Heroes of the Elemental Chaos

Sorry that Ive been gone for a while, Ive just been at a loss for things to talk about lately. Heres a review of the newest release for 4th edition. Heroes of elemental chaos

Heroes of the Elemental Chaos
Player's Option D&D Game Supplement
RPG Staff
Masters of fire and earth. Lords of air and water. This tome is the definitive sourcebook for creating and playing characters with ties to the Elemental Chaos and the primordial beings that dwell there. It shows how the elements can influence heroes of the natural world and presents elemental-themed character options for players.
In addition to discussing elemental power and presenting new character themes with strong story hooks, this book includes new class builds -- including the elementalist and the sha'ir -- and new feats and paragon paths designed to tie existing characters more closely to the Elemental Chaos.
Item Details 
Item Code: 356170000 Release Date: February 21, 2012 Series: Player's Option D&D Game Supplement Format: Hardcover Page Count: 160 Price: $29.95 ISBN: 978-0-7869-5981-5

Given the player focus of this book, I wasn't exactly expecting much in the way of DM elements beyond, perhaps, Hero of the Feywild's interjections. While it doesn't quite have the same charm as the Feywild supplement had, I thoroughly enjoyed what flavor was offered. The comprehensive list of primordials and choice explanations provide me with quite a lot in a small package: a headless titan wandering the chaos seeking to reunite with his severed head, which is entombed by the gods and jibbers all sorts of blasphemy and primeval magic for anyone to steal. Or how about the progenitor hydra who was utterly smashed to smithereens by Kord and whose entrails have slowly been collected by his remaining followers over the last age and fed in hopes of him regenerating. Great stuff, in my opinion. I also very much like the elemental companion rules in here, which have a symbiotic bend, actually housing inside a PC and offering two kinds of benefits. That has a TON of potential for reflavoring.


Character option wise, I was most interested in the Elementalist, which gives us an Essentials sorcerer; the elemental Monk options, which give us Benders ala Avatar (and a creative player could easily take it the rest of the way through his descriptions); and the Sha'ir, which I still wish was another sorcerer build, but like it or not Wizards are the go to for all magic, and their wealth of spells is the only reason I'm not completely sore over the topic. They use elemental familiars to great affect. There's also options for barbarians, warlocks, druids, but nothing really leaped out at me as brilliant. I thought the magic items and boons were pretty nice, as well.


Overall, I think this book is good in so far as being a player supplement, but many of us want more information on the Primordials. This book would have been great as a year 2 supplement in 4e's sadly shrinking life, not a year 3.5 product. I also believe this book should have been released in tandem with something juicy for DMs. Plane Below was nice, but more of an overview of everything in the maelstrom. Give me the specifics of the primordials and their prisons, cults and loyal servants, plots and secrets, give me all sorts of material I can work with and thus better integrate the player material.


I give Heroes of the Elemental Chaos a 4/5, because I do see plenty of material I and others will be using, I am a sucker for the primordials to begin with.

So want a free look at pathfinder?

Pathfinder is released under an open game license so that makes it completely legal to repackage and edit their content and release it. A project called d20pfsrd has done just this. These documents are the text only with relevant charts reworked. The artwork is all copyrighted by various artists and presumably pizzo. These documents are free to download not not illegal in anyway. They include the full text of the rules for the game and can be used as a great reference on a computer when your planing or playing games.

The first is the core book
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/extras/downloads/PFRPG_SRD.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1
This is the monster guide
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/extras/downloads/PFRPG_SRD_Monsters.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1

If you want a dynamic reference the site http://www.d20pfsrd.com/ has a wiki of all the rules and content in a very easy to use format.

Pathfinder vs. 3.5: Races

When you look at the books the first thing you notice is how thick the pathfinder book is in comparison to the 3.5 book. 3.5 D&D is 316 pages long, Pathfinder however is 574 pages. The main reason for this is pathfinder does not separate its player and GM

So The first thing you do in either pathfinder or 3.5 is choose your race. The base races in both games are Human, Halfling, Gnome, Half Orc, Dwarf, Half elf, and Elf. In pathfinder the races are much more powerful. However even though they are more powerful in comparison with their 3.5 counterparts they are closer in power level in comparison with each other. From a strictly power gamer viewpoint there was little reason to play some races in 3.5. Halflings and Half elves in particular got the shaft in power level.

In pathfinder each race has +2 to two different stats and gets a -2 to one they also have a variety of unique abilities. for instance dwarves get bonuses to appraise skill checks, attack bonuses against orcs and goblins, bonuses to poison and spell saves, defense bonuses against bull rushes, perception bonuses in relation to stonework, and automatic proficiency with any weapon with the dwarven keyword and battleaxes, heavy picks and war-hammers.

The exceptions to the +2 to two stats are humans and the half humans, they all get +2 to a stat of their choice.  Just like everything in pathfinder, its very close to 3.5 but slightly more tunned.

Pathfinder

So I bought the pathfinder core book a few days ago. If you have not heard of Pathfinder it’s a split off of the D&D brand. Basically when 4^th edition came out some of the main guys behind 3^rd and 3.5 switched companies and started the Pathfinder system with Piazo entertainment. My first impressions of Pathfinder is that it is very a very close cousin to 3.5 D&D. Most of the core concepts are exactly the same. In fact without careful examination it’s hard to tell that it is even different than 3.5.  Many of the skills have been changes, feats reworked and concepts tightened but under the hood it’s still basically Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 edition.

Over the next couple weeks I’m going to go through the book and explain how each chapter is different than its 3.5 counterpart.   I’d like to see some comments especially from anyone who has planned or run any games.

Below you will see some awesome pictures of classes from Pathfinder. They are as follows: Barbarian, Samurai, Paladin, and Monk.

New Edition and my thoughts

I guess as a D&D blog I'm required to talk about the news that wizards is planning 5th edition. If you havent heard WoTC is planning to crowd source for ideas on how to proceed with a new edition of D&D. Its only been 5 years since 4th edition launched and its had mixed response from critics. Many myself included feel that 4th edition is too combat oriented. You hear "it feels like a video game" a lot when people first play the game. I agree with these people however I also feel that despite this focus on combat oriented gaming a good GM can work with the rules to create a good story.

One thing I feel is that the Pathfinder RPG has been taking a bite out of wizards RPG pie. Pathfinder if you've not heard of it is a spin-off RPG that Monte Cook and some other big name D&D designers left wizards to produce under the pizzo games label. Pathfinder is like a souped up D&D 3.5 with many of its flaws fixed and less attention on power creep to sell product and more attention on whats good for the game overall. Therein lies the problem with 4th edition.

Wizards of the coast got its success with magic the gathering, its a company whos business model relies on pumping out new product every 6 to 8 months and keeping their consumer base interested with new and even more awesome stuff all the time. D&D was purchased when TSR the former owner was bought out by the company. WoTC in turn is owned by Hasbro. Ever since WoTC bought the D&D brand I've gotten the feeling that they have tried to turn it into another Magic: the gathering type business where they pump out new and better product every few months regardless to the consequences for the power level and balance of the game.

If WoTC wants to get it right with 5th edition they need to take a serious look at their business model. As A player of 15+ years I look for quality in RPG products not quantity. I want the most bang for my gaming dollar. Often Wizards has been producing smaller and smaller books with less and less actual useful content for higher and higher prices. I quit playing Magic about five years ago cause I couldn't afford to keep up at the rate they produced product and stay competitive.

Yes you can make a quick buck with offerings like last months book of vile darkness which was so thin Ive seen pamphlets with more pages yet still cost as much as a book with 3 times its girth. but if you really want to rehabilitate the brand you need to step back and refocus on the core audience that you have seen drift off with the 4th edition crowd. Long time gamers like me that have been buying books since the 90's and before (I know some of you guys have been buying since the 70's... not my point) We look for a quality product. If its not there release after hurried release we naturally are going to drift off.

I sincerely hope that wizards gets it right with 5th edition because If its another failed get rich quick scheme I will probably leave the brand that got me into roleplaying in the first place for greener pastures.

Your very own Dungeon master

you may have noticed my avatar on my posts this little guy:

Its dungeon master from the old D&D cartoon in the 80's. I never watched the cartoon when I was a kid I was more of a GI Joe and Transformers fan, but I have watched them since growing up and they are pretty standard 80's cartoon stuff. Anyway if you would like your very own dungeon master to tell you what to do and guide your online travels here is a paper-craft version you can print out of your very own!

Also if you want a villain for dungeon master to play with heres a paper-craft version of venger the villain of the show

These both come from http://cyberdrone.deviantart.com/ I didn't make them nor do I claim to have. If you liked these visit his site looks like he has a bunch more including some star wars ones.

My new Years Experiance

This weekend I went up to my brothers house and played 24 hours of D&D over the weekend. It was a blast, We started around noon on Friday and finished up at 1:30 on Saturday. My brother GMed for 8 hours or so then I took over and did the rest.

My bros game was really cool we were trapped in a mansion with a goblet that cause random magical effects ever so often, the effects were very different. for example one time we were investigating a room when suddenly the floor turned to quicksand. I got to talk a dragon out of eating most of us in the ballroom, and the foyer turned into a jungle. It was a very fun game where you never knew what was going to happen at anytime.

When I got a turn I created a story about an old ancient being of power who had his eye stolen. The players got the gem and it was cursed until it was returned to the being. The cool thing about playing with totally new players is you can draw from successful games of the past and its all new to them. I used some of the better situations from my regular gaming group with them and has a really good time

Sources of Inspiriation

When looking for ideas for a game your planning to run sometimes its a good idea to look to real life situations. I was recently listening to a NPR story about the violence in the Congo and as horrible as that situation is it got me to thinking about what kind of a dnd game would it be like to have a country that was wrecked by warring factions with no governmental institutions to support characters.

Players run afoul of governmental forces more often than they get support from them in my experience. Often the players are involved in less than legal activities that get them in trouble with the law, or they run into bureaucratic blocks when trying to get things done. However what would life in a culture with no strong source of authority be like? The players could be attacked on the street by thugs and nobody would bat an eye. Maybe have multiple powerful warlords that all fight with each other for control of the area.

Real life can be a great source of inspiration for settings even if you don't pull directly but set up fictionalized settings with similar characteristics. History can be a wealthy source of ideas. Similar to my feuding warlords idea the culture of feudal japan is rich with ideas that would make amazing and very different settings for D&D games. Often players get plunked down in a generic medieval European setting but just a little bit of extra work and flair can make it a much better game overall

neglecting the site and news of my own

I know I've been neglecting this site for the last week or so but December has been a very busy month around my house.

 First I got a new job working for big sandy superstore, a furniture and appliances retailer in Ohio, West Virgina and Kentucky. I work now int he service center ordering parts and shipping out parts that we receive to our 45 or so stores in the region. Its a good job and I'm glad to have it. Most of my co workers have been really supportive and I'm fitting in really well there. Before this I was a substitute teacher which while a important job doesn't pay the bills so well because of the fact you never know if your going to be working one day to the next.


The second reason I've been away is my wife and I just had our second child, a baby boy. His name is Arrick and he was born last night at 4:45pm at SOMC in Portsmouth Ohio. He and his mother are doing very well and I couldn't be a prouder dad.

I know this isnt really about D&D or gaming but sometimes you just need to share. Have a happy holidays, Christmas,Hanukkah, kwanzaa or winter solstice and I hope you and yours have as much joy as me and mine have had in this time of year.

/r/rpg

over at reddit in the /rpg subreddit is a good community of role playing enthusiasts. Its a great place to find ideas for things you had not heard or thought about. Its also a great place to find an online game if your looking for one.

sometimes history is odder than fantasy, the dancing outbreak of 1518

"The outbreak began in July 1518, when a woman, Frau Troffea, began to dance fervently in a street in Strasbourg. This lasted somewhere between four to six days. Within a week, 34 others had joined, and within a month, there were around 400 dancers. Some of these people eventually died from heart attack, stroke, or exhaustion.

Historical documents, including 'physician notes, cathedral sermons, local and regional chronicles, and even notes issued by the Strasbourg city council' are clear that the victims danced. It is not known why these people danced to their deaths.

As the dancing plague worsened, concerned nobles sought the advice of local physicians, who ruled out astrological and supernatural causes, instead announcing that the plague was a 'natural disease' caused by 'hot blood.' However, instead of prescribing bleeding, authorities encouraged more dancing, in part by opening two guildhalls and a grain market, and even constructing a wooden stage. The authorities did this because they believed that the dancers would only recover if they danced continuously night and day. To increase the effectiveness of the cure, authorities even paid for musicians to keep the afflicted moving. Some of the dancers were taken to a shrine, where they sought a cure for their affliction."


from wikipedia

book of vile darkness

The 3rd edition book of vile darkness was a waste of money in my opinion. It contained very little of substance and sold itself though sheer power of its name sounding cool. It looks like the 4th edition incarnation of this book may be the same. Wizards announced December 20th as the release date for this product here is the official text

Book of Vile Darkness
D&D Game Supplement
Robert J. Schwalb
This roleplaying game product is intended for Dungeon Masters looking to broaden their campaigns to include dark subject matter and truly evil threats. It features a detailed look at the nature of evil and the complex challenge of confronting the many dilemmas found within the deepest shadows.
It includes:

• A 32-page facsimile of the Book of Vile Darkness, filled with malignant secrets and musings that can inspire adventures or entire campaigns.

• A 96-page game supplement that provides Dungeon Masters with sample roleplaying encounters, adventure hooks, skill challenges, rituals, and lore for some of the most despicable creatures to infest any campaign world, new character options for players who like to flirt with evil.

• A full-color, double-sided poster map presenting iconic evil sites for heroes to explore.

Item Details
Item Code: 34416000 Release Date: December 20, 2011 Price: $29.95 ISBN: 978-0-7869-5868-9 

The thing that makes me think this might be a money grab is the sheer thinness of this volume. 96 pages of actual content. This is compared to 320 pages in the payers handbook for roughly the same price. Wizards really needs to drop the hardcovers for every product business model. This should be a supplement that should cost no more than $20 and be released in soft cover format

demo of the uses of the Microsoft surface product with D&D

Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition for Dummies

I recently read through a copy of Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition for Dummies by Bill Slavicsek and Richard Baker. My expectations of the work were naturally low since most of the “for Dummies” series are so basic and generic that they are often all but useless to anyone who is somewhat familiar with the topic at hand.

The book is contains 5 chapters: a D&D Crash Course, Building a D&D Character, Playing your Best Game, the Art of Dungeon Mastering, and the Part of Tens.

The first two chapters contain very basic outlines most people familiar with D&D fourth Edition would know from simply reading the rules.  However I'm not surprised by this, the book is for “dummies,” after all.  But the last 3 chapters include a large amount of material that sheds light upon what the game designers had in mind when creating 4e game mechanics, and how those mechanics differ from prior editions of the game.

The book features “advanced” sections, covering topics such as the finer points of character creation, using multi-class feats to customize a character’s abilities to match the needs of her party, and even a section on effective “Min/Maxing” for “munchkin” or power-gaming types.

An entire part is devoted to the task of Dungeon Master (DM), which players new to the role of DM will find to be of immense use. The chapter helps a new DM differentiate between different modes of play, outlines a sample combat, and provides step-by-step instructions for combat encounter creation. A sample, detachable battlemat with counters is bound into the book for reference.


Lastly, and perhaps most importantly for players familiar with the 4e rules, the book concludes with a section called “The Part of Tens,” in which the authors provide a series of “Top Ten” lists on topics such as character powers and feats, along with the reasons for their selections. While one could argue that these are largely matters of opinion, the reasoning behind the choices is illustrative. For example, the Toughness feat – which provides an additional five hit points at each tier of play – is recommended for all characters; the rationale behind the choice is that extra hit points are useful in every encounter, a distinction not enjoyed by all feats.

As the title implies, the book is certainly useful for “D&D Dummies,” but it also contains information useful to more experienced players. And with online vendors selling new copies of the book at approximately $15 U.S. and used copies selling for as little as $1 U.S., it is well worth the investment.

Shirt from woot.com

My brother dave is a freelance graphic designer he enters the design contests over a woot.com pretty frequently and wins occsionally. this week he won the design contest with this shirt:
http://shirt.woot.com/friends.aspx?k=22880

They are selling this really cool shirt for $15 any support would be appreciated

Dungeons and dragons online

Dungeons & Dragons Online is the one of the most recent pay-to-play MMORPG switching over to the free-to-play model. The game is set in the fictional world of Eberron and remains faithful to the D&D franchise. Everything from geography to gameplay mechanics has been successfully ported from the tabletop game to the online virtual world. 


Unlike other PC games that use the D&D 3.5 ruleset (such as Neverwinter Nights) combat in  Dungeons & Dragons Online is fast-paced and feels more like the style found in action-RPGs; players must left-click to swing their weapon each time. The game world functions similarly to the system used in Guild Wars, where players interact freely in towns but all other areas are instanced. Dungeons are filled with puzzles and traps, which help give the game the same ‘feel’ as the tabletop role playing game.

Freaks and Geeks - Carlos the Dwarf

From the show freaks and geeks they introduce Carlos to D&D, one of the cool things is they are actually talking about real D&D stuff, like the dancing sword reference. The books they are holding are real 1st edition books. Obviously the writers actually know what they are talking about.

Railroading is bad

Of the cardinal sins of being a game master one of the worst is railroading. Railroading is when you take the free will away from the players. This can be as dramatic as the GM simply saying no when the players want to go a different way to there being impossible to beat obstacles at every other path.

Why would a DM use such as tactic in the first place?  Well, it definitely helps with trying to get players to follow a particular path.  However, there are players who aren't particularly fond of railroading.  So while your story may progress the way you want it to, some players are going to feel like they’re just there for the ride, rather than taking a more active role in your adventure.

When railroading players, you’re completely undermining a player’s sense of accomplishment.  Players that are forced into a particular situation through brute force tend to get surly and enjoy the game much less than if they have the illusion of free will. 

The way to avoid railroading is to develop adventures that do not require players to proceed down a single path to complete the adventure. Branching is a much better method of devising a strategy of what will happen in a game. come up with 3 or 4 options at each critical decision point and if the players chose something you didnt think of its time to shine as a GM and improvise.

The best games sometimes happen because you didn't predict where the players were going to go and you have to get creative with the situations.

Penny Arcade and Power Creep

Gabe at penny arcade occasionally lets the world in on his D&D campaign through the comic and in their blog. It seems they do some seriously awesome stuff during their games like this:

The newest comics over the past few days discuss power creep in the 4ed game. Power creep is when each product that is released tries to outdo the power level of the products that came before it. After several years of this happening the power level of the original game and the newest books is vastly different. So much so that playing a basic fighter is very unappealing next to whatever cyber ninja monkey warrior that came out in the latest source book. 

Power creep was very bad in 3rd edition some of the last source books that were produced had vastly overpowered abilities when compared with basic PHB characters. Another thing about power creep is as the players become more powerful it requires a similar buildup of power from the GM. What you end up with is a role playing arms race.

Sexy DnD