Tony Vargas
Legend
So, I have the sub-titled 'Dungeon Survival Handbook.'
Quick review: it's held on to some of the things that HotFW and HotEC did. There are new races, new themes - all with power swaps. And some more under-dark-flavored power-swap options, including the first post-Essentials sightings of Skill Powers and even martial dailies (gasp!). There are also three 'new' races. OK, two MM1 races - one, the Kobold, with it's notorious racial 'Shifty' power nerfed - and one returning sub-race, the old Deep Gnome. All the races have nice flavor text - the goblin, in particular, is made more appealing in presentation/flavor - and, have feat support and power swaps. For a novelty, the feats are actually listed with each race, instead of all glomped together in one chapter - a much more logical approach: only someone playing a given race needs to find that race's feats.
On the down side: it's a little slim for a combined-player-and-DM resource, and wastes a few pages on what amount to adds for old modules, complete with cheesy (excuse me: awesome, classic) old cover art. And, this is probably just me, I got the vague impression that there was a little bit of "what the heck, the editions almost over" to this one. The inclusion of "Scrolls of Power" - one-shot artifacts that exist solely to bring up old broken spells, along with goofy history explaining their absence - being the most obvious one.
Quick review: it's held on to some of the things that HotFW and HotEC did. There are new races, new themes - all with power swaps. And some more under-dark-flavored power-swap options, including the first post-Essentials sightings of Skill Powers and even martial dailies (gasp!). There are also three 'new' races. OK, two MM1 races - one, the Kobold, with it's notorious racial 'Shifty' power nerfed - and one returning sub-race, the old Deep Gnome. All the races have nice flavor text - the goblin, in particular, is made more appealing in presentation/flavor - and, have feat support and power swaps. For a novelty, the feats are actually listed with each race, instead of all glomped together in one chapter - a much more logical approach: only someone playing a given race needs to find that race's feats.
On the down side: it's a little slim for a combined-player-and-DM resource, and wastes a few pages on what amount to adds for old modules, complete with cheesy (excuse me: awesome, classic) old cover art. And, this is probably just me, I got the vague impression that there was a little bit of "what the heck, the editions almost over" to this one. The inclusion of "Scrolls of Power" - one-shot artifacts that exist solely to bring up old broken spells, along with goofy history explaining their absence - being the most obvious one.
