So by my reckoning, this is Aberrant Rules #20 and would you believe I’m out of ideas? (Note: This should be obvious from the title. I correct it next post.) Well, don’t, ’cause I’m not! It’s just that the mechanic I had planned for this week isn’t exactly ready yet. Needs some more tweaking and more honest-to-goodness playtesting so I’ve gotta create or dig up something else for y’all this go ’round. Also, since I’m preparing for the Power Source Campaign, Jared’s Game Day, Jeff Griener’s home campaign and another one shot for a surprise friend from high school back in Ohio on top of all that – I’m a little out of creative steam. What I’m going to do for the next few weeks to take a little break and also celebrate the upcoming Alluria Game Day is do a quick review of some other 3rd party material. Each week, I’ll talk about a different publisher and what they have to offer in terms of races, classes and other rule-based material. I may mention adventures, but I want to hit the other stuff harder. This week, we’re looking at Adamant Entertainment.

Early in 4E’s lifecycle, Adamant produced a line of alternate pacts for the Warlock class, including the Vermin Lords, Dragon Lords, Blood, Ghosts and Angelic Choirs. Each pact has at most 2 powers per level, meaning all you hardcore mechanical types are going to be a bit underwhelmed, but the concepts behind them are fairly ingenious. The Vermin Lord pact is a controller – it has a lot of poison damage, ongoing damage, slow and an interesting mechanic that punishes enemies for taking multiple actions per turn. There’s also a weird class feature that lets you communicate with vermin that’s interesting but not terribly useful. The Pact of the Angelic Choirs is highly reminiscent of the Invoker even though that class had not been introduced at this point. If you’ve ever thought of multiclassing or hybridizing Warlock and Invoker, see if your DM will let you use this pact instead and save yourself the effort. A Warlock using the Pact of the Dragon Lords is all striker, focusing on dealing lots of damage and is the only pact I’ve seen so far that has an at-will close blast. It also treads a little into the Star Pact’s territory but who doesn’t want a couple extra to hit, eh? The Pact of Blood is really bizzare and includes a lot of self-mutilation. The powers sound like those from WoTC’s Dark Pact but FAR too many of them have Hit, Effect, Special AND Pact lines, putting this pact clearly in the realms of cheese in my estimation. It’s going to take a special kind of DM to allow this pact and I’m not sure I’d even want to play in that game for both story and mechanical reasons. Finally, the Pact of Ghosts which is my ‘if you can only get one’ recommendation. It’s a build clearly focused on disruption and ‘screw you’ effects, my personal favorite, and fills a niche in the world still missing in the core game – mainly that of necromancy. You won’t be raising undead minions with this pact, but the powers you do get are solid and match the Warlock’s general role. RPGNow has each of these 10-15 page pdfs available for a mere $2 a pop so if you love Warlocks, grab a couple.

Later, Adamant produced a playable PC race, the Linotaur and while I liked their Warlock Pacts a lot in general, I can’t recommend this race. Admittedly, the idea is unusual and quirky. Linotaurs are like centaurs in general build but are feline, so imagine taking a normal lion, stretching its upper torso and having it held upright. It’s a little Napoleon Dynamite, but I’ve certainly seen stranger ideas. Heck, my wife might even want to play this just for the cat-people angle. But it has many problems mechanically. First, it occupies a 1×2 square area which makes it technically Large and has a Speed of 7. It’s also packing racial bonuses to Reflex, initative, a d6 unarmed melee basic and a racial power that gives it extra damage on a charge. It’s not a terrible product, but clunky and while I try not to be a slave to balance, this is just a little bit outside my comfort zone as a designed and DM. It would make a heck of an NPC and might not be bad for a new player who needs a little extra help to keep up with more advanced players, but I wouldn’t necessarily make it an open option all the time. Adamant also has a few published adventures and a couple supplements like a Monster Maker (obsolete as of DMG2 and MM2) and a random fantasy adventure generator but I don’t know much else about them.

So that’s it for Adamant. Next week, we visit a familiar face – Alluria Publishing!