4th & Dragon : Dungeons and Dragons...and stuff

4.5 out of 5 stars

• Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
• Author: Matthew Sernett
• Released: February 22, 2010

While it may not bear the “Essentials” label, this is an Essentials-style article, providing a walk through of the basics of the warlock class as well as some new options.

For the walkthough, the discussion focuses on the pacts, the defining feature of the warlocks, but also contains some advice about the other features (Eldritch Blast, Prime Shot, Shadow Walk, and Warlock’s Curse) and on race/pact combinations.  There is no discussion of specific powers (unlike other recent Essentials articles), but there is some nod at feats.

And feats are all this article offers for new options.  It does offer a bunch of them, however: 9 heroic tier (including the long awaited d6>d8 curse damage booster), 7 paragon tier, and 5 epic tier.  Clearly Matthew really values feats as a way of customizing your character.

5 out of 5 stars

• Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
• Author: Robert J. Schwalb
• Released: February 22, 2010

As a goddess of luck and freedom, Avandra finds much respect within the adventuring community.  Many court her favor hoping to bring victory, treasure, and glory and stave off defeat, death, and obscurity.  Only a select few, however, have the necessary devotion to really gain control over the luck which is Avandra’s hallmark.

In this article, you’ll find 10 feats and a paragon path designed for those select few.  You have to be a divine character to take any of the elements, and it certainly helps to be a halfling (half the feats are halfling specific), both of which emphasize that “select few” idea.  If you do meet the criteria, however, the flavor they add to your character is very interesting.

5 out of 5 stars

• Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
• Author: Mike Mearls
• Released: February 19, 2010

So, last month Mike gave advice about skill challenges that included the fact that one shouldn’t necessarily let your player’s know they were in the midst of the skill challenge.  This month, he follows up on that advice by providing an example from his own game where he did just that.

The article features a lot of behind the scenes mechanics that Mike uses to manage the event, stuff which may be particular to Mike’s style as a DM but which provides the reader with a very practical and real application of the advice that this article series has been dispensing.

Of particular interest to me was the fact that Mike continued to ask for skill checks after the party had failed the skill challenge (which they did right out of the gate).  These checks were meaningless (i.e. the results didn’t matter) but they did prevent metagame thinking from effecting the player’s thinking about what was happening and made the deception of the players that was the result of the failure possible.  This is something I’m going to have to incorporate into my own DMing style.

5 out of 5 stars

• Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
• Author: Robert J. Schwalb
• Released: February 19, 2010

Avengers are may be a perfect fit for the adventurer’s life, but many find themselves at odds with the more mainstream members of their church because of their advocacy of violent means to accomplish or defend their god’s aims.  Even amongst avengers, however, there are those that take this idea to the extreme.  These are known as the Godsworn.

In this article, we get a background, 11 heroic feats (1 for each PHB deity), 11 encounter powers (again, one for each PHB deity), 11 utility powers (you get the picture), and 11 daily powers, which exemplify this Godsworn philosophy.

Each of the feats provides two benefits.  One which is always active and one which triggers on a critical hit and is typed as a godsworn boon.  Interestingly, each feat types has the line “You can benefit from only one godsworn boon as a result of any given critical hit.” Given that each feat can only be taken by the worshipers of one deity, there is currently no way for a character to acquire two godsworn boon options and thus this line is moot.  However, it does imply that we might see future expansion on the idea that does enable a diversity of options.

Each of the powers requires you to have the appropriate feat in order to take them, so the material in this article is only for those who want to go the whole way.  This has a potential problem, however, because it’s possible to “outgrow” your godsworn encounter and daily powers.  To alleviate that this article provides two sidebars which provide scaling instructions for the encounter and daily powers allowing you to upgrade the 3rd level encounter powers to 13th or 23rd level and the 9th level daily powers to 19th or 29th level.  In addition to preventing the godsworn from “outgrowing” their godsworn status, the sidebars introduce considerably more flexibility into the idea, allowing avengers to come to the path later in their carrear without having to tie up their retraining slot for several levels in order to really enter into the path.

4 out of 5 stars

• Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
• Author: Brian Yablon
• Released: February 18, 2010

In previous editions gnomes possessed something of a mixed reputation: tinkerers, pranksters, loved, and hated.  In part, that probably contributed to the fact that they weren’t featured in the PHB in 4e.  When they did finally appear in PH2 WotC had undertaken several measures to rehabilitate their image somewhat are really carve out a niche for them that was uniquely theirs.

In this article, they expand on that with 2 backgrounds, 2 paragon paths, and 4 heroic feats.  Aimed directly at defenders (the paladin and the swordmage in particular), these elements are designed to take class archetypes that don’t seem to fit the gnome niche and make them more gnome friendly.

2.5 out of 5 stars

• Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
• Author: David Noonan
• Released: February 17, 2010

In Those Once Loyal the party saw to the reincarnation of a god: Bahamut.  In Test of Fire they were the key in the defeat of Tiamat’s armies and the sacking of the City of Brass.  The party is now 30th level (or at least teetering on the edge) and at the height of their power.  So what do they do for an encore?

Well, how about face off with Tiamat herself and end the reign of wealth and greed in the world?  It’s something that is both climatic and anti-climatic at the same time.  On one hand the party will battle and defeat a god!  On the other, another god already owes his life to the party not once, but twice.

The Last Breath of the Dragon Queen is the final installment in the Scales of War and that seems to be an excuse for the authors to pull out all the stops.  The DM is encouraged to shower the party with material wealth and to grant individual PCs any of the last remaining holdouts from their magic item wish lists.  While XP amounts are listed for each encounter, adventure instructions tell the DM to track them only as long as it takes players to reach 30th level if they haven’t already.  For quests, there is only the defeat of Tiamat and the fulfillment of each player’s epic destines.

Consisting of 12 encounters, all are tactical encounters.  There are a couple of suggestions for non-combat encounters, but no write ups.  Thus, even though the tracking of XP is meaningless at this point, I’d very much put the XP ratio on the high side.  Indeed, one could even call it infinite.  This may be the capstone adventure in the Scales of War, but I’m not a real big fan of this adventure design.  Just because the value of rewards is essentially meaningless doesn’t mean that one can throw out all the principles of good adventure design.  Elements still need to be balanced against each other and their hypothetical (if unimportant) rewards are a good way of seeing that balance.

Still, there are several very interesting encounters here.  It’s especially interesting to see stats for both Bahamut (who isn’t an enemy) and Tiamat (who is).

3.5 out of 5 stars

• Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
• Author: Richard Baker and Rodney Thompson
• Released: February 17, 2010

With the release of Martial Power 2 just around the corner, today’s Design and Development article focuses on some of the new elements in that book and why they were made the way came out.  In particular, we get to see the reasoning behind some of the decisions regarding the new fighter, rogue, and warlord builds (with more information about the warlord than the other two) as well as some of the thoughts behind combat styles.  The latter is particularly interesting because it gives us a glimpse at how the playtest feedback they received on the material last year.

While you’re not going to find anything in this article that will change the way you play, it is still interesting nonetheless.