Rating - 4: useful for any (4th edition D&D) campaign (buy it
)Sweet mother of crunch! This is not fluffy. Almost half the book is new powers for the four martial classes. The menus expand.
This supplement adds more options for the four martial classes from the Player's Handbook: fighters, rangers, rogues, and warlords.
Each class gets thirty to thirty-five pages. The standard package is two new builds/class features, fifteen pages of new powers, and a dozen new paragon paths. The ranger has only one new build/feature, but the beast companions get an extended presentation, along with half to one-third of the other new ranger content. These are followed by twenty pages of feats and ten epic destinies.
So I repeat, sweet mother of crunch. The PHB had four paragon paths for each class and four epic destinies for all the classes to share. Each class has a higher page count in this book than in the PHB. I characterized the PHB as stable but light on content, needing fleshing out. This adds much flesh, enough to significantly change the game for half the classes.
This creates the odd case that most of the content for the martial classes is in this book rather than the PHB. I wonder how they will deal with that in future books. Do NPCs get powers from these books or stick to the PHB, or do you adopt a standard practice of reprinting the entire power for each character?
It also implies that the other classes are significantly incomplete. You might have guessed that when, say, the cleric had only two options at level 29. This would mean that the initial release of eight classes will not really be complete until Arcane Power
and Divine Power
are published. I know that 4th edition borrowed a lot back from MMORPGs, but completing the initial game a year after release is a bit much. On the other hand, Player's Handbook 2
should be able to have much more complete classes, since it does not need to include all the rules for the game. Or they could cut the page count and include the rest in Primal Power, Martial Power 2 and so on. Pardon my cynicism about development plans and revenue.How is the new content? It opens up several options for character concepts. We have tougher or two-weapon fighters, the beastmaster ranger, more mobile or thuggish rogues, and differently inspiring warlords. Fighters get the best of it with the most new options. Rangers get the most dramatically different option, becoming the first pet class. If your character did not fit into the four paragon paths offered, you now have another twelve per class. You now have epic destiny options other than demigod.
Where the PHB had four options per level for abilities, this book adds at least four to almost everything. I am still stuck on this point: the majority of the content for the martial classes is in this book rather than the PHB. It has half the build options, the majority of the powers, three-quarters of the paragon paths, and ten epic destinies for four classes rather than four for eight. It has all the feats that make it relevant what your race-class combination is. The core books might as well be the cripppleware version of the game.
The race-class feats are a useful addition, creating differences early on that were added late in 3rd edition. The Forgotten Realms races get to play too. Other feats encourage specialization paths, which is good for all those players who say, "I want a guy who can..." I am not sure how effective a breath weapon-focused dragonborn warrior will be, but it is a fun concept.
I like the fun concepts encouraged. The dwarven defender is back, along with three other (new and old) racial fighter types. There are paragon paths for knights, polearm-wielders, shield masters, blitzkriegs, and bulldozers. Classic rogues appear like the sniper, acrobat, and guildmaster.
For balance considerations, I turn to the Character Optimization board. I trust the experts to recognize what is over- and under-powered. The fighter seems to be the clear winner here, with new options that are stronger than the PHB options. Battleragers have great survivability, and tempests make it much easier to reach Striker damage on a Defender. The most broken thing is the Marked Scourge feat, which has people re-designing warriors to optimize Wisdom. The most interestingly broken bit comes at level 30, when a ranger/warlord/horizon walker/warmaster can, each round, move an unlimited distance while granting any number of allies an unlimited number of actions; that may need errata. Or perhaps balance is meant to be tossed out the window at level 30, because two classes have "infinite self-resurrection" abilities and another lets all allies within 100 feet keep fighting at -10,000 hit points.
Most balance issues arise largely because of the increased volume of material with which to work. And because this is the majority of the martial material, the question is whether the original stuff was underpowered, not whether the majority is overpowered. That said, some options are so good, or clearly so good in combination, that multi-classing seems to be a standard character optimization plan.
I speak of crunch, but the fluff is snuck in while you are so distracted. There are 12 side-boxes in the fighter power descriptions, talking about fighters of various races and attitudes. Half the description for a paragon path or epic destiny is description. There are many illustrations.
Adam Gillespie seems to have the best of the art. I was taken with Ron Lemen's Death Dealer, and Jeremy Jarvis has a great opening to chapter five in a style that I would not normally favor. As with the Monster Manual, this book recycles some previous edition images productively. The illustration quality on the whole is not as good as the core books. I like Brian Hagan's lines, and Lucio Parrillo has some good pieces.
I am skipping the chapter-by-chapter analysis this time. You have one for each class plus one with feats and epic destinies. Done. Instead, I must admit that my product line prediction has not held up. Future releases may be closer to that, but this book did not use the standard 3rd edition scattershot of a bit of everything in every book. No new race, class, skills, magic items, or monsters. This is very focused, and you get what you paid for, without any dilution.
Granted, reading this, you may have wanted the initial PHB to be a bit more complete in laying out the classes, or not take a year to get to all of them. Oh well. I am now curious about Divine Power, because there are only two divine classes at present. Either several more are going to be introduced, or there are going to be a great many divine options. Amazon says that Arcane Power includes support for the two PHB classes, one added in the Forgotten Realms, and two added in the to-be-published PHB2. So maybe PHB2 is planning to take that second path and rely on the next publication to complete the classes.
My apologies for the excess of meta-game thoughts. I find the business plan as interesting as the game itself in this release. D&D has always had a narrow profit margin, and perhaps the latest line of releases has figured out how to get more money through inter-locking releases. Or maybe people will start using more PDFs. I am not sure how D&D Insider ties into this, except for bringing the magazine publication back in-house with a different revenue model. I reserve the right to downgrade the entire product line by a rating point if it turns out that the books really are crippleware unless you spend a few hundred dollars to get the full interlocking set.
Amazon link
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