Crothian
First Post
Forgotten Realms Player’s Guide
With each new edition some of the campaign worlds get a new look. The Forgotten Realms has seen great upheaval with each edition change kind of like at the beginning of most Robin Hood movies how they like to burn down villages. I have never been a big fan of the Forgotten Realms. I remember having and reading a lot of the first edition material. We played with it a little but mostly we used what we liked in our own worlds. I did read some of the novels and those did a nice job of turning me away from the setting. The final nail in the coffin was the Time of Troubles. I could not even tell you know why I so disliked it. In the days of second edition we used bits of the Underdark box sets and a few other pieces but we never gamed in the Forgotten Realms. In third edition I did get in a game that used the setting but by then my knowledge of the places was mostly gone. I have no idea what happened to the Forgotten Realms to issue in third edition. And now here is the fourth edition of the game with the Forgotten Realms. Why am I telling you all this? So you can understand where I am coming from for this review. I’m not going to talk about what changes have happened to the Realms. I’m not going to talk about how the novels succeeded or failed to be represented in this book. The review though will look at the book and discuss how it is for just a fourth edition expansion book for those people not that interested in the setting aspects. And it will also be looking at if the book succeeds as a true players guide to the setting.
Forgotten Realms Player’s Guide is one of the firs t supplements produced for Fourth Edition Dungeons and Dragons. The book is produced by Wizards of the Coast and is written by Rob Heinsoo, Logan Bonner and Robert Schwalb. The hardbound book has one hundred and sixty two pages and that seems to be the common length for these books. The full color art is well done and easily up to Wizards high standards.
The book does very well as a D&D supplement. IT does not have a lot of new rules and options and that makes it easy to decide if one wants it just for those. The Swordmage class will be the main reason I think someone buys the books for the options. It is the first new class Wizards of the Coast has published. It is an arcane defender for people interested in the roles and power source of classes. The two builds are basic and cool sounding. One basically focuses more on attacking and the other more on shielding one’s allies. The powers of the class which they call spells have a good amount of variety and cool abilities. The other main part of the rules for people I imagine will be the new races. First there is the Drow and as possible the most famous race from the Forgotten Realms it makes sense to introduce them here. The Drow here are equal in power to the other races in the Players Handbook. The really neat thing about them is the descriptions and the focus on how to play a Drow. It is just a column of text but it really explains what the Drow are and what it will mean to play one using an economy of words. The other race is the Genasi and as there are five different types it is almost like five different races. The text has them be a struggle of law and chaos but I felt the dominance of the elements themselves was the main focus of them.
While those areas I see as being the most popular they were not the best rules the book has to offer. Those can be found in the many new Paragon Paths that doe a fabulous job of mixing great descriptions with interesting abilities. I found these Paragon Paths to be much more interesting then the ones found in the Players Handbook. While most of the twenty five new Paths are very Forgotten Realms oriented I do not feel that any of them could not be reworked in some way to fit most normal settings. If one is using something a little more out there like a Dark Sun setting then it would be a bit harder to make these fit. While the Paragon Paths are very well done I think the Epic Destiny presented here, the Chosen, is rather boring and bland. The last bit of the new rules is the feats and rituals. The feats seem to either be designed for a race, someone with Channel Divinity Class feature, or the Swordmage. Over all the feats are okay. Some of them could cause issues if someone tries to really abuse it. For instance one of the divine oriented feats allows the character to get an automatic critical hit with a hit. I am sure if someone concentrated hard and maxing out their damage on a critical hit this might be seen as an issue. But I always prefer to just not play with people that abuse the rules instead of having rules that cannot be abused.
Judging it as a Players Guide is much more difficult. There is the Campaign Guide that this is made to be used with. But I do not think players are expected to also read and know that book so I am just going on what I see here. The first thing that struck me and I am still shocked by it is there is no map of the full Forgotten Realms. Each section of the many different places has a small map of those places but using this book I have no idea where anything is in relation to each other. Even a small half a page map that shows very little detail but at least shows the player where everything is would greatly improve the book. Of everything good and bad about the book that is the one thing I think is the worst.
The book does a great job of explaining how the different races fit into the world. I really like that the writers and developers were obviously looking ahead at what other races are going to come out as there are races included here that have not been defined in fourth edition yet. Many times people worry about backwards compatibility but I really like the forward compatibility this book has. I also really like the regions as they are described and find the regional benefits to be a nice little mechanical boost. Technically it is a bit of power creep as it adds to the characters in a way that the core books did not. It is very minor and I like how it offers a mechanical difference to the different places. It is also simple to do so people who home brew have a great example on how they can do this with their own game.
The Players Guide to the Forgotten Realms does a good job of showcasing this setting. A lot of changes have been made and the time line has been advanced. But the setting still has a bit of mystery and plenty of ideas for adventure. The lack of a map is something I will always wonder on and it is defiantly stronger as a book for the new rules then a book about the Realms.
With each new edition some of the campaign worlds get a new look. The Forgotten Realms has seen great upheaval with each edition change kind of like at the beginning of most Robin Hood movies how they like to burn down villages. I have never been a big fan of the Forgotten Realms. I remember having and reading a lot of the first edition material. We played with it a little but mostly we used what we liked in our own worlds. I did read some of the novels and those did a nice job of turning me away from the setting. The final nail in the coffin was the Time of Troubles. I could not even tell you know why I so disliked it. In the days of second edition we used bits of the Underdark box sets and a few other pieces but we never gamed in the Forgotten Realms. In third edition I did get in a game that used the setting but by then my knowledge of the places was mostly gone. I have no idea what happened to the Forgotten Realms to issue in third edition. And now here is the fourth edition of the game with the Forgotten Realms. Why am I telling you all this? So you can understand where I am coming from for this review. I’m not going to talk about what changes have happened to the Realms. I’m not going to talk about how the novels succeeded or failed to be represented in this book. The review though will look at the book and discuss how it is for just a fourth edition expansion book for those people not that interested in the setting aspects. And it will also be looking at if the book succeeds as a true players guide to the setting.
Forgotten Realms Player’s Guide is one of the firs t supplements produced for Fourth Edition Dungeons and Dragons. The book is produced by Wizards of the Coast and is written by Rob Heinsoo, Logan Bonner and Robert Schwalb. The hardbound book has one hundred and sixty two pages and that seems to be the common length for these books. The full color art is well done and easily up to Wizards high standards.
The book does very well as a D&D supplement. IT does not have a lot of new rules and options and that makes it easy to decide if one wants it just for those. The Swordmage class will be the main reason I think someone buys the books for the options. It is the first new class Wizards of the Coast has published. It is an arcane defender for people interested in the roles and power source of classes. The two builds are basic and cool sounding. One basically focuses more on attacking and the other more on shielding one’s allies. The powers of the class which they call spells have a good amount of variety and cool abilities. The other main part of the rules for people I imagine will be the new races. First there is the Drow and as possible the most famous race from the Forgotten Realms it makes sense to introduce them here. The Drow here are equal in power to the other races in the Players Handbook. The really neat thing about them is the descriptions and the focus on how to play a Drow. It is just a column of text but it really explains what the Drow are and what it will mean to play one using an economy of words. The other race is the Genasi and as there are five different types it is almost like five different races. The text has them be a struggle of law and chaos but I felt the dominance of the elements themselves was the main focus of them.
While those areas I see as being the most popular they were not the best rules the book has to offer. Those can be found in the many new Paragon Paths that doe a fabulous job of mixing great descriptions with interesting abilities. I found these Paragon Paths to be much more interesting then the ones found in the Players Handbook. While most of the twenty five new Paths are very Forgotten Realms oriented I do not feel that any of them could not be reworked in some way to fit most normal settings. If one is using something a little more out there like a Dark Sun setting then it would be a bit harder to make these fit. While the Paragon Paths are very well done I think the Epic Destiny presented here, the Chosen, is rather boring and bland. The last bit of the new rules is the feats and rituals. The feats seem to either be designed for a race, someone with Channel Divinity Class feature, or the Swordmage. Over all the feats are okay. Some of them could cause issues if someone tries to really abuse it. For instance one of the divine oriented feats allows the character to get an automatic critical hit with a hit. I am sure if someone concentrated hard and maxing out their damage on a critical hit this might be seen as an issue. But I always prefer to just not play with people that abuse the rules instead of having rules that cannot be abused.
Judging it as a Players Guide is much more difficult. There is the Campaign Guide that this is made to be used with. But I do not think players are expected to also read and know that book so I am just going on what I see here. The first thing that struck me and I am still shocked by it is there is no map of the full Forgotten Realms. Each section of the many different places has a small map of those places but using this book I have no idea where anything is in relation to each other. Even a small half a page map that shows very little detail but at least shows the player where everything is would greatly improve the book. Of everything good and bad about the book that is the one thing I think is the worst.
The book does a great job of explaining how the different races fit into the world. I really like that the writers and developers were obviously looking ahead at what other races are going to come out as there are races included here that have not been defined in fourth edition yet. Many times people worry about backwards compatibility but I really like the forward compatibility this book has. I also really like the regions as they are described and find the regional benefits to be a nice little mechanical boost. Technically it is a bit of power creep as it adds to the characters in a way that the core books did not. It is very minor and I like how it offers a mechanical difference to the different places. It is also simple to do so people who home brew have a great example on how they can do this with their own game.
The Players Guide to the Forgotten Realms does a good job of showcasing this setting. A lot of changes have been made and the time line has been advanced. But the setting still has a bit of mystery and plenty of ideas for adventure. The lack of a map is something I will always wonder on and it is defiantly stronger as a book for the new rules then a book about the Realms.
