Covers Preview for Elemental Evil Adventurer's Handbook and Princes of the Apocalypse!

So, it's official now. The Elder Elemental Eye has been somehow released from The World of Greyhawk to unleash havoc in the Realms. No fantasy world was described in more detail than the Forgotten Realms, and they still manage to produce not one, but two storylines in a row with themes and antagonists that have nothing to do with the Realms. Good job, Wizards.

 

[dwayne]

Please stop already with the god forsaken realms stuff, I am so sick of hearing about it its so detailed that almost everyone has been or heard about every inch of it above and below it. Please release some books with other settings, Darksun: psionics, Planescape: epic levels, Grayhawk: hard core sword and sorcery setting "tomb of horrors", Ravenloft: Dark horror/fear. Oriental adventures: honor and more ki and monks Asian flavor, A modern setting wild west or Cthulhu: for modern classes and insanity and alternatives to magic or mixing it with modern. These are just Ideas they could always put out a forgotten realms stuff as well if they want but give us some variety please,

 

[Gradine]

Great idea! I'll happily steal anything I can find to plug into Eberron.

I'm actually still trying to figure out how to port ToD to Eberron. Right now where I've landed is replacing Tiamat with her cousin Masvirik the Cold Sun, moving the early action to Q'Barra, and replacing the half dragon cultist leaders with blackscale lizardfolk. I'm still pretty early in the conversion but I find myself liking this idea more than a basic find-and-replace proper noun conversion.

 

[Staffan]

I'm actually still trying to figure out how to port ToD to Eberron. Right now where I've landed is replacing Tiamat with her cousin Masvirik the Cold Sun

Actually, Tiamat is a force in Eberron as well. She was one of the mightiest fiendish Overlords in the Age of Demons, with power over the very dragons who opposed them. There's some info on her in Dragons of Eberron. Just replace the Cult of the Dragon with Talons of Tiamat, and remove the bit about people being surprised at the Cult's abandonment of old-school dracoliches (because that was never a thing for the Talons).

 

[Uchawi]

Is Wizards in some sort of self destruct mode when it comes to the Forgotten Realms?

I don't think it is self destruct, but they also want to drop all the baggage which is supporting all the worlds to date and just choose one. But they are going to lose some people, since the approach is less than subtle.

 

[Gradine]

Actually, Tiamat is a force in Eberron as well. She was one of the mightiest fiendish Overlords in the Age of Demons, with power over the very dragons who opposed them. There's some info on her in Dragons of Eberron. Just replace the Cult of the Dragon with Talons of Tiamat, and remove the bit about people being surprised at the Cult's abandonment of old-school dracoliches (because that was never a thing for the Talons).

I'm aware that Tiamat exists, but her association with dragons, and the fact that Eberron dragons just don't act the same way as other dragons, leave me weary to use her or dragons in general that much. I really wanted to approach it with a different sealed evil in a can. I'll have to give Rise of Tiamat a serious read before making up my mind, but so far I'm really liking the new direction I'm taking it in. The basic questions I'm asking as I read through the AP is how this is fundamentally different being set in Eberron, and for me that starts first and foremost with "dragons".

Meanwhile, I'm fairly certain that the Elemental Evil AP will fit in quite nicely.

 

[lvl20dm]

This adventure might be more setting neutral than Tyranny of Dragons. They've got solid talent working on the adventure, and I anticipate good things in the Adventurer's Guide. Hopefully this is where we will see the Storm Sorcerer (it's mentioned in the PHB) and perhaps Genasi or even Shai'ar.

 

[Parmandur]

I think you overdid the acronyms OP usually means Original Post, or Over Powered. Given that, I have no idea what you just said. Nor am I sure what inToD means. At least I know what MMO means.

Organized Play, Tyranny of Dragons. I post on this forum from a phone, dude

Anyways, the point is that for purposes of cross-media tie-ins, a stated goal of the story-centric model the designers have been touting, Forgotten Realms has a lot going for it. Primarily, existing across media.

 

[Parmandur]

This adventure might be more setting neutral than Tyranny of Dragons. They've got solid talent working on the adventure, and I anticipate good things in the Adventurer's Guide. Hopefully this is where we will see the Storm Sorcerer (it's mentioned in the PHB) and perhaps Genasi or even Shai'ar.

If it ends up being primarily dungeon-based (potentially, megadungeon), then setting is fairly indifferent. And their talk about Elemental Evil in the PHB (Ranger, Druid entries), the MM (Aarocka, Azer?), and the DMG (all up in the planar section), they seem to be angling for a multiplanar threat here.

 

[Blackbrrd]

Three thoughts:

1) I expected the title to be "Elemental Evil Adventurer's Handbook" not just "Adventurer's Handbook". The latter sounds far too generic and not storyline specific with the title being so large and the little corner logo being so small. It will be harder to have an Adventurer's Handbook for other Adventure Paths without possible confusion.
I imagine this accessory *could* be a little more generic to serve as your standard splatbook in addition to player sourcebook on elemental evils. But that's a little lame when elemental power is such a cool theme in and of itself. There's nothing in the cover or title that screams "this is the book if you want to make an elemental themed character!!"

2) The covers are kinda bland. I'm not getting "phenomenal elemental power" from the Adventurer's Handbook. I'm getting pissed off druid. Ditto Princes of the Apocalypse. It doesn't seem very culty or Evil Elemental Eye-ish. Is that meant to be an evil sylph?

3) It's neat to see the covers. But what I *really* want to know is the pagecount, to see if they're large enough to justify the expense. Or if they're little tiny things. We know they're $40 and $50 respectively. As it's priced the same as the Core books, is the adventure a 320-page book? Or is it 200-pages, like two Tyranny of Dragons books combined? Is the Handbook at *least* 200-pages as well? (If so, why is it $10 cheaper.)

I am tired of the splat book train and will skip the book entirely and am a bit disappointed that they are already going down that path. On the positive side, I think 5e did a splendid job of creating a PHB that actually feels like a complete set of options for character creation.

I was hoping for more free standing adventures like Madness at Gardmoore Abbey or Reavers of Harkenworld. 5e started out really well when it comes to adventure support with the Starter Set, but following it up with two adventure paths isn't what I am looking. 4e had some awful adventure paths and it looks like 5e is following that trend (ok, not awful, but not really good either).

My current hope is for a license that let's third party publishers know where they stand, so they can actually create the adventures that could fill the gap for me, and probably a lot of other DM's that aren't fond of adventure paths.

 

[Jester David]

I am tired of the splat book train and will skip the book entirely and am a bit disappointed that they are already going down that path. On the positive side, I think 5e did a splendid job of creating a PHB that actually feels like a complete set of options for character creation.

I'm pretty tired as well, but two books a year isn't *that* bad, especially if they're really thematic and only half the book is a standard splatbook. Tying the splatbooks to large bi-annual adventures is a good idea from that perspective, as you can play with just the PHB and the one other splatbook just fine.

I was hoping for more free standing adventures like Madness at Gardmoore Abbey or Reavers of Harkenworld. 5e started out really well when it comes to adventure support with the Starter Set, but following it up with two adventure paths isn't what I am looking. 4e had some awful adventure paths and it looks like 5e is following that trend (ok, not awful, but not really good either).

Well, this looks less like an adventure path and more like a 1-15ish super adventure. So the WotC strategy seems to be two big adventures every year. Smaller stand alone books would be nice, and there's still time for WotC to produce those. But I imagine they might consider the D&D Expeditions encounters to be those. Or any of the myriad adventures on D&D Classics. There are years of games available digitally, and there's going to be content that even the most dedicated D&Der won't have heard of.

It should be noted that this adventure is being written/produced by Sasquatch Games, founded by the designer who wrote the Starter Set adventure. So if you liked that, you might like this adventure more.

My current hope is for a license that let's third party publishers know where they stand, so they can actually create the adventures that could fill the gap for me, and probably a lot of other DM's that aren't fond of adventure paths.

That would be cool too.