Larry Elmore, R.A. Salvatore, and Ed Greenwood play D&D using the essentials rules with Chris Perkins DMing.

Parts 2 to 10

It’s still in its shrink wrap.  It’s an RPGA reward that I got some time ago and I just haven’t had time to play it.  Since I have a standing invite from a couple of groups to play it, and the DMs of those groups already have a copy, I figure I might as well give it away to a lucky reader.

The blurb on the back reads:

“Hommlet has grown up around a crossroads.  Once far from any important activity, the village became embroiled in the struggle between gods and primordials when the Temple of Elemental Evil arose but a few leagues away.  Luckily for the village’s inhabitants, the Temple and its evil hordes were destroyed a decade ago, but Hommlet still suffers from incursions of badits and strange monsters….

The Village of Hommlet is designed for five characters of 4th level and is inspired by Gary Gygax’s classic adventure of the same name.  This Dungeons & Dragons adventure includes a full-color battle map, ready-to-play encounters, and information on the Village of Hommlet-and excellent base of operations for heroic-tier characters.”

Rules:  Respond to THIS article in the comments section and tell me a gaming or RPG related joke or funny incident.  I’ll pick a winner randomly from all the people that comment.  All responses must be in by the end of August, midnight PST.  I’ll do the random selection Sept 1st and email the winner for a mailing address.  One entry per person please.

Feel free to forward this to your friends or whatever forums/newsgroups you belong to.

Oh, and feel free to let me know what you think about the comic! 

***Dungeons & Dragons is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast LLC, and they are not affiliated with Familiar Ground.

Congratulations to Adam D. of Owing Mills, MD!  The patron deity of d100 rolls have looked upon his entry with favor and he won this giveaway.

It’s called Drums of War.

A great accessory for your 4e games.  It can store characters, prepare encounters and helps run combats!

It really has too many features for me to do a proper review right now, so go check out a full list of features at the itunes store.

One change that caught my eye though was the change to Magic Missile.

It’s now an effect to do damage (2+Int, increasing to 3+Int at 11th and 5+Int at 21st).

My first thought was “Neat! auto hit like magic missiles used to do.”

Then I took a more careful look at it and realized that it’s not so great a change.

In terms of flavor, auto hit MM is great, but for me, rolling a bunch of D4s for damage is almost as iconic (though it was a bunch of D6s in other editions).

In terms of balance, the new MM is about on par with the old MM, until you start looking at the effects of feats, items and other features that increase damage or accuracy. When you take those into account, the new MM falls behind in damage once you start getting up in levels, meaning that it once more falls into the very situational category of at-wills.

However, before nerdrage was able to set in, WotC throws another curve with the revelation that the new MM is a baseline ability for the new Essentials Wizard, meaning that it doesn’t count for one of a character’s at-wills. Speculation is rife on various forums that Magic Missile will become a default standard for all Wizards (basically, a souped up cantrip). That difference suddenly ups the stock of the very situational MM.

Oh well. It’ll be neat to see MM in play more often (outside of those using it in combo with white lotus stuff).

The July update also made a few cleric utilities more useful by changing them to minor actions, nerfs the warlord power Lead the Attack, and tweaks a few other abilities to bring them more in line with similar powers.

Oh, and free actions are clarified to more explicitly state that the DM can prevent infinite recursive loops. Unfortunately, they left out the bit where the DM is allowed to throw dice at players who try to use such tactics.

160 pages, softbound, list price $14.99. Color cover, B&W interior.

ISBN 978-0-9841127-1-5

About a year ago I was browsing the enworld forums and on a whim decided to peruse the industry news section. I came across an announcement from Goodman Games. It was an open call for authors for a new product, a book of rituals for D&D. I thought, ” Neat! maybe I should submit something.”

Then I looked at the deadline.

All submissions must be sent in via email by midnight that day. It was 9pm.

So I cranked out four submissions, with a careful eye for balance. One of them was accepted (Radiance Infusion), and here we are almost a year later with a review copy in my hand.

Things I didn’t like:

I think a  few of the rituals in the books are somewhat unbalanced.

Armor of the Blessed (pg 7) for example is a 2nd level ritual that has the potential to grant armor of up to +3 quality. An 11th level item doesn’t really belong with a 2nd level character.

Sun’s Renewal (pg 106) is an 18th level ritual that allows the party to gain the benefits of an extended rest in only one hour by standing in sunlight. Oh, and since it isn’t technically an extended rest, you get to keep any action points you’ve accrued. At 18th level, the cost is hefty at 5,000gp and an action point. But since there’s no level limitation, there’s no reason an epic level character can’t cast this spell over and over again after every encounter. Of course, there’s the hour long casting time, but if time is an issue, then thankfully epic characters have access to a 5 minute version, Time Compression. Granting back daily powers outside of long rests is just a bad idea from a balance perspective in my opinion.

There’s also a couple of editing mistakes I came across, but they’re minor and overall the book was well put together.

Things I liked:

This book is filled with 300+ rituals! Players can finally customize their casters with unique and varied spells. You can find a ritual for any occasion. The Batman build is back!

DMs can also benefit since a lot of the rituals are custom made to spark adventure ideas. Seriously, I came up with several potential adventure ideas by just reading the first chapter on creation rituals.

The art is pretty good. Certainly better than anything I can do

Azagar the hobgoblin introduces each chapter with a short story and he’s one entertaining dude. I’d certainly be interested in hearing more about him.

Overall, I’d give this book a thumbs up.

Probably 95% of the book can be used as is, with the rest needing DM adjudication due to balance or campaign issues (Defile Soul for example should be an NPC only ritual…unless you want PCs harvesting souls to make residuum).

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/UpdateJuly2009.pdf

A few of the changes include:

• Rain of Blows – two attacks at 1[w] with a third attack if you meet the prereqs (no need to hit).
• Righteous Rage of Tempus – only adds the crit bonus damage rather than treat the next hit as a crit.
• Battlerage Vigor – gains temp HPs when you hit with a melee/close attack rather then when you’re hit.

• Guileful Switch – Is now a free action, but must now be used by the warlord before he acts and takes his normal turn.

A few others, but those are the important ones in my opinion.

What does that mean?  It means you can visit most game stores around the country and they’ll have free swag for you provided by various game companies, including WotC.

http://wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4news/20090617

WotC’s contribution is an Eberron adventure by Keith Baker.

Here’s a list of participating stores:

http://www.freerpgday.com/stores.htm

I found them all amusing, but was especially tickled by this one:

Hippogriff

Here is a short list of encounter powers in 4e that I think need fixing.

#5 Unicorn’s Touch (Arcane Power, Swordmage Utility 6) – This power allows healing without using any healing surges. Surgeless healing isn’t supposed to be that common at these levels, and most healing powers like this at these levels usually only work while bloodied. In actual practice though, the effects are minimal. Being forced to rest due to a lack of healing surges is quite rare and the limitless healing is only able to be done outside of combat. So this power breaks the mechanics, but isn’t really all that broken in terms of character effectiveness, making it the last power on this list.

#4 Storm of Blades (PHB2, Barbarian Attack 13) – You get an attack for each point of your constitution. Barbarians (and the fighters/rangers that MC just to get this power) can afford to have at least an 18 Con by this level to easily get 4 attacks. Any power that allows you to attack the same target multiple times needs to be carefully examined, since the static bonuses you can stack for a single round of attacks can greatly magnify the base power. It is possible to kill a single monster in one round with this power, and it’s better than many of the other encounter powers even up to epic levels.

#3 Righteous Rage of Tempus (PGtF, Channel Divinity Feat) – A minor action to auto crit on your next hit? Seriously, what were they thinking? Compare this to any other feat and you can see the discrepancy in power. If there is a feat that says, “if you hit with your next attack, add 30 points of damage”, it would never be approved, which makes me wonder how this one got through R&D. Whole builds have been created to take advantage of this feat, involving Paladins, Clerics, and Avengers wielding high-crit weapons.

#2 Guileful Switch (Martial Power, Warlord Utility 6) – As a minor action, you switch initiatives with an ally, netting the party an extra set of actions. As a daily power, this would still be good. I’ve seen people MC into the warlord class just to get this power, which immediately rings warning bells in my head. Directing the movement of allies is one of the warlord’s shticks. Now it seems they can manipulate time as well as space. One step closer to becoming a Q I suppose.

#1 Rain of Blows (PHB, Fighter Attack 3) – A potential 4 attacks against a single target and we encounter the same problems as Storm of Blades. Except that this time, it’s a 3^rd level power! This is as good as some epic level encounter powers that the Fighter has in terms of dealing damage. Static bonuses can stack to ridiculous amounts, often dwarfing the weapon die, and multiple attacks against the same target exacerbates the discrepancy. If an epic level fighter needs to think twice about replacing a power he got when he was 3^rd level, then that power definitely needs to be looked at for balance issues.

What’s in your list of encounter powers that you think need fixing?

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4news/20090428

Also available is the actual adventure, Keep on the Shadowfell and the Character Builder program that will allow you to build up to 3rd level characters.

It’s a great way to introduce new players to the game.