At Will

(He’s more on the Defender side now)

What a difference a year makes!  Wizards of the Coast launched the 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons one year ago, and gamers’ heads exploded in both good and bad ways.  Some people (including yours truly) loved instantly the blend of opening and closing traditional D&D design spaces.  Others, well…some have converted. Others are having fun where they are.

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Arcane Power is out!  I’ve spent a few hours with it.  The quick verdict?  All is well in the Magic Kingdom.  Each arcane class gets at least one new build (sorcerors, the lucky SOBs, get two) plus a grip of paragon paths.   There are a host of new feats and rituals, and familiars are back! I’ve always been a fan of the little buggers, though they have a tendency to be forgotten.

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Just got back from Game Day ‘09, where a rocking good time was had by all.  I liked the people, the adventure, and my class ( I played Ilivarra, the drow avenger).

I didn’t get the name of the adventure, but the basic plot was we came into a town where the demons broke free from ancient wardings underneath (it seems they used a little girl as a gateway) and ransacked the town.  The townspeople have been taken underground where they await their fates as sacrifices in a summoning ritual for a powerful evil.

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You woke up in a cold sweat this morning.

“What is gamefiend doing this weekend?”

Well, you can rest easy now.  I’m here to tell you.  I’m going to participate in in the D&D Game Day at a great hobby store in Salem, NH –Myriad Games. The crew there is fun, personable and professional so I anticipate good times.

I haven’t gone to one of these before, so expectations on the delve itself are set at neutral.  When I get back though I’ll be sure to tell you all about it.  If you’re going, have a fun Game Day!

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?