Advanced Player's Guide pre-orders and preview

[jgbrowning]

The first of 4 weekly previews of the Advanced Player's Guide, written by one of the most experienced Dungeons & Dragons writers, Ari Marmell, is available for download at Your Games Now.

It contains the credits and table of contents pages along with the entire powers list. It's an exciting overview and the next three previews will highlight a race, a class, and some paragon paths, so watch out for next week's preview as well.

Also, we're accepting pre-orders for the Advanced Player's Guide at our web store, so if you know you already want one and feel like directly supporting Expeditious Retreat Press, drop by and place an order. For those who'd rather support their FLGS, the book will be on store shelves in October, 2008. In addition, we're taking pre-orders for our other 4e-licensed products due in October, Plague, and Lands of Darkness #1: The Barrow Grounds.


joe b.

 

[Phaezen]

Just had a look, and I am intrigued

In particular pages 103 through 108 look interesting.

Although just one question - no paragon paths are listed for the Spellbinder?

Phaezen

 

[Mouseferatu]

Although just one question - no paragon paths are listed for the Spellbinder?

Well, here's the deal with the spellbinder. You'll doubtless note that not only does it not have its own paragon paths, it's also shorter than the other entries. There's a reason for that.

If you go back to 1E--which was my own source material, of course--what you had was a class that basically functioned exactly as a wizard, but with a different selection of spells. I didn't want to make my own version exactly like that, but some amount of overlap was inescapable.

In a way, then, the spellbinder is almost a "sub-class." That doesn't mean that it's any less playable than the others. If you choose to play one, you have a full range of choices and options. But, over the course of 2nd and 3rd editions, most of the spells that made the illusionist what it was in 1E were given to other classes. So when I sat down to design a 4E illusionist-equivalent, I realized that the majority of the spells I wanted to give it in 4E--not all, but most--either WotC had already given to the wizard, or I myself had already given to my bard-equivalent, the troubadour.

This left me with two problems, since

A) There's only so many ways you can do illusion spells and still have them feel like illusions, and

B) I wanted this to feel like the 1E illusionist class in many respects, not like a brand new concept that happened to have some illusions.

So ultimately, to make the class work, it had to borrow a lot of its spells from the wizard and troubador (and, here and there, the warlock). Thus, because it's the only class in the game thus far not to have an entirely unique spell list--it has some unique powers of its own, don't worry, but as I said, many are borrowed--it didn't require nearly as much space.

Similarly, once I'd decided to make it a sub-class, I took another look at the troubadour and wizard paragon paths, and realized that some of them fit the spellbinder just as well as they did their original classes, and I've made notes to that effect in the text.

Take a look when the book's out, and I think you'll be happy with it; it's got less page count than the others, but I don't think it's any less viable.

 

[Phaezen]

Ari, thanks for the reply.

I guess I will have to wait patiently to see how the class looks , but it does sound interesting.

Is it October yet ?

And Now?

Phaezen


What about now?

 

[JeffB]

DL'ed the preview. Looks like it's gonna be great!

Will this (print version) be available through Amazon.com or Borders, etc?

 

[vagabundo]

How many pounds (weight) is the book? I'm trying to work out postage from your site to Ireland.

thanks

 

[vagabundo]

How many pounds (weight) is the book? I'm trying to work out postage from your site to Ireland. (would buying from Paizo be better? their based in the uk right??)

thanks

 

[jgbrowning]

DL'ed the preview. Looks like it's gonna be great!

Will this (print version) be available through Amazon.com or Borders, etc?

The Advanced Player's Guide will only be distributed through the hobby channels, meaning that game stores are the only retailers able to purchase the product for resale, unless the bigger box stores open a hobby channel of their own.

Short answer, no.

joe b.

 

[jgbrowning]

How many pounds (weight) is the book? I'm trying to work out postage from your site to Ireland. (would buying from Paizo be better? their based in the uk right??)

thanks

I think it should be $9. About a pound in weight. I think Paizo is based in the US out of Seattle, although I could be incorrect.

joe b.

 

[garyh]

The preview zip didn't work for me. Got a corrupted message. I'll try when I get home.

That didn't stop me from pre-ordering, though. Love the concept, love everything I've heard about it, and love being able to support three great members of the EN World community.

I also plan to snag something 4e from Necromancer once Clark can get something out.