monster Manual 3.

On the other hand, Dungeon has a Penny Arcade adventure, which intrigues me. This surprises me because in general I dont really give a crap about the adventures in Dungeon. Not necessarily for lack of quality, but for lack of infinite time to run games. I’m curious if this something they (as in Gabe & Tycho) planned, or is it the game that they went through? I’m expecting the Cave of Tits, personally. We’ll also see more stuff for Skill Challenges, which is always helpful.

People Actually Hate Familiars?

Clearly, some people are not satisfied with familiars. The OP on the thread doesnt like them because he thinks they are somehow too…weak? I’m sorry, but this is bullshit.

In 3rd Edition, familiars had half as many hit points as the master did, rounded down. A level 1 wizard probably had 4 hit points, meaning that the familiar had all of 2. If it was a toad, it then got 3 since they granted the Toughness feat (+3 hit points, flat rate). On average, its going to go down on the first hit, even on extremely low damage roll: your average goblin has a 66% chance of taking it out on any given hit, assuming it even wants to bother. I mean lets be honest: why would anyone want to attack your familiar? Its not like its doing anything except standing in as Skill Focus or Toughness.

Thats all well and good for single-target attacks, but lets take into account area-effect attacks. Familiars do not by default have any way of avoiding an attack, and while they have improved evasion, it will be harder and harder for them to successefully avoid area attacks as the party increases in level since their saves are based on the master (and wizards have shit for Reflex). If the monster has some kind of aura effect that just deals flat damage, then the familiar is screwed.

And for what? What does a familiar actually do? Not much.

You can share your spells with your familiar, so mage armor and shield can benefit the both of you with one casting. You can have your familiar deliver a touch spell, and while this might be handy in some cases its probably not a very intelligent move to try (especially if the monster has reach and/or can see it coming). Umm…it can speak with animals of its own type, and eventually can even speak to you.

You cant even argue that a familiar can be used as a role-playing foil since it cannot even talk to you until about midway through your career. Its also not very intelligent until that point, so its not like you can engage in conversations about the nuances of arcane theory or anything more complicated than eating or taking a dump.

Familiars in 4E each provide useful benefits for your character. Much of the time they grant bonuses to skills, or perhaps damage resistances. Sometimes they give you bonus languages. The point is that one feat gives you benefits that can add up beyond a feat. This isnt even counting the bonuses gained from active mode, which are certainly worth more than that. The caveat is that active mode carries risks, but not the kind that basically make you waste a feat for a year or so.

The fact that familiars do not permanently die has lead to the bizarre conclusion that these are World of WarCraft pets (because apparently association with WoW is a hell-worthy sin). First of all, if you want to argue about familiars being WoW pets you should be complaining about the beastmaster ranger class feature, especially given that you even have to use your own actions to command the thing (although to be fair you could set pet behaviors in WoW).
I frankly do not understand why some people see a mechanic, and clamor that it sucks because this-or-that game already did it. Part of good game design is playing other games and discovering what makes them work. If you see a good design element, why not use it for your own game? Halo had their own regenerating shield gimmick that was later cribbed for Resistance and Uncharted to great effect.

However…familiars are nothing like WoW pets, they just operate in a different manner than what you’re used to. First of all, they arent magically enhanced animals, but arcane energy given shape. Who are you to say how magic operates in a fantasy world? Why cant wizards have functionally useful magical companions that they can reshape given a sufficient amount of breathing room? Because its “not how it used to work”, or “because I dont like it”? If you want people to burn a feat that they will randomly lose access to for however long you feel like, then houserule it. Make them have to wait a year, or 1001 days, or whatever floats your boat, to get it back.

There’s no reason why you cant use familiars now and not have them fulfill the same function as they did before, except that now they’re smart enough to actually interact with you instead of playing the part of Lassy and forcing to figure out what the fuck they want.

Its a fucking game, and the designers want us to have fun with it. Its not fun to have your class feature killed off by accident, take a XP dive, and then have to wait around for a year or so before you can get it back. I’m glad they changed them. I want to use them, and I feel that its worth the feat. If anything I feel sorry for beastmaster rangers because they cant just pull another beast companion out of their ass if they lose one in the middle of combat.

What it all boils down to is that they’re still companions in every sense, they’re just useful companions. They can actually help you out and can provide entertaiment, especially if you give one a personality and play out some of the many recommended quirks. Sorry, there’s no possible way I can agree with either stance.

Review: Arcane Power

Arcane Power is the latest power source-specific supplement released by Wizards of the Coast, adding new options for the bard, sorcerer, swordmage, warlock, and wizard. Like its predecessor Martial Power, each class gets their own individual chapter, which adds new class features, powers, and paragon paths to each class. There’s a section on feats, and in touting the new tome implement a magic item section that offers a small selection of magic tomes. Its a great book with a lot of great stuff to offer any arcane character (except the artificer, who gets to wait for Eberron Player’s Guide).

Before I dive into the classes, I want to mention the sidebars. This book is laden with sidebars in each chapter, most of them talking about what races would commonly pick whatever class you find yourself in, and why. I think these are useful resources for new players or players looking to try out a new class (or just want to try an unconventional race). However, some also explain some of the new stuff, and I found the ones on illusion and summoning magic to be particularly interesting. I’m sure a lot of people hate them for taking up valuable page space, but not myself.

Bards are one of the new kids on the block, receiving a new virtue that lets them boost an allies defense by 5 against an attack. Its an interrupt, which makes it similarp-but-better than the wizard’s shield utility since it can apply to any defense and grants a slightly better bonus. Otherwise its a big chapter with more bard spells. What makes it interesting is that many of them require ranged weapons, making an archery-themed bard viable at this point, and the euphonic bow paragon path further emphasizes this build by letting you use a bow as an implement.

Sorcerers get two new spell sources: cosmic and storm. Cosmic sorcerers gain benefits that change with each rest you take, which represent reoccuring cosmic cycles. Some powers let you change it to one of your choice, or set it to a specific one. I already pegged sorcerer to be a class that appeals more to the “dedicated” crowd, and this just further reinforces the fact that if you are a casual gamer the sorcerer is probably not for you.
Storm sorcerers gain lightning and thunder resistance, and can push enemies when they crit them. Its easier to manage that the cosmic sorcerer, so if you are itching to try one but want to avoid bookkeeping you could certainly do worse.
The new powers obviously cater to the new spell sources, but they supplement chaos and dragon sorcerers as well. My favorite goes to wyrm form, which is a level 29 spell that lets you take the form of a dragon, granting you three new attack forms while the spell lasts. The reason why I like it is because you take the form of a Huge dragon. So…yeah. Oh, dragon sorcerers get an attack bonus with all the attack forms granted by the spell, to boot.

Swordmages get a new aegis that lets you teleport a monster and also disorient it so that it grants combat advantage. The swordmage saw some expansion in Dragon, but otherwise not much. The new class feature is interesting, and it gets a bunch of powers and paragon paths, but not much else. I’d say this is the most lackluster of all the class chapters, but probably because I dont play a lot of defenders anymore, instead getting shoehorned into the leader role.

Warlocks get a new pact (vestige), but not much else aside from powers. Its not surprising since they already got a lot of love so far in the form of Class Acts articles and the dark pact in Forgotten Realms Player’s Guide. Even so, they get a lot of new powers in this book that are tied to all five pacts that they can now pick from. Likewise they get some very interesting paragon paths that work with each pact as well as some generic ones.

Wizards, I think, see the most improvement across the board. I felt that wizards were playable originally but seemed a bit pruned when compared to bygone editions. In 2E and 3E you had a bunch of spells that did a lot of (often useless) things, existing mostly to justify how a NPC might conjure a magical disk to carry luggage, or an invisible butler to serve drinks. The most common archetype was the blaster-mage, capable of dealing high damage to a high concentration of targets. This is the one that 4E emphasized the most, though to be fair there were plenty of utility spells and rituals to give the wizard some wide coverage.

Dragon articles expanded them a bit, providing some thematic illusion and necromancy powers, but Arcane Power ironically blows the doors wide open by providing a heap of new illusion and summoning powers. There’re three, count ’em three, new forms of implement mastery to compliment this expanded selection to boot.
Orb of deception is ideal for tieflings, since its keyed to Charisma. Once per encounter if you miss an enemy with an illusion attack, you can redirect it to another creature instead, adding in your Cha bonus to the attack.
The tome is a new implement, and they give you two options to play with. Once gives your summoned monsters bonus damage, and the other lets you drop an encounter attack spell into it that you can cast by burning an encounter attack of an equal or higher level. You only get to change it when you level up, but it adds a bigger degree of flexibility to wizards when you consider their spellbook class feature.

The best thing is that they’re globally fucking useful. Determining how effective an illusion was could fall to DM fiat, assuming that the monster could even be affected by it in the first place (I’m looking at you, Undead type). Also, if you specialized on illusions you probably wanted to go about problem solving a “different” way, which is another way of saying that you wanted to trick a monster with some trite illusion and hog the spotlight. Kind of like how only rogues got to tackle locks and traps, except that its more like playing Metal Gear Solid 4 where everyone shows up hoping to play but has to watch and illusionary movie.

Illusionists now actively participate in the challenges instead of (maybe?) soloing them through a convoluted scheme that has to get bantered back and forth until the DM finally caves. They mostly focus on psychic damage and their utilities do what you expect by allowing them to conjure up illusionary terrain and obstacles. All in all a major step forward over prior editions and its become a very attractive choice for my players.

Summons are likewise spells that you would want to take, since you can summon things that arent several levels weaker than the weakest crap you’d fight for your own level. If you didnt play 3E summons worked like this: you took an entire round casting the spell, and at the start of your next turn a creature would appear and you could make it attack. Now, imagine that you’re a level 3 wizard, which means you can only summon stuff that is level 1. Now imagine how in the hell this thing is going to achieve any purpose aside from provoking opportunity attacks or just trying to get in the way. Dont get me wrong, I really like summoners and the concept behind them, I just rarely tried to play one because I didnt want to be about as useless as the bard.
I’m sure Red Jason would love to tell you about how he summoned a shitload of devil spiders only to have them all die in one hit. In the same round. Using his highest level summon spell.

Since summons have stats based on your own, they can actually survive and contribute more reliably. I’ve got a fire-base tiefling summoner in Adrian’s Scales of War game, and it was fun to be able to finally summon a monster that landed a hit. Several times. In the same battle.

Now that we’re done with the classes its time to get to the feats. Chapter 6 rolls out new feats for all classes, for all tiers. They each do their part in modifying/improving the way class features work or by tying racial characteristics into classes (such as drow gaining combat advantage against cursed targets), but best addition by far are familiars. Yes, familiars. I’ve really never liked familiars until now. Sure, they sounded neat in concept, and rarely could provide some form of comfort in social roleplaying, but they were mostly just worthless mobile XP sinks.

It takes some time and money to get one, and if it ties its sure to be remembered not for the fond memories but for the assload of XP (or perhaps a Constitution point) that it takes to the grave. Oh, and in case you are feeling particularly risky, you have to wait 100 days or so to snag another one.

Any arcane class can snag a familiar with a feat, and there’s no charge. They are formed out of arcane energy and actually give you benefits since they cost a feat and all, though the better ones require that you keep your famliar active. Active mode lets your familiar run around and get attacked. If you are feeling protective or just dont want/need the active benefits, you can shift it to passive in order to render it invulnerable from harm. Best of all if it dies, it reforms after the encounter without any lingering penalty.
Every familiar has something to offer, and the problem with me is that its hard to pick which one I want.

There’s a section on customizing your familiar’s appearance (within reason) and to determine how it enters passive and active modes. Good stuff, as it adds a lot to a formerly underwhelming class feature. Finally, there is a small section on feats that let you boost your attacks, protect yourself from harm, or communicate telepathically with it.

Next, we get to epic destinies. Almost all of them are for generic arcane classes, though there is one for the swordmage, fey warlock or fey character, and wizard. The parable is a master of illusions that considers existence to be merely a story that she has learned to write and rewrite for herself. You get to avoid difficult terrain, ignore damage from missed attacks, and appear elsewhere when a monster tries to hit you, but its the base concept that makes it so appealing.

And then we arrive at the end of the book. Magic tomes, new rituals (of course), and some arcane backgrounds round out the last part. This is an excellent supplment. Almost everyone in my group bought a copy (except Jen, but she’s poor), even the guys that dont seem to arcane characters. I think it shows a major increase in quality from Martial Power, which makes sense since it was the first of the power source books. I’m already using a good deal of it for my bard and wizard, and given the chance would jump at playing a starlock or sorcerer (probably cosmic, since it amuses me the most).

I’m not exactly a fan of rating systems, but I think that they really help you determine at a glance if something is generally good. For now, my recommendation is to get this book if you like arcane characters on the whole. If you like only one specific arcane class, I’d still recommend it unless you are only into swordmages. That section is pretty spartan and you might not get your money’s worth out of it. That being said, its got a decent chunk of content, I just think it got the short stick. Hell, get it for the familiars alone.

Review: Player’s Handbook Heroes, Set 1

Got a case of each set in the mail today and just cracked them out. Most of them look really good, with the exception of the male human fighter and male human barbarian: fighter’s sword looks to tiny and flimsy (plus the color scheme just sucks), and the colors on the barbarian look too solid and flat.
A simple ink wash would have done a lot to bring out some details without adding too much work to the paint job, in my opinion. Its easy enough to do that I’m just going to do it myself, but frankly the other stuff in the pack makes up for it.
The only other figure that gets any complaints from me is the male human wizard since I think that the yellow scheme likewise looks really bad.

I havent gone through the power cards yet. They’re a nice addition but I dont think for a second that you “need” them at all. The ones I could see through the packaging looked interesting, a few tempting, but I dont feel like that my character would be gimped without them: chilling cloud is a wizard at-will that imposes an attack penalty to creatures caught in the area, knockdown assault is a fighter at-will that lets you prone a creature you hit, and cutting words is a bard at-will that deals psychic damage and pulls a creature.
As you know, each set gets three, and while a lot of them seem to be new level 1 at-wills, there’s supposed to other types and frequencies as well.

Otherwise, its a solid deal. I’m happy with my purchase, and even some of the ones that I thought looked bad came out a lot better (male dwarf paladin, for one). Hopefully we see a tiefling with a polearm in the next set so I have something remotely similar to Kobal. For now, I got a good one for my tiefling fire-based wizard, and the half-elf warlock fighter might make a good swordmage.

Review: Ecology of the Deva

The deva was, until very recently, my most disliked race from Player’s Handbook 2. I never really got into the whole aasimar bit in 3rd Edition, preferring tieflings for my gimped planetouched of choice. The art for devas seemed pretty meh, and likewise their racial features didnt do much to improve their image. To sum it up, while I think the race is mechanically sound it just didnt grok for me.

Then I read this.

This article is great. I was a bit disappointed by a few of the past race ecologies (namely the genasi one), but this sells the race to me. After reading it I had quite a few new ideas relating to Adrian’s deva in Songs of Erui. I already knew that they could reincarnate as rakshasas if they fucked up too much, but there’s some other interesting story content mixed in as well concerning primal spirits (which works out perfectly for me since my campaign is heavy in the primal theme).

It also adds some new crunch in the form of feats and new “bad deva” monsters. The feats are only for Heroic and Paragon tiers, but they add in the deva bloodline that gives you a daily utility stance that makes it harder for enemies to hit you and also causes you to glow. There are a couple feats that grant you temporary hit points if you get hit by attacks with the fire, cold, or radiant keywords. One lets you target allies with channel divinity powers instead of yourself. My absolute favorite is the paragon one that lets you stand up and immediately fly at your speed if you get revived during combat.

This is the kind of ecology article I like to see. Its stuff I want to read and use, and I whipped up a deva cleric with Heavenly Heritage for the next available game I can hop into. Considering that I’ve already got two leaders and I’m running a homebrew campaign, I suspect that will fall between never and not-happening. Oh well.

Report: Songs of Erui, Session 1

Party Roster
Grynn: gnoll artificer, played by Jennifer
Vimak: deva invoker, played by Adrian
Other-Vimak: goliath fighter, played by Matt as a stand-in for Red Jason.
Josh is played a razorclaw shifter ranger, but I cannot remember his name

Loot List
70 gp, 75 sp
Tarnished electrum necklace with a star sapphire (50 gp)

What started out as a simple test-delve to see how well the concepts worked gradually changed into the first session of my Songs of Erui adventure path that I’ve been working on for the past few months now. I was mostly concerned for Jennifer’s character because it was A) very unorthodox (gnoll artificer), and B) it was a role she had never played before (leader). However, many players were using new races and classes from PH2, so I felt it would be good to see if they actually liked them before cementing their choices.

While I was planning Songs of Erui, I emailed each player a guide on the home base village, Dorsen. Its a sizable farming village that is nestled within a ring of big-ass menhirs that depict various animal spirits. I wanted to know if the lived there, and if not, why they were there. They also knew that they would be hunting goblins in the first adventure, so had to figure out why they would help (ideally because they had a stake in the village for some reason). Red Jason didnt make the game, which left me with Jennifer as the only player that actually did her damned homework.

Undaunted, I proceeded the adventure as planned with a round of Perception checks that were followed by Stealth checks. Everyone but Vimak succeeded, and as such got the drop on a band of goblins that were busy chowing down on roasted humans within the forest that they had tracked them into. This quickly became a running joke as Adrian determined that Vimak’s failures were due to him wanting to give the monsters a fair chance, and in tradional bad-paladin fare would announce the arrival of the “Brink of Corruption”, or some other random title that he claimed his deva had “just recalled”.

The first battle went okay despite me not downgrading it at all: I had planned the adventure for a party of five, but even with Red Jason’s dwarf absent they did an amazing job holding off about 650 xP worth of goblins (including a goblin hexer). Now not counting Jennifer, each player is a veteran of 4th Edition as well as past editions, so I was pleased with how well she pulled off a leader role considering she exclusively played defenders prior to this adventure. I could only imagine how difficult this might have been in 3rd Edition if she had to figure out which spells to pray for, when to convert, and all the other minor nuances of playing a spellcaster. Point to 4E for accessible design.

Looting the goblins, as desperate neophyte adventurers are want to do, they discovered a pair of tattered parchment that pointed to a specific location within the Bone Forest and a triskelion symbol. Josh managed to squeeze out a natural 20 on a History check, and having been raised by elves I gave him another +1 to top it off. Somehow, against all odds, he recognized it to be an eladrin rune that meant “hydra”, which refers to three eladrin noble houses that were closely allied together over a millenia ago.

He also noticed more goblin tracks moving away from the campsite.

The party tracked them to an old crypt hidden in the forest and spotted a goblin digging through shallow tombs in the walls from quite a distance. Adrian took the opportunity to bellow out a challenge while Josh just rolled his eyes and plugged him with a few arrows. Entering the crypt, they were surprised by a few goblins that were cowering out of sight to the left of the door, and were easily dispatched.

What made the crypt encounter interesting was that there were several links rooms from which the goblins could prepare and ambush or dynamically reinforce eachother. I used a lot of minions in addition to the standard fare, which in total amounted to about 1,000 XP of monsters that they were able to tackle in rapid succession without having to stop. This impressed me as I was used to parties stopping after roughly two encounters in our earliest 4th Edition sessions.

All in all they only took one extended rest, which was after a particularly difficult fight against eladrin undead that they encounter further into the crypt: they werent expecting them to retain fey step, you see. They somehow least expected to fight undead eladrin swordmages, complete with teleporting-mark-goodnes. Narrow corridors dont do much when they can blink past your defenses and start stabbifying your soft-casters. I wanted to use minions to test how dangerous this could be, but also because it gave Jennifer and Adrian a chance to shine with area-effect attacks.

Once the dust had settled, they were able to activate a fey crossroad that would let them explore further and each ended up almost 700 XP (about 2,800 XP in total) richer for their troubles. They didnt find much treasure, and to be honest I had forgotten to double up on item parcels since the first adventure is supposed to push them all to level 3. However, I didnt plan on putting much of anything on the top level and have since added a lot more loot to the rest of the dungeon complex.

The next session will include Red Jason’s character, a dwarf paladin that is on a kind of vision quest by Moradin. Hopefully it’ll go smoother than having the casual-new-guy play meatshield.