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May 16, 2012 -- 6:31AM, frothsof wrote:

Spoiler: Show

Short Shot Onslaught

Your time spent underground has forced you to adapt to skirmishing in close quarters.

Encounter        Primal, Weapon
Standard Action      Close burst 3

Target: One, two, or three creatures in the burst

Attack: Wisdom vs. AC

Hit: 1[W] + Wisdom modifier damage.

Effect: After all of this power’s attacks are resolved, you can use a free action to shift up to 2 squares for each attack that hit. You ignore difficult terrain during this movement

You do realise that close burst powers don't work with ranged weapons (RC page 269), right? So it's OK for thrown weapon seekers, but pretty useless for those who use bows or crossbows. The power's name kinda implies whoever wrote the power had forgotten that rule too...

Ironically, if your seeker is proficient with (say) the gouge, you could use that with this power. So there's probably some twinky hybrid/MC CharOp build just waiting to be discovered that turns this power into a gamebreaker.

May 17, 2012 -- 4:00AM, frothsof wrote:

although i was thinking of it for my seeker/rogue that throws daggers, i still didnt notice that. bad bad bad wording, it should have said you make the following ranged attack vs everyone within 2 squares

Or a line reading "Special: You can use this power with a ranged weapon."

Or, even better, get rid of the stupid rule that you can't use ranged weapons for close attacks.

as an aside, i also dont get whay its limited to three creatures, as if it is overpowering the seeker (purportedly a controller) to have a basic party friendly close burst power

Compare it to the wizard's Fire Shroud, which is ten levels lower, but targets all enemies in a close burst 3 and also inflicts ongoing damage. Feeling like you picked the wrong controller class yet?

OK, I took a closer look at the Skill Powers today.  And three in particular are pretty impressive, IMO...

(1) Timely Dodge (Acrobatics 6) / Encounter Interrupt: Shift up to half your speed when an enemy targets you with an attack.  (He can pick someone else in range, if there is anyone.)  Forget Second Chance and the like; an auto-miss on everything but Ranged attacks (and on those if blocking terrain is convenient) is amazing.

(2) Enter the Crucible (Endurance 10) / Daily Minor: Lose a healing surge for Resist 10 All and immunity to Weaken for an entire encounter.

(3) Iron Resurgence (Heal 2) / Encounter Minor: It seems expensive, but basically for the cost of 3 healing surges, you or your ally heals 2 surges and gets THP equal to half his surge.  Not bad for an L2 that non-Leaders can take.

-O

The book is fairly disappointing.

For the most part, it covers too much ground without providing either players or DMs enough mechanical material to incorporate into an adventure or campaign. It suffers the identity crisis of covering both Dungeons and the Underdark as if they were one and the same. But obviously, they’re not. I’ve read through this book twice now, just to make sure that my assessment is sound.

Character Themes
Pages 6–33 list a bunch of new themes with some mechanical benefits. Of course, if you do not use Themes (which are optional), then nearly 1/5th of the book is useless for you. The themes help toward developing a character background and identity. For those who are concerned with player motivations, this is good stuff. But again, providing assistance to create a character who needs to make his or her character concept relevant to the existence of the Underdark or dungeons seems completely contrived.

Races
Really good stuff here, no doubt about it. The best chapter of the book. Goblins in particular look attractive to play. Kobolds slightly less so (do they really need to be a PC racial option?), and Svirfneblin are fine. However, for every good (great?) idea in this section, there seems like a lost opportunity. Why do we not have class builds for a Goblin Artificer or Rogue who likes to blow things up? Or a Goblin Ranger who rides atop an animal companion (wolf or warg)? Why are Goblin Assassins encouraged instead of a Goblin Shaman? The authors present the charming idea of a Goblin Bard, who would be more comical than the standard counterpart (a Jester), but provides no mechanics to make it so. Or Kobolds, why not create a class build for a Trapmaster as a Rogue archetype? Or a Dragonshield Fighter? Or a Dragonpact Warlock? Or Kobold Slinger (Ranger)? The chapter starts with kernels of something really special, but ends before you can really turn the content into something playable. Detailing more about a Svirfneblin Warden would have been a welcome addition as well.

Dungeon-Themed Powers
Pages 52–69 offer up some interesting powers for all classes, but unforuntely, they way they are organized is so confusing and counterintuitive to how readers reference these books that most of what’s good here is lost. And they certainly aren’t “Dungeon-themed” as much as they are “Underdark-themed,” which is different. I can’t imagine any reader who doesn’t think this is a mess. What would have been better is to cover Skill and Class powers by the Skills or Classes.

Expert Delving Tactics
4 pages of pragmatic tactics that have been covered elsewhere.

Dungeon Types
Covers with very broad strokes about the types of underground environments, but provides nothing for the player or DM to act upon or integrate into his adventures. Generic to the point of being superfluous.

Dungeon Denizens
5 pages of creature summaries that you expect to find in any dungeon, but with no information for the player on how to overcome them, and nothing for the DM that hasn’t been covered previously. There is, literally, again, nothing useful here.

Infamous Dungeons
This is a weird section of the book. For 20 pages, we have a run-down of some of the more popular TSR dungeon modules with their publication history, but  with very little advice as to how to incorporate them into your game. It’s an odd chapter of navel-gazing, only useful to those who have never heard of them before. All of this information can be found on Wikipedia. Just bizarre.

Then the book starts getting really weird, with “Involving the Characters,” helping players justify their role in the Underdark based on the character theme they’ve selected. Again, useless if you don’t use Themes. Unnecessary material for a DM. “Dungeon Makers” is a run-down of races that build areas in the Underdark. And here’s where the authors have forgotten the rule: Show, Don’t Tell. Each race (Drow, Duergar, Dwarves, Kobolds, Kuo-Toas, etc.) is covered with such light, non-mechanical detail that all the content does is inspire… but then provide nothing to actually build upon. Duergar build fortified structures? Great! What do those look like? Kuo-Toas have breeding pits and guard them? Huh, how about listing what a typical group of guards looks like mechanically? There’s no mention of Monitors or Whips at all. Mind Flayers inspire madness? What would that look like in terms of rules that the DM can execute on the player party? What this section could have really used are diagrams of what a traditional “dungeon” could have looked like for each of these groups… or what kinds of treasure you can expect to find there… or unique traps or hazards  you might encounter. Instead, the largest section for DMs provides so little detail that it’s nothing more than light reading material.

Special Rewards
4 NPCs for you to add and a couple of high-level spells. This should have been omitted entirely or expanded upon greatly. It has more to do with Epic Tier play than any relevancy to the topic of this book.

Build Your Own Dungeon
3, count them… 3 miserable pages on advice for DMs how to design a dungeon. No maps. No diagrams. No discussion of pacing or creating varied sized rooms. No information of how to build different types of dungeons (zone dungeons, multi-level dungeons, linear dungeons that  don’t play like a linear dungeon, etc.). Nothing about how and where to place traps. How to pace a dungeon. How to introduce new objectives or quests. This is a subject that is badly needed. Halls of the Undermountain covered this topic better than this book does.

The LAST thing I wanted to do was be disappointed with this book. No one likes being a negative Nancy. But the book simply lacks enough new information that a reader can use. You will not go back to this as a reference once you put it on your shelf. I can only imagine how disappointing it would be to be one of the authors and read this assessment… but really… some direction from an experienced author would have helped here. The book has too much fluff, and the fluff that’s here doesn’t say anything new or useable. The writing also repeats its thoughts over and over again, reiterating such points as “the Underdark is vast” or “…the Underdark is not a mere dungeon—even one of unbelieveable size.” The redundancies that plague the book should have been caught by the editing team.

Ultimately, the fault is with the book’s outline. Like the review on Amazon.com reiterates (more kindly), the content is just unfocused. It’s a hodge-podge of Dragon Magazine articles instead of a cohesive resource. Just as the authors start upon a good idea or topic, it’s abandoned before details or mechanics can be used to flesh them out and make them usable.

So, sorry to harsh everyone’s mellow. Like you, I had higher hopes for this book. If anything, just know that there’s enough ideas here to start with… but you’ll have to write the rest on your own.

I have to concur with this review. I haven't looked at the player stuff, but the parts about dungeon design could really have done with some examples and more detail. Perhaps some "dungeon snippets" with example sections of dungeon with puzzles and RP content that DMs can draw inspiration from.