Review: Divine Power
Divine Power
I was previously pretty happy with Martial Power and Arcane Power, and based on my initial reading, Divine Power
As I mentioned in earlier reviews of the Power series, this sort of class-focused supplement has been pretty common in D&D’s history, with varying levels of quality showing in the finished products — but the Power books tend to fall toward the top of the quality scale. This is still true of Divine Power.
I should mention, perhaps, that I’ve had a long-standing fondness for the cleric class, and that I’ve found avengers and invokers equally attractive since their introduction to 4e D&D. So maybe I’m a little biased. After looking through the book, though, I’d have to say even paladins come off pretty well now. This might be my favorite Power book yet.
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Mythic Japan: the Tengu
A tengu and a Buddhist monk. Print by Kyosai.
The tengu of Japanese legend is an odd creature. It seems to have started out as a type of evil spirit, specifically one opposed to Buddhism. Over the years, the priest-abducting, temple-burning bird-monster became both more humanlike and more benevolent. Tengu became mischievous, powerful creatures not unlike kitsune fox-spirits, and eventually became protectors of Buddhism, seekers of wisdom, and master swordsmen — though they retained their weakness of pride. It became common to ascribe to great swordsmen, such as Minamoto no Yoshitsune, tengu training.
Obviously they make a great addition to a game that features mythic Japanese elements.
The Kenku of D&D, which was introduced to fourth edition in the Monster Manual 2, is clearly based on the tengu, but its attributes have changed to reflect its place in D&D lore. The kenku could be used to reflect the mischievous version of the tengu, but it’s a poor match for the demons, and even for the wise blademasters.
So I used stats of my own. In 4e, they look like this:
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Deep Psi
Side note first: I fixed a problem that might have been keeping comments from working correctly, so if you’ve tried to leave one lately and failed, you should be able to now.
On to the main post. Recently, I decided I’d try a subscription to Insider. Although I didn’t see a lot of purpose to it when I first got the core books, and I’m not terribly moved by promises of exclusive content, I figured it would be worth a try, and if nothing else there might be some interesting stuff in Dungeon that I could lift for my game. Plus, I’d get access to stuff like the Swordmage, a class printed in a book I have no intention of ever buying. And the Monk, in which I have something of an interest, if you hadn’t noticed…
I haven’t played around with Insider enough to really comment on it yet. I can say that I find the character builder fun to tinker with, and probably pretty useful (although I’ve never had problems with creating characters in 4e using pen and paper, either). Dungeon and Dragon look promising enough that the subscription might be justified, although the Dungeon content looks a little lighter than I’d like.
But the main thing that’s caught my attention is the Psion class, recently revealed.
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Ritual of Rejuvenation
This is mostly a plot-device ritual, but I wrote it up since it came to feature pretty prominently in my game. Its purpose is to extend the life of its caster… perhaps by sinister means. This is the ritual used by evil magicians to bargain with the Raven Queen, trading others’ lives for their own — but it can also be used by a good magician, albeit less effectively.
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4E from One Year In
4e PHB alternate cover image I had sitting around... from the German version, maybe?
Fourth edition Dungeons & Dragons is a little over a year old now, and I’ve been playing or running it for almost exactly a year today. On the whole, I’m finding it a pretty robust system. It’s not my favorite system, or even my favorite D&D (that would be Cyclopedia D&D), but it’s become my favorite version of AD&D. A few of my favorite parts:
Philosophy
I’ve said before that I’ve been playing the same game since I first picked up basic D&D. That game is a cinematic game about daring heroic exploits with the fates of villages, nations, worlds hanging in the balance. Not every campaign has had the same elements, to be sure; many were high fantasy, but some were low fantasy, or even bizarre science fantasy. Some were set in mythic Asian locations, some in the Bronze Age, one memorable one in the prehistoric during an ice age. There were flirtations with dark fantasy and steampunk. But the game remained the same. With few exceptions, the characters were heroes and did heroic things (or died trying).
Categories: My Campaigns, Philosophy and Rants | Comments (7)
