Heroes of Shadow Table of Contents

[Walking Dad]

Something odd I noticed about the blackguard in the toc is that its the only "class" that has a full page devoted races. I wonder why.

Maybe much artwork on the page?

 

[gyor]

Maybe much artwork on the page?

Could be or it could be that the previous entry ran onto the races page. Or Blackguards could have a more complicated relationship with other races. Or it could have an unlisted side bar.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Give me 45 days or so and I'll let you all know. Or someone will.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I find it odd that peeps are surprised tha a Necro is a Wizard. It always has been, and I expectted it to always remain so. Wizard is often where summoning goes, so the "army of undead" is a Wizzy thing imo. Otherwise a Necro is just a "cleric of death" (which was the best way to do the classic "army of undead" in 3.5 as it happens).

Yeah, I find this odd too. There was absolutely no option for a Necromancer of ANY kind in the game until 2e, which allowed it as a wizard school. 2e also allowed for reversed effect cleric spells as a standard thing, which allowed a bit of necromantic action for clerics, but in no case could you even really summon undead as a general thing. It wasn't until LATE 3.5 that there was ever any kind of class that was a dedicated necromancer. There really is little tradition for it in D&D.

Beyond that who cares what class is written on your character sheets guys? Seriously. The 4e devs don't really care about fluff wedded to the name of a class. They never did. They likely never will really.

Yes, your Necromancer is based on a controller. I suspect there are enough options in the game at this point that you can manage to make a leaderish necromancer or whatever.

 

[Incenjucar]

People are surprised in the sense of a pure-shadow necromancer being what many feel is a perfect class to add to the game as its own thing, especially since it gives WotC a way to innovate further. Not everyone is used to the new "cling to the past" paradigm yet.

 

[Aegeri]

but if you are not a rogue or assassin, it will often mean using up a standard action to do so ... thus not attacking an opponent to make it harder to hit you.

You've actually missed the key point that makes the power actually extremely poor for almost anyone. You need to use your standard just to be *able* to make the stealth check. The standard action does not in any way let you make a stealth check - you need to spend a second action, which will probably be a move action to actually become hidden. So the standard action power lets you make a check with any cover or concealment, including from allies and THEN you need ANOTHER action to become hidden. If you need to move away, you provoke an OA and thus accomplish nothing - especially if you were using it to try to leave combat to heal (this likely leaves you unconscious).

Additionally it's primary claim to fame - using allies as cover - assumes monsters can't just take a shift action. If a monster can shift, it can break your cover quite trivially in many cases (by no longer having the ally placed between yourself and it).

So the huge action sink - combined with how ineffectual it is unless you are in the land of perpetual night and enemies lack low-light or darkvision - makes it worthless for controllers (who frankly, have better options than this that won't take their most important actions in a round to do), leaders and most defenders. They're just not classes who can afford to throw away two vital actions to gain some CA. Especially given the total concealment being worth anything in the first place is conditional on monsters not having a burst or blast attack (or blindsight, tremorsense or truesight). The racial power becomes useful in only an incredibly limited number of niche scenarios that it is never worth using.

To be honest though, in general I am worried about the mechanical crunch in the book. What I've seen has been... less than impressive to put it nicely. The shadow hound for example, which relies on charging and fails to have any melee basic attack - so hence cannot charge - is another mechanic that seems to have been poorly thought out. I really hope many of these things are fixed in the final book.

 

[WalterKovacs]

I'm not choosing sides or seeking to start any hat of essentalz here, but it Walking Dad left out the most likely to appear thing that's 100% incompatible with Essentials:

Warlock encounter attack powers.

This does depend on what the binder ends up looking like. The hexblade doesn't provide any encounter powers for the old warlock, but since the binder is a controller, it's possible it may be closer to the wizard (or at least he cleric) in giving it encounter powers as well as dailies and utilities.

 

[AntlerDruid]

This does depend on what the binder ends up looking like. The hexblade doesn't provide any encounter powers for the old warlock, but since the binder is a controller, it's possible it may be closer to the wizard (or at least he cleric) in giving it encounter powers as well as dailies and utilities.

Yes the Binder gives Encounter powers - I am currently using one in my campaign.

 

[gyor]

I think it would be cool if the Gloom Hexblade's pact blade was a double weapon, secondary stat dex of course. Hexblades the Jedi Knights of Dnd

 

[Walking Dad]

Yes the Binder gives Encounter powers - I am currently using one in my campaign.

The binder starts to sound really interesting.
Can you say if it feels more like a wizard/invoker/psion/old warlock?
Has he summoning powers (dailies)?

BTW, the vampire preview uses the new class format.
I like it.
Kind of glad he turned out to be a striker. And another class that loves unarmored agility.