Critique? Heroes of Horror - & - Magic of Eberron

[User3]

Looks like these 2 new books are getting a lot of rave reviews at WotC and EnWorld boards.

Normally Frank, K, and others right scintillating reviews on these new books. Sure would be nice to hear what the IMHO Crew has to say about them.

The Dread Necromancer sure looks sweet. And the MoE book seems to have a lot of nice new swag as well. i'd be curious to see if the new Artificer infusions can make the artificer even more broketastic.

Anyone?

[Username17]

OK, here's the deal on the Dread Necromancer and the Archivist:

They get crappy abilities every single level in exchange for having a crappy spell-list, and are otherwise pretty much the same as an already established class (Wizard for Archivist and Warmage for Dread Necromancer). Both of them have spell learning mechanics which are written in an explicitly generous fashion - which means that people who never really thought about how to go about learning a bunch of spells are covering themselves in happy juice because they think this is new territory.

The Archivist is particularly uninspiring, mostly because while the wizard (the core class it was modelled on) is somewhat less explicit on that point, but wizards really do work that way as well:

A wizard can also add a spell to her book whenever she encounters one on a magical scroll or in another wizard's spellbook. No matter what the spell's source, the wizard must first decipher the magical writing

So a wizard can't copy spells out of an Archivist's spellbook (or even a Sorcerer's spellbook if they have arcane preparation), but she can copy spells off of an Artificer's scrolls.

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The Dread Necromancer, OTOH has the very generous mechanic that it gets to cast spontaneously from its spells known, and every spell on its list is automatically known. Unfortunately, the list really sucks until you get to quite high level. But fortunately, you can add spells to the list. In fact, once you hit level four, you'll continue to be able to add spells to the spell-list every four levels once you Prestige out.

The Dread Necromancer responds very well to such otherwise stupid feats as Arcane Disciple, because adding spells to the spell list makes them castable spontaneously. Expect to see a bunch of Dead Necromancers of Oliadarma.

That being said, Dread Necromancers are a lot better than Sorcerers. At first level, they get Chill Touch that they seem to be able to combine with a "charnel touch" that is usable an unlimited number of times. They can cast in light armor like a bard, and they are proficient with one martial weapon (which is either going to be a reach weapon or a bow). They get unlimited uses out of cause minor wounds, which would be largely meaningless, except that it means that they can heal themselves at a slow rate outside of combat because they took Tomb Tainted Soul at first level. So at very low level they can actually compete with the fighters at their job (which is good, because they don't have any good spells at this point). At higher level they are just like Sorcerers except that they know a whole lot more spells and have a more generous mechanic for getting more.

Despite all of your minor advantages, you still aren't as good as a non-good cleric of your level at raising hordes of the dead or self-buffing. Eventually you are going to be able to do some really wild stuff involving Fear and Soul Killing. Your last half-way decent ability is at level 8, at which point you are going to Prestige out into anything at all. It's that or get a bonus to saves against level loss when Death Ward is already spontaneously castable by you - and I'm not even kidding.

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There are a few PrCs in there that appeal slightly, but nothing that you can't do better elsewhere. The Taint Mechanics are totally batshit of course. The maximum Taint you can pull off is in the mid two hundreds, and the Taint Scholar gets a save DC that is linearly dependent on his Taint Score, so you see where that is going. Those rules, like every version of Taint in every edition, are completely unsalvageable.

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And that's... the whole book. The book is really short, and despite that fact it has a lot of filler text. Sentences are reiterated sometimes three or four times. Almost the entire book is "flavor", which mostly boils down to "make sure the players understand that the characters aren't having fun if you want to stay in genre for horror". At least one of the authors used to write for White Wolf and it shows - entire sections that should be filled with rules are instead filled with ambiance and a directive that the DM should ad hoc some rules to cater to that ambiance.

The dream world, for instance, is something that you enter when the plot requires it and which may or may not cause your magic to behave in an unexpected fashion. There's a feat that you can take that makes your magic behave normally unless the DM overrules it with an "especially strong dream" - which basically means that the feat does nothing at all.

-Username17

[User3]

Very interesting, Frank. Thanks! I'm a big fan of the Dark Knowledge class ability though. You can use it and a spell in the same round. Which is nice when you can use DK to stun.

I'm getting the books tomorrow. So I can comment more on it tomorrow.

Anyone have any info on Magic of Eberron?

[Username17]

Actually, I lied. I forgot about one other section - the spells. There are a bunch of spells that are powerups of PHB spells that have weird flavor descriptions/restrictions that won't work the same way in every game.

For example, there's a version of Bestow Curse that is miles better and actually worth casting - but to work properly you have to name something that the target has done to you to piss you off so much that you are casting this spell. Now presumably, if you are casting a combat curse on somebody, they probably did something to piss you off. Tried to kill your party if nothing else. But some DMs might conclude that they had to have struck you or met you in combat previously - in which case the spell would be worthless.

Similarly, there's a contingent resurrect that costs nothing (no XP, no GP, no levels) as a 7th level spell. You have to describe how you are going to die, and while the example is pretty vague, many DMs are going to dick you on that. More importantly, it leaves out such crucial information as what the hell it actually does. You come back from the dead, but where? When? The spell doesn't say. You can make a strong case for you rematerializing with 1 hit point in the same lake of lava you died in.

-Username17

[User3]

Frank basically hit the main talking points for Heroes of Horror. I'll add this:

The Dread Necromancer is a niche class. It lives in that special place of a fighter/caster. With its touch attack, DR, armor profs, and martial weapon, it basically is asking for a elite player to minmax the hell out of it.

At low levels, you play an elf in a mithral breasplate and run around smacking people with a longsword and offhand touch attacks for Two weapon fighting action, occasionally busting out Chill Touch or your other touch spells for your larger enemies. Then you heal after every battle with Charnal Touch because you really did take Tomb Tainted Soul, or you drop Inflicts on yourself during battle.

By 8th level you've just gotten your mount, a 16 HD skeleton or flying zombie (or both, if your Cha mod is +4 or better by 8th level), and you stop being a fighter/caster. By this point you are blasting off spells while making your mount attack stuff. You've also picked up a ghostly visage familiar, and now you are immune to mind-affecting spells forever, and you just sit on top of that bastard and blast away.

Then you are required by law to PrC. Fiend-blooded is a niche PrC that only exists to put good arcane spells on bad spell lists. At this point, you go blaster mage (using Scorching Rays and Fireballs, as usual), but you use Energy Substitution[cold] and Lord of the Uttercold and later Empower Spell, blasting away at yourself and undead, healing them and you and jacking your enemies.

Also, for gods, you want Afflux and the Deathbound Domain. It gives ytou some very nice necomancy spells.

Overall, you are not as powerful as a Sorcerer. You can only play one kind of character, with one path of advancement, and you will never have the raw power or utility of someone who can pick spells off the whole Wizard/Sorcerer list. Straight Necromancers(specialist wizards) will spank you with all the additional Necromancy spells they have(assuming they have access to non-core spells) and straight clerics will always have the better undead spells(assuming they also have access to non-core spells).

In a Core world, a Dread Necromancer is a strong enough niche to work as tanking character with his summoned and animated undead and his melee skills, but otherwise he falls short despite my best efforts to make him good.

For other classes, the Tainted Scholar is crazy good with built in insane DCs and nice powers and has only one weakness: all his spells are evil, and so Dispel Evil automatically Dispels them.

The Taint rules are in their third rewrite and they still don't work at all. It pains me. A lot of the tainted feats are so good that you have to take them, meaning that you are basically racing towards taint, then picking up ability drain/damage immunity to prevent sudden character-ending destruction via taint, and then you spend GP to perfectly prevent more taint aquisition for the rest of the campaign. Taint has no negative effects you care about, adds bonus feats, ang gives access to crazy power.

PrCs of note include the Fiend-blooded who, as said before, exists to put good spells onto bad arcane lists. The Dread Witch is fun because you are expected to have a cohort casting very weak Fear effects on you every round so that you can get free 0th to 2nd level uses of spells. I could see an odd but workable Scorching Ray Sorcerer built off this rules abuse.

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Magic of Eberron was written by fanboys, and thats the only explanation.

First, they have some cool but cheap grafts that follow unique grafting rules. That unnecessary, but its the only salavagable part of the book.

Also, they add a ritual mechanic where you pay small amounts of gold for real power. There is the Dragon Totem rituals, which add dragony powers, and I don't see why you can't layer them on for every color of every dragon, picking up a rainbow of draconic immunities, breath weapons, summons, etc.

Then there is a ritual to add a Dragon Prophesy feat as a bonus feat, which is a poor man's psionic focus with a range of nifty uses via feats. Again, I see no reason why you wouldn't add all five of these feats as the ritual is quite cheap and seems to not disallow multiple reiterations. Taking them as real feats is a fool's game.

The Dragon Prophesier PrC is actually quite neat for a 9/10 class, and is another example of Eberron making a 9/10 caster I'd actually want to lose a caster level for. It adds some crazy choosable powers like stealing spells.

The rest of book is unusable crap like artifacts that have no damn effect, just a "it kills you but the DM can make villains and monsters out of it if he feels like it", and ho-hum spells, symbioants that still aren't good, magic items you would convert to craft pool, and monsters that no DM could describe during play other than "a pile of raw coldcuts with teeth".

[RandomCasualty]

1129840337[/unixtime]] Almost the entire book is "flavor", which mostly boils down to "make sure the players understand that the characters aren't having fun if you want to stay in genre for horror". At least one of the authors used to write for White Wolf and it shows - entire sections that should be filled with rules are instead filled with ambiance and a directive that the DM should ad hoc some rules to cater to that ambiance.

Yup, that's pretty much how you run a good horror game though.

To run a horror game, you don't need to add anything to D&D, you need to do what Call of Cthulhu did and pretty much strip away things to make the PCs weaker and more vulnerable.

[User3]

Guest above is me.