My clammy hands have finally wrapped themselves around my copy of the PHB2. At-Will is going to go over each class in-depth, but I wanted to share some first impressions.
The book is full of new goodies. If they had reprinted the basic rules in it, it could have easily been the alternate Player’s Hanbook. You could easily run a campaign using just the classes and races out of this book! You’d have an interesting mix, for sure — Deva invokers, half-orc shamans, gnome barbarians (you know you want to!), goliath wardens…it would be pretty “exotic” by standard D&D cannon, but could be quite fun.
Wizards has done an excellent job of making the primal source distinctive in effect and feel. The Primal source, if you haven’t yet heard, is the ‘natural world’ power source. Primal classes draw their powers from nature and therefore have a lot of elemental attacks, and the powers reflect this. There’s a lot of thunder and lighting attacks here, which just fits. Barbarians promise brutal power, and we are bound to see them in a lot of multiclass builds. I love what they’ve done with druids as well, allowing the player to be a ‘caster’ druid or ‘beast’ druid or something in-between. Obviously they are nowhere near previous levels of broken-ness from 3.5, but it seems like a very fun class to play. The shaman hasn’t caught my eye for a deep look yet, but the warden…the warden redefines “tank”. Extra saves, huge HP. And he can transform into a mini-treant! The warden is my initial favorite out of the new classes. It’s a triumph of flavor and mechanics.
The arcane and divine power sources were not forgotten. The avenger and invoker fill out the divine roles (Striker and Controller, respectively). The avenger I’m not so sure of yet. Oath of Enmity, a class feature that allows you to roll two dice for attacking against your chosen foe, is a really nice power. The bard looks great as well. Destined to become the multiclasser’s class of choice, it also offers a strong core if you want to go simply with that one class.
I’ll be honest and admit that I skipped past the backgrounds right to feats. There are a lot of gap-filling feats which you’ve already heard about. Weapon Expertise is strong, and Melee Training makes viable a whole new class of builds. Expect to see lots of melee-based classes in the future.
Again, I’ll be going into much more detail on this in the near-future, but these are my first impressions. What do you think of the PHB2? Worth the money?
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.
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Totally worth it. I bought it for the classes and wasn’t disappointed. I’m especially excited to try out the Avenger and Warden. The feats were nice (though some of them seem like they should have been in Martial Power), the races were ok and the magic items were just a lot of ‘blah blah blah’ to me, but the classes? Fun, exciting and make me want to play right now.
-Rob D.
I’m sorely tempted to get it, but I have yet to actually view a copy in person. My main areas of interest are new Feats and Rituals – my hope is that the PC’s in the campaign I’m already running might benefit from them. I know I could just get the other supplements – but I want the additional races and classes for future campaigns.
I like that we have more choice when building characters, but has Wizards given us too much choice as “core” mechanics? Are there Too Many Classes?
@rob I’m with you there. I ran right to classes and am particularly excited by the Warden and the Bard. Should be fun stuff.
@ameron I’m an options junkie. I’d like to have as many choices as I can get, and then prune to taste. Right now, I’m contemplating a fantasy Africa campaign that’s full of the primal classes to the exclusion of most of the other classes. Primal powers as a whole seems to encourage this, as in general it’s less reliant on metal armors and weaponry. There’s much less tweaking to be done on my end, and all the basic roles are still covered. I think it’s pretty clever that each power source is self contained, so you can theme games as required and still play within the assumptions of the tactical game.
All the reviews have definitely been positive with the exception of Mr. Baur’s. How do you feel the more flavorful parts of the book come off? I know the book is very mechanics heavy and rightfully so, but I’m hoping that the Primal power source has a lot of interesting feel to it.
I’m actually most excited to try out the one class that I was least excited about. The shaman looks like it would be an interesting class to role play and I like the idea of a spirit companion. I was looking forward to the avenger the most but based on my initial impressions it seems over powered. It’s like a combination between a fighter, a rogue, and a cleric.
@kingworks there are a few choice feats that you can use in your campaign now, but for the most part this book is devoted explicitly to the new races and classes. All that’s there for PHB1 characters are paragon paths and feats. In my campaigns I’ll certainly be using the new classes for some NPCs though.
@Chris the flavor for the classes and races is, I believe, quite solid. It’s not grounded too deeply in any one world or mythos, which is a strong point from my perspective. But each race and class has a clear feel and tons of hooks for use in your own campaign.
@kaoesdad The avenger is wierd to me. I’m still curious as to how it’s class features play. I’m hoping to play one at Game Day tomorrow to get accustomed to what it can do.
The shaman does seem like it would be a fun character to play.
Does anyone feel that the bard offers an amazing amount of battlefield control? I was looking through the powers list and this class can slide and shift things all day. It looks very powerful, especially with some choice multiclassing with other controller/leader classes.