The Gaming Den

I realize this is a really, really late review. But the way 4e has fucked up this book pisses me off, as I got it to play a necromancer. 4e has something called a necromancer, which is inferior once again to a necromancer cleric. More shitty classes rear their heads here, and honestly, when you KNOW there's a market for people who like to play vampires, necromancers, and assassins, how do you fuck it up?

On with the review. I will be giving the chapters my own titles, so they won't match what's in the book.

Chapter 1: The Darkness is Dark.
This is the fluff chapter. It can be summed up in a few sentences:
-Shadow magic taints your immortal soul wif darknezz!
-Some shit about the Raven Queen
-The shadowfell is dark
-Blah blah blah.

There's a small section about how the DM can have PCs bargain with the Raven Queen, which is basically "the DM can use plot powers to save PCs, but then he can have them subject to a critical hit once per encounter when they disobey the Raven Queen, blah blah blah". So now we are informed that the DM can use Plot Powas, just like the DMG says. Thank you, Mearls, for bringing in more DM powers like in your stupid columns.

Chapter 2: Classes

I'm just going to break them up by class here.

Assassin: Chemical reactions can only occur once per day!

The first pile of shit class in the book is the assassin, or, more specifically, the "executioner" assassin (apparently the other type, which I am informed plays completely differently, is behind the paywall). It has some amusing mechanics, but the one I hate the most are the poisons. First, the poisons replace daily powers, so you can only mix 1 a day. Got that? If you get the same quantity of the same ingredients and mix them again, it mysteriously fails. Of course these are all level based, so you need to be able to kill gods to harvest dragon spit, just like Runescape. The second retarded part is that half the assassin poisons have "if the DM allows it..." as part of the the effect. There's a little sidebar where they go out and say "we didn't write anything, so make this shit up!". And they wanted money. Imagine that.
The rest of the assassin mechanics involve picking utility powers (teleport, darkness, illusions, etc), a once-per-encounter extra damage strike, and some other crap. You also get a bullshit light weapons bonus.

Lastly, you're stuck joining some lame guild for your class features. Your assassin is self-taught? Fuck you, this is 4e! I can see refluffing this, but why, oh why, did they tie the two fighting styles to guilds? The fuck are there only 2 guilds in 4e land for? 4e fluff sucks.

Blackguard: Suprisingly not shitty. Deal extra damage if you have CA, smite per encounter, dumpster dive for paladin dailies. Main stupid thing is the paragon path giving you the ability to summon an altar of darkness in the middle of combat, which strikes me as retarded imagery. Also, a commanding presence is apparently only good for sliding people in combat as opposed to getting them to do what you want outside of battle, and you can only use it once per day.

Vampire: This is not a class. Classes have choices. It picks all your shit out for you. You pick a race, a pp, and an epic destiny which is demigod because everything else sucks ass. Also, you apparently need a bullshit focus which is supposed to remind you of your former life, so your badass vampire is carrying around his childhood teddy bear, because you will be burning your wealth by level for the RNG. Except that you're going to throw away your teddy bear because you found some perv's stolen underwear collection which has a +2 bonus, as opposed to Mr. Teddy's +1. Now that's roleplaying.

As for powers, it's a motley collection of vampire themed things, which is apparently a striker or something. It attacks off both Dex and Cha, and you can't even do the warlock thing where you ignore half the powers because they're arbitrarily assigned to you. At least the attacks are "Cha+2" which kind of helps.

Binder: This class is so bad, that even the guy who tried to write a guide to it on the WotC boards gave up in frustration. It's the PHB warlock, but without the warlock's curse and preassigned, shitty powers. It gets the "summon warlock's ally" power, but this book doesn't say how to use it with PHB warlocks, proving that Essentials != 4.0. There is also a selection of warlock powers in the back, along with a new hexblade pact which I can't evaluate as I don't know how the hexb;ade powersets work. From the warlock powers in back, there's a shittier (but cha-based) hurl through hell, a not terribad inescapable zone thing (if they fail their save), and a bunch of shadow-based teleports.

Cleric: Not a new class, just a selection of powers. There's a bunch of "touch people and they feel bad" shit damage ones, a speak with dead utility, and actually good powers which raise dead guys to fight for you. Also, Crushing Despair requires you to stab people now. The best is unarguably the Shackles of the Grave power, which can raise a blast 5 worth of dead guys as minions WHICH YOU CAN HEAL TO FULL HEALTH if you have surgeless healing. So really, once you become a level 19 cleric, you can win 4e. There's also a death domain, which really isn't special except that half the attack powers are "spend action, buff other guy's attack" which is really fucking boring.

Wizard: Two new schools for the mage, making this of course, Essentials only. There's the new school of "nethermancy" (darknezz!) along with necromancy.

So now that the necromancer is finally out, the one they made us wait years for after the core books (when every older edition HAD animate dead in core), what does it get?

Shitty blasting powers. Woo fucking hoo. It gets ONE permanent summon, and if the necromancer goes enigmatic mage, 5 minions which last for a day - but as written, can't actually move. The nethermancer gets a bunch of shadow debuffs, which consist of awesome inescapable zones and things that are actually good, and the necromancer gets dark fire, dark fire, and more dark fire. Avoid this shit like the plague and play a cleric.

Chapter 3: Races of Emo.
Revenant: This was supposedly a DDI exclusive, like the assassin. Now it is not. What a surprise. +2 Dex, +2 Con/Cha

Shade: Loses healing surge, gains shitty utility powers to trade out with class. +2 cha, +2 dex/int

Vryloka: Look, it's a vampire race to go with your vampire class! +2 cha, +2 str/dex. You get a different list of shitty utilities to choose from, my personal favorite being the one where you run into a wolf but can't attack in wolf form, with the art on the next page showing vryloka in wolf form with fangs. But hey, this is 4e, what did you expect?

There is also some lame fluff about the standard races, such as "dwarves dig up bad things" and "humans like power". No one cares.

Chapter 4: Shitty Mechanics of DARKNEZZ!

There are some paragon paths in here. There's the battleweaver, an illusion class which has...something...to do with shadow, some random light-based class which creates light by drawing on shadow, a warlock pp of some demon you don't care about, the dusk oracle which can speak with dead at will (woo!) and make your at-wills hit, the nocturnal which turns into a wolf of darknezz, a raven queen path, and two paths which don't suck. shadow dancer and shadow shaper. There are epic destinies which each boost 1 ability score by two, and get more powerful when more of them are on the field, however, they aren't demigod and thus you don't care.


Lastly, there are feats you don't care about.

Final thoughts: Too many boring and underpowered classes, too much fluff hiding the fact that you're actually really weak, rules are shitty and incomplete in some places, lots of immersion breaking bullshit, boring fluff, and just a shitty book. The necromancer sucks and now every cleric gets a bullshit infinite army, which is hilarious. Assassin sucks, vampire is a joke, the new races are meh, and I am disappointed.

sounds incredibly shitty. But is it so shitty even 4e lovers think it sucks? that would be fucking hilarious.

I've seen some reviews where this is the case. Mostly they think its at least underpowered.

CapnTthePirateG wrote:I've seen some reviews where this is the case. Mostly they think its at least underpowered.

What are you talking about.


As a person who mostly plays 4E and generally follow 4E I would say that this is pretty much completely backwards.

the nethermancy is considered one of the very good schools for a wizard.

The war cleric new stuff was considered at least on par with exsting essentials options.

The blackguard was considered powerful enough to be one of the better essentials strikers stand alone but could also be used to get a black dragon flying mount by doing some horseshit with the cavalier.

there was a popular hexblade/cavalier combo that also could swap in the blackguard for a powerful effective striker.

The assassin in heroes of shadow is considered superior to the other versions of the assassin that have shown up and is actually workable (although he is not a really top tier striker but like all essentials characters his damage is within 10% of the other essentials strikers)

finally the vampire is considered to be a replacement for the monk as it basically fills the same role and does it better.

Now if your argument is that the stuff is underpowered because in general essentails characters are underpowered there is something to that although its much more complex than that.

It is much harder to make a useless or failing essentials character than it is to make a standard 4E character. On the other hand optimized 4E characters are generally a superior. I have not seen anybody say anything really different about heroes of shadow (or heroes of the feywild) than that.

Dude, I SAID nethermancy was good. Necromancy, however, is usually considered to be shit. I also said blackguard was good too. I don't think I commented on the assassin's power, just that the mechanics were dumb and counter-immersive. Also, vampire is fucking boring.

The executioner is better than the assassin? Like that's a hard hurdle to clear.

The paladin mount is generally overrated. The silver dragon mount is good because it grants you always-on flight, but even the action advantage of the mounts doesn't amount to very much because they have crippled damage.

The blackguard is awful because it doesn't have any killer-app encounter powers or dailies. Now the paladin doesn't really have any either (it does have utilities, but the blackguard and cavalier still do) but it has a bunch of other weird crap that interact with the class in such a hodge-podge way that you can grab something good out of it all along. The Hospitaler actually makes a really, really good defender if you trick it out right, which takes some system mastery. Champion of Order requires some build finagling and cooperation from your party but its level 11 power is so good that you can seriously build the class around it--hell, even epic-level Bravura/Resourceful Warlords wish they had it and in fact it was the recommended multiclass paragon path for CHA-warlords before Martial Power came out. Unfortunately due to the way auras work Cavaliers and Blackguards can't take advantage of it.

Even so, Blackguard and Executioner fall into the same trap that every other non-Ranger/Warlock/Barbarian/Fighter/Wizard (yes, I said Wizard) striker falls into; it's definitely within striking distance at early heroic tier but by paragon tier it's so far behind in killer app daily and encounter powers and action advantage that you'll feel small in the pants every time. But then again D&D designers have shown us time and time again that they only think about the first few levels, so are you surprised?

So I got to see a bud's copy of Mordenkainen's Magical Emporium recently and... wow. Just, wow. They've pretty much given up. They barely have enough content for five Bazaars of the Bizarre and they're going to make a book out of this crap?

So hit us with the rant. What kind of stupid items have they come up with, and do they have enough to implement that retarded "item rarity" no one asked for and no one wanted?

CapnTthePirateG wrote:So hit us with the rant. What kind of stupid items have they come up with, and do they have enough to implement that retarded "item rarity" no one asked for and no one wanted?

The item rarity thing was a failed attempt to overhaul their failed item wishlist system. As mentioned in several threads recently, wishlisting is really bad. It means that the players don't feel any accomplishment in getting the swag they acquire and resent the DM when things don't go completely their way.

The attempt with item rarity was to divide things into stuff the players can get under their own power, stuff the players can get by putting it on their Santa Wishlist, and stuff that the DM can put into the world or not as befits the expectations of the story. A noble enough ambition, and done properly it might actually have salvaged the core problems with wishlists vs. item dependency. The problem is that they did it in a totally halfassed fashion and never bothered to check what items various builds actually "need". And then they forgot to make the rare items be something that the players would actually feel particularly good about having found, and it's all a catastrofuck.

So yeah, there were people clamoring for some kind of item rarity system. Because the thing that 4e rolls with is currently a wishlist + catalog with a big list of marginally different items and a very small number of drops with an explicit set of orders to the DM to honor the wishlist "sometimes" and an incredibly heinous penalty for the PCs if they end up not getting core items on their wishlist. It's actually the worst possible item system. So not a few people wanted explicit guidelines as to what could be put on a wishlist to have that be definitely honored and what was considered a "bonus". But the item rarity system as actually shat onto the paper was not that system.

-Username17

CapnTthePirateG wrote:The second retarded part is that half the assassin poisons have "if the DM allows it..." as part of the the effect.

What sort of "mother may I?" effects are we talking about? Interesting story things for if you put the poison in someone's drink? Stuff that is TOO GOOD FOR 4E COMBAT (ie anything other than damage + slide the target X spaces and mark them/give them a shitty status effect you don't care about)? Or just the regular crap?

On that note, please tell me there are poisons that shift the character about just like everyone else's powers.

There's a little sidebar where they go out and say "we didn't write anything, so make this shit up!"

Regarding what? What the poisons do? Or is there just a sidebar saying "This is a sidebar. It doesn't really have anything. Pretend this sidebar is useful!"?

so your badass vampire is carrying around his childhood teddy bear, because you will be burning your wealth by level for the RNG. Except that you're going to throw away your teddy bear because you found some perv's stolen underwear collection which has a +2 bonus, as opposed to Mr. Teddy's +1. Now that's roleplaying.

Please tell me teddy bears and stolen underwear are specifically listed as Vampiric Foci. That would somehow improve the game by so much.

Player: I am playing a Vampire. He is called... Eddie. And he has a VERY SCARY TEDDY BEAR! SCAREBEAR STARE! RAAAA!
DM: Get out.

Koumei wrote:

CapnTthePirateG wrote:The second retarded part is that half the assassin poisons have "if the DM allows it..." as part of the the effect.

What sort of "mother may I?" effects are we talking about? Interesting story things for if you put the poison in someone's drink? Stuff that is TOO GOOD FOR 4E COMBAT (ie anything other than damage + slide the target X spaces and mark them/give them a shitty status effect you don't care about)? Or just the regular crap?

On that note, please tell me there are poisons that shift the character about just like everyone else's powers.

There's a little sidebar where they go out and say "we didn't write anything, so make this shit up!"

Regarding what? What the poisons do? Or is there just a sidebar saying "This is a sidebar. It doesn't really have anything. Pretend this sidebar is useful!"?

so your badass vampire is carrying around his childhood teddy bear, because you will be burning your wealth by level for the RNG. Except that you're going to throw away your teddy bear because you found some perv's stolen underwear collection which has a +2 bonus, as opposed to Mr. Teddy's +1. Now that's roleplaying.

Please tell me teddy bears and stolen underwear are specifically listed as Vampiric Foci. That would somehow improve the game by so much.

Player: I am playing a Vampire. He is called... Eddie. And he has a VERY SCARY TEDDY BEAR! SCAREBEAR STARE! RAAAA!
DM: Get out.

Most of the poisons have effects like "If the DM allows it, when an opponent is reduced to 0 hit points, the target goes permanently insane." The sidebar is essential an explanation of "Well, we didn't decide what permanent insanity meant, so your DM and you can MAKE SHIT UP! Did we mention you paid 35 dollars for this?" They DO have good effects if you put them in someone's drink, but the only instant death one requires you to be level 29, and has a level check. Whee.

Unfortunately, the book has no rules for foci. No prices, items, are anything, There are rules for using foci, but what the foci actually are is not addressed by the book.

A wishlist system basically does not work. Any of the following will work, but they don't really work in conjunction with each other. Forcing drops makes random items pointless unless the later are more powerful or come at an accelerated schedule. And in any case they work at cross-purposes at each other even if you segregate them.

1.) Random Treasure Drops.
2.) No treasure whatsoever. The DM and/or setting designers assign everything ahead of time. Everything works as artifacts.
3.) Treasure as a class feature i.e. if you're a Fire Mage you own a wand of fireballs starting at level 5.
4.) A catalog of magical items that have restrictions on currency (no tearing down the castle for a +3 sword) and equippages (there's a limit to how much swag you can use at once). I'm thinking something like a pile of four different non-overlapping crystals sorted by stuff that you can trade in/forge for offense boosters, defense boosters, consumables, and miscellaneous with the limit to how much or how powerful stuff you can equip to yourself limited by chakra. If the power level of your magical items are small and weak it's okay to assign 'real world' prices to them.

CapnthePirateG wrote:So hit us with the rant. What kind of stupid items have they come up with, and do they have enough to implement that retarded "item rarity" no one asked for and no one wanted?

Couldn't tell you. I don't own the book, I just got to look at it. I still keep in contact with people who do and I can tell you right now that the book is not even half of the size of the Adventurer's Vault in terms of content yet is about the same size and costs as much. It's padded with a bunch of stupid fluff.

Koumei wrote: What sort of "mother may I?" effects are we talking about? Interesting story things for if you put the poison in someone's drink? Stuff that is TOO GOOD FOR 4E COMBAT (ie anything other than damage + slide the target X spaces and mark them/give them a shitty status effect you don't care about)? Or just the regular crap?

On that note, please tell me there are poisons that shift the character about just like everyone else's powers.

LICH DUST RECIPE (level 15-19)

To the uneducated in the art of poison crafting, lich dust is often believed to be a powder made from the ground-up bones of liches. This belief is only partially correct; in truth, lich dust is made from a combination of pulverized bones taken from a variety of undead creatures (liches among them) mixed with other alchemical and natural substances. Lich dust retains some of the necromantic power that once animated the bones it is made from, which can drain the energy and spirit of creatures that consume it or are injured by a weapon coated by the poison.

Power: (Consumable * Poison): Minor Action. You apply the poison to your melee weapon or one piece of your ammunation. During this encounter, the next creature you hit with a weapon attack using the poisoned item takes 10 extra poison damage, and it is weakened (save ends).
Power (Consumable * Poison(: Minor Action. You pour the poison into a drink or onto a plate of food. Within the next hour, the first creature to consume the food or drink is weakened until the end of its next extended rest.

DARK REAVER RECIPE (Level 25-29)

Said to come from the pulverized bodies of angels devoted to gods of death, dark reaver powder has the ability to knock a creature unconscious for a long time. Assassins use dark reaver powder to get enemies out of the way without killing them or to send a message not to cross the wrong person. When applied in powder form to a weapon, the poison seeps into the blood and produces a diluted effect that renders enemies woozy for a short period of time.

Power: (Consumable * Poison): Minor Action. You apply the poison to your melee weapon or five pieces of your ammunation. Until the end of the encounter, when you hit a creature with a weapon attack using the poisoned item, the creature takes 10 extra poison damage, and it is dazed until the end of your next turn.

Power (consumable * Poison): Minor Action. You pour the poison into a drink or onto a plate of food. Within the next hour, the first creature to consume the food or drink falls unconscious (save ends). The creature can make a saving throw against the unconsciousness only at the end of an extended rest and does so with a -5 penalty.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:The creature can make a saving throw against the unconsciousness only at the end of an extended rest

How do you take an extended rest when you're unconscious?

No angel dust until late epic tier? Does this mean WoTC thinks drugs are epic?

Seriously though, I'm a bit confused about the inclusion of a host of one shot items such as ammunition, alchemy, poisons and the like. I realise they are optional, but they can be kind of difficult to balance against. It also seems to go against the design philosophy of reducing item bloat.

I bring this up only because the player of a ranger at the local gaming club was getting an extreme amount of mileage out of consumables.

The executioner poisons are a class feature. You get to craft a class-limited amount of them for free every day and they dissolve after a finite amount of time. Hence the draconian time-usage restrictions.