Class Acts: Runepriest

Runepriest support with an “asian” twist? Okay I am hooked. In addition to a few pages with some sidebars of flavor on how runepriests could fit in Kara-Tur, we also get a new runic artistry, prayers, paragon path, and a pair of feats.

The flavor parts are interesting, touching on the Path of Enlightenment (which was apparently written on cliffs with red lightning), and depicting rune magic as more commonplace in Kara-Tur, with “homes adorned with sutra scrolls of varying sizes, that burn with red lightning when focused on or read”. There is also a sidebar on calligraphy, which along with the code of honor syncs well with the whole oriental thing they got going on. Great if you are running such a campaign, but you could still use stuff like the sutra scrolls–changing them to runestones or what-have-you–and lightning in other games.

Each of the existing runic artistry gets a few paragraphs for re-flavoring their place in Kara-Tur. Defiant words are pretty common, wield longspears or halberds, and they tend to serve in a standing army or serve as temple guards. Wrathful hammers use testubos (aka greatclubs), lacquer their armor in red, and tend to stick to the Plains of Horses and hilly regions. They also spend most of their time hunting demons, giving them a solid adventuring concept.

Serene blade is the new artistry. These guys embody the runepriest devotion to the sigils granted by the Celestial Emporer, wield longswords, and typically wander the land teaching literacy and the Path of Enlightenment. In game mechanics picking this class feature gives you proficiency with military heavy blades, lets you add your Wisdom to AC when wearing light armor (allowing you to stick to the red robes that they like so much), and gives you scaling temp hps based on your Wisdom once per round aftering getting hit. 

New Prayers

• Words of Bravery (level 3): You hit each creature adjacent to you, you and an ally can make a save, and you either allow an ally push an affected target or dish out a bonus on the save.
• Words of Compassion (level 6 daily): You or an ally regains hit points and gets a bonus to saves for a turn. Level 6, daily, and a standard action? Er…shrug.
• Words of the Reflected Karma (level 9): A friendly-fire blast that targets a NAD (and Will at that), with an effect that causes the target to take lightning damage when it attacks. Veeery nice.
• Protective Scroll (level 10 encounter): You burn a healing surge to scribe a sutra scroll, that can be used as a minor action to heal another creature and grant a huge bonus to defenses for a turn. These things last until you take an extended rest, meaning you can pretty much use it every encounter to basically give yourself a minor-action heal WITH something extra. Also, anyone can use it.
• Words of Fiery Fidelity (level 13): Single target, hits Fort, deals fire damage, heals adjacent allies, deals ongoing damage as an effect (that also heals allies whenever the target takes ongoing damage). Oh, and depending on your rune state the ongoing damage and healing is either double, or the range of allies that it affects is increased. 
• Words of Ancestral Bravery (level 15): Single target, hits Will, deals radiant damage with prone on a hit, half damage on a miss. As an effect if allies end their turn next to you they got a lot of temp hps and a bonus on saves for a turn.

Enlightened Word Paragon Path 

Only non-evil runepriests need apply. 

• Cloud Step (level 11): A new rune state that lets adjacent allies shift as a free action if they hit an enemy. You can also end it in order to fly.
• Shared Enlightenment Action (level 11): You can burn an action point to have an attack originate from a nearby ally, using your stats and giving them temp hps for their troubles.
• Celestial Lightning (level 11 again): A ranged, friendly-fire area-effect that targets Fort, deals radiant and lightning damage. It has to be centered on an ally, but in addition to not giving a fuck the ally also deals lightning and radiant damage for a turn (in addition to whatever they would normally do, making it very unlikely that resistances will factor in). In addition, depending on your rune state the ally either a bonus to damage or their healing surges.
• Touch of Hope (level 12 daily): You or an ally that you can touch make a save against every effect on her, regains hit points, and can stand up if prone.
• Radiant Cloud Step (level 16): When flying by dismissing your cloud step rune state, you are also insubstantial and phasing.
• Words of Celestial Heaven (level 20): A solid melee attack that deals lightning and radiant damage, stuns with a save end, and causes the target to make an attack against an ally after saving against the stun. Hit or miss you also deal bonus lightning and radiant damage for the rest of the encounter.

New Feats 

• Heavenly Halberdier: You can use glaives and halberds, in addition to sliding targets of your at-will runepriest prayers.
• Scribe Sutra: You can use Warding rituals as well as Brew Potion, Gentle Repose, and Magic Circle. In addition, making scrolls takes half the time.

Class Acts: Assassin

It has been awhile since the assassin got any support, and this article provides about two pages each of flavor and crunch content. While the black flame zealot was a prestige class in 3rd Edition Forgotten Realms, this article thankfully provides setting-neutral story information, in addition for some tips on incorporating them into Eberron and ironically into Forgotten Realms (which gets its own sidebar). Much of the information paints them as “sith” assassins, channeling their hatred and fury, which fits the theme of the shadow power source.

The real highlight is being able to swap out shade form with black flame form, which gives you damage resistance, a damage bonus, and you can use your shrouds for free. Like shade form you can sustain it. There is also a handful of feats that increase shroud damage (I thought we already had a feat that increased shrouds to a d8), keep shrouds after critting, move them to other targets after killing them, gain combat advantage against shrouded creatures, and a damage bonus with ki focus powers.

A pair of magic items thematic to assassins helps round things out: one is a level 16 arm slot that increases your crit range on targets with three or more shrouds, while the other is a level 10 rare ki focus that adds necrotic damage to fire attacks (and vice versa), with an encounter attack kicker that deals scaling ongoing necrotic and fire damage, in addition to stopping the target from regaining hit points. To top it off, the crit damage is both d10s and adds on necrotic and fire damage, making it very hard to resist.

I think a better assassin article would expand upon this theme more and provide additional power options to help differentiate them, like the blackguard. Eh, baby steps I guess.

Bards of Wolfstone

A good mixture of flavor and rules, Bards of Wolfstone furnishes a little over a half-page of story, a half-page of background information, and a couple pages for character-building advice, new spells, and some feats. It’s tied to an older article, which I approve of because I wouldn’t mind seeing a more strongly defined setting. The concept is a bard that is able to commune with spirits, specifically the spirits of dead warriors that the bard can call forth or bind to her allies in order to improve their combat prowess. I’ve built a few skald-type bards in the past, so this is relevant to my interests.

I’m not sure if the new spells require that you have be a bard with access to primal magic: they say bard, but they have both the Arcane and Primal keywords. Also, the article gives you some advice on multiclassing or going the hybrid route, but nothing specifically states that you have to. The new spells are all encounter powers that range from levels 3-23–so there’s something for each tier–and they all hinge around conjuring spirits to spur your allies on, defend them, or lock your enemies down. Their abridged effects are as follows:

• Rally the Spectral Host: Double-weapon damage, and you generate an aura that gives all allies a power bonus to attack and damage rolls.
• Wrath of Wolfstone: Double-weapon damage (melee or ranged), and you conjure a spirit that deals automatic cold damage and slides enemies that end their turn next to it. Good for a small measure of control, but since the enemy can do whatever they want before the damage-and-slide, it’s kind of limited, especially against anything with cold resistance.
• Spectral Vanguard: This one does triple-weapon damage, generates a sizable aura that grants your allies a power bonus to defenses, and lets you slide enemies that end their turn in the aura. The size makes it very likely that your allies will benefit from this, and you’ll probably catch a few enemies in it as well.
• White Wolves: This close blast creatures deals weapon-based damage, and creates a zone that deals cold dmaage and immobilizes enemies that end their turn there. The area of effect is nice, and it only hits enemies, but immobilization isn’t often terribly useful.

There’s also three feats, as well:

• Battle Cadence: When you use majestic word, you can slide the target further and give them a damage bonus for a turn. Very nice.
• Wild Virtue: You get to shift whenever you use your Bardic Virtue. Also very nice.
• Words of Wrath: You get a feat bonus to Intimidate, and can use words of friendship to boost it instead of Diplomacy. Thematic, if nothing else.

Really, the only thing this article was missing was a paragon path, but then there are several well-suited for it as is. Much of the content is thematically appropriate for the melee-oriented bard, though two of the feats are handy for most bards.

Sword Guard of Astrazalian

Otherwise known as Class Acts: Knights, this article is about allowing an eladrin knight to swap out the usual fare in order to exploit your inherent magical capabilities. In short, you can teleport things. A lot. Before we get into the powers however, I want to mention the flavor of the article. It just breaks about a page, going into the history of the City of Starlight, which shifts between the Feywild and natural world with the seasons, and eladrin knighthood. It provids a solid backstory for why these guys exist, as well as character hooks for why you might seemingly leave the city for adventure (mostly to fight your enemies at the source).

Since eladrin have a +2 to Intelligence and a floating bonus to either Dexterity or Charisma, they aren’t exactly suited to knights, which are Strength primary and Constitution secondary. To alleviate this, the article recommends the “specialist” array (which lets you go with Strength 18 and Constitution 14). Since they rely largely on melee basic attacks, another suggestion is taking Melee Training to make your attack stat mostly Intelligence. The damage would be a bit lower, but it lets you get away with lighter armor since having an Intelligence of 18 and hide armor is the same as scale.

Ultimately, a Strength of 16 (before modifiers) is good enough for your attacks, which is what people usually buy anyway, especially considering swords have the best proficiency bonus. Yeah, you don’t have a racial, but who fucking cares? I’ve seen players go with halfling fighters (Strength 16) and I’ve played a minotaur rogue and warlord (all with “attack stats” of 16). It’s certainly doable, especially considering that the new Expertise feats scale faster and provide other bonuses. The only reason why you’d want to have a good Intelligence score is if you wanted to multiclass into an arcane class to help push the concept, or best utilize the new paragon path (see below).

Anywho, on to the powers.

• Feywild Guardian (level 1): You swap out battle guardian for the ability to teleport to the triggering target, and then make a basic melee attack. This is pretty cool, because it allows for better positioning.
• Glimmering Blade (level 1): A stance that lets you teleport whenever you hit an enemy. Also very nice.
• Eldritch Tactics (level 2): This is pretty standard as far as low-level teleports are concerned: you swap places with an ally within range. Swordmages, and I think even battleminds and The Simpsons already did it.
• Bewitching Glare (level 6): An immediate interrupt that lets you impose an attack penalty and pull the target if the attack misses. The pull cannot move them into hindering terrain, which sucks.
• Arcane Instincts (level 10): Another immediate interrupt that gives you and all adjacent allies energy resistance against a few types. The good part is that it stops the most common kinds of energy (except for necrotic), but the downside is that allies have to be right next to you.

Not a whole lot, and I’d probably only take the level 1 and 2 stuff. But wait, the article isn’t over yet! There’s still the eldritch knight paragon path, which requires that you be trained in Arcana and have a nice Intelligence score to boot. While eladrin can take Arcana at level 1 without having to burn a feat, personally I’d recommend multiclassing into an arcane class. It’ll help push the concept, as well as give you another nifty ability.

• Eldritch Abduction (level 11): When you teleport, an ally in your defender aura can come with you. Oddly, you cannot teleport the target into hindering terrain…but I can’t see why you would try this, except against an enemy, who probably wouldn’t take kindly to this anyway.
• Far Step Extension (level 11): You can teleport a distance based on your Intelligence whenever you burn an Action Point. Hrmm…normally Intelligence is a dump-stat for knights. There’s no minimum distance, so if your Intelligence isn’t at least 12 or higher, this won’t do shit for you. 
• Diversified Study (level 11): You gain a wizard encounter, and can use any weapon you want as an implement when attacking with the power you pick.
• Eldritch Leap (level 12): Basically another fey step, except that it’s dependent on Intelligence and you have to end up next to an enemy.
• Eldritch Blade (level 16): When you hit something with an opportunity attack, you ignore insubstantial and resistances. Great if you’re fighting ghosts, I guess? To my knowledge, weapons can turn their energy types off anyway, and since it only works on opportunity attacks it just makes this all the more limited.
• Eldritch Isolation (level 20): When you use power strike, you can teleport both you and the target up to a (thankfully) set distance.

Now, I like the concept, and it’s doable without too much work. The problem is that it seems like an armored variation of the swordmage, which has the benefit of being Intelligence-primary from the start. With this, taking Melee Training to prevent spreading your ability scores too thin, as well as Weapon Focus to patch the damage, just makes it a less attractive option considering that as a swordmage I can just take Armor Proficiency (hide) if I want to look the same, and I won’t have to wait 10 levels in the hopes that the game goes on long enough to see if it all pays off.

In the end it’s alright, but is mostly useful to those stuck with a DM who wants to run purely Essentials games that cannot be dissuaded. Otherwise, I’d be hard-pressed to not just roll an eladrin swordmage.

Empathic Champions

Empathic Champions is all about allowing your ardent to dabble into disciplines that lead by reading the minds of your enemies. There’s no new class features here, just a handful of new powers that you can cherry pick from, along with some flavor/role-playing tips and other thematically appropriate recommendations from Player’s Handbook 3 and Psionic Power. The entire article uses the Essentials format, presenting each ability with a few sentences that give greater insight on what it does, and how you might describe it. I like this, as it provides a greater contextual foundation when players wonder what the hell just happened.

• Intent Laid Bare (level 1): You deal damage and stop the enemy from shifting, can communicate with the target via telepathy until the end of your next turn, and it’s usable as a melee basic attack. Since telepathy isn’t language dependent, this could be very handy for trying to talk your way out of a fight against a creature that you couldn’t otherwise communicate with. You don’t have to hit them, either, but you could still opt for non-lethal damage. The augments let you impose an attack penalty, or increase the damage, prevent shifting, and allow your or an ally to shift if the target moves.
• Sympathetic Agony (level 2 encounter): If an ally within range takes damage, you reduce the damage, have a save-ends effect apply to you instead, and grant both you and the target a defense bonus for a turn, so long as you both stick together. The range is good, and if you have resistance or a bonus against whatever save ends effect you might contract, even better.
• Painful Revelations (level 6 daily): An aura that lets you take psychic damage when an enemy takes damage to cause them to grant save-ends combat advantage? Hell yes. The psychic damage isn’t much, and the aura lasts for the entire encounter, too. This is a very easy way to continually grant everyone a free +2 to hit. Just try to have some healing potions on hand, cause you can’t reduce the damage.
• Clarifying Impact (level 7): Another melee basic attack discipline, this one prevents the target from gaining partial cover/concealment against you or adjacent allies as an effect. The augments give you a Perception bonus, or grants you automatic combat advantage if the target is next to an ally, in addition to increasing the damage and generating an aura that prevents enemies from gaining partial cover/concealment for a turn. Eh…I’ve never had a problem with adjacent targets being able to hide all that much.
• Unshakable Bond (level 10 daily): If an enemy hits an ally within range, you can use this power as a free action to always know where it is, and ignore all forms of cover/concealment. I suppose if you’re fighting someone who can turn invisible regularly or has some manner of hiding itself, that this could be handy, but there are a other ardent powers that are less situational.

So, the new power selection isn’t much to write home about, but the article comes with a brand new paragon path: the contemplative ardent. It gives you a lot of abilities that depend on your telepathy range. Of course you get telepathy once you pick it up, and it also extends your telepathy if you already had it, so kalashtar or shardminds will get a bit more out of it.

• Telepathic Mind (level 11 feature): You gain telepathy, or extend your existing telepathy. When you drop, allies in your telepathy range gain an attack bonus for a turn. The bonus is alright, and if you’re playing a race with telepathy you can virtually guarantee that all of your allies will get the bonus.
• Contemplative Action (level 11 feature): When you burn an action point, you gain a bonus to attack and damage rolls based on the number of bloodied allies within your telepathy range. This is pretty situational, but is has greater potential if you’re playing a race that starts with telepathy.
• Paragon Power Points (level 11 feature): Par for the course, you get +2 power points.
• Thought Harvest (level 11 encounter): When you hit an enemy with an un-augmented at-will, you add bonus psychic damage. Additionally, you prevent it from shifting, as well as imposing an attack and defense penalty against allies within your telepathy range. This is a pretty flexible kicker effect that can be used against a monster that you want to keep in place, or just to spice up an attack when you’ve run out of power points.
• Sleeper Awakens (level 12 daily): A stance that grants you a hefty Insight bonus, and prevents enemies from flanking you. It also comes with a secondary at-will that lets you shift when an enemy attacks you or an adjacent ally as an immediate reaction.
• Inverted Corona (level 16 feature): Whenever you do something that lets an ally burn a healing surge, you can opt to pull one or two allies (doesn’t matter which) as a free action. This can be really handy in getting an ally out of danger, or mixing up the battlefield formation. It’s based on your telepathy range so, again, if you can increase that range, you increase how useful this will be, too.
• Open the Floodgates (level 20 daily): A close blast 3 that deals weapon-based damage, in addition to weakening and inflicting ongoing damage. If you miss, it only does half. Regardless you get to shift, you just have to end somewhere in or adjacent to the area of effect.

There’s no new magic items or feats to further support this. As it stands, this article is somewhat useful to ardent players, and because of this I doubt it will entice other players to give it a shot.

Class Acts: Cavalier

Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms gets more momentum this month with Class Acts: Cavaliers, which provides an alternate level 4 class feature for the cavalier, a bunch of new feats that are more general use, and a magic item to top it off.

Now, I don’t like paladins. Not because of years of ingrained stigma from players that didn’t know how to play a Lawful Good character and not be an ass, or DMs who didn’t know what Lawful Good meant and tried to simultaneously fuck over the paladin by threatening to strip away her class features unless she did something to irritate the party (like loudly proclaim to a warband of monsters that we were going to attack them while overwhelmingly outnumbered). No, it’s just that the concept never got any traction with me, and I didn’t like the idea of needing a high Strength, Constitution, Wisdom, and Charisma to get the most out of my class features.

That, and I don’t get to actually play a lot, instead spending the lion’s share of my game time “playing” characters vicariously through the rest of the group.

The alternate class feature–Summoned Steed–lets you use summon celestial steed to conjure up an angelic warhorse twice per day that anyone can ride. Its got half your hit points, uses your Defenses, a Speed of 8, grants riders a damage bonus when charging, uses your level to determine attack bonus and Charisma modifier for damage, can kick as a melee basic, and trample as an encounter. If it dies you lose a healing surge (or take damage), and you can’t summon it again until you take a nap. Basically, its a throwback to what paladins did in earlier editions, except you don’t need to invest a lot of skill points into Ride and constantly make checks.

Feats are divvied into two categories; Mounted Combat and Improved Mount, with four for each.

Mounted Combat feats are more general use, granting you the usage of encounter powers when you are riding a mount (and in some cases has the requisite attack power). In otherwords, its multiclassing for mounts. For example, battle trample requires trample, and grants it a one-turn aura effect that automatically deals damage and pushes enemies that end their turn adjacent to it. Riding attack is for you, allowing you to attack something that your mount doesn’t, though its keyed to either Strength or Dexterity and only deals 1[W] damage.

The Improved Mount feats are straightforward and limited to the cavalier, allowing you to summon something besides (and superior to) a horse with summon celestial steed. These ones are restricted by tier, with battle tiger being Heroic, behemoth and pegasi Paragon, and silver dragon Epic. The dragon is fucking hardcore, being all but immune to cold, having a flight of 10, can heal itself and recharge its breath weapon with the same minor action, and granting you a constant power bonus to attack rolls. Which is only for starters.

(This is where I wanted to put a badass image that Wayne Reynolds drew of a character on an armored lion, but I couldn’t find it. If you own Defenders of the Faith, check it out and pretend it’s here.)

Finally, we wrap things up with the jade horse, a level 8 uncommon wondrous item with a daily power that lets you summon your very own horse (of course). It has half your hit points, your Defenses, resist all, doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks when charging, and can kick and trample to boot. Nothing too fancy.

While the cavalier doesn’t hold much interest for me, I think the next character I make will have a warhorse. Ultimately, I’d like to get a skeletal horse or nightmare. A man can dream…

Class Acts: Wardens

Adding faeries to wardens seems a bit contradictory, as I’ve always envisioned wardens mighty warriors that derive durability and strength from the trees and mountains, while fey seem to prefer deception and agility. Fey wardens are able to summon forth aid from diminutive allies to hinder and befuddle their foes, and this article provides six evocations and feats to support this concept. Despite the continual presence of the fey-folk, there are not stats for any kind of fey in the article.

New Evocations

• Playful torment is a level 1 at-will that deals damage, causes the target to grant combat advantage, and grants an attack bonus with warden’s fury for a turn.
• Stinging nettles is a level 1 encounter that lets you deal damage to one target within the power’s range, reduced damage to the rest, and mark everyone.
• Call faerie guardian is a level 2 daily that conjures of a fairy warrior that you can move about, and whenever you use your Nature’s Wrath feature you can mark a creature next to it for free.
• Fey congress is a level 6 daily that creates a small sustainable zone that enemies treat as lightly obscured terrain.
• Sylvan trickery is a level 10 daily that renders you or an ally invisible, and you teleport when it runs out.
• Swarming fey is a level 13 that affects a close burst, dealing damage and creating a difficult terrain zone for the rest  of the encounter.

New Feats

• Dancing Leaves allows you to teleport when you use warden’s grasp.
• Fey Companions grants you a bonus to Nature, Perception, Streetwise, and saves against charm effects.
• Starshine Mantle is for fey creatures only, making you harder to hit when you use second wind.
• Sylvan Fury requires that you be an elf, and lets you shift when you use Nature’s Wrath.
• Swaying Branches prones or slides an enemy when you hit an enemy with warden’s fury in lieu of dealing damage.
• Unseelie Blight is a drow-only feat that prevents an enemy from utilizing concealment after you hit with encounter attacks.

The Shivs of Sorcery

4th Edition has gone a long way to make wizards and sorcerers into distinct classes. Aside from vastly differing class features and spells (you know, the entirety of the class), sorcerers can also use daggers as spell implements, and this Class Acts article expands its utility by providing spells that require you to use the dagger in melee and feats that improve upon this theme.

On feats, there’s a Heroic tier feat for Cosmic, Storm, and Wild Magic sorcerers that took Sorcerous Blade Channeling (lets you use ranged attacks in melee) that add a small benefit such as forced movement or letting you shift after the attack. Armored Sorcerer only works with leather, boosting resistances gained from your Spell Source. I really like Mastery of Knives, which gives you proficiency with kukris and lets you treat them as daggers for sorcerer spells. Glee.

As for spells, there aren’t a lot and they range from levels 1-9.

• Ensorcelled blade is an at-will attack that deals automatic damage to the target if they tap you back in melee before the start of your next turn. As another perk, you can use it as a melee basic attack.
• Teleporting strike lets you attack, teleport as an effect, and then attack again (the second attack imposes conditions instead of dealing damage).
• Lightning cuts is really simple: you deal double weapon lightning damage without an ability boost to damage. The plus is that it targets Reflex and only takes a minor action to use.
• Blinding blade is a level 5 daily that deals double damage and blinds.
• Dweomer dagger is a level 7 attack that deals double damage and imposes a defense penalty for a turn. Nothing too fancy.
• Force daggers is a level 9 attack that affects a close blast and deals double damage, unless there was only one target in which case it deals triple damage.

Class Acts: Artificer

This Class Acts article ties in racial traits with artificer class features, mostly focusing on the various effects of Healing Infusion: curative admixture, resistive formula, and shielding elixir. For example, Astral Elixer causes shielding infusion to grant resist 5 radiant, and the target can end the effect to gain a variable bonus to a save. On the other hand, Human Innovation lets you recharge an ally’s daily item power when you spend an action point. Any race that’s been in a Player’s Handbook is on the list, even a few that aren’t like the minotaur and shadar-kai, which is good for providing a foundation for players that want to play a “non-standard” artificer. There are a total of 25 feats, all Heroic, so useful to any artificer of any level.

Lot of DDI Updates

I’ve been extremely busy with moving, work, and school. Things should smooth out within the week, but until then I’m going to call out a few DDI articles that I actually give a fuck about (meaning almost anything but Forgotten Realms articles).

First up is Underhanded and Overconfident, an article on playing scoundrel types. Its roughly equal parts fluff and crunch, giving some advice on playing a scoundrel without pissing off the rest of the party: dont fight fair, take lots of risks, be charming (or pretend to be), and if you must be a dick at least do the right thing in the end.

There are only three feats, two of which give kickers to using Bluff as a feint, either by granting the combat advantage mod to all allies or giving you a flat bonus to the check and some extra Sneak Attack damage to boot. The other, Building Camaraderie, gives you a cumulative Diplomacy bonus each time you successfully pull it off in the same encounter.

The article wraps up with a pair of paragon paths. The phantasmagoric scoundrel requires that you are trained in Arcana and either Bluff or Thievery, and emphasizes the use of illusion magic. It mostly seems to be geared towards wizards, which makes sense since the orb of deception implement mastery is also linked to Charisma.

The silver-tongued scoundrel, on the other hand, is for artful dodger rogues. You can grant allies bonuses to Bluff or Diplomacy by successfully using them, use either skill in place of an init bonus, the level 12 utility lets you roll twice and take the better result, and the action point kicker and attacks you get all cause the target to grant combat advantage to you (making it incredibly easy to get Sneak Attack damage whenever you damned well please).

I’m sure a lot of people are going to be pissed that the Winning Races article is on, of all things, changelings. Even in Eberron we never saw many of these guys, so its kind of strange to see it getting the spotlight before a multitude of others. Its not even a crunch-heavy article, focusing on one of several changlings archetypes, the becomer. Unlike most changlings, becomers choose a single identity as another race and stick with it. They dont let anyone know the truth, even close friends or loved ones.

Most of the article is devoted to discovering your character’s reasons for doing so,  and it includes a list of common races to choose from with reasons why you might pick that race. There’re several backgrounds, but only one feat that gives you a bonus language and skill bonus to a skill that that race gets a bonus on. Very cool.

Last on the list is Class Acts: Warlocks. This issue adds a bunch of Charisma-based spells for infernal pact warlocks, including a new at-will that you can swap out for hellish rebuke. While there is only a single encounter attack for each level, its a step in the right direction for tieflings who can get more out of Charisma and still reap the benefits of the very thematic infernal pact. As a tiefling fan, I endorse this move. There are also a pair of new item properties for rods and leather/hide armor. Nothing too fancy, but a nice gesture.