Post by Gilvan Blight on Oct 26, 2008 12:24:15 GMT -5
Quickly - Rules light, probably more appealing to people who know The Realms.
[glow=blue,2,300]Summary:[/glow] This is the first campaign book released for the new 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons. It gives you all of the information you need to play in the newly updated Forgotten Realms.
The book starts off, after a brief into, with two new race options. The first is a rather cool race called the Genasi. These are humanoids with a touch of elemental thrown in. Each has the aspect of one of the elemental aspects, so there are Fire Genasi, Wind Genasi, Earth Genasi etc. The element affects their look, their outlook on life and what powers they get. Each element gets a rather unique bonus (Wind Genasi can fly, Fire can do a flaming attack, etc). The second new race is familiar to most D&D players, but never as a Good Aligned PC race: The Drow. It's interesting that they are now making it okay and official for people to play Drow who have turned their back on the Spider Queen. After all the rules for the new races the book takes a look at how all the core PHB races fit in to the setting.
The next section details two new Character Classes. The Swordmage and the Darkpact Warlock. The first is a totally new class and is a Fighter/Mage style character who uses magic to supplement melee combat. The second is a variation on the Warlock class from the PHB, where this on is one who gets their powers from an Infernal source. Nearly half the book is dedicated to these new classes, as like the PHB each class has to detail every power, every utility, the paragon paths etc.
Chapter 3 takes a look at character backgrounds. This section again takes up almost half of the book. Each set of two pages gives information on a region of the Realms and lists a distinct benefit characters from that area get. This really is the bulk of the book. Each region gives common knowledge, landmarks, and then 3 sample character styles and then 3 sample motivations. This is where we find out what happened during the Spellplauge. The Spellplage is a huge catastrophe that happened 100 years ago in game. See 4e Forgotten Realms isn't your fathers (or even your old) forgotten realms. It follows that Points of Light idea that the PHB had. Everything is more desolate, and overrun with monsters. The Spellplague nearly destroyed the world and what's left is small bastions of civilization. In addition some other plane of existence has swapped with large portions of Farun.
Chapter 4 gets into new Feats. 90% of these deal with the new races, gods and classes from this book. These are racial powers, Chanel Divinity powers for the new gods, new multiclass feats, etc.
Chapter 5 gives you about 6 pages of new Rituals, and Chapter 6 gives some more information about The Realms in general. This last chapter explains the Spellplauge in a bit more detail, talks about social classes, Technology levels, The calendar, Deities and other details missed in the earlier chapters.
[glow=green,2,300]The Good:[/glow]I really like the new races. The Geansi are just cool, and now you don't have to bend the rules to play that good aligned Drow fighting against his or her heritage. The new classes are interesting and pretty much everyone loves more options. I liked the concept of regional traits, it's a nice way to make one Human Paladin different from the Next (something that is definitely harder in 4e then 3.5).
[glow=yellow,2,300]The Bad:[/glow]I was disappointed with the Feats section. I was hoping for something new and cool for my character and instead I saw lots of new and cool things for races and classes that didn't even exist when I made my toon. I would have liked to have seen some Magic items, Forgotten Realms specific ones.
[glow=red,2,300]The Ugly:[/glow]Chapter Three was BORING! See I've never in my life read a Forgotten Realms novel. I've never played a game in the Realms or read any source books or rules. So this page by page gazetteer on how things changed was not of much interest to me. Even worse a lot of the sections just tell you thinks like "X has sunken devastating the Y", which probably makes Realms fans go "Wow I can't believe they did that" while I go "Where, devastated who?". I know for a fact that at least one Realms fan loved this stuff and even went online looking for information that wasn't mentioned in the book. Personally though, I found it very dry and hard to get through.
[glow=purple,2,300]Summary:[/glow]I mainly picked this up due to the fact I am playing in the Living Forgotten Realms RPGA events at our FLGS. I knew that rules in this book could be used in our games so I picked it up hoping for more options. Thus my disappointment with a book that contained way more background information about places I had never heard of then new stuff for my existing character. I do think the new classes and races are pretty great, unfortunately I already had a character that I'm rather attached to, so they aren't of any immediate use to me. I really think a long time Realms fan would love this book though. All the background stuff that I found little interest in seems to really excite people who know and love the setting. Overall I don't think this is a required book every player should have. If playing in the Realms then maybe. I would suggest that one of the players at the table buy it and then share as there isn't enough in there to be of interest to every player all the time.
[glow=blue,2,300]Summary:[/glow] This is the first campaign book released for the new 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons. It gives you all of the information you need to play in the newly updated Forgotten Realms.
The book starts off, after a brief into, with two new race options. The first is a rather cool race called the Genasi. These are humanoids with a touch of elemental thrown in. Each has the aspect of one of the elemental aspects, so there are Fire Genasi, Wind Genasi, Earth Genasi etc. The element affects their look, their outlook on life and what powers they get. Each element gets a rather unique bonus (Wind Genasi can fly, Fire can do a flaming attack, etc). The second new race is familiar to most D&D players, but never as a Good Aligned PC race: The Drow. It's interesting that they are now making it okay and official for people to play Drow who have turned their back on the Spider Queen. After all the rules for the new races the book takes a look at how all the core PHB races fit in to the setting.
The next section details two new Character Classes. The Swordmage and the Darkpact Warlock. The first is a totally new class and is a Fighter/Mage style character who uses magic to supplement melee combat. The second is a variation on the Warlock class from the PHB, where this on is one who gets their powers from an Infernal source. Nearly half the book is dedicated to these new classes, as like the PHB each class has to detail every power, every utility, the paragon paths etc.
Chapter 3 takes a look at character backgrounds. This section again takes up almost half of the book. Each set of two pages gives information on a region of the Realms and lists a distinct benefit characters from that area get. This really is the bulk of the book. Each region gives common knowledge, landmarks, and then 3 sample character styles and then 3 sample motivations. This is where we find out what happened during the Spellplauge. The Spellplage is a huge catastrophe that happened 100 years ago in game. See 4e Forgotten Realms isn't your fathers (or even your old) forgotten realms. It follows that Points of Light idea that the PHB had. Everything is more desolate, and overrun with monsters. The Spellplague nearly destroyed the world and what's left is small bastions of civilization. In addition some other plane of existence has swapped with large portions of Farun.
Chapter 4 gets into new Feats. 90% of these deal with the new races, gods and classes from this book. These are racial powers, Chanel Divinity powers for the new gods, new multiclass feats, etc.
Chapter 5 gives you about 6 pages of new Rituals, and Chapter 6 gives some more information about The Realms in general. This last chapter explains the Spellplauge in a bit more detail, talks about social classes, Technology levels, The calendar, Deities and other details missed in the earlier chapters.
[glow=green,2,300]The Good:[/glow]I really like the new races. The Geansi are just cool, and now you don't have to bend the rules to play that good aligned Drow fighting against his or her heritage. The new classes are interesting and pretty much everyone loves more options. I liked the concept of regional traits, it's a nice way to make one Human Paladin different from the Next (something that is definitely harder in 4e then 3.5).
[glow=yellow,2,300]The Bad:[/glow]I was disappointed with the Feats section. I was hoping for something new and cool for my character and instead I saw lots of new and cool things for races and classes that didn't even exist when I made my toon. I would have liked to have seen some Magic items, Forgotten Realms specific ones.
[glow=red,2,300]The Ugly:[/glow]Chapter Three was BORING! See I've never in my life read a Forgotten Realms novel. I've never played a game in the Realms or read any source books or rules. So this page by page gazetteer on how things changed was not of much interest to me. Even worse a lot of the sections just tell you thinks like "X has sunken devastating the Y", which probably makes Realms fans go "Wow I can't believe they did that" while I go "Where, devastated who?". I know for a fact that at least one Realms fan loved this stuff and even went online looking for information that wasn't mentioned in the book. Personally though, I found it very dry and hard to get through.
[glow=purple,2,300]Summary:[/glow]I mainly picked this up due to the fact I am playing in the Living Forgotten Realms RPGA events at our FLGS. I knew that rules in this book could be used in our games so I picked it up hoping for more options. Thus my disappointment with a book that contained way more background information about places I had never heard of then new stuff for my existing character. I do think the new classes and races are pretty great, unfortunately I already had a character that I'm rather attached to, so they aren't of any immediate use to me. I really think a long time Realms fan would love this book though. All the background stuff that I found little interest in seems to really excite people who know and love the setting. Overall I don't think this is a required book every player should have. If playing in the Realms then maybe. I would suggest that one of the players at the table buy it and then share as there isn't enough in there to be of interest to every player all the time.