ELEMENTAL EVIL Player's Companion - FREE!

The Elemental Evil Player's Companion is available for free download over at DTRPG (and RPGNow). It includes new races (aarakocra, deep gnome, genasi, and goliath) and ove 40 new spells. The PDF is a full-colour 25-page PDF; according to the first page, the genasi in chapter 1 and all of the spells in chapter 2 also appear in the appendices of Princes of the Apocalypse, the adventure due to hit store shelves very soon.

"Not inherently evil, elemental power can be mastered by those with both malevolent and benign intentions. The Elemental Evil Player’s Companion provides everything players need to build a character that is tied directly into the Elemental Evil storyline.

New race options include the aarakocra, deep gnome, genasi, and goliath. Additionally, a plethora of new spells put the elements directly at your command.

The Elemental Evil Player’s Companion, was original designed by Richard Baker, Robert J. Schwalb and Stephen Schubert, with additional design and development by Wizards D&D R&D.

This accessory is specifically meant to support the Elemental Evil–Princes of the Apocalypse adventure product."

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[Umbrathys]

Love the content. Love the art. Also (in my humble uneducated opinion) logical to exclude new cleric spells (wouldn't this be a non-issue if they would simply implement a "spells known" number or a spell list by deity / focus??).
Absolutely love the spells, especially the return of many old faithful ones
Is it just me, or is Melf's Minute Meteor coupled with a Fire Dragon Sorcerer really, really kick butt now?

 

[Sailor Moon]

Anyone else find the deep gnome magic presented as a feat to be...interesting? I don't know if I like it or not. It was certainly unexpected to be put in that way...and, of course, has implications as to the "optional" expectations of Feats in general...or opens up the whole can of worms o individual tables "ok'ing this feat but not that one".

But, like I said, unexpected...not entirely unwelcome...but intriguing why they would chose to do innate racial magic for this race this way...

It's been done before in 3rd edition.

Remember how drow used to get "levitate" back in the day? Well the made it where you could take a feat in 3rd edition and gain levitate along with a few other innate abilities.

 

[Desalus]

Then how about they put out more product and give me something that I will use?

I'm complaining about not getting enough product that I will pay for.

If this is where most of their attention is spent and that's all they could come up with then we better see something that is awesome in the near future.

I'm curious...Can you please give an example of a product that would give you something of use and be worthy of your purchase. You obviously don't care about new races or new spells.

 

[Klaus]

Did you do the illustration for the whirlwind spell, with the gnoll? I was wondering if that was you. I love it! The gnoll looks fantastic, and I appreciate the Egyptian trappings flying around; it really tells a story.

Yep, that was one of mine! Thanks for the kind words!

 

[Sailor Moon]

I'm curious...Can you please give an example of a product that would give you something of use and be worthy of your purchase. You obviously don't care about new races or new spells.

They have produced races that are niche to the product to be honest and we don't need anymore spells at the moment. Almost every class is a spellcaster in some way, how about bring out some nonspellcasting material?

A Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide would be a great start, along with some short term modules, regional books for FR, An Adventurer's Guide that contains options for "all" classes and contains more feats, backgrounds, weapons, and armour.

For a start.

 

[Agamon]

2. Because it supports the hobby, directing traffic to another site that sells rpg materials.

I suspect #2 is of less importance to WOTC, but I'd be surprised if no one was pleased at the result.

Yup. Rising tides raise all boats, even the big battleships.

 

[Kobold Stew]

Some people would rather get something good they pay for than have the company spend it's time making garbage for free instead. It seems that this is really just a way to get people to buy the elemental evil path, which is fine, but it also does seem like the sort of power creep we were getting with the less strictly edited Dragon material rather than the official splat books.

At least you're keeping an open mind about it.

I suspect you're in a minority to classify three new balanced races and a significant number of spells as "garbage". Apart from the low-level flying (which is explicitly called out in the text), I see no indications of power creep.*

Speaking for myself, this is the material I want, and if anything it makes me less interested in the adventure path, since the material I am most interested in has been given to me already. For free.


* What would be an indication of power creep?

I would say the reason we didn't see cleric spells is the fact that anytime new cleric spells come out, the cleric in question could automatically have access to it, unless it's god specific.

Cleric spells (without any other counterbalancing mechanism), as others have noted.

 

[Staffan]

Guys, I'm no mod or anything, but could we keep the complaining about the release schedule (or lack thereof) to one of the dozen or so perfectly adequate threads that already exist, and keep this one for talking about the contents of the EEPC?

 

[occam]

Speaking of power creep, I'm wondering if we're not seeing some in reverse. A few spells seem a little weak to me. The one that stands out is the highest-level new spell, Abi-Dalzim's horrid wilting. An 8th-level AoE spell that does 10d8 (45 avg.) necrotic, and doesn't affect constructs or undead? Seems like it should do more.

Compare, for instance, to sunburst, an 8th-level spell AoE spell (same range with much larger area) that does 12d6 (42 avg.) radiant, undead and oozes have disadvantage on the save, and it blinds.

 

[Desalus]

They have produced races that are niche to the product to be honest and we don't need anymore spells at the moment. Almost every class is a spellcaster in some way, how about bring out some nonspellcasting material?

A Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide would be a great start, along with some short term modules, regional books for FR, An Adventurer's Guide that contains options for "all" classes and contains more feats, backgrounds, weapons, and armour.

For a start.

Yeah, I agree with you on the lack of material for non-spellcasters. I tend to shy away from using spellcasters so it's a bit disappointing to see nothing new for those classes. As for the races, it seems that the PHB covered all of the basic races so I would expect any additional ones to be a bit more obscure.

I also agree that it would be really nice to get at least a campaign guide for the Forgotten Realms. Perhaps this PotA campaign book will contain a lot more fluff than the 180 page Tyranny of Dragons campaign did, so it could possibly fulfill that need. As far as more adventures, if you have access to the Encounters Adventures those are pretty good one shots. I agree with you though that the publicly released adventures are sorely lacking (hopefully they end up releasing Encounters for free at some point). My last point is that if they will not be releasing any new classes, class options, feats, or background in the campaign books, they must be planning to release this content in separate products.