Review of Heroes of the Feywild

[Wednesday Boy]

I agree that the Fey Beast Tamer is really good. I was surprised in reading it how similar it was to the "pet" that the beastmaster ranger gets. Now any class can have it on top of their normal class features - pretty strong!

I would love to see the beastmaster pets get revamped to fall in step with the Fey Beast Tamer theme. (Or in step with the sentinal's companion for that matter.)

 

[Nullzone]

Specific court feats sounds like a really interesting idea. It sounds to me like you've got a great Dragon article to pitch!

Heh, a writer I am not

 

[Drammattex]

Heh, a writer I am not

I bet you 5 XP that Klaus pitches that article.

 

[Klaus]

I bet you 5 XP that Klaus pitches that article.

Is the window still open?

 

[WalterKovacs]

What do you all think of the strikerness of the Berserker? An additional 1d8 on melee basics and at-wills seems weak. Maybe that's the cost of having dual roles but since they only have one role at a time it seems like their ability to fulfill their role shouldn't be lessened.

The 1d8 per tier is comparable to other striker features (executioner, ranger or warlock if they take a feat), and they still have the no weapon restriction (if you do go with a one handed weapon, you have the option to get a damage boost to make up for the loss a bit). The striker 'switch' goes on when you start using the main striker powers for the old barbarians ... namely their encounter and daily powers which have some of the highest X[W] numbers for those levels, which get even better with massive weapon dice that come from unrestricted weapon selection options. Basically, the striker 'mode' is more or less the same as an old school barbarian, with their at-wills doing comprable damage to howling/devastating strike. As an added bonus, your pre-fury uses of vengeful guardian, and post-fury normal OA's, also do extra dice of damage. You do miss out of rampage and the 1/encounter class feature that gave the old barbarian a bit more damage output, but those weren't really easy to control, so while they upped the average damage output, you couldn't exactly use them too tactically (the 1/encounter powers are easier to time, but you can't really predict when you'll crit outside of something like Dice of Auspicious Fortune.

As long as you don't fury too soon (leaving yourself with defender encounter powers which will do less damage without having actual defender features to back the power up) you will be striking nearly as well as a normal barbarian, and they tend to do a decent job at it.

 

[SSquirrel]

Great review! One clarification, though - the Pixie explicitly has Reach 1 instead of Reach 0 as a Tiny creature usually would have, which means that it doesn't have to enter an enemy's square in order to attack in melee (though it may do so). This comes from the Wee Warrior class feature.

When Faen in Arcana Unearthed/Evolved metamorphosed into Sprytes they also retained their reach 1, but they also still took up a 5' square, even tho they were also size Tiny.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

Is the window still open?

I think until the end of November.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

I think it would be neat if the campaign villain was a dark mirror of a pixie PC--someone that had lost their way, and the pixie PC is sort of the bright potential that they were as a child, or could have been. It was a stray thought I kept having while writing that section. Somebody please use it.

When I first considered pixies the class/race combination of Vampire/Pixie stood out because of the shared primary stats but I couldn't think of a good story to flesh out the concept. Going with the dark mirror idea, perhaps a human got turned into a vampire (or corrupted by Shadow in some other way) and that got reflected onto the human's pixie, turning him into a vampire.

It's a different take on the reluctant, unwilling vampire theme and allows a borderline evil class to work within a group without being of evil alignment. And curing their human in order to cleanse themself is a good reason for the pixie PC to adventure outside of the Feywild.

 

[Drammattex]

Wednesday Boy, I would play D&D with you any time. You always have cool ideas.

 

[Ryujin]

When I first considered pixies the class/race combination of Vampire/Pixie stood out because of the shared primary stats but I couldn't think of a good story to flesh out the concept. Going with the dark mirror idea, perhaps a human got turned into a vampire (or corrupted by Shadow in some other way) and that got reflected onto the human's pixie, turning him into a vampire.

It's a different take on the reluctant, unwilling vampire theme and allows a borderline evil class to work within a group without being of evil alignment. And curing their human in order to cleanse themself is a good reason for the pixie PC to adventure outside of the Feywild.

Remember the little flying bone-eaters from the second Hellboy movie? (Yes, I would also like to forget that movie was ever made, but.....) There's plenty of precedent, in many cultures, for little Fey blood/bone/life sucking creatures so your Vampixie would fit right in.