Wik
First Post
I bought this book for two simple reasons: It was the last Miniature's Handbook on the shelf (and, the clerk assured me, once it sold, there wouldn't be any more, since the book was out of print), and because I was dying to find out just what the Marshal was capable of.
Really, this book is NOT a "Complete Miniatures" book in any true sense; more, it's the "missing link" between D&D miniatures and regular D&D play. The first half of this book is built entirely for D&D crowds - new base classes (the healer, the marshal, the warmage, and the favoured soul; two of which are covered in other books as well), a bunch of new monsters, new spells, and some really interesting new feats (many of which are reprinted in the Complete series). The second half of this book focuses on the D&D minis game - it gives the skirmish rules (Which are already printed in the D&D minis starter set; and, if you are playing D&D minis after War Drums, you'll find these rules obsolete), as well as a "mass battle" system that is derived from the skirmish rules. There is also much info on converting your D&D character into D&D minis rules, which is something I thought was pretty nifty.
The new classes in this book are all fairly interesting. The Healer gains a bunch of healing spells, and gets a unicorn animal companion. I thought it was a bit uninspired, but I could see how it can really benefit the group. Since the healer can be either gender, though, I thought it was rather interesting that a Unicorn was selected as the animal companion - can't they only be ridden by females?
The Marshal projects auras that grant benefits to his allies, in a manner similar to that of the Dragon Shaman (or the paladin from Diablo 2). He also grants his allies the ability to take extra move actions, which is something I thought suited a book based around miniature (and, by extension, tactical) play. However, with a cleric base attack bonus and a d8 for hit dice, the class really just seemed to be a watered-down fighter with a few simple benefits.
The War Mage is an interesting idea that has been covered in other books as well. She gets a selection of pre-selected battle spells that she can cast similar to the sorcerer, and a few class abilities that let her wear armour and deal extra damage with her spells. Really, I'm not a fan of the warmage. I had a player run one of these (I used the warmage as presented in Complete Arcane) and found the character capable of one-shot kills against many of the CR 3 or 4 creatures I was using as villains for our 2nd level group. The only time the warmage ran into any trouble was when the group fought a large animated statue.
The Favoured Soul is a cross between the cleric and the sorcerer. Some people really love this class, and I know a lot of people think it's the best "cleric" class in the game, but personally, it bores me. I *do* like how the class gets wings and alignment-based damage reduction, but I don't like how the class seems to be less reliant on the specifics of it's deity. For example, a Cleric's deity determines many things for the character - what domains it can select, favoured weapon, alignment restrictions, and so on. For the favoured soul, your deity only determines your favoured weapon, as well as your alignment. A lawful-evil favoured soul and a lawful good favoured soul could be mechanically the same, which is something I'm not too fond of.
There's also a few prestige classes - a Summoner of sorts, a Samurai tied to one of the ten different dragon types, an undead hunter, a leader of savage tribes, a monster class for heavy-hitters, a tactical soldier, and a "havoc mage" that seems to fill the exact same niche as the warmage. None of them really leapt out and grabbed me, with the possible exception of the War Chief - this is a PrC for the warrior who leads a group of savage humanoids. Humanoids under the War Chief's command gain strength benefits at the expense of taking damage every round.
I'm not going to go into detail regarding the feats, spells, and monsters. I will say that the book makes a point to cover the lower-level side of the spectrum, which is something I was very happy to see. I don't really run high level games; my highest level games typically wind up around 8th level or so. Most of the spells aren't much higher-level than 3rd or 4th, and there were only a few monsters that were higher than CR 5 or so. The book also adds "Aspects" - manifestations of the very gods themselves, that are considerably weaker in power. The average aspect was around CR 10 or so, meaning you could conceivably use it as the final villain for an 8th level group. I really enjoyed that.
Most of the spells came off as alright, although the power level of a few seemed iffy. In fact, many of the spells (not surprisingly) seemed more suited for mini play than in an actual D&D campaign. For example, there's a first level spell that allows two friendly creatures within 25 feet of the caster to suddenly switch places. While this spell might be perfect in mini play, I felt it didn't really fit into my idea of how spells work in D&D. There are also a few spells that really confused me - Swift Fly, for example, is a fly spell that can be cast as a swift action but lasts for only one round. This is great and all, except for the fact that only druids and bards can cast it! Bards and Druids can't cast the regular fly spell, but they can cast the swift version? And why can't wizards cast it? I understand this has been corrected in Complete Arcane, but I caught myself wondering "what were they thinking" when I saw this.
The Skirmish rules, as I've already said, can be found in the minis starter set, so I was a little miffed that they were printed here as well (although, I guess it makes sense. And, these rules are a more indepth printing of the skirmish rules, which would have been great, were it not for the fact that War Drums has made most of these rules dated). This part of the book also gives advice for running Skirmish scenarios, which I thought looked like a lot of fun. These scenarios really expand the D&D minis game, and if you find yourself playing minis alot, you owe it to yourself to check out these rules. The new scenarios (and skirmish campaign play!) look like they'd be a lot of fun.
The mass combat rules seem more suited for the D&D minis game over the regular D&D game; they make heavy use of commander ratings and skirmish damage ratings, meaning it might be a bit difficult to run a mass combat in regular D&D rules. Strangely, the mass combat rules use rounds that are the same length of time as regular D&D combat, meaning I could see an entire epic combat happening in less than two minutes (20 rounds) of game time. There also isn't a "scale" included in these rules; the mass combat rules seem to believe that "one mini=one soldier", which makes it hard to create truly "mass" battles. I don't think you'd be able to recreate the battle of Helm's Deep with this system; I still think BATTLESYSTEM is the way to go for D&D mass battles.
Finally, there is a "random dungeon" ruleset that ends the book. This chapter provides a way to use your D&D mini cards to stock random dungeons for solo play. There's a lot here, although the book points out that these random dungeons will be very violent and result in high PC death, meaning they don't work too well in general campaign play. Still, I think the system looks like a lot of fun, and it's high death count and heavy dose of combat means that it looks like an ideal playground for testing new character classes/prestige classes that I create. I intend on using this system for a "thursday night kill 'em all" session or two.
All in all, there wasn't really anything in this book that I thought was ground-breaking. While some of the classes seemed interesting, and I liked the new monsters, I felt that this book wouldn't add much to any D&D game I planned on running. As a regular D&D minis player, however, I felt that while the skirmish rules are now outdated, the skirmish scenarios and campaign play features should be a lot of fun.
Really, this book is NOT a "Complete Miniatures" book in any true sense; more, it's the "missing link" between D&D miniatures and regular D&D play. The first half of this book is built entirely for D&D crowds - new base classes (the healer, the marshal, the warmage, and the favoured soul; two of which are covered in other books as well), a bunch of new monsters, new spells, and some really interesting new feats (many of which are reprinted in the Complete series). The second half of this book focuses on the D&D minis game - it gives the skirmish rules (Which are already printed in the D&D minis starter set; and, if you are playing D&D minis after War Drums, you'll find these rules obsolete), as well as a "mass battle" system that is derived from the skirmish rules. There is also much info on converting your D&D character into D&D minis rules, which is something I thought was pretty nifty.
The new classes in this book are all fairly interesting. The Healer gains a bunch of healing spells, and gets a unicorn animal companion. I thought it was a bit uninspired, but I could see how it can really benefit the group. Since the healer can be either gender, though, I thought it was rather interesting that a Unicorn was selected as the animal companion - can't they only be ridden by females?
The Marshal projects auras that grant benefits to his allies, in a manner similar to that of the Dragon Shaman (or the paladin from Diablo 2). He also grants his allies the ability to take extra move actions, which is something I thought suited a book based around miniature (and, by extension, tactical) play. However, with a cleric base attack bonus and a d8 for hit dice, the class really just seemed to be a watered-down fighter with a few simple benefits.
The War Mage is an interesting idea that has been covered in other books as well. She gets a selection of pre-selected battle spells that she can cast similar to the sorcerer, and a few class abilities that let her wear armour and deal extra damage with her spells. Really, I'm not a fan of the warmage. I had a player run one of these (I used the warmage as presented in Complete Arcane) and found the character capable of one-shot kills against many of the CR 3 or 4 creatures I was using as villains for our 2nd level group. The only time the warmage ran into any trouble was when the group fought a large animated statue.
The Favoured Soul is a cross between the cleric and the sorcerer. Some people really love this class, and I know a lot of people think it's the best "cleric" class in the game, but personally, it bores me. I *do* like how the class gets wings and alignment-based damage reduction, but I don't like how the class seems to be less reliant on the specifics of it's deity. For example, a Cleric's deity determines many things for the character - what domains it can select, favoured weapon, alignment restrictions, and so on. For the favoured soul, your deity only determines your favoured weapon, as well as your alignment. A lawful-evil favoured soul and a lawful good favoured soul could be mechanically the same, which is something I'm not too fond of.
There's also a few prestige classes - a Summoner of sorts, a Samurai tied to one of the ten different dragon types, an undead hunter, a leader of savage tribes, a monster class for heavy-hitters, a tactical soldier, and a "havoc mage" that seems to fill the exact same niche as the warmage. None of them really leapt out and grabbed me, with the possible exception of the War Chief - this is a PrC for the warrior who leads a group of savage humanoids. Humanoids under the War Chief's command gain strength benefits at the expense of taking damage every round.
I'm not going to go into detail regarding the feats, spells, and monsters. I will say that the book makes a point to cover the lower-level side of the spectrum, which is something I was very happy to see. I don't really run high level games; my highest level games typically wind up around 8th level or so. Most of the spells aren't much higher-level than 3rd or 4th, and there were only a few monsters that were higher than CR 5 or so. The book also adds "Aspects" - manifestations of the very gods themselves, that are considerably weaker in power. The average aspect was around CR 10 or so, meaning you could conceivably use it as the final villain for an 8th level group. I really enjoyed that.
Most of the spells came off as alright, although the power level of a few seemed iffy. In fact, many of the spells (not surprisingly) seemed more suited for mini play than in an actual D&D campaign. For example, there's a first level spell that allows two friendly creatures within 25 feet of the caster to suddenly switch places. While this spell might be perfect in mini play, I felt it didn't really fit into my idea of how spells work in D&D. There are also a few spells that really confused me - Swift Fly, for example, is a fly spell that can be cast as a swift action but lasts for only one round. This is great and all, except for the fact that only druids and bards can cast it! Bards and Druids can't cast the regular fly spell, but they can cast the swift version? And why can't wizards cast it? I understand this has been corrected in Complete Arcane, but I caught myself wondering "what were they thinking" when I saw this.
The Skirmish rules, as I've already said, can be found in the minis starter set, so I was a little miffed that they were printed here as well (although, I guess it makes sense. And, these rules are a more indepth printing of the skirmish rules, which would have been great, were it not for the fact that War Drums has made most of these rules dated). This part of the book also gives advice for running Skirmish scenarios, which I thought looked like a lot of fun. These scenarios really expand the D&D minis game, and if you find yourself playing minis alot, you owe it to yourself to check out these rules. The new scenarios (and skirmish campaign play!) look like they'd be a lot of fun.
The mass combat rules seem more suited for the D&D minis game over the regular D&D game; they make heavy use of commander ratings and skirmish damage ratings, meaning it might be a bit difficult to run a mass combat in regular D&D rules. Strangely, the mass combat rules use rounds that are the same length of time as regular D&D combat, meaning I could see an entire epic combat happening in less than two minutes (20 rounds) of game time. There also isn't a "scale" included in these rules; the mass combat rules seem to believe that "one mini=one soldier", which makes it hard to create truly "mass" battles. I don't think you'd be able to recreate the battle of Helm's Deep with this system; I still think BATTLESYSTEM is the way to go for D&D mass battles.
Finally, there is a "random dungeon" ruleset that ends the book. This chapter provides a way to use your D&D mini cards to stock random dungeons for solo play. There's a lot here, although the book points out that these random dungeons will be very violent and result in high PC death, meaning they don't work too well in general campaign play. Still, I think the system looks like a lot of fun, and it's high death count and heavy dose of combat means that it looks like an ideal playground for testing new character classes/prestige classes that I create. I intend on using this system for a "thursday night kill 'em all" session or two.
All in all, there wasn't really anything in this book that I thought was ground-breaking. While some of the classes seemed interesting, and I liked the new monsters, I felt that this book wouldn't add much to any D&D game I planned on running. As a regular D&D minis player, however, I felt that while the skirmish rules are now outdated, the skirmish scenarios and campaign play features should be a lot of fun.
