Pathfinder Sells Out

Is it just me, or does that wizard look like the same one who's on the 4e PHB cover, aside from the hair color?

According to Paizo, as of Monday, their Pathfinder game’s core rulebook has sold out its first printing.  Now, this is mostly distributor orders — not actual sales — and there’s no indication of how large the first print run is.  Still, it’s a pretty impressive accomplishment.  I suspected that the initial sales would be very strong, and I hope it’ll bring people to the hobby, and not be confined to the existing 3.5 audience.

I have my doubts, though.

I haven’t seen the final revision of the rules, obviously, but the beta was not promising.  While the stated intent of the developers was to address some of the problems of 3.5e, and in particular to make melee characters a more viable choice, I found that the beta did the exact opposite — spellcasters were given a variety of bonuses.  Some problem spells were addressed, like Glitterdust and death spells, but there remained a wide variety of “I remove the enemy from combat” spells — including some new ones added by Paizo.  Fighters, on the other hand, were given more bonus feats… but they also need to spend more feats in order to achieve the same effect they used to get from a single one.  For instance, the +4 from Improved Disarm?  That takes two feats in Pathfinder.

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Review: Divine Power

Divine Power

I was previously pretty happy with Martial Power and Arcane Power, and based on my initial reading, Divine Power seems to continue the trend.  As you’d expect from the book’s title, this supplement for fourth-edition Dungeons & Dragons offers new options for the divine classes:  avengers, clerics, invokers, and paladins.

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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Foxbat for President: Sacred Cows and Hamburger

Sacred cows make the best hamburger, or so the saying goes.  When it comes to RPGs, they tend to provide grist for the mill.

There are sacred cows aplenty in rules systems, of course.  That’s one of the reasons why we have edition wars:  change anything, no matter how inconsequential you think it might be, or how much better you think the new version is, and there’s sure to be someone loudly decrying the change and lamenting that the new version just isn’t the same game any more.  No more assassins or cavaliers in 2e?  Sacrilege.  No more THAC0 in 3e?  A travesty.  No more Vancian casting in 4e?  Well, that’s fine, but not for any game whose title includes the words dungeon and dragon.

That’s not the sort I’m thinking about today, though.  I’m interested in the sacred cows within the settings.  The characters, locations, and other elements that are always present, if only lurking somewhere in the background.  The ones that define that setting, that — in a sense — make it what it is.  The ones that are iconic — not Tordek and Mialee, but the real icons.  The ones with names like Bigby, Mordenkainen, Raistlin, Elminster, Vecna.  (There tends to be a good share of wizards among them.  I don’t believe this is a coincidence.)  The guys you know and love.  Or hate.  Sometimes both.

A campaign set in one of these published settings must acknowledge its sacred cows at one point.  Either it kowtows to them, making use of the pre-existing body of lore that surrounds them (however nebulous it might be in some cases — how much do most D&D players really know about Bigby, other than that he’s the guy with the hand spells?), or it slaughters them, creating some explanation for why they’re no longer present or have no impact.  The former option limits the GM somewhat; the latter often infuriates players who have a fondness for that setting.  Witness the reaction of Greyhawk fans to Greyhawk Wars, or the more recent reaction of Forgotten Realms fans to the 4e redesign of that world.

Which brings us to Foxbat.

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Review: Arcane Power

Arcane Power

Following my positive experiences with Martial Power, I decided to pre-order Arcane Power, the new fourth-edition Dungeons & Dragons supplement that deals with additional options for the arcane classes:  bard, sorcerer, swordmage, warlock, and wizard.  Based on my initial reading, I feel pretty confident about saying that the Power line continues to display a pretty high standard of quality.  Class-based supplements have been pretty ubiquitous in D&D since the second edition, and their quality has varied, but like Martial Power, this book seems to fall toward the top of the heap.

Arcane Power is a 160-page book, and there’s a lot crammed into it; it felt a little longer than Martial Power to me, although it’s the same page count.  Physically, it seems similar to other fourth-edition hardcovers; its layout, binding, and so forth all seem decent.  Some people have reported problems with ink smudging in their 4e books; I’ve never experienced any such issues, but if you have, the ink and paper seem about the same to me, too, so that might be something to watch for.

Content is split up into five chapters by class, each of which covers new powers, builds, class features, and paragon paths for its respective class, and a sixth chapter including new feats, familiars, epic destinies, rituals, and a handful of magic items (tomes, for the new wizard build).

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Review: Open Game Table Anthology, Volume 1

I’ve mentioned Open Game Table: The Anthology of Roleplaying Game Blogs, Volume 1 before, but last week I got my hands on the hard copy and set to reading it.  The long and the short of it:  It met my expectations (and they were high) in every way.

Jonathan Jacobs, of The Core Mechanic, brought the project together quickly and professionally.  He’d probably be the first to tell you he didn’t do it alone, but the time and effort he put into this went way beyond a couple of blog posts — not just collecting the various posts that went into the anthology, but rounding up some artist volunteers, investigating means of distributing the final product, even getting Wolfgang Baur to write a foreword.  That shows in the quality of the finished book.  This is a professional product.  A round of applause here for him.

So, what’s in the book?

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