Arcane Power: State of the Bard Address

We were fortunate enough to receive a copy of the new Arcane Power sourcebook for review recently. I was particularly excited to get my hands on this, as I had recently rolled up a bard and wanted some new abilities to play with.

The new Prescient Bard build in the book sets the flavor for many of the new bardic abilities. These turn your bard into something of a short-term prophet, able to see the future and to mess with it a little to his advantage. There are a lot of really cool powers to choose from, but on occasion I feel they didn't try hard enough to engage the player's imagination and just relied on the combat mechanics. (This is one of my primary complaints with 4e in general, not just this book.) Take for instance the Horrifying Truth power, whose description reads "Your cruel pronouncement becomes truer with every strike." It deals damage, dazes the target, and stuns the target if it doesn't save. With that kind of description, I'm expecting a gypsy to hop out of my lute and rub the target's nose and say "THINNER!". Or maybe the ghost of a creepy Japanese girl to appear and proclaim the target not a pitcher, but a belly-itcher, causing him 4d8+CHA self-esteem damage.

They've added several bardic paragon paths in Arcane Power as well:

• Cunning Prevaricator - basically your bard is fantastic at lying and exaggerating. Somehow this translates into making him and all his allies invisible at strategically opportune times. (As an aside, "Lying Lights" sounds to me like the name of something I would have watched on Cinemax as a teenager when my parents had gone to bed.) Later powers let him misdirect the opponent's attacks back upon himself or other enemies, presumably so the bard can ask him "why do ya keep hitting yourself?"


• Euphonic Bow - The concept for this one is, in my opinion, one of the coolest things in the book. You're a bard, except your bow plays notes as you attack. The path description says something about the sound your arrows make as they hit their targets providing percussion for the song of battle, and all I can think of is Freddie Mercury singing, "out of the doorway, the bullets rip -- to the sound of the beat!" It's sort of like multiclassing your bard with an arcane archer, but without quite the range of abilities. Still neat.


• Grave Caller - Apparently they have bardic assassins. Who knew? This one seemed a little out of place to me, since I guess I always imagined assassins as being quiet and not singing. Then again, I've watched enough anime in my day to know that a really talented assassin can use anything they want as a weapon, immense size and noise be damned. Either way, if you're looking to cause grief (possibly in the form of death) to one unlucky creature at a time, the deathmark ability and its associated powers are a good way to get there.


• Half-Elf Emissary - Ever have one of those people in your group that tried to max their Diplomacy skill and use it as often as possible? Well, now that person's empathy and oratory ability are deadly weapons. (For, ahem, "aggressive negotiations", I would assume.) This path gets automatic points against it for only being available to half-elves. Because everyone knows dwarves and half-orcs can never, ever be charismatic and likeable. This path's powers are based largely on him being such a galactically amazing social butterfly that the number of people he can see, friends and enemies alike, make his abilities stronger. I kind of want to bludgeon myself into unconsciousness when I think about this one too hard.


• Karmic Shaper - Sort of the "evolved" form of the Prescient Bard build, this path is all about squaring up karmic debts. Well, sort of. You "interpret" karma, so that means if your enemy does something bad to you, your powers make him pay for it. If one of your allies screws up, you interpret all the good times you've had together and replace his attack roll with one of your own. It's kind of like D&D My Name Is Earl, but backwards and with swords and a touch of godlike power to change fate.


• Life Singer - You're a bard who comes from this place where some bad stuff happened and evil spirits cursed you with bad weather. Now, in order to combat the evil spirit (which I thusly dub "El Niño"), you become a tree-hugging pacifist hippie. Your power is that of smugness, and atop your ivory tower of morality, you grant bonuses to all your allies only if they do not attack anything. This will almost certainly set a new standard for the paragon everyone regrets picking almost immediately due to everyone hating them forever. This paragon path may ruin long-standing friendships. I worry for the future of gaming now that this is out.

A few odd complaints aside, I would wholeheartedly recommend this book if you've got a bard. The only thing I'm really disappointed in is the lack of the 3.5 book Complete Arcane's Seeker of the Song prestige class. I had my fingers crossed, and was denied.

Next time, I'll review the Sorcerer class. Spicy!

D&D Test Drive

WotC has created a set of test drive tools for 4E, giving everyone an opportunity to try the new edition for free.  The Test Drive site includes Quick Start Rules, the Keep on the Shadowfell module and the Character Builder.

The Test Drive Basics

If you're new to 4E or to D&D in general, this set of tools was designed for you.  The Quick Start guide is designed to give you the rules you need to play the module, including some pre-gen characters.  Though since the Character Builder is included and will let you create characters level 1 to 3, you don't have to use the pre-gens.

As a player currently in the middle of the Keep, and I can say that the module is pretty entertaining.  Who doesn't love a dungeon that starts with goblins?

The Character Builder is pretty easy to use.  It may take a while to install, but in the end, for those who want to quickly put together a character, it walks you through all the steps.  It includes character options from the PHB, PHB2, Monster Manual, DMG, Forgotten Realms guides, as well as several other sources.  Based on your choices, it will fill out your character sheet and provide you with power cards to print for your character.

The Quick Start Rules documents contains 15 pages of rules and guidelines, followed by 12 pages of pre-generated characters.  The Quick Start rules provide a lot of good basics, including descriptions of what happens in combat.

Even if you have been playing 4E for awhile, I like the Quick Start guide as a small reference guide.  It's got a lot of pages from the PHB that come in handy, like the conditions and combat actions.

Behind the Screen: The Joys of New Experiences!

At long last I emerge from my programming cave to post again! Special thanks go out to Stupid Ranger for pulling some of my weight the past few weeks while I work through a particularly thorny set of work responsibilities!

Learning by Doing

As those of you that follow us regularly may remember, we are experiencing 4th edition via the excellent Keep on the Shadowfell module. This experience has been heightened by the addition of the PHB2, which we reviewed thoroughly last month. During this process, this module has provided a buffet of 4e goodness.

It is interesting to behold the group dynamics that take place when different aspects of the adventure present themselves. Two weeks ago, our group found a secret door that led them into an adjacent room with an illusory wall. The rogue in our group got his moment to shine as he found the secret door, checked it for traps and led the group through into that portion of the module. The player of said rogue had a giant grin on his face the whole time.

In that same section, Stupid Ranger's character used Tenser's Floating Disk to bypass some terror runes that were carelessly strewn throughout that portion of the dungeon. I've not read all the errata surrounding the disk, but I decided to allow them to step over it to avoid the trap since it was an interesting use of that ritual. She was very pleased about this.

The group ran into their first encounter with a time-resetting trap that spewed skeletons, which was mildly annoying but they quickly dispatched their foes and pressed on into the dungeon without their coveted five minute rest to solve that encounter handily.

Finally, I got my moment of learning and enjoyment out of a negotiation style challenge with what could have potentially been a game-ending encounter with a fallen knight. I found this challenge mechanism incredibly fun to play and very engaging for the players as well, so I count this as a success.

Shared enjoyment for all!

So what's the point of listing these various encounters? Mostly, I want to illustrate the variety of good stuff to be had in Keep on the Shadowfell thus far and I also want to point out the "shining moments" of our last few sessions so you might incorporate some of the same aspects into your games.

Because I haven't played in groups with very many rogues, I was slightly surprised by the visceral joy to be had by the player of our rogue when he found that secret door. Stupid Ranger got her classic "I really showed you, DM!" smile going when she dreamt up riding that disk a short distance to avoid the terror runes. Even I got a moment of happiness to try a different style of encounter in that negotiation (and I think our group enjoyed it as well!)

So get out there and try some new things throughout the course of your normal campaign. If you're stuck in the same "find enemies/kill enemies/loot treasure" cycle it pays to break it once in awhile with a new experience.