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A Tome of Heroes Review
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<blockquote data-quote="humble minion" data-source="post: 8794243" data-attributes="member: 5948"><p>Personally, I was a bit less than enthused with this one. I love Kobold Press's setting material, but for me their game mechanical material has consistently been behind it in quality and I think it's stopped being an auto-buy for me at this point.</p><p></p><p>There's a LOT of reprinted stuff here, and that's a theme through the whole line. Some of it has been given tweaks for the better (the new gnoll subraces for instance), but as someone who buys a lot of KP books, I already own a lot of this - many times in the case of really basic Midgard fundamentals like the minotaur PC race rules. A non-trivial number of the subclasses (Serpent domain, Wind domain, Vermin domain, etc) are reprinted from the Southlands Players Guide, and that book is only about a year old. </p><p></p><p>The player options I think generally (but not always) trend lower-powered than WotC equivalents. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, just that it's a thing to be aware of. But it really put a dampener on great concepts like the Inner Eye barbarian. A nifty subclass built around a sort of ecstatic prophetic frenzy. They get some clever new reaction options and at higher levels, additional reactions per round to use them in. But they get so few uses per rest of their fancy new options that it all seems like a bit of a letdown. Having said this though, my gripes with this are predominately stylistic or balance quibbles. There's many fewer of the outright rules howlers that messed up the Southlands Players Guide or Deep Magic so badly, so hopefully things are on the improve from an editing/playtesting standpoint. They still forgot to say what sort of action it was for the Wind Domain cleric to use Grasp Not the Wind though. Maybe a copy-paste error from the SPG, which made the same error? The druid Circle of the Wind has a very similar ability usable as a bonus action, I'd probably house-rule it that way.</p><p></p><p>There's some good stuff here. I did very much like the Animal Lord and Old Wood warlock patrons, the Haunted Warden ranger, and the Shadow Domain (a much more balanced option than WotCs Twilight domain). The College of Echoes bard seems great fun though I'm sad they didn't take the opportunity to beef up the bang for your spell slots that its level 6 ability gave you since its original appearance in Unlikely Heroes. The new backgrounds are excellent and I'd allow them in any game, though it's sad they'll most likely all be made completely obsolete by the upcoming new core books.</p><p></p><p>In summary - it may or may not work for you. If you've got a lot of KP stuff, then you'd probably be paying for a lot of racial rules in particular, that you already own. And evaluate the rest of the player options on a case by case basis. Some might need beefing up, some might need clarifying, and it's better to have those expectations and questions managed in session zero rather than 10 levels in when you're on single-digit HP and a TPK balances on the outcome of an ambiguously written rule.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="humble minion, post: 8794243, member: 5948"] Personally, I was a bit less than enthused with this one. I love Kobold Press's setting material, but for me their game mechanical material has consistently been behind it in quality and I think it's stopped being an auto-buy for me at this point. There's a LOT of reprinted stuff here, and that's a theme through the whole line. Some of it has been given tweaks for the better (the new gnoll subraces for instance), but as someone who buys a lot of KP books, I already own a lot of this - many times in the case of really basic Midgard fundamentals like the minotaur PC race rules. A non-trivial number of the subclasses (Serpent domain, Wind domain, Vermin domain, etc) are reprinted from the Southlands Players Guide, and that book is only about a year old. The player options I think generally (but not always) trend lower-powered than WotC equivalents. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, just that it's a thing to be aware of. But it really put a dampener on great concepts like the Inner Eye barbarian. A nifty subclass built around a sort of ecstatic prophetic frenzy. They get some clever new reaction options and at higher levels, additional reactions per round to use them in. But they get so few uses per rest of their fancy new options that it all seems like a bit of a letdown. Having said this though, my gripes with this are predominately stylistic or balance quibbles. There's many fewer of the outright rules howlers that messed up the Southlands Players Guide or Deep Magic so badly, so hopefully things are on the improve from an editing/playtesting standpoint. They still forgot to say what sort of action it was for the Wind Domain cleric to use Grasp Not the Wind though. Maybe a copy-paste error from the SPG, which made the same error? The druid Circle of the Wind has a very similar ability usable as a bonus action, I'd probably house-rule it that way. There's some good stuff here. I did very much like the Animal Lord and Old Wood warlock patrons, the Haunted Warden ranger, and the Shadow Domain (a much more balanced option than WotCs Twilight domain). The College of Echoes bard seems great fun though I'm sad they didn't take the opportunity to beef up the bang for your spell slots that its level 6 ability gave you since its original appearance in Unlikely Heroes. The new backgrounds are excellent and I'd allow them in any game, though it's sad they'll most likely all be made completely obsolete by the upcoming new core books. In summary - it may or may not work for you. If you've got a lot of KP stuff, then you'd probably be paying for a lot of racial rules in particular, that you already own. And evaluate the rest of the player options on a case by case basis. Some might need beefing up, some might need clarifying, and it's better to have those expectations and questions managed in session zero rather than 10 levels in when you're on single-digit HP and a TPK balances on the outcome of an ambiguously written rule. [/QUOTE]
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