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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[Fildrigar]

The module is 300 pages. Once they ditched the Adventurer's Handbook, they always said it was going to be a small PDF of the PC-stuff from Princes + some extra races.

It's 256 pages. From what I've heard.

 

[Goblinerd]

Maybe they're saving elemental priests for Dark Sun or something beyond the scope of a 25 page document? One can hope anyways.

Considering they only handed this PDF out because they cancelled the Adventurer's Handbook, I won't hold my breath for a Dark Sun one.
WotC has already gone on record as saying they don't want to come out with too many books and focus on adventure paths... I'm not asking for 3.5 scale product launches, but it would be better IMO if they released a few splats and campaign books too. The community seems to be convinced they're coming out and clearly have voiced an interest for them, I just hope WotC will listen... I'm doubtful though, it just seems to me like WotC has shrunk the D&D department and given them very little leeway and resources. It almost reads like a company on the verge of bankruptcy

 

[True_Blue]

Since I mainly want newer books for new crunch, and not fluff, this definitely sates some of my hunger for new books. The fact that this is given out for free is excellent. When it comes to fluff, I have all the books I need from past editions. And if I keep getting rules stuff for free, I may not have to spend much on this edition to have everything I want.

Count me very happy with this.

 

[KirayaTiDrekan]

Not sure if this has been posted yet, but, for those not wanting to go through drivethru, its up on the WotC website now as well.

http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/elemental-evil-player’s-companion

 

[Nellisir]

[*]Maybe this will sate the beast for a bit and we won't see so many threads complaining about the 5E release schedule.

They cancel the Adventurer's Handbook and release a 25-page pdf instead, with no notice*. So, no. If anything, the lack of information about the release makes me more nervous. I found out about it on Reddit, since it had already been pushed down out of view on the front page here.
A version that doesn't devour my ink cartridges would be nice too....

Cute disclaimer.

*If there was an announced release date for this, then I withdraw this point. I hadn't heard one.

 

[bogmad]

Considering they only handed this PDF out because they cancelled the Adventurer's Handbook, I won't hold my breath for a Dark Sun one.
WotC has already gone on record as saying they don't want to come out with too many books and focus on adventure paths... I'm not asking for 3.5 scale product launches, but it would be better IMO if they released a few splats and campaign books too. The community seems to be convinced they're coming out and clearly have voiced an interest for them, I just hope WotC will listen... I'm doubtful though, it just seems to me like WotC has shrunk the D&D department and given them very little leeway and resources. It almost reads like a company on the verge of bankruptcy

I expect there'll be a document for Dark Sun at some point, if only a "playtest" doc like they did for Eberron. A full product launch? Yeah, that's not something I'm holding my breath on.

But no cleric love in here I get. Given how cleric spellcasting works you can't just add new spells without potentially unbalancing the entire class, unless you do it through a subclass and perhaps add new domain spells. Seems they made a point to no have any subclass options in this pdf. So no new cleric options. If they went ahead and threw a cleric subclass in here just because of how they got left out of spells I think this whole thread would derail into people complaining how the sorcerer got mistreated.
Can't please everyone, but I'm pretty happy with what they gave us. For Free.

 

[Kramodlog]

Not sure if this has been posted yet, but, for those not wanting to go through drivethru, its up on the WotC website now as well.

http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/elemental-evil-player’s-companion

Interesting. I wonder if they used DTRPG first to avoid a crash of their site with all the traffic the PDF would have created.

 

[Nellisir]

Interesting. I wonder if they used DTRPG first to avoid a crash of their site with all the traffic the PDF would have created.

I find it unlikely this will generate more traffic than the Basic Rules. Did that crash the site at any point?

 

[TerraDave]

Its nice, but its does feel like they started something bigger, like the book they announced, and stopped. At some point the cleric elemental domain(s), shai'r warlock, elemental sorcerer, oath of chaos paladin...etc and so on where outlined, then dropped for for whatever reason.

I am quite happy with this offering, especially for free. I wonder why the PDF was pushed through DTRPG rather than the articles format on the D&D website?

Its a final supplement to a print product (which will also be available as PDF????) vs a playtest article. At least thats one guess.

EDIT: and now its on the wotc site. Doesn't change my answer, I guess.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Well, I've already rolled a goliath paladin of the ancients Whenever we don't have the time or enough of the group, we do one-off arena style sessions. It's a 50 level tower, where each level is a different challenge. A great way to try out new PCs and get a good feel of the game when our regular campaigns aren't doable.