Yesterday, I got my copy of the Advanced Player's Guide from Expeditious Retreat Press. Overall it isn't bad for a 3PP. I like what they did with the "missing" classes and races. I think, given the material that has been released for 4th, the powers need some tweaking. Some are weak compared to their core counterparts, while others are a bit strong. The book itself is softbound with black and white pages, which doesn’t bother me but might bother those expecting a hardbound full-color product for their $25.
The martial artist is surprisingly decent, if perhaps ill-suited for traditional sword-and-sorcery game play. I love some of the names of the Troubadour Spells. Many have an air of the dramatic, such as Deal With Him! Others are an homage to various sources that many gamers love, such as I Am Not Left-Handed! I like all of the classes on paper, but again I feel some powers need adjusting to bring them in line with the powers of the core classes. I feel that the races are very well done,
Anyway I like the product and the sentiment for it, but some serious play-testing needs to be done. I may do some house-ruling on some of the powers to make them more in line with other classes. There have been some corrections posted on the XRP website; be sure to check those out.
Overall, I recommend plunking down the money and getting this book. It is playable with minimal adjustments and very useful for ideas for both PCs and NPCs.
Wow. What a difference a day or two makes. I wish to recind my review posted above.
After thoroughly reading over the APG, I have determined that this product was not play-tested, is horribly inconsistent and unbalanced, and was perhaps rushed to get to print to make a buck before WotC's Player's Handbook II came out. That is the short version of my revised review. The long version requires a lot of swearing.
A couple of examples that come to mind.
* Many of the troubadour's melee attacks target defenses other than AC. Even the melee Strikers, Defenders and other Leaders generally target AC with their weapon-based powers, as being proficient with a weapon grants a bonus to the attack. This makes the troubadour's attacks generally more accurate than even the rogue, ranger, fighter or warlord.
* One of nature priest's Level 1 Encounter Powers is a Close Blast 6 that pushes the targets 6 squares and knocks them prone (as well as having the effect of a -4 penalty to ranged attacks until the start of your next turn). This is way over-powered compared to the wizard's powers of Thunder Wave, Burning Hands, and Color Spray. A fight on a cliffside could be over with one use of this uber-power.
Being the UBER-nerd that I am, and wanting to play a bard NOW rather than in March 09, I am revising the Troubadour class to make some better sense and be in line with the other two Leader classes (i.e. the warlord and the cleric). The Inspiring Warlord beats the Troubadour as written hands down. My version will be more balanced while not being a clone of the other two classes. As I am using the AGP as a starting point, I will not share or sell my work (as much as I'd like something for my efforts).
So save your money folks and either pass on this one or get the PDF. A more balanced version of the classes will be coming soon enough. (The races within the book appear balanced enough to play, but they alone aren't worth the purchase.)
I hope future 3PP releases are of much better quality than this one.
In your opinion, Jezred, how does the APG stack up against Goodman's Forgotten Heroes: Fang, Fury, and Song?
* Many of the troubadour's melee attacks target defenses other than AC. Even the melee Strikers, Defenders and other Leaders generally target AC with their weapon-based powers, as being proficient with a weapon grants a bonus to the attack. This makes the troubadour's attacks generally more accurate than even the rogue, ranger, fighter or warlord.
I'm not so sure about that. It seemed somewhat to me as if the troubadour had about as many weapon attacks at defenses (will, reflex, fortitude) as the rogue, and those powers seem to be divided between dexterity attacks and charisma attacks. The other powers are usually the troubadour implement powers. So I wouldn't say that the troubadour has that many more options for attacking defenses, just that they have less options for attacking AC.
* One of nature priest's Level 1 Encounter Powers is a Close Blast 6 that pushes the targets 6 squares and knocks them prone (as well as having the effect of a -4 penalty to ranged attacks until the start of your next turn). This is way over-powered compared to the wizard's powers of Thunder Wave, Burning Hands, and Color Spray. A fight on a cliffside could be over with one use of this uber-power.
-4 penalty on ranged attacks against you and allies adjacent to you until the the start of your next turn.
I'm not as convinced that this is that overpowered (with the exception of a cliffside battle or similar situation). Compared to burning hands, this spell does no damage (meaning it doesn't kill even minions which is what I think most area spells would be best suited for).
If the battlefield had areas that apply negative penalties or damage, this spell gets a power up, and would become overpowered if those areas caused death (like high cliff-sides or lava) while I have only played in a few 4e games, the only areas of death on the battlefield were one that the enemy could safely ignore (otherwise I would have attempted to use my own rogue powers to shove the enemy into it).
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In your opinion, Jezred, how does the APG stack up against Goodman's Forgotten Heroes: Fang, Fury, and Song?
Crimson-Hawk, there are links to some threads comparing the two books at the Goodman Games forums. As one of the authors of FH, my opinion is somewhat biased but I think it's great to have two (soon to be three) perspectives on these classic classes instead of none! Even when the PHBII is available, I expect there will be people who want to go with the FH or APG versions - for example, if you visualize a barbarian (aka savage warrior) as a defender rather than a striker.
Jezred, I think we're definitely going to see a steady increase in quality of 3PP products as time goes on, just as was the case when 3E was launched. We had the opportunity to do a good deal of playtesting with the first Forgotten Heroes book, including running ~20 different groups using these classes through the tournament at Gen Con. (Premade characters and tournament module available here.) Nevertheless, the second FH definitely benefits from our additional months of playing 4E (and having the rules be more-or-less stable and available for public discussion, which wasn't the case with the first book). And the third book that we're working on now also has the advantage that there are other published examples of class design that we can use as inspiration to expand the boundaries of what's possible.
Ok, some time has passed. My opinion of the work has swung back and forth between my two posts: fairly decent and fairly bad. I think that there is a lot of potential in the book. Comparing the troubadour to the playtest artificer (i.e. another Arcane Leader), the powers seem more reasonable. Perhaps I knee-jerked a bit when I saw the "Close Blast 6; Push 6" because in my own play experience push powers are very 'strong' and useful. (I still think the Blast should be 5 and the Push distance based on WIS, but that is IMHO.)
So now that I have taken a look at things, I would say that it is a decent-to-impressive first attempt by the author at a major solo work. There are some things that I would change or tweak, but then my play experience is perhaps different than that of the author or other readers. I may have to check out the Goodman Games product and compare the two.
Anyway, if I could delete my first two posts and replace them with something more in-between, I would. That would perhaps reflect my true opinion of the APG.
Crimson-Hawk, there are links to some threads comparing the two books at the Goodman Games forums.
Considering that both books were written during the playtest period, I think both your team [i]and Ari did a fantastic job, Tavis.
Yes, there is going to be room for error. In fact, XRP scrambled real fast to post a two-page errata for their book once several editorial errors were discovered. Even a couple of powers got completely re-written in the errata due to the nature of the final 4E rules.
I haven't been able to follow FH much, since (as you mention on the RPG.net forums) I heard of Ari's work much sooner and so I spent my money on his book rather than yours. But from what I saw on the druid preview, FH does look interesting.
One thing that I do agree with on some people's assessments was Ari's lack of "taking risks." But I like that. He didn't make assumptions about the Primal or Ki power sources, which will make transitioning to the PHB2 much easier, imho. Admittedly, it did cause some fan backlash; when I deduced that Ari's martial artist was a divine striker and announced such on ENWorld, so much negativity ensued that I nearly vomited.
FH, from what I hear, takes greater risks... the Primal (and perhaps the Ki) power sources are tapped and the class concepts are much closer to what the WotC versions are predicted to be. This might be better for people who want to create their characters now and then rewrite their stats later when the "official" versions come out.
At some point, I'm going to get the money put on my GreenDot card so that I can get FH, if for no better reason than to have a counterpoint for the APG. For now, though, I still favor the AGP, since it fits very nicely into the source/role matrix I've constructed with other fan-based classes.
Anyway, if I could delete my first two posts and replace them with something more in-between, I would. That would perhaps reflect my true opinion of the APG.
I had a feeling that would be your final assessment once all the chips fell.
I admit, I favor the APG so strongly that after I'd read your second post, my own kneejerk reaction would have been less than diplomatic. I caught myself, though, and simply asked you to compare it to the FH.
It was a learning experience for me. That both books were written during the playtest period had affected their initial quality was something I failed to take into account. There is always going to be strengths and weaknesses to any book.
And, for the record, I like your house-ruling of the Gusting Wind power.
After reading a bunch about FH, mostly from this post, I went ahead and purchased that too in PDF. I am a bit of an impulse shopper, and I had some cash sitting around in PayPal that needed spending. :) That and I like much of Goodman's work that I thought I'd give the FH a look-see, seeing how my FLGSs are less than anxious to stock 3PPs around here.
I really like the FH'd take on the bard at initial glance. I like the way the instruments work in enhancing certain powers. I like the idea of how they went with a swashbuckling build and a mystic build (which is how I would house-rule the AGP troubadour anyway). Overall I prefer FH's bard to AGP's troubadour at first glance. I need more time to look over the FH before I make a "final decision". (No more knee-jerks here.)
I think both the AGP and the FH has a lot to offer with its 'non-core' classes. My advice: get them both!!! Then you can use either, or both, or pieces of each. Perhaps get the PDFs and "frankenstein" your own book together for your playgroup's usage.
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Considering that both books were written during the playtest period, I think both your team [i]and Ari did a fantastic job, Tavis.
Thanks! I'll pass that on to the rest of the guys when we get together to playtest our newest set of classes later this week; that can be a dispiriting process of tearing apart one another's babies, so it's good to have some heartening things to share then as well.
when I deduced that Ari's martial artist was a divine striker and announced such on ENWorld, so much negativity ensued that I nearly vomited.
I missed that brouhaha - back then it was too hard to read forums and not be able to speak out. What part of divine striker did people get upset about? As I was saying in another thread, I kind of feel like I did a disservice to the OD&D foundation of the monk being a subclass of cleric by making them martial instead of divine. And although I toyed with making them a defender, in the end I decided that martial artists in the movies that inspired Arneson are all about ripping out people's spines; it was just an artifact of 3E monks not being very good at dealing damage that made them temporarily into a class that was mostly effective at sucking up attacks.
I think both the AGP and the FH has a lot to offer with its 'non-core' classes. My advice: get them both!!! Then you can use either, or both, or pieces of each. Perhaps get the PDFs and "frankenstein" your own book together for your playgroup's usage.
I like the way you think, sir! In the next 4E game I run I'm going to try "frankensteining" with the PHB classes as well - letting players mix and match powers from different class lists, adjusting the primary and secondary stats as necessary.
EDIT: I should add that I don't think going with this power source or that one is a risk mechanically, since nothing I've seen indicates that there is any mechanics behind power source. You could make a class that used the Care Bear power source and as far as I can tell that wouldn't interact with the rules of the game any differently than any other source. (If there are mechanical effects of power source anywhere, please let me know!) You could say that going with power sources that aren't defined in the GSL was risky, or that Ari took fewer risks by not re-defining classes that are named in the GSL; but in our case at least I know that it was our publisher that made that call, not us.
As one of the authors of FH, my opinion is somewhat biased but I think it's great to have two (soon to be three) perspectives on these classic classes instead of none! Even when the PHBII is available, I expect there will be people who want to go with the FH or APG versions - for example, if you visualize a barbarian (aka savage warrior) as a defender rather than a striker.
I do like different versions, which is why I am getting FH through my FLGS. Love different versions.
I missed that brouhaha - back then it was too hard to read forums and not be able to speak out. What part of divine striker did people get upset about?
The "divine" part. Most of the haters were a little too quick to point out that it made absolutely no sense to make a class called a MARTIAL artist into a DIVINE class. Even after it was explained several times that the "martial" part of the title "martial artist" was simply designating that the class was focused on unarmed combat, haters were still posting that by dint of their name MARTIAL artists HAD to be of the MARTIAL power source. It got so bad that I eventually gave up on my own thread.
I like the way you're thinking on the power source, though, even if I've declared recently that I don't like tempting fate with "new" power sources until WotC defines it. Perhaps there will be mechanics to differentiate the power sources in the future. Who knows? *shrug*
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Perhaps there will be mechanics to differentiate the power sources in the future. Who knows? *shrug*
That'd be awesome, but IMO to make it work they would have needed to include power source in monster entries. As it stands you could make a rod of cancellation that was especially effective against interrupting arcane effects, but since arcane is exclusively specified for PC classes there'd be no way of knowing that you could use it against the powers of a drow arachnomancer, say, but not a drow priest.
but since arcane is exclusively specified for PC classes there'd be no way of knowing that you could use it against the powers of a drow arachnomancer, say, but not a drow priest.
Wow, I never noticed that little detail. Yeah, that'd put a wrench in the monkeyworks. I know I'd judge that on a case-by-case basis, but I can see a very strong argument for having needed to notate that in the official rules from Day 1. I hope WotC figures something out on that front.
Hey! Maybe it'll be in D&D 4.5! /duck