Masters of the Wild Book Review

             Greetings! Just recently, I happened to finally purchase the D&D accessory book, “Masters of the Wild: A Guidebook to Barbarians, Druids, and Rangers” and figured this would be a good week to review it since I haven’t reviewed a D&D book in awhile.  There are five main sections of the book that I find to be the most informative and useful for most players.

            The first thing that I really like about this book is in the very first chapter it goes out of its way to describe the perspective of these three, wilderness loving, classes.  Often times I’ll find that players will not fully understand the mentality of a character that spends most of his/her time in nature (which is not surprising since most people who play D&D are not going on frequent and extended treks through the forest).  This section of the book really makes a player better understand exactly what their character’s motivations and leanings are.

            The second chapter focuses mainly on Feats and let me tell you there are some pretty crazy ones in there.  Can you imagine a Barbarian that can rage twice as long, twice as many times per day, and deal greater damage while in raged?  Well the feats in Masters of Wilderness will give you all this and much more.  Druids benefit in similar ways in that their wild forms become buffed like no tomorrow.  In my book, a Druid in wild form as a wolf should not normally be able to cast lightning from its mouth and simultaneous shoot a bow and arrow, but with the right set of feats, this is indeed possible. Rangers don’t get quite as many “cheap” feats, but there was one in particular that struck me as pretty ridiculous; a critical threat range of 15 to 20 on a favored enemy of your choice.  Talk about overkill.

            The third chapter of the book focused on weapons and tools and such.  The standard weapons of the guide primarily focus on not killing a foe, but instead “subduing” them.  I thought this was an interesting mechanic, but in all honesty, I didn’t feel like it was overly useful.  In my experience, there are only so many situations where you have to subdue an enemy rather than just kill the thing.  The magic items on the other hand I found to be pretty good, although a bit generic.  Bonuses on wild form, tracking, wilderness stuff, etc.  One item that caught my eye though was the “Standing Stone” which is basically a piece of Stonehenge that when a druid touches it is able to cast the spell it is imbued with, but at a much higher potency.  While these obelisks are not movable, I fell like these are great plot device pieces for any Druid.

            The fifth chapter focuses on Prestige Classes, of which there are quite a few.  However, I will say that almost 60% to 70% of all of them look horribly mutated.  Don’t get me wrong, they are most certainly powerful and/or useful, but let’s just say you wouldn’t want to walk into any towns looking like them….ever.  For instance, if you decide to become an Oozemaster you will have the ability to seep through cracks, cast a plethora of damaging and debilitating spells, and all of their standard attacks have “Oozy touch”, which heightens the potency of any attack from an Oozmaster.  However, you also will appear to be made out of mold, you lose your ability to communicate, and you spend most of your time in a puddle.  Potent, but terribly strange.

Speaking of horribly mutated, here is an Undead Bear-for- Shark, courtesy of SPipes

            Finally, there is the new spells, which while there are not many, I like how most of them are quite useful even for level 0.  For instance, one of the spells is an enhancement on your entangle spell, which not only entangles the enemy, but also deals damage over time to all those entangled.  So, nothing game breaking in the spells department, but most definitely a good addition to your selection of divine nature spells.

            Overall, this book is well worth the purchase considering that it gives new depth and flavor to classes that lack in elaboration for the most part.  The new feats and items introduced make Barbarians and Druids much more useful and don’t make rangers any more over powered than they already are.  So, I give Masters of the Wild a  4 out of 5 stars.

Until next week!

Raz

So Many (More) Classes...

Hello everyone!  I have officially decided that my Jumper Class is very overpowered (but extremely fun to play as).  I say this for two reasons: 1) at level 10 the teleporting abilities of the Jumper allows a player to teleport indefinitely upward without ever hitting the ground 2) I am a pain in the butt to kill. 

We are currently facing a trial where we have to fight a clone of ourselves that has all the same equipment and abilities that we do.  One would think “Ah! Brilliant challenge!” but in my case because I on average deal in the realm of 18 damage (a.k.a half my total health), have a +11 on attack rolls, and my abilities allow me to ignore an enemies Dex bonus to AC,  it basically boils down to who is favored by the gods of dice rolling.  Long story short, I’m having trouble killing myself.

Anyway, back to the classes!  Here are the final five base class descriptions:

7) Paladin: The righteous warrior. This class has high HP, can wield most weapons and armor, and has a small set of support spells to heal minor damage or increase stats.  While all of these are good things, there is one “problem” (depending on your preferences) with the Paladin in that it MUST be Lawful Good aligned.  This means you must do the right thing ALL THE TIME.  Paladins are tanky front liners that boost their melee capability with spells.

[This post is property of Do A Spot Check]

8) Ranger: Think Aragon from The Lord of the Rings.  Rangers can either fight at a distance with bows or up close using Two Weapon Fighting. They also have the help of an animal companion, like the druid. Rangers are primarily offensive damage dealers, usually specializing in the multitude of ranged feats they can take advantage of more than any other class.

A Rogue Courtesy of TheDarkestSeason

          9) Rogue: (My favorite class).  This class is the skill master.  No other class is as proficient in skills or has as many skill points as any other class.  They are also the only class that can disable and notice magical traps.  In addition, Rogues can deal high damage with Sneak Attacks.  Rogues, while not the best combat class, are a vital part of any group because of their sneaky battle tactics and high skill proficiency.

A Sorcerer Courtesy of Wes-Talbott

          10/11) Sorcerer and Wizard:  These two are together because they have more or less the same abilities, but are played very differently.  Both of them are the quintessential spell casters of D&D, but the way they cast their spells are very different.  Sorcerers cast spells as an inherent ability that they gain from their bloodline, though they don't know very many spells.  Wizards, on the other hand, gain their spells through study and hard work and then record them in their spell book.  Basically, Sorcerers know a few spells that they can cast at will, while Wizards can cast a much wider range of spells but fewer of them.  These two classes are generally the party’s primary spell casters and while weak in lower levels, they are devastating at higher levels. [This post is property of Do A Spot Check]

Hope you enjoyed this layman’s rendition of the classes.  Until next time!

Raz    

=========================

Player Tip of the Week

Keep note of minute details. While it can be a little difficult to keep track of exactly what is in your surroundings, sometimes the smallest of details can be the answer to a potentially lethal situation.

            For instance, in the same situation as mentioned in last week’s example, the man who we were supposed to kill jumped down into his cellar and grabbed a pencil that was on a desk and wrote on some magic leaves that allowed him to disappear from our sight in the cellar.  [This post is property of Do A Spot Check]

As stated last week, I had already searched this cellar and noticed the pencil.  If only I would have taken the pencil (or at least moved it) then we wouldn’t have ended up in a dim cellar, which we filled with fog thinking that we would be able to see his silhouette move in the mist.  It didn’t work…

DM Tip of the Week

Improvisation is a good thing. In a D&D campaign, almost nothing will go as expected, but just because there was a hiccup in your master plan doesn’t mean the end of the world.  In fact this is often a good opportunity to expound on the plot of the story and make the campaign better. [This post is property of Do A Spot Check]

For instance, in our current campaign, we had made it to this town which had been charred to a crisp before we arrived, and I wanted to search it for loot.  Even though our DM had not planned on there being anything I rolled a 25 on my search check (so there just had to be something to find, right?).  So I found a cellar that had 5 bottles of vintage wine that were worth a small fortune. 

Lo and behold, though, these bottles of wine were actually Shadowbreaker Wine that when drunk cause the drinker to become possessed with an evil spirit sealed in the wine.  It just so happens that this is a major plot device for later in the campaign. 

None of this was planned.  All of these thoughts and ideas were entirely made up on the spot and left me wanting to drink the wine while my party is threatening to kill me if I so much as touch the cork.  It was great.