Review: Martial Power

I’d been looking forward to Martial Power, the fourth-edition Dungeons & Dragons supplement for martial characters, for some time.  Happily, Amazon got it to me a day early, so I’m able to review it.  Does it meet expectations?  I obviously haven’t been able to play with the new content yet, so this is based on just a reading, but my initial reaction is:  Yes, mostly.

Wizards of the Coast, like TSR before them, has a history of putting out player-oriented supplements in large numbers.  Generally these are broken down by class “groupings” — so we have the Complete Priest’s Handbook, covering second-edition clerics, specialty priests and druids, or the Complete Arcane, covering third-edition arcane spellcasters, including wizards, sorcerers, and warlocks.  Martial Power follows in that tradition.  Its content is oriented, not surprisingly, toward the four classes that employ the martial power source:  fighters, rangers, rogues, and warlords.

These lines of supplements have one other thing in common:  their quality was always variable, and their content best taken by the GM with a grain of salt.  While I’d put Martial Power pretty high on the quality scale, at least on first glance, I did take note of a couple of things that might warrant some GM attention.

First things first.  The production values on this 160-page book seem pretty high.  The style — font choice, layout, and so forth — matches that of the core 4e rulebooks very closely, keeping things nice and consistent.  I’m no great judge of paper quality or anything, but it seems decent, as is the binding, and the ink doesn’t easily smudge or anything.  It looks like this is a hardcover that will hold up to use.

Content starts on page 4 and runs through page 159, interrupted by the occasional chapter-title 1 1/2-page graphic in the 4e style.  A great deal of it is rules — new feats, new powers, new builds and ability options for the four classes, new paragon paths and epic destinies.  If you’re not the type of person who enjoys products full of game-mechanic additions — if you prefer the non-mechanical detail — then Martial Power is not going to please you.  It’s not entirely without the “fluff,” but that’s definitely a secondary consideration here.

The content is broken down into five chapters:  one for each of the four classes, and one for feats and epic destinies.  It breaks down to about 30 pages for each class, 20 for feats, and 10 for epic destinies.

Fighter: This chapter introduces two new build options.  The battlerager is a barbarian-style fighter who gains bonuses to damage rolls when wearing chainmail or lighter armor and when he possesses temporary hit points.  He’ll have these fairly often, because his class feature gives him temporary hp whenever an enemy hits him (after the attack is resolved).  Furthermore, these temporary hp stack with ones he gets from another source, creating an exception to the standing rule.

The tempest fighter is a two-weapon build, and it gains a bonus to attack and damage rolls with weapons that have the off-hand property.  It seems very like the two-weapon ranger, with only a couple of minor differences — there’s even a Dual Strike at-will power that’s more or less identical to Twin Strike, but without the ranged option.

There’s a pretty good array of powers, with anywhere from 4-6 exploits of each level (and each of the types of level 1 powers).  Two new keywords are introduced:  Invigorating powers grant temporary hp when you hit with them, if you’re trained in Endurance, while Rattling powers give the target a -2 penalty to attacks until the end of your next turn, if you’re trained in Intimidate (and if it’s not immune to fear).  I’m not sure how I feel about the “if you are trained in X” clause.  I suppose it makes those two skills a little more appealing, but at the same time it reduces the utility of the power to those who aren’t trained, which might cause some pigeonholing.  Fortunately, there are plenty of choices here that don’t use those keywords.

Sidebars deal briefly with the fighters of the core races, leaving out humans and half-elves, though there are no real insights here — the dragonborn sidebar, for instance, begins, “With their naturally high Strength, dragonborn make excellent great weapon fighters or battleragers…”  Other sidebars, such as Signature Weapons, spark a little more interest.  The Fighters in the World sidebar takes the opportunity to make explicit one of the central ideas of 4e:  “The rank-and-file soldiery of the local barony, the band of mercenaries, … these aren’t real fighters.  But fighters do emerge from among these sorts of people.  Your fighter character might have served in the military… but you rose from those ranks to become something greater than your colleagues.”  It’s a repeat of the “an army of elves is made up of soldiers, not fighters” line from (I think) the Dungeon Master’s Guide, but an apt one.

Fighter paragon paths include the dwarven defender, the knight protector, and the berserker-like ravager.  There’s a good mix of paths here, most of them fairly general and broad in application — which I consider a good thing in a book such as this, because it means they can easily be adapted to many campaigns.

Ranger: The new ranger build is the beastmaster, and quite a few of the new powers presented for rangers are beastmaster powers.  The animal companion is a separate creature (and ally) who acts on your initiative.  You use your actions to deliver commands to your companion — you give up your standard action to command it to make a basic attack, for instance, although both of you can move with a single move action.  You can command it to do other things, at the GM’s discretion; the example given is that you can pick up a bag of coins as a minor action, so you could instead spend the minor action to direct your companion to pick up the bag in its mouth.  Your companion’s opportunity attack costs you an immediate interrupt.  And so forth.

Animal companion is itself a sort of class — whether you have a lion, tiger, or lynx, for instance, it’s a Cat.  Available types are bear, boar, cat, lizard, raptor (bird of prey, not dinosaur), serpent, spider, and wolf.  Each has its own ability scores, speed, defenses, hit points, attack, damage, and trained skills; some also have small bonus traits, like the boar’s +2 to damage when charging.  The given eight options cover a lot of ground, but it doesn’t look as if it would be too hard to adapt a new sort of companion, such as a dolphin for an aquatic campaign.

Your animal companion is the same level as you are, and its stats mostly improve with level.  It has two healing surges; it also gets a second wind when you take yours, and if you’re adjacent to it, you can spend a minor action and one of your own healing surges to heal it.  You automatically learn a ritual to raise it if it dies.  Your hunter’s mark can target either the creature closest to you, or the one closest to your companion, and either you or your companion can inflict extra damage (but only one of you on any given round).

In exchange, in addition to trading two-weapon or archery focus, you give up Prime Shot.  All in all, it looks like a pretty balanced trade.  It won’t give the ranger extra attack actions, but it does give him extra tactical options, at the expense of some personal offensive power.

Sidebars are pretty mundane here, although there’s a nice rumination about what exactly Hunter’s Quarry entails, in character, that bears a read.

Ranger paragon paths presented include the avalanche hurler (a thrown-weapon specialist who switches from two-weapon melee to ranged as necessary — an interesting idea, though I wonder about the effectiveness), the feral spirit (beastmastery specialist), the pack runner (beastmastery specialist focused on wolves — a bit redundant, I think, but there you go), horizon walker, and sharpshooter.  This crop feels generally weaker than the fighter paragon paths, and a couple of them seem redundant.  Others are very specific, but it’s hard to begrudge something as intriguing in concept as the hellborn shadow, a tiefling ranger paragon path wherein the ranger makes use of his devilish lineage to add some “shadow and flame” to the typical two-weapon ranger goodness.

Rogue: This chapter presents two new class builds and one class feature option.  The aerialist is an acrobatic specialist, probably a nod to the first-edition Thief-Acrobat, which favors the Artful Dodger tactic.  The cutthroat rogue is a more straightforward thug, and favors the new Ruthless Ruffian tactic — the ability to use clubs and maces in place of light blades for rogue powers and Sneak Attack, and to add Strength bonus to damage when using an attack with the Rattling keyword.  This is very similar to Brutal Scoundrel, gaining club and mace proficiency but limiting the Strength bonus to only specific powers.  I’m not too impressed.  It does help create a mugger/thug-style rogue, I guess, but the difference between it and Scoundrel is pretty minimal, and I wish they stood apart more.

Some of the rogue powers are really cool, though.  I especially love the level 6 daily utility Fortuitous Dodge, an immediate reaction triggered when an attack misses the rogue, which causes the attack to also target one creature other than the attacker who’s adjacent to the rogue.  In other words, you missed me, but you did (maybe) hit your buddy.  This is a classic.

The rogue sidebars are mostly short and sweet.  Sneak Attack, The Swashbuckler, Avandra’s Luck, and Sehanine’s Blessing are wel worth the couple of seconds it takes to read them.

Rogue paragon paths presented include the cloaked sniper (a ranged attack specialist), daring acrobat, dread fang (a drow rogue paragon path), the guildmaster thief (which adds some leader-like qualities to the standard rogue), the rakish swashbuckler (among the best D&D treatments of the archetype I’ve seen), and the raven herald (rogues who worship the Raven Queen and hunt the undead and those who cheat death — and whose sneak attack deals radiant damage starting at level 16).  Most of the paths presented seem pretty strong and flavorful, although the death dealer (a rogue who specializes in… killing stuff) is pretty uninspired.

As a side note, the shadowdancer, which I posted a 4e adaptation of recently, is not included in Martial Power.

Warlord: Martial Power introduces two new styles of warlord.  The bravura warlord, who leads with bold, aggressive, and risky maneuvers, gains either a melee basic attack or a free move action after spending an action point if the attack they made with that point hits.  If it misses, the ally grants combat advantage for a turn.  (The ally gets to choose whether or not to take advantage of this feature, and therefore whether or not to risk disadvantage for the possible reward of a free attack or move.)  The resourceful warlord is the ultimate adapter, a seat-of-the-pants type whose action-point ability grants allies a damage bonus if they hit and temporary hp if they miss — sort of a cross between the two Player’s Handbook warlord types.

The powers are more of the same in a sense — there’s a lot of shifting, sliding, and otherwise repositioning allies and enemies on the field of battle, but then, that’s what warlords are supposed to excel at.  There are plenty of other buffs and utility powers as well, including such interesting applications as Pike Hedge, an immediate reaction daily power which triggers when an enemy enters a square within your reach while you wield a reach weapon.  You get a free attack, and then there’s an until-end-of-encounter effect that lets you deal automatic damage as an opportunity action any time an enemy enters a square adjacent to you or to an ally adjacent to you.  While a little complicated to explain (and a little defender-like), it suits the warlord class very well.  There are plenty of other opportunities to get a little more hands-on, too.

Warlord sidebars are pretty bland; one basically rehashes what the Player’s Handbook had to say about warlords and deities, and another suggests that a polearm is a great weapon for a warlord — true, but I’m not sure that’s news to anyone at this point.  There are only a couple of short sidebars, though.

Warlord paragon paths include the skald-like battlelord of Kord, the borderlands marshal (warlord/ranger multiclass), longarm marshal (polearm specialist), and spiral tactician (the very specific yet interesting Eladrin tactical warlord who uses Fey Step to great tactical advantage).  The warlord paths are a mixed bag; some seem pretty useful, others are uninspired.  Additionally, many have very narrow prerequisites:  the borderlands marshal (warlord and ranger), the concordant leader (genasi), the flamebrow commander (dragonborn, bravura warlord), the infernal strategist (tiefling, resourceful warlord), the above-mentioned spiral tactician, and to a lesser extent the battlelord of Kord, dujun of Erathis, and platinum warlord, all of which are tied to specific deities from the PHB (though this is only flavor text and can be changed).  In that sense, I’d have to say that these are the weakest paragon paths of the bunch, but there are some good ideas to be had nevertheless.

Feats: The feat tables printed in the book are broken down by class, including “Any Martial Class,” which is a nice touch.  There are new racial feat options, new fighter feats to give bonuses to some weapons (like Surprising Charge, which gives an extra 1[W] damage when charging with a light blade or spear), ranger beast-related feats, warlord feats to improve their class features, rogue feats for a wide variety of nefarious purposes.  Most are heroic (the tables span about 2 1/2 pages), but there are many paragon (~1 1/3 pages of tables) and epic (~1 1/4 pages of tables) feats as well.

Epic Destinies: An even ten new epic destinies are presented.  The better include the Undying Warrior, who lives on, Highlander-style, until he chooses otherwise; the Dark Wanderer, a seeker of destiny who always seems to turn up in the right time and place; the Legendary General, who ultimately ascends (or descends) to lead some deity’s or power’s host; and the Godhunter, who kills things that are really tough to kill and really need killing.  (Honestly, I’d include that last one just for the name of its level 26 power, Deicidal Eye.)

On the weak side is the Martial Archetype, a destiny by which you become… an epic example of a martial character.  Um… well… yes.  The machanics — gaining lower-level powers from any martial class — aren’t too bad, if you look at them as a sort of extension of paragon multiclassing, but as far as flavor goes… well, this has none.  Whatsoever.

Still, the rest are at least adequate or adaptable.  Nine out of ten isn’t bad.

Weaknesses: Aside from the occasionally lackluster content I pointed out above, there are some things that just puzzle me.  For instance, one of the new level 1 fighter encounter powers is Shield Bash, in which you whack the enemy with your shield for 1d10 + Strength mod damage, push one square, and knock prone.  It’s a STR + 2 vs. Reflex attack, so I might argue that that’s a little too good mechanically — but I’m not absolutely sure of that, and conceptually, it’s a sound, traditional maneuver.  So what’s the problem?  Well, the power includes the line “Special: If you are a dwarf, the attack deals extra damage equal to your Wisdom modifier.”  Why is that?  I don’t recall anything in the flavor text about dwarves being especially good with shields, and there are no other similar mechanics that favor shield-wielding dwarves.  The closest I can see is the existence of the dwarven defender paragon path (which dates back to the 3e DMG prestige class).  And the dwarven defender gets no particular bonuses with a shield, nor does it even require one.

It’s not just a mistake or an earlier version that slipped through, though.  Humans get the same bonus to the level 27 encounter power Desperate Strike, as well as the level 17 Wild Strike.  Halflings get to ignore the combat advantage requirement of the level 13 Assured Strike.  Other races get no special bonuses to anything.

So apparently dwarves are all really skilled with vicious shield bashing (but not shield slamming, a separate power), while humans are all prone to panic but do extra damage when they do.  And halflings are really assured.

This makes no sense to me.  It’s easy to house-rule out if it still doesn’t make sense by the time I start using it in my game, but I’d rather not have to.

Also, there is no index.  This is a major disappointment to me.  I really like having an index handy to help me look up, say, a given power.  The table of contents is okay for getting specific paragon paths or epic destinies, though, so it’s not a total loss likewise very limited, though at least it exists.  Still… index, please.  I’d happily pay a little more for the extra pages for a thorough index.  Hell, I’d give up a couple of paragon paths for one, if you really have to maintain the page count where it is, Wizards.

Price: $29.95 list; Amazon’s offering it for $19.07.  Worthwhile, I think.  This is the same price as 3e’s Complete series, though the page count is a little shorter (many of the Complete books were 192 pages).

The Verdict: On the whole, I think this book succeeds.  It provides a wealth of new powers (which were greatly needed), some new build options, and a variety of new feats, exactly as it promises.  If some of these powers seem a little off-kilter, or if some of the paragon paths and epic destinies are a bit lackluster, it’s no worse in this regard than the 3e or 2e class supplements, and on the whole, I think it’s better, as far as the mechanical elements go.  (And I don’t need supplements for flavor purposes.)

I was anticipating good things with this book, and the first readthrough did not disappoint me.  I expect to allow much of the material in my game, and it will indeed expand my players’ options.  It could have been better, it’s true — but if the rest of the books in the Power line are this good, I’ll buy them and have no regrets.  It’s more than adequate and it serves my needs, and if the content needs a little vetting, that’s no more than I’d expected.

I rate Martial Power 8/10 on first impression.  Not perfect, but more than serviceable — not every concept in it is a sparking gem to apply to your game, but it lives up to its promises.  Could easily be a 9/10 if it had a good index, as that would improve its ease of use.

(Edit: Fixed the bit about the table of contents — not sure what I was thinking when I wrote the original, but the ToC is very minimal.  It will serve to find the list of paragon paths, but not a particular one.  Epic destinies, on the other hand, are listed individually.  So I suppose that’s something.  This doesn’t affect my rating, since I’d already dinged it for the ease-of-use issue.)

Related posts:

1. Review: Arcane Power
2. Review: Player’s Handbook 2
3. Review: Manual of the Planes
4. PHB chapter 4: Classes
5. PHB Chapters 5-6: Skills and Feats