Hierophant Druids

In case you’re one of those people that think that the Essentials line divided classes pre-and-post release well, this article is geared for both druids and sentinels, as indicated by the Player’s Handbook 2 and Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms stamps of approval. So, ha. You know, if they’re going to put little icons in the article that denote which book they pertain to, they could at least make them not so blurry/more stylish.

The article is kind of a throwback to 2nd Edition, in which you could only advance to a certain level before you had to start offing other druids of your level, as there could be only a set number of a given level. Mostly, it’s about an organization that tries to blend primal magic with elemental forces, something that most druids don’t like due to the Primordials’ prior agenda of keeping the world in a constant state of elemental flux.

The article also provides a couple new evocations, intended as benefits for Hierophant members, but technically anyone can pick them up. Unfortunately, you have to be at least 22nd level, which severely limits the scope.

• Elemental passage is a 22nd-level daily utility that lets you vanish, presumably into the Elemental Chaos, and reappear when your turn starts. When you return, there are four different effects that can occur, each tied with an element: push, pull, create difficult terrain around you, or impose fire vulnerability. It’s a standard action to use, which is a turn-off.
• Summon elemental warrior is a 25th-level daily attack that, as the name implies, lets you summon an elemental. The exact element is up to you, and there are four stat blocks to choose from. They all mark targets that they hit (along with a kicker effect, like ongoing damage or forced movement), and have an opportunity action that works on marked creatures. About what I’d expect.

EDIT: A buddy of mine pointed out that the evocations have the Elemental keyword (and Primal). Does this mean that Wizards is considering a class with the Elemental power source, or is this just a keyword that serves to globally encompass the four classic elements (instead of printing out a bunch of keywords). Frankly, I don’t see how much different an Elemental class could be, especially considering that wizards can summon elementals, and chaos sorcerers tap into it a bit as well.

And to wrap things up, the master hierophant epic destiny. I think the coolest part is the Immortality part: you eventually leave the world, drift through the Astral Sea, and become a new world. It’s kind of like radiant child, but for druids instead of warlocks…and a planet instead of a star. I could see this being used for an adventure hook, where the players have to explore the Astral Sea for a new world forged from the body of an ancient druid. Hell, you could use this as the basis for having a solar system, as the worlds don’t have to look like our own.

• Level 21: You gain a Wisdom bonus, as well as a bonus to something else.
• Level 24: You are immune to disease, stop aging, and can enter suspended animation once per encounter, during which you gain regeneration and make saves when you turn starts and ends. The regen only works while bloodied, and it renders you unconscious. On the plus side, you can end it when your turn also ends.
• Level 26: You gain elemental transmogrification, which makes you a Huge elemental with a variable benefit based on the element you choose.
• Level 30: You can use two options from elemental transmogrification, and once per day if you get dropped below 1 hit point, you immediately regain a shitload of them.

The article has some nice inspiration for campaigns of any level, but the provided crunch is intended entirely for epic-tier play, which reduces its utility. Personally, I’d like to see elemental evocations for a wider level spread, allowing players to be Hierophants from a lower level. Great for druid players approaching epic tier, also good for DMs.

PH2 = Best Seller

Just in case anyone hasn’t seen this yet, Players Handbook 2 has reached its second week on Wall Street Journal’s best seller list:

http://www.newser.com/article/d97afjko0/wall-street-journal-best-sellers.html

Review: Players Handbook 2

I’ve been waiting for this book for a long time, and even contemplated trying to get it via Amazon.jp despite the $70 bill, and while I wasnt one of the extremely lucky people to get an early copy of Player’s Handbook 2, I did manage to get it yesterday. Unfortunately that was the day of a ColdFusion final, which when combined with my normal D&D day meant that I barely got a chance to even flip through it. Hell, Red Jason saw more of it than I did.

Now, its my turn.

The basic rundown is that Player’s Handbook 2 is a huge content expansion to D&D, providing five full race write-ups that include some that were occasionally missed (like the half-orc and gnome), and eight classes that have a 50:50 ratio of revamp and new. The theme of this PH is primal, with most of the races falling into place along with half the classes, but it also rounds out the divine and arcane sources by pitching us two classes for each.

As the name implies, this book is almost exclusively intended for players. I say almost because it has a lot of new magic items and rituals, which if the players want then your DM will want to know what they do, but also because as a DM you might actually want to use class templates for monsters and in that case you’ll need to know what a class does.

This is a big book so I’m just going to tackle it in order.

The first thing I noticed upon opening the book was the art. This was a comment I heard last night–between Red Jason paying attention to Adrian killing us, people shouting for heals, and flipping through the book–was about the art. The art quality seems to have gotten a lot better, in particular the race art. However, while eye candy is nice it wont do anyone any good if the new crunch

Races
Overall I like all of the new races. I played gnomes purely for aesthetics in 3rd Edition, but couldnt care less about the goliath and half-orc. The half-orc’s only real ability was that it could use items that were limited to orcs, which at the time I think amounted to two magic items, one of which was an epic-level item. Big deal, especially considering that for your troubles you got a -2 net penalty to your ability scores.

I liked the idea of a shifter, but always felt that they were fairly underpowered (about as badly as the half-orc). Each race now has something that it brings to the table that helps differentiate it and also makes it more desirable to play: I’m strongly considering trying out a goliath, and already have a shifter up and running.

Another very cool thing are the racial paragon paths, which as the name implies are paragon paths that have only a specific race as a requirement (makes sense). By far the coolest of these is scion of Arkhosia, which lets you grow wings that grant an at-will fly utility at level 12 and overland flight at level 16. Most of them have a lot of appeal to a race, and I expect to see a lot of players picking these up.

Classes
Here is the meat of the book. PH2 brings eight classes to the table, half of which are entirely new, while the other half are revamps of classes that existed in 3rd Edition but didn’t make the cut for the initial launch. The best part is that in reading through each class none of them seem noticeably better than the other classes at what they are supposed to do: the barbarian doesnt seem to be superior to other strikers, for example. Also, none of the classes seem to suck, which was a fear of mine after playing a few of them back in 3rd Edition, specifically the bard.

The bard. Oh, what to say about the bard? Me and the bard go waaay back, since the release of 3rd Edition when I played in my first campaign. One of the players, Bat Jew, decided to make a gnome bard as a kind of foil for my gnome fighter. I went with the concept because it was funny, and thats mostly why I played a gnome: the laughs. Anyway, we played for almost seven levels before the DM had to move, and I have to say that I was severely unimpressed with the character’s performance. He was bad in and out of combat, and I think the only shining moment of the character for the duration of the short-lived campaign was when we had to rescue a baby and he cast invisibility on both of us so that we could run away.

Of course, that was the 3rd Edition bard, not the Revised Edition version. Well, that got a pretty thorough playtest when I was running Age of Worms, up until level 14 in fact. Throughout much of the campaign, the player didnt enjoy the combat part of the game at all since she basically just sat there singing and repeatedly missing with most of her ranged attacks. She derived some enjoyment from the character concept, background, and various decisions he made building the character (including having a hippogriff improved familiar with all the durability of cracked glass), but that’s all very ancillory when you compare it to the core D&D experience.
My most recent experience with bards was actually last week, when I made a tiefling bard for Red Jason’s Scions of Punjar adventure, and I have to say that I already enjoy it a lot more. The basic premise of a bard is no more a “jack-of-all-trades”, but as an artist, and this emphasis helps define the class and make it work. In combat, my powers are useful. I’m not carefully treading about failing to hit one monster after another, or expending both 0-level spells to heal a grand total of two hit points. Quite the opposite, I felt useful and functional. In combat I could contribute in a meaningful manner, just as I could outside of combat (and with skills other than Diplomacy, to boot).

Part and parcel of the fear of suck is the fear of power creep. Many people bitched about the druid (amongst other things) on the Wizards.com forums, mostly with highly circumstantial evidence, about how it was better than basically any other class due to wildshaping into specific animal forms and self-buffing. Having seen the preview material and read through the class, I’m happy with the final result. Its a flexible controller that relies on wildshape to determine if you are going to blast things from a distance or close the gap and rend creatures apart in melee. With the way the class is made, you always have the opportunity to do both, and I think thats going to make it a lot of fun.

The class that has the most appeal to me is the shaman. I’ve found out that I have a secret love of leaders, but what really sells it for me is the fact that you get to control a spirit. Shamans themselves are ranged characters, but throw their spirit into melee and buff allies that are close to the spirit. This is like me playing a summoner in Final Fantasy all over again, but without all the tedious work that often resulted in three wasted hours.

Character Options
The final chapter contains the rules for backgrounds, feats, rituals, and new gear. Backgrounds arent necessarily a new mechanic, but the presentation in PH2 is. Backgrounds are divided into sections like society, occupation, geography, etc. You can pick as many as you want, but they dont do anything by themselves. Once you figure out your background you are allowed to add a +2 bonus to a skill, a bonus language, and an extra skill that you can choose to be trained in. Its simple, its not a huge bonus, and most importantly I think it will be very handy for newer players to help flesh out their character.
I’m playing with a few new people in one campaign, and I think this is something that will help them both out. I’ve heard that the benefits arent as big as the ones in Forgotten Realms, but the easy fix is to just not use those ones (if you even have the book), or to just increase the bonus slightly.

Many of the feats are intended for the new races and classes, but some can be used with the rest as well, and one is specific for the half-elf. I think that in most cases players will use feats from the same book they pick their race and class out of, though there are a couple that improve upon older feats (like Epic Fortitude) as well as some arguable necessities (such as Weapon Expertise).
I’m not going to get deep into the value of Implement/Weapon Expertise again, I will say that I dont think its necessary but handy for players that took a low proficiency weapon or went with a suboptimal route.

I find Coordinated Explosion to be funny and wish that I knew about it before my eladrin wizard got killed, since I liked to drop Fire attacks on my tiefling warlord because she had fire resistance. This would have been an entertaining way to get a +1 bonus to hit.

Melee Training will be great for classes like the paladin, ranger, and rogue since they can opt to use Dex or Cha or whatever for their attacks. Jennifer’s Charisma-paladin works out great until she needs to make a basic attack, at which point her Strength of 12 means she cannot damage the broad side of a paper sack.

There’s not much to see in the mundane gear section. We get totems and a handful of musical instruments, but thats it, so we’re off to magic loot. There are over 30 types of new armors, only seven weapons, and a smattering of new implements. I would have liked to see more implements, but likely there are enough in Adventurer’s Vault to tide everyone over until the next one comes out.

For the bard, they added a bunch of magical instruments which are wondrous items that can act as implements, but also grant a benefit if you play it while taking a rest. This ranges from bonus hit points to bonus damage until the next time you take a nap.

There are new rituals, a little over a third being stamped as bard-only. Some are classic spells that werent put in as powers, such as control weather, lullaby, and animal friendship.

Appendix
Thankfully not very long, the appendix is mostly devoted to explaining powers and keywords, and it does an excellent job defining them and lumping them all up in one spot. It wraps up with new rules for Bluff and Stealth.

Put simply, this is an excellent book. The best by far. The crunch and the art are both great, and its worth it for the classes alone. If you hate gnomes, or think that goliaths are boring, I still highly recommend this book since its mostly a huge-ass book of classes-and-stuff-that-goes-with-them. A few people are bitching about the price tag, but Martial Power was only five bucks less: I’m more than happy to shell out a bit more to get a lot more.

Player’s Handbook 2 Previews

A pair of very lucky people over at RPG.net have already received copies of Player’s Handbook 2, because apparently Japan is just plain awesome like that. I was tempted to try and purchase through Amazon.jp, but the grand total amount was close to seventy dollars. I’ll just have to wait. As per the usual, people are clamoring for answers to all things about races, classes, feats, etc, and I’m going to list some of the major things here.

Half-orcs get a bonus to Strength and Dexterity, a bonus to Endurance and Intimidate, tempt hit points when first bloodied, a racial encounter that lets them deal bonus damage, and boosted charge speed. The book mentions that the races in the first PH are the more common ones compared to the new stuff in PH2.
Goliaths get a +2 to Strength and Constitution, +2 Athletics, +2 Nature, +1 racial to Will, can roll twice on Athletics checks made to jump or climb, and get a racial encounter that gives them resist 5 all until the end of their next turn.

The section on Custom Spirit Companions, which was mentioned in the PH2 table of contents, just lets you make your spirit companion look like whatever you want. It doesnt have any mechanical impact on the game.
Barbarians now only get a +1 to AC and Reflex if they are not wearing heavy armor, and thats it. This means bye bye to your Con bonus. The thaneborn build does two things: it gives you roar of triumph and when you bloody an enemy you or an ally gains an attack bonus against the target equal to your Cha mod. Roar of triumph functions similarly to swift charge, in that you use it after dropping an enemy. The difference is that it imposes a -2 penalty to all defenses against enemies within 5 squares of you.

Implement/Weapon Expertise is a no prereqs feat that grants a +1 to attacks with either an implement or weapon, and the bonus increases by another 1 at levels 15 and 25, different from the expected progression rate.
Melee Training is a feat that lets you use any stat you want for basic attacks. This will be invaluable for a certain Charisma-based paladin I know. Conversely, people are now griping that Intelligent Blademaster sucks.
Initiate of the Old Faith gives you a Beast at-will as an encounter and lets you wildshape for free. On the other hand, Spirit Talker lets you use call spirit but as a standard action in addition to getting either spirit fangs or spirit’s shield as en encounter power.
Arcane Spellfury grants you an attack bonus after you hit with a sorcerer at-will attack. Sounds like a good opener for an encounter or daily.
Sorcerous Blade Channeling lets you use a dagger to make ranged attacks as a melee attack, which is ideal if you are caught in melee.

The Demonskin Adept paragon path seems very interesting and suitable for chaos sorcerers. First, burning an action point grants everyone (including the bad guys) a bonus to attack rolls for a turn. You can change your energy resistance as a minor action, crits cause you and the target to go blind, deal extra damage when bloodied, and you get an attack that can deal a crapload of damage or moderate damage and shield allies. Now I wanna make a chaos sorcerer…
Disciple of the World Serpent causes your spirit companion to be surrounded by difficult terrain for enemies, let an ally use a healing surge when you use an action point, and cause enemies to take poison damage when they save against your daily attacks. Their include one that immobilizes them and deals extra psychic damage if enemies move closer to the target, one that lets your allies ignore cover and concealment, and one that contricts the target, requiring two saves to escape.
Dragonborn fans can rejoice, as the Scion of Arkhosia gives you wings that grant normal flight and overland flight later.
Wild Mage lets you burn an action point to roll on a table for random outcomes. One lets you become invisible, while another lets you and all your allies make an immediate saving throw. The wild surge benefit of the class lets you roll a d6 for a random result instead of taking the miss on a natural 1. One causes you to drop prone and slide 3 away from the target (big explosion), while another lets you reroll the attack but if you get another nat 1 you take damage and cannot wild surge again during this encounter. Cool stuff. It gives you an element of risk that you can call upon if you want to.

Instruments and totems are added to the list of “basic equipment.”

Thats all I managed to scour up after 39 pages of thread drudging, though I’m sure more will be added later.