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

3.5 out of 5 stars

• Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
• Author: Matthew Sernett
• Released: February 08, 2010

Mielikki is the good goddess of the forest in FR, made popular by Drizzt’s devotion to her in Salvatore’s books.  Targeted towards those characters who worship or at least honor Mielikki, this article provides a guide for creating a well rounded character devoted to the Forest Queen and a few new options for them.

For the guide portion of the article (the first and last part) the article points the reader to the backgrounds within the FRPG and tables listing the feats, paragon paths, and epic destinies which are appropriate to Mielikki devotees.  For the new options, there are 2 heroic feats, 1 paragon feat, and 1 paragon path.  It should be note that the feats are not Channel Divinity feats, but rather feats which are open to any class.

Also in the article is a sidebar which points to the real-world origins to Mielikki and a link to the Kalevala in which Mielikki makes a couple of appearances.

4 out of 5 stars

• Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
• Author: Aeryn "Blackdirge" Rudel
• Released: February 05, 2010

While the title of this article suggests that it presents a new Barbarian build, it doesn’t go the whole way in delivering on that promise.  There’s a reasonable suite of powers (1 at-will, 5 encounter, 2 daily, and 1 utility) and a few feats (3 heroic) which support the use of reach weapons by a barbarian, but there’s no paragon path or Feral Might option.  As a result, this is really a complementary focus for your barbarian, not a whole new one.

That said, however, the stuff presented contain a whole lot of interesting options, especially if you like a little controller element in your barbarian.  Indeed, these options hint at what a martial controller might look like (much as the Seeker did).  It’s just too bad that this is for a primal class (again, like the Seeker).

5 out of 5 stars

• Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
• Author: Jeff LaSala
• Released: February 04, 2010

This is the third article to visit Fairhaven, the capital of Aundair in Eberron, and it continues to detail the more seedy side of the city.  Inside you’ll find four individuals whose disreputability ranges from mild to infamous and 4 locations with ties to the underworld.  Clearly aimed at the DM, this article is bound to help out anyone running a game in Eberron which is based out of or visits Fairhaven.

4 out of 5 stars

• Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
• Author: Mike Mearls
• Released: February 03, 2010

The psionic defender, the Battlemind will be appearing in the PH3 come March.  D&DI subscribers, however, get to see the class early, starting yesterday.

As with most other psionic classes, the battlemind uses the at-will/augment system rather than encounter powers and thus suffers/benefits from all the associated capabilities.  In addition, the battlemind has several class feature powers; 4 in fact.  Three of those powers are at-will and define the marking mechanism for the battlemind with one power to mark (a minor action which can be augmented to target more than one foe) and two more which take advantage of the mark (one as an opportunity action, the other as an immediate reaction) when the marked enemy attempts to ignore the mark.  The last power is tied to your build and thus will vary a bit, however for the moment only one power is presented.  This is an encounter power that triggers when you roll iniative, so you should always be using it.

For powers, there about half the usual swath of powers for a class, as is normal for debut articles.

In addition to the class, there are two paragon paths, and 5 feats (2 heroic, 2 paragon, and 1 epic) which all have the class as a prerequisite.  Enough to start playing the class right now, should you so desire.

4 out of 5 stars

• Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
• Author: Robert J. Schwalb
• Released: February 03, 2010

Yeah… more elves…

Touched by the archfey of winter, the Winterkin are Eladrin who tend towards the cold and savagery of winter.  Like other racial variants, the distinction is created by taking a feat and can be built upon with other options.  In total there are 3 backgrounds, 1 paragon path, 5 heroic feats, and 1 paragon feat.

Like the recent tiefling variant, the winterkin variant for eladrin does not take away the existing eladrin racial power and instead simply adds an new racial power.  On top of that, they get cold resistance out of the heritage feat.  As a result, we’re really beginning to see power creep in these racial variants, something I don’t like.  I really want WotC to stop this trend and go back to the previous versions of racial variants which kept things more in line.  After all, if I don’t have to give up anything about the race I’m playing to gain variant abilities, why wouldn’t I?  If this trend keeps up, then pretty soon everyone will be playing racial variants.

2.5 out of 5 stars

• Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
• Author: Bill Slavicsek
• Released: February 03, 2010

So, with D&D Experience in the past, Bill’s had a good part of his gag order lifted and is thus free to provide some details about the stuff that he hinted at last month.  To that end we get a full description of the D&D Essentials line (an alternative entry point to the game meant for novice players), a link to video of Chris Perkins DMing for the folks behind Robot Chicken, a mention of the new regular play format for D&D (Wednesday Night Encounters), some notes about the new Gamma World genre setting (including a dispelling of the CCG myth that seems to have sprung up around it), and another myth dispelling about the board games (no, they don’t replace the miniatures).

Basically, this is the article that Bill wanted to give us last month, but couldn’t.

4 out of 5 stars

• Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
• Author: Cal Moore
• Released: February 02, 2010

So, Tuesday is the one day a week when I actually have no scheduled events.  For WotC, however, Saturday and Sunday are the days when no new content is released.  This creates a problem for me when I decide to take off on Tuesday and go skiing, like I did yesterday, as I fall behind the publishing schedule, and I can’t spend all day Wednesday getting caught up (I still have to get some work done).  As a result, some weeks are going to be like this one, where I end up falling behind and it will take most, if not the entire rest of the week for me to get caught up.

So, all that just to point out that this article actually came out yesterday.

As our third level 2 Chaos Scar adventure, this adventure continues to expand the options available within the Chaos Scar sandbox without actually expanding the sandbox.  Indeed, given the rate of release, I don’t expect the Chaos Scar sandbox to be populated enough for a full campaign that is run on a weekly basis for a couple of months yet.  That should get the sandbox options up to level 3 or 4 (and thus the encounters within them to level 6 or 7), enabling the DM to properly convey the progressively more difficult nature of the valley and for the players to have enough space to move about in.

As is normal for Chaos Scar adventures, this adventure has just three encounters.  However, unlike the other adventures released thus far, one of those encounters is a skill challenge rather than a tactical encounter.  It’s only a complexity 3 challenge and there are no quests presented, on the other hand, so the XP split is still very combat heavy: 525:1,886 (1:3.59).  Plus, partial failure in the skill challenge can make this worse: 525:1,948 (1:3.71).  At the same time, though a complete failure doesn’t completely make up for the lost non-combat XP (2,411-2,473 XP total on success, but only 2,123 total on failure) so while the meta encourages PCs to take the skill challenge seriously, it also encourages them to walk the fine line between success and failure.  End result?  I think that WotC is getting closer to fitting the skill challenge into an adventure’s meta, but still hasn’t quite gotten it right.