I’ve got my copy of Martial Power from Amazon, which I preordered about a month ago. I spent the entirety of the time after work devouring the book, and wanted to share my impressions with you.
Everyone should be aware of the concept with the book now, but to reiterate: Martial Powers is a book that expands all classes with the “Martial” power source, offering a host of new powers, class abilities, Paragon Paths, Epic Destinies, and feats for the fighter, ranger, rogue, and warlord.
First, let me say that anyone playing these classes should have absolutely no complaints from here out about lack of options. The number of builds and options available have increased by an order of magnitude with the release of this book. Some numbers on the Fighter:
2 new class features (replacements for Fighter Weapon Talent)
4 new at-wills
6 new level 1 encounter
5 new level 1 dailies
So your level 1 fighter now has:
9 at-wills
10 encounter
8 dailies
to choose from. That’s a lot of options and combinations before you’ve even hit second level. Flip to the back of the book and you’ll get smacked in the face (then pushed 1 square) with more fighter feats than you would have ever thought you wanted.
This trend of options,options,options repeats for the Ranger, the Rogue, and the Warlord.
The powers themselves are a mixed bag. Some leap forth from the page, forms inky hands and throttle you by the lapels while the remaining white space screams “Use me foolish human!” Others stay pagebound, shy little wallflowers waiting for someone to ask them on the dance floor. Then there is that third category, stoned out of their mind and clearly underachieving and happier with the book placed on the table next to some unwitting player’s Doritos.
I didn’t spot too many of the stoner powers. Most seemed to be wallflowers, with a few screamers, sandwhiched in occasionally.
In my mind, this is how it should be. 4e has been compared to a lot of things since its release, but in my opinion it’s most like Magic: The Gathering. WotC has arrived at a format where they can make tons of poewrs and it’s up to the players to find the keepers, the losers and the clear winners. Just like in a CCG, there shuold be a few clear winners, and a few clear losers, and everything else should float in the middle somewhere. And there will be powers that people will poo-poo now that some ingenious player will find near-gamebreaking uses for.
I look at the powers series as CCG expansions, giving us new “cards” to play with. For some people that will reinforce their dislike for the latest edition of the game, but I like it. It’s easy to look at the CCG experiment and see that there are a few “great” decks, and everything else falls at the wayside. Look deeper and you’ll find a bunch of seperate “metagames” where the concept of what’s good or what’s broken can vary wildly. Every tabletop is it’s own environment, and now every table has it’s own chance to sort out a lot of cool options and play the game and tell the stories that it chooses to play.
So we’ve gotten a block of powers and feats to play with, and flavor and skin to work with our worlds and our games. Cool.
But cooler than that — the true winners of this book are the Beastmaster Ranger build and the bevy of Paragon Paths available for each of the four classes in the book.
The Beastmaster Ranger is hands-down the slickest build option in the book. Yes, you can re-make your WoW hunter (which my wife reminded me of like five times). The mechanics for commanding the pet is clean, and the supporting powers are distinct from anything we’ve seen in the game thus far. What I’m looking forward to are all the different combinations we’ll see from this –the halfling beastmaster charging into combat astride his bear animal companion, the eladrin beastmaster teleporting through the battlefield with her wolf , or a tiefling ranger with his black-feathered falcon perched on his shoulders. I expect to see a lot of interesting concepts emerge out of this, at least half of them from my wife (hi honey!)
Lastly, Paragon Paths. Each path cements a unique build and offers unique flavor to your character. The promise of paragon paths as what prestige classes were supposed to be proves itself in this book. Once your character hits 11th level, there is a world of options waiting for him. Not all are mechanically equal, but any number are quite interesting. The winners in terms of flavor are the racial paragon paths. We get paths like the Warfiend, tiefling fighters who have learned to harness their infernal natures in combat, or the Spiral Tactician, eladrin warlords who use tactical teleportation to help their allies.
Here’ the verdict: If you’re playing 4th edition these days, buy this book. It expands your game tremendously. If you were feeling crimped for options and choices for your martial character, Martial Powers will cure you of this ill in the first few pages.
A Jack of All Trades ,or if you prefer, an extreme example of multi-classing, Gamefiend, a.k.a Quinn Murphy has been discussing, playing and designing games straight out of the womb. He is the owner and Editor-in-Chief of this site in addition to being an aspiring game designer. As you would assume, he is a huge fan of 4e.
By day he is a technologist.
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Hear hear! I like the CCG expansion analogy. There really is a good sense that you can pluck powers from here and mix and match, unlike in D&D 3e expansions where the stuff coming out might have prerequisites and mechanics unknown before that were totally incompatible.
Thank you for the review!
I definitely plan on buying this book, my players will revel ecstatically in it’s golden aura : )
On second thought, they will pick through it with a fine toothed comb lookingfor an edge over my poor, pathetic minions.
It’s all the same though, as to the CCG analogy, there’s a reason it’s the biggest and most popular CCG out there, I am glad to see it being applied to RPG’s. A lot SAY they are “modular” but 4E is the first one I’ve seen that walks the walk.
Good review…Now to remake my night-elf hunter with elder shadowcat pet…
I also commend you on a great analogy. I never really thought of it like that until now.
So, for those who’ve read the book, Page 32 – The Ravager…When reading the last line of that Path’s description, did anyone else think the writer was a Conan fan?
Hi guys! Welcome!
@Wyatt, Donny –thanks, glad you liked the review. To me, 4e seems driven by some of the best lessons WotC learned in Magic. I’m happy that they’ve given it to us in the ‘lessons learned’ phase and not the ‘black lotus’ phase
@Bob –thank you, and yes, I imagine someone made the Ravager with a copy of Savage Sword of Conan to the left of his/her keyboard.
The CCG comparison strikes me as valid, though I hope it isn’t too true.
I haven’t read any splatbooks for 4e. I just don’t want to spend the money, and I hate reading pirated PDFs. Anyway, I hope the CCG analogy doesn’t ring true in the sense of the power creep that occurs in CCGs (3e also, but that’s beside the point).
Are the new powers more powerful than the old powers? Are all of them? A lot of marketing folk seem to think that unless the new set/book has cards/powers that are inherently better than the old, no one will buy it. Is that how Martial Powers works?
I dunno. I’m suspicious of splats. I’ve seen them used to pretty devastating effect in 3.5e, MTG, and other games.
Still, cool review. I might see if my compatriots, who are less squeamish about pirating, like the thing as well. Might be worth picking up.