One Bad Egg publishing closed its doors on September 11, 2009. Their product line showed a lot of variance, running the full gamut of classes, races, adventures and DM tools, including the famous Hard-Boiled Armies which was an attempt to run mass combat using 4E rules. Though their products were spoken about often on ENWorld, apparently the sales were less than stellar. According to their website, “our best selling products never managed to break the 300 copies sold mark, and many of our catalog didn’t even hit 100. We’d have had to see significantly higher numbers for the sales themselves to make a strong argument for continuing the work. They didn’t happen.” That’s a real shame because despite the company’s absolutely tiny scale, they had a ton of publicity. OBE’s products were even featured on the Tome Show and put for ENnies. It goes to show just how rough it is trying to get third party material out there for this edition.

As to races and classes, One Bad Egg had two class contributions – the Shroudborn multi-class and the full Witch Doctor class– and two race, the Half-Dead race and the Apelord race. The Shroudborn and Half-Dead are intimately tied together so we’ll tackle those first.

The Shroud is a staple feature of the One Bad Egg D&D mythos – a sort of necrotic volcano that destroys the Frozen North and leaks Evil into the world. Those who die and are infected by the Shroud become Half-Dead, an alternative to the Revenant for all you zombie lovers. They have +2 Strength and Con, resist necrotic, get a bonus to death saves, stand as a minor and, like the Revenant, have a racial power that adds necrotic damage on an attack. While not outstanding in any way, it’s a solid race that’s absolutely impossible to kill with a couple of feats. I’d allow it in my game any day. Those who were born after the Shroud arrived or are in close contact to it may undergo some subtle changes and then take on the Shroudborn multiclass. And can I just say I freaking LOVE the Shroudborn multiclass. How could you not love a class with powers like Howling Abyss Strike, Unreal Vortex Strike and Ethereal Evasion? The Shroudborn does crazy stuff like rip an enemy’s blood from its body or cleaves its soul in half. It’s over-the-top, dark, brutal and made of awesome. The class is sort of a controller/defender and has powers that hit off of every stat, though classes that hit off of the mental stats will find it most useful. Go buy this. Now.

I can’t recommend the Apelord, unfortunately unless you want to mix it.. oh.. wait, no, can’t say anymore. I just figured out how to win Jeff Greiner’s copy of Amethyst. ::laughter:: But anyway, yeah, this class has many of the same problems as the Linotaur. Speed 7 with a climb speed of 5, Strength and Dex, bonuses to Athletics and Acrobatics, 1d6 unarmed damage, reduce falling damage by 10 feet and a racial encounter power that lets you do Twin Strike in melee? And I don’t even want to get into the feats. Can you imagine one of these as a Monk? Nope, not doing it. Great idea, awesome flavor – not happening at my table, thank you.

Then there’s the Witch Doctor – one of the first original third party classes. For reference, I’m not counting Ari Marmell’s Advanced Player’s Handbook since he just covered classes that would be released in PHB2. If you like the idea of playing a Shaman without the spirit companion, consider the Witch Doctor. It’s a controller though, not a leader, so you have to be OK with that. Its class feature lets you force enemies to reroll saving throws, making it a real thorn in the side of Solos and Elites. It uses a medicine stick as an implement and the vast majority of its powers are Close bursts, blasts or walls so it’s sort of a mid-range controller like the… actually, like the Jester. There’s not much in 4E core that looks like this except for maybe a couple of uncommon Sorcerer or Invoker builds. There are three sub-builds based on masks and a multiclass feat, but no hybrid option. Bottom line, Druids and Shamans who don’t want to change forms or run around with a second token on the board should look carefully at the Witch Doctor.
One Bad Egg also released a line of books about poisoncraft, including the Codex Venenorum – a bunch of new poisons and poison creation rules – as well as the Syrallax. I’m not all that interested in poisons, so I don’t have much else to say about that, but go check it out if you’re interested. Hard-Boiled Cultures is almost entirely flavor text, so while it’s good, I don’t have much to say about it. Finally, Hard-Boiled Armies does an excellent job scaling up the 4E class/race/power system to large-scale army maneuvers and is well worth the price if you’re interested in including mass combat in your campaign. You can find all of these products at RPGNow, DriveThruRPG and the OneBadEgg website.

I’m talking with Elderac on Twitter as I finish this recording and it looks like the demand for my own material is rising so next week we’ll skip back into houserules as I unveil a new death mechanic I wrote as part of a blog carnival – Under the Raven’s Wing.