
detritus |

What the headline says. If you do have them, what do you think of them?
I have the Martial Powers book and I like it alot. The new options for the Ranger, Rogue, and Fighter are great. I have never really been too excited about the Warlord, but one of the options looks like it is probably the best of the 4 that is now available. If I remember correctly it combines both of the ones in the Players Handbook and gives the person using the action point to choose which bonus they are going to receive.
The new feats are nice without being overpowering and the new paragon paths really allow you to flesh out a character nicely. The swashbuckler is just plain cool.

Jezred |

I flipped through Martial Power last night. From first glance, I like the book. The additional options for the Fighter and Rogue are great and add a bit of diversity for the two classes. The Ranger looks decent, but I'd need to play a beastmaster ranger before I could say. The Warlord builds are very interesting: one is all or nothing and the other is a hybrid of the two PHB choices.
The rest of the book is decent. The paragon and epic paths/destinies look good. The additional feats add a lot of options without appearing overpowered or superior to the PHB feats.
Overall, I think this is one of the better books put out by WotC for 4E. This gives me high hopes for the other Power books, the PHB2 and the MM2.
I will be getting the Draconomicon today and will post something on that later.

doppelganger |

I flipped through both at Books-A-Million and bought the Martial Power book on the strength of what I saw. The Rogue stuff really appealed to me. Dragonomicon is a great book to flip through, but I just could not justify paying the cover price for that amount of in game use that I think I would get from it.
Both books seem to have been printed on cheaper paper than I am used to seeing in Wizards D&D products, and some of the graphic elements seem to be pixelated or blurry.

TheNewGuy |
I flipped through both at Books-A-Million and bought the Martial Power book on the strength of what I saw. The Rogue stuff really appealed to me. Dragonomicon is a great book to flip through, but I just could not justify paying the cover price for that amount of in game use that I think I would get from it.
Both books seem to have been printed on cheaper paper than I am used to seeing in Wizards D&D products, and some of the graphic elements seem to be pixelated or blurry.
I did the opposite. I'm sure my players will all be picking up copies of Martial Power, but as the DM ... gimme more 4e dragons! I ran a dragon encounter and it was the most fun I had as a DM since I ran Kyuss.

Matthew Koelbl |
Grabbed Martial Power yesterday, planning on snagging Draconomicon tonight. (From what I've heard thus far, I'm very eager to check out the advice on setting epic questing to slay Tiamat).
I am very, very impressed with 95% of Martial Power. Not just excellent options, but some great flavor, great encouragement of different ideas, and a lot of interesting mechanics for different concepts. I especially like how much racial emphasis there was - and how each race felt like they got a lot of viable options while all remaining very distinct.
There is, sadly, a handful of powers and feats that seem unbalanced. Probably inevitable, given the book has over 200 feats, and probably at least twice that in powers - four or five are going to slip through the cracks. Two of the three main issues I saw were underestimating how powerful it is to get multiple attacks, and not making as decent use of the named bonus system that 4E has built in. (For example - a paragon feat let's Dragonborn deal Strength modifier damage when they push someone or knock them prone - which is a big boost to Tide of Iron and many other powers. If they made it a feat bonus to damage, instead, it would be much more reasonable.)
The third possible area of concern was with a number of powers that were more powerful than others, with the built in downside of making the attacker grant combat advantage for a round to all enemies. Given that there is a feat at Paragon level (Uncanny Dodge) to remove the biggest downside of combat advantage (the +2 to hit), I suspect some of these powers will be a bit abuseable. Most of them, honestly, aren't too bad - any extra advantage they get is reasonably small.
The only one that really made me worry was Brash Strike, of of the new fighter at-wills. It gets +2 to hit, like Sure Strike, while also getting Strength modifier to damage, and also gets Con modifier to damage when certain weapons (axe, hammer, etc). Now, giving enemies +2 to hit is a big deal, especially for a defender, but the power seems a little too good. (Dropping it down to +1 to hit, in my opinion, would make it fit just right.)
All of that said... an excellent book. Very impressed with it, and has me suddenly filled with far more character ideas than I'll ever get the chance to really play. That, honestly, is the best sign of success I can imagine.

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The only one that really made me worry was Brash Strike, of of the new fighter at-wills. It gets +2 to hit, like Sure Strike, while also getting Strength modifier to damage, and also gets Con modifier to damage when certain weapons (axe, hammer, etc).
Well, the STR damage mod is going to be standard on a melee attack, so you've got a Sure Strike that grants combat advantage in exchange for +CON damage. Seems reasonable. And sure, you can take a feat to remove the +2 to hit, but you're still left vulnerable to sneak attacks and other powers that depend on combat advantage, right?
Seems like a power that the fighter is going to think is really OP until he runs into something that hits him for a jillion damage because he handed it CA.

TheNewGuy |
I got both yesterday. Martial Power got a cursory overview by me (I'm DMing, and this is a book that's targeted squarely at players) but it looks like it upped the flexibility of martial characters slightly. Look at all the powers that are minor actions. I think a couple of the PCs are going to be more productive in combat and I like that.
Draconomicon is great. It's a DM-only type of book, so there's no reason for players to need it. It's got all the "physiology of dragons" fluffy stuff that we've come to know and love/hate, but the crunch is solid through-and-through. Running dragon encounters in 4e is way simpler than the same thing in 3rd edition without sacrificing much in the way of tactical options. There are new dragon types, new dragon-related monsters, planar dragons, elemental dragons, shadow dragons. The list goes on. They also include probably a dozen sample lairs, completely mapped, stocked, and statted up in the delve format (which REALLY helps me run 4e games). There are some of the "heavy hitters" of the dragon world statted up in the back ... Tiamat, Cyan Bloodbane, and, of course, Dragotha.
If you're looking to run more dragon-related encounters, this book is a must. Even if you just want to have a couple per campaign and keep the rest of the game more "swords & sorcery", this book is still solid for background material on dragons, their lairs, their hordes, and how to make those scarce dragon encounters truly memorable.
I loved it. It was exactly what I was hoping for.

Matthew Koelbl |
Matthew Koelbl wrote:The only one that really made me worry was Brash Strike, of of the new fighter at-wills. It gets +2 to hit, like Sure Strike, while also getting Strength modifier to damage, and also gets Con modifier to damage when certain weapons (axe, hammer, etc).Well, the STR damage mod is going to be standard on a melee attack, so you've got a Sure Strike that grants combat advantage in exchange for +CON damage. Seems reasonable. And sure, you can take a feat to remove the +2 to hit, but you're still left vulnerable to sneak attacks and other powers that depend on combat advantage, right?
Seems like a power that the fighter is going to think is really OP until he runs into something that hits him for a jillion damage because he handed it CA.
The main issue is that Sure Strike doesn't get Str mod to damage. That is the trade it makes for getting +2 to hit. So with Brash Strike, you trade in Combat Advantage to get back your full damage - and get some extra damage on top of it, which is where I think it crosses line.
Also keeping in mind that the vast majority of creatures that gain benefits from Combat Advantage also tend to have a very easy time acquiring that Combat Advantage, and I think the fighter is getting significantly more then they are giving up - even without Uncanny Dodge.
Now, that said - I don't think it will break the game, and I think there will definitely be times when the Fighter will be at a penalty for using it. But it does seem a bit much, and part of a trend in Martial Power (and Adventurer's Vault, for that matter, with Bloodclaw Weapons and similar items) that it is ok to give large boosts to damage in return for some danger on the part of the PC.
Now, while I accept that concept in theory (and think a lot of PCs that use it without caution will end up dead), I think it is a lot trickier to balance than most trade-offs... and in the case of this power, they went too far over the line, which is especially worrisome in an At-Will.
Again, nothing too gamebreaking, and I suspect I'm more likely to be concerned about powers that might be abuseable, while still likely to be perfectly balanced for most ordinary play.

TheNewGuy |
I think we are starting to see the germs of power-creep in the books released so far. I think that's inevitable. It probably won't get as bad as 3rd edition did and WotC is doing it in such a way that it evens itself out over time.
If Martial Power makes fighters/rogues/warlords/rangers a little more effective, you can bet that the Arcane Power and Divine Power and PHB2 are going to compensate. In the end, though, I think the differences are slight and they're doing a good job of keeping a lid on the power creep.
I hate to say it, but the GSL looks like it's going to be a good thing. A lot of the most blasphemously broken rules were written by 3rd parties (the Psionic rules by WotC being the NOTABLE exception). The GSL should clamp down on people publishing garbage just to publish something. Hopefully we should see a much higher quality of 3pp material.
Sorry for the ramble.

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I am very pleased with the Draconomicon and think it is their best product so far. The lairs section is very useful as a DM. Likewise, the rules for building a hoard are great. I am mildly put off by the new dragon types, in the same way I am bothered by the changes made to elemetnals. However, the designs are solid, and the rule sets make sense. There's some very interesting work done on cosmology and life cycle.
Much of it had a second edition feel. Thumbs up from the Kilgores.

JohnBiles |
Draconomicon was really excellent, balancing the fluff and crunch very well and giving me tons of ideas and useful encounter fodder. And it gives you lots of prefab Dragon lairs at various levels. And it has non-solo dragons so you can build things like Dragon + rider or multiple-dragons encounters easily.
Martial Powers looks really good too.