This book was a fun one to work on, especially when the playtest characters completely embarrassed the Tarrasque. If you decide to pick it up, I hope you enjoy!

[Paizo/Vic: The fourth author's name should be "Greg Tito."]

[Paizo/Vic: The fourth author's name should be "Greg Tito."]

Knowing Greg, I think he'd actually prefer it kept the way it is.

sweet. been waiting for this.

At this point I just want to know who to blame for the quote on the Mythic Hurler (Deathwarden Paragon Path).

I have enjoyed Greg Tit's work in the past, so I'm considering picking this up to see if there's anything I can adapt. Always looking for cool material to mine.

The spirit-sworn sounds like it would mesh nicely with some stuff in my current campaign.

I haven't looked at this one yet, but I do like the feel of coming up with established fantasy archetypes and basing a class off of that rather than taking a role, trying to come up with a new way to fulfill that role, and fill in the details later, which honestly feels like how some of the WOTC classes seem to come about.

Plus the Goodman Barbarian from the previous book actually feels more like the Conan-esque version of the archetype, which I like.

I'm almost tempted to pick this up even though I'm not currently in the 4E game I was playing in.

This book was a fun one to work on, especially when the playtest characters completely embarrassed the Tarrasque. If you decide to pick it up, I hope you enjoy!

That isn't a good thing, the Tarrasque is supposed to be tough, if he was embarrassed by the play test characters, they were either over level, or over powered, and if they are over powered, as a DM I'm not going to let this book into my campaign.

Cool sounding flavour, check, but don't make 3rd party juiced splat book classes please.

I'm curious if the new WOTC licence would have allowed you to make Death Warden and Necromancer as class variants instead of classes unto themselves (variants of the Warlord (?) and the Wizard (or Sorc)) much like the * Powers books add variants to the classes.

That isn't a good thing, the Tarrasque is supposed to be tough, if he was embarrassed by the play test characters, they were either over level, or over powered, and if they are over powered, as a DM I'm not going to let this book into my campaign.

Cool sounding flavour, check, but don't make 3rd party juiced splat book classes please.

Many of WotC's own splat books add a huge power creep. I witnessed a playtest in which they used only the core and martial power books and taken on a solo lvl30 red dragon with a single ranger. So the assumption that it's only 3PPs who are adding power to the game is incorrect.

Brian Cortijo wrote:

This book was a fun one to work on, especially when the playtest characters completely embarrassed the Tarrasque. If you decide to pick it up, I hope you enjoy!

That isn't a good thing, the Tarrasque is supposed to be tough, if he was embarrassed by the play test characters, they were either over level, or over powered, and if they are over powered, as a DM I'm not going to let this book into my campaign.

Cool sounding flavour, check, but don't make 3rd party juiced splat book classes please.

I would note that it seems that just sometimes the players have abilities that just counter a monsters abilities. A monster may rely heavily on being able to move in and out of combat, but is heavily hampered when facing a single fighter.

I see luck and how PC abilities interact with monster powers as having a greater impact on how a combat goes than a set of classes being a bit more powerful than the norm. Additionally I would suggest that if one merely allows the Player's Handbook 2 in a game, it affects balance more than most third party products.

Brian Cortijo wrote:

This book was a fun one to work on, especially when the playtest characters completely embarrassed the Tarrasque. If you decide to pick it up, I hope you enjoy!

That isn't a good thing, the Tarrasque is supposed to be tough, if he was embarrassed by the play test characters, they were either over level, or over powered, and if they are over powered, as a DM I'm not going to let this book into my campaign.

Actually, the problem in this case was the Tarrasque itself (which, according to most accounts, is not the threat it ought to be), not the classes. We tested this book at multiple levels against core parties of the same roles and levels, and found the results--in terms of damage, survival, and playability--to be roughly equal. In this case, it's the target monster that was the issue, not the characters we used against it. Other monsters and encounter groups provided significantly more challenge during the playtest sessiosn.

Cool sounding flavour, check, but don't make 3rd party juiced splat book classes please.

Any designer, if worth the name, attemps to make classes that are flavorful and balanced. A bland, balanced class is no fun to write, and an overpowered, flavorful class is no fun to play.

This book isn't 'juiced,' by any stretch, but you're entitled to check the preview on the Goodman Games site and ddecide for yourself.

I'm curious if the new WOTC licence would have allowed you to make Death Warden and Necromancer as class variants instead of classes unto themselves (variants of the Warlord (?) and the Wizard (or Sorc)) much like the * Powers books add variants to the classes.

The deathwarden is very different from the warlord--enough so that making it a variant of the warlord wouldn't have worked (in fact, I know Tavis specifically worked on making it a not-warlord). The necromancer might have been workable as a wizard build, but that's not how the class was designed.

I'm quite certain, however, that variant builds and powersets for WotC classes would be permissible under the current license. I don't think that all concepts work as variants, though.