Complete Arcane (10 reasons)

[Naathez]

War...lock....

-dreamy eyes, glassy with anticipation, shine in the darkness of a foreign player's long wait...-

 

[Li Shenron]

Depends what you define as problematic.

One thing about these feats is that monsters won't have them (in general) because that the pregenerated monsters you find in the Monster Manuals have been given other feats.

Thus, the DM has to make a conscious decision to use that option against the party.

The problem with feats always arises from player usage of them. None of the feats presented so far seems overpowered, as their power is balanced by how terribly specific they are - with the possible exception of Sudden Maximize.

However, when you consider that Sudden Maximize has the same effect as a rod of metamagic, can only be used once a day, and takes up an extremely valuable feat slot... it's not so much of a problem.

You answer the question yourself they may reveal themselves as problematic once your players start demanding them for their characters. The one which bypasses all magical AC protection is effectively the most scary one. Impossible to say at the moment, maybe they have been careful enough to word it down, but it sounds like a game-breaking feature: not game-breaking in the sense that it "disrupt balance" in the game, just that it introduces quite a big change in what people are used to know about this game. On one hand, this definitely sounds interesting, on the other hand I am afraid it can have difficult-to-handle consequences. But let's see once we have the book out...

 

[Li Shenron]

My comments about the new article...

Warlock's invocations
Rumor is that the class will get quite few of them, definitely lesser than a sorcerer's known spells, but castable at will. I seem to remember that the class has intermediate combat traits (BAB, HD) am I right? Also SLA don't suffer from ASF, so the warlock can cast in armor, mmm... Definitely too hard to say yet, this class could be anything from pathetic to outrageously powerful. In any case it's different from all other core classes, not just a mix of abilities, which is very good. Well, not really completely different however... I just hope they have playtested it enough.

Prestige classes
We already heard about the revised Fatespinner. The Enlightened Monk (although I hate Monks) is at least an example that the book may be useful to others than arcane casters. The bardic PrCls are absolutely welcome, sounds like the first empowers the bardic music and the second the bardic spellcasting (let's hope there is some drawback here...).
Then there's the Suel arcanamach, "a warrior/spellcaster who can ignore all or part of the arcane spell failure", wow! Wait, you mean... another one ???

New feats
Ok they reprinted many old metamagic ones, but I really wonder if they have changed anything or not. Cooperative Spell was IMHO a great idea but with weak usefulness in 3.0, I'm curious to see its revision.
Sudden feats are not of my appeal. That's because the entire process of making metamagic much easier for non-spontaneous casters isn't of my appeal in the first place. I can't say why but if these sudden feats require the base metamagic feat then I will be glad to accept them in my game, but not otherwise.
OTOH the part about draconic feats can be a good counterpart for sorcerers, to make up for the general trend of making metamagic just as easy for everyone else.

New Spells
Well almost all these are just revisions so nothing impressive yet.

 

[Jolly Giant]

Not as impressed with these 10 reasons as I was with the first 10. Sounds like there's an awful lot of T&B material reprinted and not enough new stuff. The warlock sounds interesting, though.

 

[Felon]

No, it never was. It was designed as a fighter's draconic class, with just a little sorcerous multi-classing. Cheers!

"It never was"? It was first introduced in Tome and Blood, not Sword & Fist. It doesn't even have a BAB prerequisite, just spontaneous spellcasting and 8 ranks of Knowledge (arcane). It may work well for fighter/sorcs, but that's not sufficient to say "it never was".

 

[Knightfall]

6. Arcane Organizations: Organizations are always great sources for adventure hooks, and both PCs and NPCs benefit from membership. In addition to the usual mages' guilds, colleges of wizardry, and societies of magic, Complete Arcane offers three new organizations that also support various prestige classes. The Arcane Order is a college that offers members access to its Spellpool. The Seekers of the Song celebrate the primal music, and members of the Wayfarers Union provide teleportation services for their communities.

Woo hoo! Mage of the Arcane Order is IN!

This makes me happy too. Although, I wish they'd completely redo the Arcane Order and the College of Wizardry as its own book again. Something bigger and meatier than the 2e book. Can you say hardcover?

 

[Chun-tzu]

"It never was"? It was first introduced in Tome and Blood, not Sword & Fist. It doesn't even have a BAB prerequisite, just spontaneous spellcasting and 8 ranks of Knowledge (arcane). It may work well for fighter/sorcs, but that's not sufficient to say "it never was".

"Never was" might be a bit strong, but it's really not a PrC any Sorcerer takes if he wants to remain a Sorcerer. It gains no additional spell levels. A Sorcerer can take it after level 5, when he's casting level 2 spells, and go through level 15 casting only spells of level 0-2! That's not what most players are looking for in a 15th level Sorcerer.

 

[Felon]

"Never was" might be a bit strong, but it's really not a PrC any Sorcerer takes if he wants to remain a Sorcerer. It gains no additional spell levels. A Sorcerer can take it after level 5, when he's casting level 2 spells, and go through level 15 casting only spells of level 0-2! That's not what most players are looking for in a 15th level Sorcerer.

Sure, but nothing says you have to take all ten levels, and a few levels can make for a solid character. I play a campaign where the players make liberal use of level-adjusted races, monsters, and templates, so the prospect of actually getting hit dice, skill points, BAB, etc. is pretty appealing compared to the squat you get for the levels that becoming a half-dragon costs.

 

[Arcane Runes Press]

The warlock could be interesting, but I don't like the name. WotC is defining just about every name for spellcasters as a specific class of PrC, to the point where synonyms are going to get pretty sparse.

DM: "The mysterious man says 'Greetings, o' travelers. I am Magnus, warlock of Fireborn Mountain."

Timmy:"Um. When he says 'warlock', does that mean warlock, or warlock?"

DM: "Crap."


On a more serious note, I'm hoping the warlock doesn't step on the sorcerer class' toes too much. It's all well and good to say "you get 10 - 20 actions per day, so unlimited casting means nothing." But if the warlock's invocations are powerful, and offense-oriented in general, that's potentially going to cut down on prime sorcerer territory, and could work to shift the sorcerer towards different spells. Which in itself is okay, save for the fact that a lot of the focus on sorcerers to this point has been on their role as mobile canons.


On a similar track, I'm not holding my breath that the draconic feats for sorcerers will be too wonderful, for a couple reasons.

First, all draconic feats focuses the sorcerer class' origin too much. I'm a big fan of lots of possible origins for the sorcerer, and all dragon-ancestry related feats cuts down on that a bit. I would have prefered an approach more like the one I took in Quint Sorcerer, and the one taken (in a very similar fashion) in a couple recent Dragon articles, where multiple origins are explored and given benefits and drawbacks.

Second, the draconic feats will have to be powerful enough to warrant selection. Claws and natural armor are nice and all, but in combo with the sorcerer's BAB and crappy hit die, they're none too useful, and might end up looking blah if the warlock does have mid-range attack bonuses and decent hit points.


It is nice to see another couple PrCs for bards, though a couple more would have been nice (come on, throw the bard players a bone now and again). The teaser abilities are interesting, but I'm curious to see how they shake down in comparison to one another. The Seeker of the Song's new abilities sound nice, but they'll have to be really spiffy to defeat the Sublime Chord's new abilities + 9th level spells combo. We'll see.


As to new spells, we'll see. There's bound to be a few spiffy things there, but there's already so many spells out there (just counting WotC) that scads more just aren't that appealing.


On the plus side, it's nice to see the orb spells again. I always liked them, for some reason.

Patrick Y.

 

[hong]

First, all draconic feats focuses the sorcerer class' origin too much. I'm a big fan of lots of possible origins for the sorcerer, and all dragon-ancestry related feats cuts down on that a bit. I would have prefered an approach more like the one I took in Quint Sorcerer, and the one taken (in a very similar fashion) in a couple recent Dragon articles, where multiple origins are explored and given benefits and drawbacks.

You did Quint Sorcerer?

Crap, mang, why didn't you SAY anything?