My last blog entry saw me reviewing the core books, now lets head on to the splat books. I have to say upfront that i expect the following three from splat books:
A) spice up the classes, and deliver new options for everyone (versatility)
B) power creep. It's inevitable, but it has to be kept to a minimum in order for the game to not break. Most importantly, this means that there should be few obviously already broken powers to start with (like blade cascade or orb of imposition) - stuff like that can happen, and will always happen - but it should not be the theme of the book.
C) Only a few flavor parts. Such books are meant for players and DMs wanting to get even the last portion of power out of a given class or feature, and as such, flavor is mostly irrelevant.

It took me quite a while to decide whether I wanted to have the "other" splat books or not. I started buying and preordering all of themin January, but the only one i really needed at that time is Divine Power for my poor, poor Paladin.

Martial Power [February 2009]

If you are a ranger, rogue or warlord, this book perfectly delivered. While the new rogue and ranger builds just add something on par with the other builds, and just some gamestyle flavors are different, the new warlord builds really change the way you want to build your 'lord. Bravura presence makes you totally independent from your secondary stats, Resourceful presence relies on both. It was not really a big surprise for me that our party Warlord changed to Resourceful immediately.

Now to the big offender: fighter. There is now a two-weapon fighter build. something that should have been best left to the ranger. Worst of all, it could even outdamage the ranger, if built properly. An Errata-fix took care of the ill-balanced dual strike, but still this kind of fighter is far to offensive minded to really fulfill the role of "defender" properly.

Second big offender: fighter, again. The Battlerager is one of the nicest concepts I have ever seen - to bad it fails in practical play. Stacking temporary hitpoints is just mean, and gaining them for nearly every attack made against you, makes you nigh unkillable. A DM really would have to go through hoops to challenge you. Of course, this was also "fixed" in the meantime. Which means, they dropped the whole old feature, and replaced it with a new one. Playtest => Failed.

Feats are "as expected". Many of them seem better than the ones already in existance, but overall, they are still balanced. Some of them needed fixes, and some of them already received them - but nevertheless, mostly solid work.

I won't go into details with epic destinies - sure, there's some cheesy combinations to be found, but this will always be the case for epic destinies - and to be blunt: it looks like nothing will ever outdo the core epic destiny of demigod.

Arcane Power [June 2009]

The second in line for all those who seek power, and again, it was delivered very late in europe. This book I'll have to do class-by-class:

Bard: At long last, a ranged weapon leader! On the downside, this build gets a lot more attention than the already existing. You're mostly better off with the existing powers if you are a cunning or valorous bard. The same holds true for bardic feats.

Sorcerer: Both builds are well done, with cosmic adding a strong secondary controller feeling, and storm adding the ability to play a dex-secondary sorcerer without the feel of managing 200 different options for every die roll, like it happens with the wild one. Contrary to the bard, the "old" builds also are supported, and partially this holds true for feats. All in all, a chapter well done.

Swordmage: I have to say, I'm not happy with the inclusion of this class into this book, and the reasons are various:
A) it takes aways space from the other classes - while there were only 4 martial classes in martial power, there are now 5 classes in arcane power, with both having equal pagecount. logical conclusion is, that arcane classes are less supported than martial ones, and it shows.
B) including something that is rather optional (Forgotten Realms Setting) into a Core-Option-Book, just feels like they want to force you to buy that book as well. Setting Specific Classes should just be handled with the setting books, that's my take on that.
C) If there is a swordmage, then where is the artificer? FR being supported early , but the Eberron class not at all, is something hard to swallow as hardcore Eberron fan.
But back to the mechanical - it's new aegis is probably the weakest around, and it's feats are thin. Powers are mostly run-of-the mill, so overall, I'd say not much to buy here if you just take it for your swordmage.

Warlock: For anyone feeling that their Warlock is not hard enough to play, we'Ve got a new tool: Vestige Pact! You basically get lots of options how your pact boon works, and it can change with powers used. The Downside of it is: a lot more management to be done. I advise anyone who wants to play such a Warlock to not only have powercards, but Vestige-Cards as well, in order to make it more manageable.  Warlock received the biggest love in this book, and even if you did not choose Vestige pact, you'll have a lot new powers to chose from. feats are rather slim pickings, but most of them are useful.

Wizard: Many people wanted to play an illusionist or summoner. This book provides those mechanics. Both builds feel nice to play, and you've got enough to choose from this book - but if you don't want to be a summoner or illusionist, the powers are mostly wasted for you. A search for elemental keywords is pretty much a waste of your time - you'll really be better off using just PHB material. The feats are again slim, especially in paragon tier - but the crown jewel of offenders in this book can also be found: Enlarge Spell. -2 damage, to increase the size of a spell? Yes, please, anyday, we're not controller because we care about damage that much. Hitting a possible 49 instead of 25 creatures with a single spell, is nothing to be sneered at.

Now to come to my last offender, a feat which is pretty nice in its concept, but will always help breaking mechanics: arcane admixture. As of now, you can e.g. mix cold with fire, and gain everlasting combat advantage with frost-cheese and deal more damage at the same time. Admix thunder to your scorching burst, add in resounding thunder and enlarge spell feats - makes an at-will 7x7 spell. this is only the tip of the iceberg - but one can easily see how this will be problematic over and over again. (makes also a nice multiclass features for arcane strikers)

Divine Power [July 2009]

The last one to arrive, and the one i was waiting for most. (paladin player, remember?) It adds the concept of domains, which are pretty much feats that aid you with your chosen god. I'm not yet sure what to make of it, but it seems to me like this is once again, like Channel Divinity, something that will only get cherry-picked now and then, and not be an integral part of any divine build. Part of this failure is that every domain only supports one of the at-wills of each class. Take another build, and you don't have any of the powers supported by your domains!

I'm not done analyzing all the options yet, but here are my impressions on the classes:

Avenger: Solid support. Censure of Unity is probably better than Censure of Pursuit, as monsters usually do not flee from strikers...
Cleric: A new build focussed on not dealing damage and instead controlling the field more. While this is a neat addition, it also is a trap. Don't build your entire character around it, you just need to damage someone, sometimes!
Invoker: The new covenant is within the same power curve as the old ones, and the powers just supply more options. Nothing really new to be gained here.
Paladin: Straladins rejoice! You're less MAD now. Oh, no, sorry, wishful thinking. But some of the flaws have been adjusted. You can make your challenge finally worth a grain with mighty challenge, and you have options that do not focus on lay on hands but damage (ardent vow) or the stalwart image of a paladin shrugging everything off (virtue's touch). The build that really has gained a lot from the DP book is accidentally the one I am playing - Chaladin with Wisdom secondary. No need for melee training anymore, as virtous strike fixes all that. Also, with divine sanction being a rider effect of many powers, no more fear that your paladin is not sticky enough. if at all, you need to be careful now that not everyone gangs up on you.

About Feats:
Many of the new feats to be had in Divine Power are Racial Feats. This is a bit sad, because while it allows players of said races to gain one nifty item in their repertoire, it leaves general options out there to dry.

All in all, this book adressed many of the issues that the PHB left open for clerics and paladins. Some issues still remain, however: Strength paladins still suck at marking, and need 4 to 5 attributes to be an effective defender. Clerics still don't have real different builds, just channel divinities and powers based on STR or WIS, but nothing added onto that difference. 

So, that's it for today. Might get back with AV1+2 as well as the settings books (most of which I do not own myself) when i feel like it.

I recently took the survey "What do you think (about PHB2)" from wizards, and taking it, I saw that I'd actually would like to comment or rate all of them. Since there's currently no official way to do so, I need to do it verbatim.

Players Handbook 1 [preordered before release]

The classes and races are solid, however there are some major problems with them: The divine classes get the stick in regards to build paths, as anything else can choose between two of them. And the Paladin gets the stick again, as he is pretty much the non-stickiest defender you can imagine, with the added "bonus" of needing 4-5 of his attributes to be effective. Lastly the Warlock, a striker that is so much a controller, that you'd rather write his role as striker|controller instead of it as secondary. These added effects make him look rather bad in comparison to his peers, the all-time-high-damaging ranger and the almost-never-missing-rogue.

The feats are OK, however some of them are unimaginative, simple damage increasers. - When the first interviews were out about how 4e works, I really thought that could change and feats would mean something. It's still back to mostly increase character power, and only sometimes increase versatility/customize how it feels to play the character. Also, there is a big hole in epic feats: Most of them are just Weapon Critical feats, and if you don't use a weapon (like those poor 4 spellcasters) you'd better choose something else from paragon or heroic, or get some other sourcebooks as your bases are really not covered here.

The items are OK. With the amount of different implements introduce in 4e, those feel like they are a bit undervalued.

Dungeon Masters Guide [preordered before relase]

Now this is a book I almost entirely like. It has one major problem chapter, and the author even admitted to this: Skill Challenges. It was written rather fast, and you can see that. The numbers are broken, no matter how often you crunch them, and the mechanics as described work clunky for most groups. Within mere days, fans had created better, playable alternative systems. It also did not help, that the example adventure "Kobold Hall" did nothing to introduce skill challenges. There really should have been 1 or 2, to present the mechanic in a concrete surrounding.

There's another gripe about math in the DMG: DCs. They were errata'ed almost instantly: QS failed badly. But why? i still don't know. They playtested 4e a lot of times, built the system about basic mathematical premises, yet the DCs are that much too high, and after the fix, too easy again. I'd advise anyone to keep the old DCs, and just drop the +5 for skill checks, or use the new DCs, and add +5 for skill checks. 

Monster Manual [preordered before release]

Solid book. Lots of monsters, mostly balanced. Sometimes, they did not keep themselves to their own ruleset for monsters - which results in too hard or boring encounters. Some of the iconic monsters are missing out, but well, you can't put everything from 3 past editions in the first book. Major failures of the book: in epic, things get really slim; Inclusion of oversized weapons for playable races. 

Players Handbook 2 [June 2009]

First off, this book came to me a lot later(4 months!) than to my friend, and we ordered like 2 weeks apart. This was a start to measly delivery of D&D in europe, where they currently seem unable to deliver close to the release dates - It's always at least 2 weeks late.

The new classes are really a good addition - But some of the mechanics are simply overpowered. First and biggest offender: The Sorcerer. Adding STR to AC that's something I can live with. But adding STR or DEX to any arcane damage roll, is too much. Sorcerers can easily take a lot of multi-target powers, which means that any encounter without elites or solos has just gotten a lot easier for the party to deal with. Second, and also a big offender: Avenger. Rolling twice for pretty much everything is really game breaking. Even if it does not ruin your campaign by overpowering the monsters, it takes a lot of time at the table. Initially, 4e was all about simplifying the game. Avenger as well as Wild Sorcerer, they broke this in already the second core PHB book.

New items: a bit on the slim side, but well - they are only meant to be an addition for the phb items, so i can live with that.

BUT: the feats! Obviously, the guy who crunches numbers for R&D failed again. There are many game fixing feats in PHB2, and I'd advise you to houserule them in as bonus feats or fixed additions to some scores, as they are very much annoying to take, and so much more powerful than anything else. My current houserule on this is: at lvl 5, gain weapon+implement expertise as 2 bonus feats. at lvl 11, gain paragon defenses. at lvl 21, gain robust defenses. There really should never be the need for players to take simple +to-hit or +defense feats just to be able to keep up with the monsters.

Monster Manual 2 [skimmed over it@DM]

It's as solid as the first book. Nice about it is that it expands the epic playscale to somewhere more usable. What I dislike is  the small amount of playable races in it - I so do like my custom NPCs...

So, and that's it for now. Will write about the *** Power and maybe AV series soon.

I've wanted to write about this for quite some time, but now that I've 1 spare hour till I need to go to my thursday night game and nothing to do at work, I'll just do it now.

In case you didn't know: Keith Baker, the creator of Eberron, is currently on a world tour. And so, one day at the end of june, our DM called me and said: "Hey, Keith is gonna be here at the start of June". Somehow, this was unexpected. Yes, i knew - He'll journey the world, he has responded - and then, for months, nothing. Good timing as well - pretty much the whole group had time available, and those non-working students where at the start of the holidays - perfect! Full-Day schedules possible.

Hmm... looks like I still have not talked about the title. Maybe it's best if I just describe the impressions he left with me:

• That man really knows what he's doing. Creative Energy seems to flow from whatever he's doing. His Cthulhu Monopoly Variant is really funny, but don't attack other players - it's what cost me the game early on.
• Gaming. One Night to play one game, with characters you've never seen, a DM you've not known 2 days before, and all in a foreign language. And we've all had a blast. 
• Insight. There are so many aspects to Eberron, so many stuff that has been considered - and he's the guy that knows it all. The real important fact however, is his ...
• Adaptability. Whatever you throw him, he can easily make it fit in his setting. Users posting on this site's forum should have seen this many times by now. His gaming style, and group style, is all about ...
• Options. Lots and lots of them. Whatever you want to do, he'll be game.

All in all, if he liked being here even a quarter of how I enjoyed his stay, this was a good time. In restrospect, I really should have taken the days off - but business is business, sometimes you just can't afford it in all honesty.

So, now in all privacy, I need to work out a new plan. How do we get him back, and locked into my newly built dungeon? Laying out a route of fine chocolate might help, but I'm kinda sure it won't work.

So: If you ever want to come back, do so. We'll always have a place to sleep and some food for you, even if there's no time to game.

When you first come around a new page, or the retrofit of an already existing page, there are many questions that arise around your personal likes or dislikes of various features. I could care less for groups, forums, chats, videos or even blogs, but that's just me, I can have them in a lot of other places, or worst of all, implement them myself. What is the real deal maker or breaker, however, is the usability, technical maturity of a page, this is what will make users beam with joy or spoil their week, as this is what concerns anyone, whether they like the concepts or not. And let's face it, WOTC/onesite has many dealbreakers in this current system.

1: Documentation

When i see something new, and this is radically new compared to the old VBB forums, there should be some kind of newbie-guide around. Now that it doesn't exist, is there some kind of action-related help, or at least a link to an html/wiki tutorial? Again, the answer is no. A graphical editor seems to be the solution of choice for all that. But where are the features you'd need most? You have to digg through masses of html tutorials to find what you could or could not do, and this is nothing an ordinary user should have to go through.

2: Consistency

So, HTML is allowed. Fine. I used to be a web-developer earlier in my career, and am now managing a governmental site with around 150.000 users. Pull out those old HTML skills, and scribble on - or so I thought. HTML is allowed, but nowhere close to all tags, and even worse, far from all attributes. Many a useful thing is stripped out for security reasons, that much I can understand - but where is this documented? Where can you see what is allowed and what is not? Figuring out everything by trial and error, is bound to give a lot of people either headaches, or bring them towards resigning and non-using the features.

This goes as far as this: the TinyMCE Editor used in this system as HTML editor supports a lot of stuff, like anchors or links that get opened in new windows. However, their own system strips that HTML code out like it is seriously dangerous, leaving you with a screwed up post if you are lucky, or without a post if you are not.

3: State of the Art

Well, this is something I can forgive a site if it does not use every latest hype like google wave or AJAX. But really - there are a lot of features that ARE standard for any good community or forums system.

1. The ability to see whatever you subscribed to. This is no joke. Every System where you can subscribe to something, is bound to have a page where you can look at it, AND see the changes.
2. The ability to customize your own "home"-page. Not everyone has the same needs, or wants to see the same stuff. The same thing that's possible with RSS-feeds, should be possible with pretty much any section in your own "home"
3. RSS for groups, and maybe forums as well. Really, this technology has been around for so long, you'd consider it standard to a point that hurts. Every major site out there has RSS feeds.
4. Adaptable Layouts. Skinning a site to a relatively fixed screen? That's 1990's style. At work, screen to small. At home, screen to large. I now needed to adjust for both via Stylish... which should not be necessary.
5. Low Bandwidth Themes/sections. I do not own an iphone or use any other portable internet, but this is something they neglected.
6. Accessibility. It is very easy to make a page that is also usable for disabled or handicapped people. But as it stands at the moment, they'd rather not try anything in here. Contrasts are horrible, and the HTML lends itself to many things, but definitely not screen readers. Read up on section 508 or WAI.

4: Color me up.

As it stands, the WOTC pages have two major problems:
A) the default color scheme is lacking
B) the current themes are very similar, thus rendering people with specific likes or dislikes unable to escape the "all white"-mania that is currently going on.

5: The Legacy

Yes, when designing a new system, you have to spill some beans. You have to go on. You have to change stuff. But never, ever, forget where you come from. The current change made many of the people who just wanted places to post unhappy, due to the unavailability of the old and well-used BB-codes, and due to certain issues with data-transfer from the old to the new system gone bad. If you remove such a thing as BB, you'd better have a replacement plan for everything old in place, or it will get as far as the situation is currently on many roleplaying or the CO board: people are scrambling, trying to recover whatever they can do from google or various other sources in order to preserve their work.

6: The Future

So, where is Wizards headed with this Community Site? I honestly don't know. I'd like to know, however. They nowhere mentioned what their intent behind this site is, just that it's newer and a community now. I guess it shows, why certain areas here are really neglected - There seems to be no real overarching plan, except for making a newer, better, more sophisticated community page to draw in more people and keep them here. This is a good company goal, but it should not be the only reason to do such a site.

Now, that I've posted two pages of complaints, I also need to give some opinions on what WOTC absolutely needs to do:

• Get a better concept. Community is good, groups are OK. But as it currently stands, groups will explode, and most of them will stay very small due to the sheer amount of them. The end result will be, that even prospering communities of PbP games will suffer, since noone will find them by accident anymore. The only way to alleviate this, would be to advertise those groups better. (instead of featuring every MTG group around the planet)
• Get some of the things back to state of the art. In some ways, the old forum was more state of the art than the current. Especially problematic places are the WYSIWYG editor TinyMCE, and the whole WIKI - at least support all proper wiki tags, redirects, and fix those links.
• Make more themes. You've had like 50 themes on the old forums, and now we are stuck with 3 who basically are the same save for some backgrounds pictures. 
• Before the next change, ask your community more questions.
• And last, but not least: Learn from this, and make the transition more smooth. nothing would be stopping you from keeping the old forums alive for a little while longer, and test this thingy in parallel mode with more than just a few odd-out users.

So, that's about it. Gotta go and drown myself now, for posting a BLOG.