Looking at the “Essentials” Warlord

When Dungeons & Dragons 4E was first released, I found the warlord to be the most intriguing addition.  So I was intrigued when Dragon announced the new Class Compendium feature, which converts classes to the Essentials format, was tackling the warlord.

I assumed we would see a new build of the warlord which favored melee basic attacks over powers.  After all, the knight and slayer builds of the fighter, the executioner build of the assassin, and thief build of the rogue all took this tack.

What I was not expecting the changes to be as minimal as they were.  I would hesitate to call the new marshal build a build at all.    Instead, it seems to simply be a rewriting of the tactical warlord and the inspiring warlord using the new Essentials format.

The few mechanical differences seem to merely be errata rather than any attempts at new mechanics.  The power selection is slightly different than the Player’s Handbook Warlord, but is more of a “greatest hits” from existing source books than anything new.

The Good

I like the existing warlord, so the fact that the marshal build changes nothing isn’t really a negative to me.

The Bad

Frankly, I am confused as to what the point of the Class Compendium feature is.  I assumed it was going to provide new builds for existing classes which were similar to the new builds created for Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms and Heroes of the Fallen Lands.  Instead, all we seem to have gotten is a change in the layout with a little errata thrown in.

As content for Dragon goes, that seems a little thin.

Spoiled by computers?

The Lords of Tyr has always been pretty technologically savvy group of gamers.  The original lords were all IT professionals who met through work.  While the group soon grew beyond the founders, we still tend to use technology into our games liberally.  For character creation we use tools like the D&D Character Builder.  Rather than a battle map and miniatures we use RPTools.  We even broadcast our games using UStream and allow remote players to join using Skype.

I am starting to wonder if this is a good thing.

This is a concern I have had for awhile, but it really came to the forefront a few weeks back when we were playing a Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 game.  One of the lords had been gone for a few sessions and didn’t realize we were running a new game.  He didn’t have a character so he had to make one up on the spot.  After awhile it became obvious that he couldn’t.

The problem was that he generally used E-Tools to create characters for D&D 3.5, but he didn’t have it loaded on his laptop.  After I noticed he was struggling, I helped him load PCGen to help get him started.  Once he had a character creation program in front of him, even an unfamiliar one, he was up and running.

This feeling was only exacerbated when I heard my fellow lords talk about the Heroes of Hesiod game Tyrwench ran on September 11th.  The game was run without any of the technological tools we normally use.  Everyone present talked about how nice it was to play old school with pen, paper, and tokens.

On the other hand, our embracing of technology has provided us with many benefits.  Despite my comments above,  the Character Builder does make character creation much simpler.  The Rules Compendium has allowed us to run games without lugging around a backbreaking amount of books.  Using electronic maps and initiative trackers has sped things up at the table.  More importantly, the remote capabilities of these tools have allowed members who might not be able to attend the session otherwise to at least be able to attend virtually. 

In fact, the success of these tools have lead to a Wednesday night game which is entirely remote.  The Lords of Tyr are scattered throughout the Greater Chicagoland Area.  There is no way we could get together on a Wednesday night to game for three hours if we had to include travel time.  Without the technology, that game wouldn’t even be possible!

I am not suggesting that the Lords of Tyr abandon technology completely.  Maybe we just need to step back from the edge from time to time, similar to the Heroes of Hesiod game.  Throwing a low tech game in every so often might be a nice change of pace.  More importantly, it might remind us why we fell in love with pen and paper gaming in the first place.

So how has technology affected your gaming?  Do you loathe it when someone cracks open their laptop or are modern gaming tools a convenience that you would not want to go without?

Looking at the Essentials Assassin

When I first weighed in on Dungeons &  Dragons Essentials, I wondered if we would start seeing revamped “Essentials” versions of existing classes.  With a couple of days left until Heroes of the Fallen Lands and the Rules Compendium hit the shelves, the revamped Essentials Assassin has hit Dragon Magazine.

Well that certainly didn’t take long.

Nevertheless, the Essentials Assassin is especially interesting to me because it provides both a first look into both the Essentials format and into the kind of changes we will see to the existing classes.

The New Format

It is obvious that a lot of effort went into making class descriptions much more friendly for the new player.  In the new format, at each level the player is walked through exactly what choices they need to make.  This is a small change, but one that should make leveling up substantially easier for the newbie.

On the other hand, it will lead to a lot of repetition in the books.  For example, every class description will tell you that at 4th level you need to increase two ability scores by 1.  In the Dungeons & Dragons 4E Player’s Handbook, this information was only mentioned once.  Multiply this by the rest of the redundant leveling information and you have a lot of additional pages per book.

Also interesting is that the class description refers you to Heroes of the Fallen Lands rather than the Player’s Handbook or any other source.  I suppose this makes sense since Wizards of the Coast sees the Essentials line as their new evergreen product.  Still, it seems a bit like they are trying to pretend that the older books never existed.

Changes to the Assassin Class

The changes to the assassin class are more substantial than I was expecting.  The class is much more focused on martial weaponry and poison use.  The shroud mechanic for striker damage is gone.  It has been replaced with the Assassin’s Strike encounter power, which is like a more powerful Sneak Attack which is more limited in use. 

Similar to Essentials martial characters, the assassin lacks encounter and daily attack powers.  Instead, the assassin gains special abilities which make their at-will and basic attacks more effective.

While the assassin still uses shadow magic, its use is limited to certain utility powers.  In fact, depending on what utility powers you choose, it is possible to completely avoid using shadow magic at all until ninth level.

These changes actually give the Essentials Assassin a more classic feel.  The Essentials Assassin seems like a direct descendent of the AD&D 1E Player’s Handbook assassin with a few elements from subsequent editions thrown in.  I can definitely seeing this version appealing to certain people who were turned off by the previous 4E version of the assassin.

Final Thoughts

It is hard for me to separate my thoughts about the new assassin from my thoughts on the Essentials line as a whole.  The changes it makes to the assassin class are pretty substantial, much more than I would expect out of a new “build”.  It does nothing to allay my fears that D&D Essentials is a stealth edition and that all new content we will see out of Wizards of the Coast will have an Essentials bent to it.

Still, I can’t argue that I don’t find the new build to be an improvement over the original.  I am much more interested in making an Essentials Assassin than I ever was in making the previous version.

I figure that says something.

You have to love those crazy gypsies!

The original Ravenloft module introduced gypsies as a plot device, with the fortune telling of Madam Eva being a way to change the module in small ways and to increase replay potential.  They were also added for flavor, as their relationship with Strahd was obviously meant to echo the relationship of the gypsies with the titular character of the novel Dracula.

When Ravenloft was expanded into a full-fledged campaign setting in 1990, the gypsies also got an expanded role.  They became the Vistani, the only beings in Ravenloft capable of travelling the Mists safely.  Having a strange relationship not just with Strahd, but with the Dark Powers themselves, the Vistani were both mysterious and powerful.

The Vistani became the ultimate plot device.  Their very nature allowed them to appear and disappear as needed by the DM.  They were capable of spouting accurate but cryptic prophesy on demand.  Perhaps most importantly, they generally had enough mystic might to keep annoyed players from killing them on sight.

They were never really intended to be player characters, but like drow elves and dragons, it is perhaps inevitable that people wanted to play them.

Players first got their crack at playing members of this mysterious race when Van Richten's Guide to the Vistani came out for AD&D 2e.  When White Wolf took over the setting in D&D 3e, they introduced Half-Vistani as one of the core races for the setting.

In this month’s Dragon, we get to see the D&D 4e take on playing a Vistani.  I am certain that some Vistani purist will cry foul, but all in all I think it is an interesting updating of the concept of what it means to be a Vistani.

Vistani are no longer a separate race.  Much like the Dhampyr presented in an earlier Dragon, they are considered a bloodline.  To become a Vistani you only need to pick up the appropriate bloodline feat.  This feat then opens up a number of bloodline feats that can be used to enhance your class abilities.

Because the Vistani are now a bloodline, they can be of any race.  They become Vistani after being subjected to the Vistani blooding ritual.  This ritual is usually performed on children who are absorbed into the clan, but it can be performed on an adult who performs a great service for the Vistani as well.

While this seemed a bit weird to me at first, I think it is a good idea to make the Vistani a bit more cosmopolitan.  In a world with a large number of sentient races, I like the concept that a Vistani caravan may include halflings or tieflings in its number.  The common bond of being outcasts outweighing the difference in race is a powerful concept to me.

As for the Vistani feats, they are very interesting.  The initial bloodline feat gives the character the Evil Eye of the Vistani feat power.  This power is a ranged charm attack vs Will which grants you combat advantage versus the target and prevents them from willingly moving closer to you until the end of your next turn.

What is interesting is that many of the bloodline feats you can pick up give you special abilities you can use against the target of your Evil Eye of the Vistani power.  These often play off of existing class abilities, like Warlock’s Curse or Oath of Emnity, and grant additional abilities when used against the target of the Evil Eye.

Probably my favorite bloodline feat is the paragon level Prophetic Preperation feat.  Once per day, it allows you to swap a daily attack spell and a utility spell you did not prepare for one that you did prepare.  The rational is that your prophetic visions led you to choose the spell you needed.

I am a little surprised that they didn’t tie the Vistani into the Shadowfell in some manner.  Since the Shadowfell is where the D&D 4e version of the Ravenloft setting is located, and the Vistani are so traditionally tied in to Ravenloft, it seems like it would be a natural fit.  It is easy to see how an ancient pact with the Raven Queen could be used as an excuse for them to wander between the Domains of Dread with impunity.

I can only assume that with WOTC exploring the shadow power source in recent issues of Dragon with races like the revenant and classes like the assassin that they were loathe to tie the Vistani to the Raven Queen and the Shadowfell as well.

Perhaps this is for the best.  With a little tweaking, the Vistani can now become an interesting part of any campaign, not just a horror themed one.

Anyway, there is nothing stopping you from placing a Vistani Revenant Assassin in your game if you want to.  Well, nothing other than good taste.