Class Compendium: Heroes of Sword and Spell Preview

November’s Ampersand opens up by reminding you to buy Beholder’s Collector Set before telling you what we already knew about the Character Builder going web-only, which is fine in case you’re the type of person that only goes to the D&D homepage to learn about the going-ons. The part that gets good is the Heroes of Sword and Spell preview, which unfortunately does not seem to be so good.

It’s a bare-bones book that features five classes–almost all the martial plus wizard, and for some reason cleric–and that’s about it. No races, no skill descriptions, no gear. Instead, they direct you to Heroes of the Fallen Lands or Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms if you want to wrap things up. I’m guessing that the classes are going to take up a lot more space than Essentials?

The classes are presented Essentials-style (ie, tables by tier) which is entirely unnecessary since every class in the book follows the exact same progression: get a utility power at level 2, get an encounter power at level 3, etc. I understand that they’re trying to maintain the theme of using tables to illustrate progression, which was fine because classes out of Essentials books didn’t all get the same thing, but this just seems like that they’re doing it for “tradition’s sake”. Speaking of tradition, they’ve previewed the Heroic tier of the fighter-renamed-weaponmaster, which is a fighter that only gets to pick between the two weapon talents (that fighters got when 4th Edition came out). It otherwise operates exactly as a fighter does, same class features and powers.

From what I’ve gathered, this is what you get when Wizards of the Coast takes a fraction of Player’s Handbook and repackages it. Its got all the “base four” classes, plus the ranger, but nothing more. The question is, why get it instead of Player’s Handbook, which has all that and more? From what I’ve heard, this has all the errata’d powers and class features. Unfortunately, its got a lot less content than Player’s Handbook (by several classes at the least) and not much cheaper (five bucks…woo).

On the other hand, as with the Essentials books, they go into a lot more detail on individual powers and concepts. For example, cleave gets a few lines that further explain what it does as well as indirectly when it’s a good idea to do it. Powers still have their descriptive text built-in, but they get a bit more. Perhaps this will help make things seem friendlier, or easier to explain to people who have a hard time understanding concepts like daily powers.

At this point, I’m tentatively on the fence. I like the idea of having an updated, compartmentalized book, but I don’t like having to go back and forth between books to pick races, figure out what skills do, etc. Well, I personally don’t, since I know all that already. I’m talking about new players who haven’t had the luxury of years of play experience under their belt. It’ll also depend on how many powers are given to each class; if it’s the same or less than Player’s Handbook, it’s going to take quite a bit to sway my vote.

I will say this: it does have a bitching cover.

Essential Fighter Preview

Well technically, its a knight. Shazbot mentioned that the podcast mentioned that the fighter knight wouldn’t get at-will exploits, but instead have abilities that would modify melee basic attacks, and from the looks of things thats true. The knight is proficient in every sort of armor out there (as opposed to having to burn a feat on plate like actual fighters), but otherwise looks to be on par in terms of class traits.

She gets a laundry list of class features at level one,  only a couple of which are even touched on: Defender Aura constantly marks any non-marked enemy adjacent to you, but it doesn’t look like she knight gets the freebie attacks. Instead of at-will attacks, you instead get two Fighter Stances: battle wrath gives you +2 damage, while cleaving assault works like cleave, except that the damage is based on Con instead of Strength. Power Strike is cited as a class feature, which is actually them just choosing your level 1 encounter for you. It also modifies melee basic attacks, dealing +1[W] damage as a free action after you hit something.

Again, the essential classes look to be thematic characters that make most of the decisions for you. The knight’s only key ability scores are Strength and Constitution, instead of the usual Strength and maybe either Constitution or Dexterity, perhaps with some Wisdom on top that the usual fighter possibly demands (I’m guessing the slayer will be linked to Strength and Dexterity only). Again, I think these are going to be great for newer players, or players looking for that nostalgic feel without all the save-or-fuck-all bullshit of past editions.

Essentials Preview

Finally, some information about what the fuck Essentials is all about. Reception is about what I’d predicted: trolls are crawling out of their bridges, and forums are blazing with excitement, trepidation, and people clamoring that its the second coming of another goddamn Half-Edition (even though none of the actual rules are getting changed and its all backwards compatible).


For the rational, here are some facts.


First, there are going to be ten products that are intended to, “provide a more comprehensive approach to the game rules,” adding new options and material without changing the existing rules. So, no, its not 4.5 Edition, and yes, you can still use all the content you have now. There’s stuff for veterans and newbies, but from the looks of things its supposed to make it really easy for new players to get into the game (or people who stopped back into the game). Frankly, I kind of wish that they’d done this from the start. 😛


Second, the “heart” of the Essentials line are character classes. From what I’ve gathered, they are making the newer classes more inline with the structure of past editions, doling out class features at various levels instead of leaving it all to power selection. In the end what we’re looking at is alternatives to existing classes: they’re different, but not better or worse. Two new types of fighters, the slayer and knight, are briefly mentioned. One is a two-weapon fighter, while the other is a sword-and-board. The only way these differ from the fighter is that each will get class features that the fighter does not, though they can still take feats and powers that are fighter-only. I’m guessing that slayers and knights will lose out on stuff to keep them balanced with the fighter.


They do go into more detail on the warpriest, which is a cleric by another name. Most of the traits are the same, though they do get a +1 to Fort and Will instead of a +2 to Will. As for class features and powers, they start out with healing word but get powers depending on the domain they pick (in this case, Storm or Sun). Apparently your domain determines both at-will attacks in addition to your utility (?) and encounter power. I’d heard that dailies were going away, but they’re on the list (levels 1, 5, and 9, par for the course). From a cursory glance it all looks mostly the same…have to wait and see how much domains affect your abilities, as well as what exclusive shit they get.

So, more shit, no new edition. Cool.

The Essentials

This month’s Ampersand article discusses a ten-product lineup referred to as Essentials, italics and all. Its designed to be a kind of stepping-stone path that allows players completely new to D&D to gradually transition from barebones rules to a more comprehensive structure. My understanding is that it kind of worked like this for OD&D, which had like, four different rulesets. Does it work well? I’m not sure since I started out with 2nd Edition.

Logically it makes sense. Start new people out small. Very small. The “Red Box” will have limited options and only get you to 2nd-level. Aside from rules, its got a lot of other shit like dice, an adventure, tokens, and power cards. I might pick it up for the tokens alone, which will prolly look a lot better than coins. >_> After that, players can pick up additional rules as they go, adding more and more until they shell out for a core set.

I think that this lineup is good for getting players in that are completely new to the scene and dont know a guy (who might know a guy) that can guide them through the process. While initially cheaper to get in the game, players will end up spending more to get the core rules, and in the end spend more than if they just splurged on the core books in the first place. That being said, there’s something attractive about spending a fraction of the money to get into a game you arent sure about…so I can see where they are coming from.

Mostly I’m looking forward to the Dungeon Tile sets, since I hear they’re gonna go 3D (meaning that I can stop buying Dwarven Forge and save a couple hundred dollars).

Dragon 376: Ampersand

Oh, Dragon, how you have failed me. Ampersand and Editorial articles have, ironically, usually been the greatest source of joy for me when it comes to Dragon. Sure, the other articles are nice and all, but they often put in a lot of cool shit into the monthly openers.

Until now.

Aside from a handful of things that are mentioned only briefly, I dont care about anything else on the list:

• Revenant is a new race.
• Assassin (and associated power source) will debut in September.
• PH3 content will start getting posted in July. Feel free to start complaining that, “you’re just paying for the same shit twice a dur dur duuuurrr.”
• Dragon Annual is in fact coming out, despite beliefs to the contrary.

Aaand thats a wrap. There is a list of panels at GenCon, but I dont go to GenCon, so I dont really care. Whelp, lets see how the Editorial fares…

…and survey says no. Its basically the author talking about how to play a character that does potentially annoying/bad things, without fucking over the party/pissing everyone off. Kind of like how I played a barbarian in Diablo 2: whirlwind attack through hordes of monsters to every evil urn I could find, and trigger them before we killed the rest of the monsters.

Ampersand: Domains and Divine Power

Domains were a mechanic in 3rd Edition that largely belonged to clerics and granted them even more additional powers keyed off of whatever type of flying spaghetti monster they chose to prostrate themselves before. 4th Edition retained a vestige of this system in the form of Channel Divinity feats that let you do other things with your channel divinity class feature, just in case you didnt have enough to keep track of.

Apparently, this wasnt enough for divine-users, and Divine Power intends to add more to the menu in the form of new Divinity feats and Domain feats. First, I’ll go into a bit of detail on domains in case you missed 3rd Edition. Domains were the portfolios of a god that clued you in on what they mostly cared about. For example, Erathis is given the domains of civilization, creation, and justice. If you worship Erathis, you can take any Channel Divinity feat that requires that you worship a deity with those three domains.

This means that in addition to the Channel Divinity feat that requires the express worship of Erathis, that you can get three other Divine feats. There is, however, some overlap: Asmodeus also has the domain of civilation.

In addition there are Domain feats. There are identical to the martial feats that modify your at-will powers in various ways, excpet that they apply to divine powers. Power of Civilization gives you a +2 feat bonus to Diplomacy, and a +1 bonus to damage for each adjacent enemy when you use leading strike, mantle of the infidel, priest’s shield, or valiant strike.

This sounds like a lot to take in, which is why I’m extremely pleased with the supplement distribution by Wizards. We initially got Player’s Handbook with eight races and classes, and they’ve gradually rolled out ever-expanded options for various sources one at a time. Less rapid-rules-bloat, more time to let it all sink in before the next big thing hits. I’ve got a lot of Martial Power down, what with my paragon tiefling resourceful warlord/infernal strategist, and I’m still taking in the new content in Player’s Handbook 2.

I’m glad they’re kind enough to give us almost half a month before dropping Arcane Power in our laps.