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Heroes of the Feywild is coming soon, and it was announced that among the new races in the book is the pixie! Pixies will have a reach of 1, unlike most Tiny creatures and will have a racial power that lets others fly called Pixie Dust. Tinkerbell anyone?
Can you take a Pixie hostage and shake the pixie dust off against their will to grant Flight?
EDIT: I can see the black market application of this trait. Little caged pixies for sale!
Seriously though. A racial power to grant Fly to an ally for one round is reasonable.
Anyone who has bought this book capable of telling me what you thought of it? Hows the flavor/crunch?
I liked it. For fluff, it has lots of short fairy-tale like stories all through the book, and they have a kind of choose your own adventure in the last few pages of the book to make a nice background for your char.
As for the races, we have the male-only satyr, a female-only Hamadryad, and of course the pixie. They are ok, but not quite my thing.
The new classes are more interesting - I like Berserker(Barbarian) and the Skald(Bard), and the Protector(Druid) and the Witch (Wizard) seem nice. Note that the new classes use the 4E, not the essentials system, so they are fully equipped with At-Wills/Encounter/Daily/Utility powers as those in PHB1.
While I haven't read everything yet, from what I have seen yet, I can recommend it. Would buy it again.
I dig heroes of the feywild. One of my players is trying the witch, which(haha!) on the surface is similiar in flavor to Paizo's witch (a good thing as far as falavor is concerned). Also with the berserker barbarian and skald bard it makes norse mythology games doable (Thirteenth warrior anyone?)
The flavor of some of the stuff is pretty good, and if you want to run a fables style game or something set in ancient greece or the like it is a must have IMO.
The themes are cool and the paragon paths are pretty neat.
- The fey beast tamer gives you an animal companion,
- the sidhe Lord is just crazy good allowing you and your allies to make pacts, and bargains in which you give them something and they give you something (such as they lose an action point to get a free standard attack and you gain the action point).
- Tuathan are fey blooded shapechangers (from what I guess)
- and the Unseelie agent is a spy type that can make a shadow weapon out of thin air..
the paragon paths are for the character classes introduced (berserker, skald, and witch)
The epic destinies are cool aswell.
Overall I really like the book, and While I don't dislike Essentials in general (I'm one of the few who are fine with the 3 phbs, etc) the added books like feywild and shadow IMO add some very cool ideas and add ons to the game.
Overall Very cool product :P
This is the first book I've picked up in a while and I'm really glad I did. Overall the pixie is my favorite race from the book for no special reason beyond being a pixie. The other races are fine but don't really hold a strong place in my heart.
My favorite part of the book however are the alternate classes. I can definitely feel the marks of essentials on these classes and I think that it has improved them.
Berzerker
The berzerker is a barbarian subclass and it continues what I saw in the Essentials Ranger by mixing martial and primal keywords on powers depending on what type of power it was. Powers that seem to require more skill as a warrior are labeled as martial and those with more barbaric ferocity are primal. The special thing here is that these differences have a significant impact on the way this class works. The role of the subclass is both defender and striker, but not at the same time.
Each battle you start out with the defender aura from the Essentials books and you have at will opportunity attack that you get to use when an enemy shifts or attacks an ally (and not you) while in that aura. During the battle though, if you use one of your barbarian primal attack powers, you enter a berzerker fury (you can also use a minor action while bloodied for this same effect). Then you lose your defender aura and opportunity action power while gaining extra damage with your basic attacks and at-will powers.
From my rough look through, it seems that the primal encounter and daily attacks already take into account extra damage as they have a bit more damage than their martial counterparts.
Not sure how well it plays, but so far it is among my favorite mechanics for rage that I've seen.
Skald
The skald is a bard subclass and even though it has at-wills, encounters, dailies, and utilities at all the right levels, it feels like post Essentials class and I love it.
The skald has an odd leader mechanic where they can produce an aura, and then use their twice per encounter minor action ability to heal an ally in that aura (either you or an another ally in the aura can do this). On the first read through it just looks very oddly worded for what it does, but looking through the rest of the class, many of skalds powers grant additional bonus effects through this aura.
Like most martial Essentials classes the skald uses basic attacks instead of attack powers. There are no powers in the skald write up that cause you to make an attack (unless the power just makes you make a basic attack). The actions required the all the powers in the class are minor actions, immediate actions, and many that require no action.
They are powers that add additional abilities to your healing aura, add effect to when you hit with a basic attack, or otherwise heal and aid your allies. Pretty much every turn a skald has will involve them making a basic attack while using other powers to augment it.
I really do like it using basic attacks (like some of the essentials classes) while having a great number of options to play with (like the pre-essentials classes). I even like that it also has the same mix of martial and arcane keywords rather than just applied one of the two throughout the class.
Protector
The protector is a druid subclass. I don't really like the name for this subclass, it does have the same memorable feel as the others. I almost started this section by just calling this option "Druid."
Overall, it is a normal druid class option, but it has one notable Essentials-like area (not terribly accurate as I would have called the psionic lack of encounter powers "Essential"-ly than not if they had come after the Essentials books). The subclass doesn't have any choices for daily attack powers even though the book does give daily attack powers for other Druid classes (and a Protector who takes a feat for the option). The subclass gains Summon Nature's Ally at 1st level and at any level where they would have gotten a new daily power choice, they get a more powerful creature to summon and they can use the daily power more times per day (up to a max of three times per day).
Other than that difference these are more or less the standard summons I've seen from other classes. The protector needs to use their own actions to fuel the summon, however each one has something I haven't notice before. If not given any commands they perform basic actions (usually performing a melee attack or moving up to an enemy). Commanding makes it do more, but even not commanding it leaves it acting in battle.
Witch
The witch is a wizard subclass and is most normal of the classes in the book to me. The first Essential-type thing I see from it is that your choice of coven as a witch dictates what encounter power you start out with (and I believe that power later is intended to turn into the improved version of itself that appear at later gain the other coven's power but it doesn't specifically note this). That is a very loose connection though. The only other thing is the Augury power each witch gets, but only because that is more flavor and less direct mechanical bonuses than early class abilities.
I really do enjoy all the class options in the book so far and I'm looking forward to seeing them in play.