Heroes of the Feywild

I've heard some good things about Heroes of the Feywild, and after paging through it in my local store I have to say I like the species in it. What do you guys think? Is it worth it?

The races are a welcome addition, many of the themes are great, and the Skald is absolutely fantastic, but the other options in the book leave a bit to be desired. Many of the feats are dull, the magic totems were simple recasts of existing magic items to fit a different item paradigm, and I wasn't to enthralled with most of the Epic Destinies.

All in all, I give it a 5/10. Half of the content was superb, but half of it fell flat. The book isn't quite worth a total 35-40$ to get it in a store, but if you've got some money to spare, may want to try and find a copy for cheep off of amazon or something.

My take:

Fluff: 9/10 - Some awesomely evocative stuff. Just wish there was more of it.

Races: 6/10 - I don't like that the hamadryad and satyr are one-gender races. I would have preferred that to be pure fluff (and preferably optional fluff - e.g. "In some worlds, female satyrs are rare or absent.") rather than an actual mechanical rule that you have to houserule away if you don't like it. Other than that, they're both pretty cool. I completely hate the mechanics of the pixie race though (I concede their fluff is decent). They seem to have been deliberately designed to be the twinky munchkin race, whose power comes from taking advantage of odd rules loopholes, not to mention they require a whole shedload of suspension of disbelief to explain how they can have similar strength, carrying capacity etc. to regular characters.

Classes/Subclasses: 7/10 - The berserker is good. I actually prefer it to the PHB2 barbarian. The skald is interesting, though honestly I don't see that it brings anything really new to the PHB2 bard (other than a couple of very nice powers - every bard should take Echoing Weapon). The protector is how the druid always should have been, IMO. It's actually a competent controller and a good summoner (as far as "good summoner" is a thing that exists in 4e). To me, wildshape was always a very secondary part of the druid "feel", and protectors can pick that up with a feat anyway. The witch sucks by wizard standards, which means it's still fine by general controller standards. A fey pact warlock with the Witchcraft Initiate and Arcane Familiar feats fills the same conceptual space, but does it better (because warlocks already have loads of 'witchy' powers that are actually good, while the new 'witchy' wizard powers in this book are mostly terrible).

Themes: 8/10 - None of them are bad, although Fey Beast Tamer is, IMO, a bit too mechanically powerful. It entirely obsoletes the beastmaster ranger, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Tuathan actually manages the impossible task of making half-elves seem cool and interesting (as well as letting you play a character who can morph into an animal without being a lycanthrope or a druid).

Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies: 5/10 - Uh... they're OK, I guess? I would have liked to see more generic fey-themed paragon paths that didn't require you to belong to one of the subclasses from this book. The witch-specific paragon path is... yet another reason never to play a witch.

Feats: 6/10 - Nothing really bad here except the pixie feats that further cement their "twinky munchkin race with wierd rules interactions" credentials. Being able to give your (non-wizard) character a wizard cantrip is nice - the ones that let you substitute Arcana for another skill can be especially useful.

Equipment: 8/10 - Some incredibly cool non-enchanted items here. My bard carries a supply of feywine raisins and a grey rain cloak so he always has a cup of wine conveniently to hand for carrousing purposes.

Build Your Story: 10/10 - IMO, every book with player options, especially the plane-specific ones, should have had a section like this for randomly generating character backstories.

I like most of what the Essentials line has to offer so I wouldn't mind picking up a copy of this book either. How do the Build Your Story themes work?

Felorn Gloryaxe wrote:

I like most of what the Essentials line has to offer so I wouldn't mind picking up a copy of this book either. How do the Build Your Story themes work?

It's basic prefab story options that replace a background selection with several options fitting for a Feywild themed character. You can roll for an option or pick one yourself. Sort of a neat idea to try using for any other campaign settings really, if your players are into that sort of thing.

It's a bit like a mini version one of those old Choose Your Own Adventure books. It replaces the trained skills and languages your character would normally have at first level, as well as the benefit you'd normally get from picking a background. If you want, you can also let it determine your race.

Example:

Your first roll indicates you were raised among merchants. That means you add either Bluff or Insight as a trained skill, and you're either an eladrin, a gnome, a half-elf or a human. You're then told that fate intervened in what would have been a pretty peaceful life of trading and given a choice to go to one of several locations. Let's say you pick the city of Astrazalian. In Astrazalian, you get several options of what you are doing there. The most obvious choice for our merchant is to join the Star and Dolphin Coster, a grand mercantile house. You now get to add History, Insight or Streetwise to your trained skills to represent your experiences working for the Coster. You then have to make a Wisdom check to see how well you did working for them. Let's say you roll a 5, which indicates you screwed up spectacularly, leading to you getting sent on some dangerous assignment to get you away from the city for a while. You find yourself lost in the wilderness, so you roll on the Wilderness Locations table. You roll a 15, so you were marooned on the Isle of Dread, where you found and explored some mysterious Yuan-Ti ruins... And so on.

Yeah I recently just seen them. It is quite cool if you ask me. Really neat stuff. I hope at least some of it makes it into Next. But then again for Next to buy me over it's gonna have to stop trying to be everything, and be something unique and cool.

Great book. Great flavour. A lot of interesting design choices. Yeah, I like it.

Of course, I want an even larger DM's version of it fleshing out the Feywild even more.

Felorn Gloryaxe wrote:

Yeah I recently just seen them. It is quite cool if you ask me. Really neat stuff. I hope at least some of it makes it into Next. But then again for Next to buy me over it's gonna have to stop trying to be everything, and be something unique and cool.

Thank you!

I know I'm very late to this discussion, but I feel the exact same way about 5e (I won't call it 'Next' lol.)

I believe that the game has gotten better over the decades. The red box of the mid 80's was my first, then AD&D. 2e didn't seem too mechanically different, but brought in so many new options, ideas, campaign settings, etc...It was just better. 3e got rid of crap like THAC0, negative ACs, class requirements, different amounts of xp to level up depending on class, added feats, etc. 4e brought balance to the game for the first time (IMO) and gave fighters more to do per round than roll d20 while saying I swing my (blank) at the (blank), while wizards (above 5th level or so) cleansed the room with fire. 4e also made you not die with one hit during your first level 1 fight. I thought the 4 defenses, instead of just AC, was brilliant. Not to mention how much easier it was to DM/build encounters. Getting rid of the "ok, I'm a level 5 caster, so...I get to learn a level 3 spell now" thing was just great, too. Being level 5 and gaining a level 5 power just makes the game so much easier to explain to newbies. I could go on, lol. I love 4e, despite its flaws.

These are good signs. a 5th edition could only get better right? I'm still hoping...But my faith is weakened. We'll see.

 

Next (aka Previous, aka Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition) is going to have to change radically during the non-playtested part of the design phase for it to be anything new or original or an advance built on the good bits of 3.xE and 4E.

Right now it's back to the future.

And it's crap. Seriously. It's take over a two years to produce a game far less complex and interesting than 13th Age, that has basically no new design and, unlike 13th Age, has the best-resourced RPG team in the USA.

What have those clowns been doing for over two years to produce this modest update of AD&D?

(BTW, it's not crap. Well, not completely. However, when I look at the gridless combat in 13th Age and then compare it to the gridless combat in Dog's Breakfast [oops, Previous, oops, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition) it just seems like a backwards joke. 13th Age: it absolutely nailed the skills in concept, execution and the maths. Previous? It needs to go back to the drawing board for skills and use an entirely new team to work out the maths.

As a business owner I look at what they're doing and just wonder how they are getting away with it....

Off the top of my head, one thing I LIKE about 5e (from the playtests) is how both race AND class give you an ability bonus. That's a cool idea. And, it makes sense. Although, I still can't believe they're going forward with humans having +1 to all ability scores...Gridless combat can work, I just don't like it. I like the 'board game' element. Many use that as an insult, but I think it's a good thing. It makes combat what it should be. Tactical, and no one can say anything like: "No way that guy hit me! I was...um...behind a rock...yeah." I figure if you want to go theatre of the mind, go all the way. Play Fiasco, or the Gumshoe system. Or, just sit around and tell stories, lol.

I read a bit of 13th age's core book. I like it. A lot like 4e, but different enough that I don't see it as a clone of 4e. Makes sense when you see who's names are on the cover. I might give it a try, but I want to wait for more to be published. More classes, monsters, etc.

I wonder if the D&D development team can do whatever they want...WotC has its crack to sell for money (MtG) so maybe Hasbro doesn't care about D&D's profit potential. The 'brand' D&D is worth more than a PnP RPG anyway. MMO's, novels, even a new movie idea is being tossed around...(from what I've read).

Don't get me wrong, seti, I love the tactical element of 4E. 13th Age is the first game that has made me realise that you can still have tactical miniature- and grid-less combat that still satisfies unlike, say, Gygaxian AD&D where the piss-poor design skills of the author were revealed in his inability to ever write combat rules that made sense.

seti wrote:

Off the top of my head, one thing I LIKE about 5e (from the playtests) is how both race AND class give you an ability bonus.

Just sayin', but at least one system already beat 5E to it.

seti wrote:

I still can't believe they're going forward with humans having +1 to all ability scores

It's speciesism, either that or they just wanted players to have no brainer options with humans.

seti wrote:

Gridless combat can work, I just don't like it. I like the 'board game' element. Many use that as an insult, but I think it's a good thing. It makes combat what it should be. Tactical, and no one can say anything like: "No way that guy hit me! I was...um...behind a rock...yeah." I figure if you want to go theatre of the mind, go all the way. Play Fiasco, or the Gumshoe system. Or, just sit around and tell stories, lol.

As Schrivener mentioned, 13th Age not only gives you "theater of the mind" as done in various systems (including Dungeon World), but provides tactical elements for the zone-based movement: Engaging/disengaging vs. opportunity attacks, relative distances vs. ranged weapon maximum range, area spells that affect grouped foes, and resource management similar to D&D 4E, but with added twists here and there.

Just saying that theater of the mind isn't necessarily tactics-free or tactics-lite

seti wrote:

I might give it a try, but I want to wait for more to be published. More classes, monsters, etc.

Originally it was supposed to be a one-shot, "labor of love" sort of thing, but right now there are several fanmade stuff, as well as third party support being kickstarter'ed and official products (13 True Ways, Bestiary) are coming out real soon.

"Originally it was supposed to be a one-shot, "labor of love" sort of thing, but right now there are several fanmade stuff, as well as third party support being kickstarter'ed and official products (13 True Ways, Bestiary) are coming out real soon." -chaosfang

Good to hear! Those two books would probably push me to invest in hard copies of 13th age. Monk is one of my favorite classes, and I believe '13 true ways' has the monk class in it. Also, I love monster books. The more the merrier. I actually collect monster books, and enjoy just reading them. I have 'MMs' for games I haven't even played, lol.

Last off-topic reply from each participant, then let's get back to discussing Heroes of the Feywild, ok? :)We can always continue this discussion in the appropriate section of the forums

seti wrote:

Monk is one of my favorite classes, and I believe '13 true ways' has the monk class in it.

Yes, it has the Monk, as well as the Druid (both classes were supposed to have appeared in the original book, but due to editing constraints and the need for added playtesting, they alongside multiclassing mechanics were taken out at the last minute; all three are to appear in 13 True Ways ). It also has the Commander (formerly Battle Captain, a.k.a. Marshal/Warlord), Chaos Shaman, Occultist,  and Necromancer, as well as dragonriding rules and a bunch of other mechanics -- such as possible combat stats for the Icons -- and added lore for various areas of the Dragon Empire) in different, sometimes conflicting tones (as a reminder that the lore for the Dragon Empire is anything you want it to be, with the default entries being placeholders and sources of inspiration rather than unchangeable facts).

seti wrote:

Also, I love monster books. The more the merrier. I actually collect monster books, and enjoy just reading them. I have 'MMs' for games I haven't even played, lol.

Then you're in luck! ;)the Bestiary not only contains new monsters (some of them already appearing in Tales of the 13th Age Organized Play), but a lot of lore and new artwork for them as well

Scrivener of Doom wrote:

Great book. Great flavour. A lot of interesting design choices. Yeah, I like it.

Of course, I want an even larger DM's version of it fleshing out the Feywild even more.

Agreed. I think it's a really interesting setting to run a campaign in (although there's enough fluff/stats now to run one, in all likelihood).