Heroes Of Battle SUCKS!!! (IMHO)

[swordsmasher]

While i haven't read the book cover to cover, I will say at first glance the book looks pretty good. Cool back cover summary, not too shabby cover art. Then you see the price. 30 bucks! I was thinking maybe 20, but 30!?!?!? For a book not much thicker than last years Wolverine Annual? Come off of it.

So I opened it up. Hmm, interesting table of contents. Flipping through it, I scoped out the feats. Not much here, Complete Warrior was better for combat feats if you ask me.

Prestige Classes: Right, all three they printed suck. The combat medic is basically one big joke; a straight up cleric in any form is a better healer/medic than the combat medic! lol

So i get to thinking, okay, i read somewhere this book is supposed to have an interesting and different way of running large scale battles without mass amounts of minis and too much use of a flowchart. AHHH!!! I was horrified and stunned to see the intricate details of the flowcharts! I'd say a good 75-85% of the pc's battlefield encounters are flowchart based encounters (which offer very little in the way of "player mobility" in my opinion.)

All in all I give the book 4 out of 10. Why? Because there are some useful things, and the feats weren't all that bad, and i am sure somebody somewhere will find a use for the combat medic; maybe as a cohort, or even thier cohorts cohort or something like that. lol

Again, my major turn off was the size of the book compared to the price. I might ask my rich gramma to pick it up for me for christmas, or wait for some other sucker to purchase it and buy it off of him at next years lawn sale.

And honestly, I still have yet to find a better Mass Combat syste than what was printed in the Sacred "D&D Rules Cyclopedia".

Any other comments or things I missed?

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Any other comments or things I missed?

The point of the book?

 

[Pants]

HoB is 192 pages correct?
If so, then 30 bucks is the norm.

 

[Beholder Bob]

The.....book....is...crap!!!!!!!!!!!

It is verbose, but does not actually hand the reader anything. When you are done, you wonder, why did I read this section?

They explain the implications of a war campaign - material already inherently obvious and a waste of time. I found no new info, nothing worth my time. The mini's handbook was better reading.

Fluff without the flavor. Now that’s a great concept - dry & unsatisfying.

The prestige classes do suck.
The feats are not that impressive.
They wrote up war and siege magic items. Excuse me while I deflate my tire. The brain juices were at low tide - they offer flaming, frost, shocking..... catapults, ballista, etc.

They give you - flowcharts. That’s it. Flowcharts.

I want my money back! Grrrrr!

BB

 

[Phaedrus]

You should read Steel Wind's comments here for a different take:
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=131457&page=2&pp=40

The battlefield as dungeon... that's a good summary of the book's intent. For what it sets out to do, I like it. More flavor and advice than rules, but I think that's what they meant to do.

 

[Beholder Bob]

I suppose if all you sought was advice.

This book has little/no flavor.

It offers little/no crunch (as in how to run a war or battle, good ways to develop characters from this sort of background). It gives you a few feats, some siege equipment, and states how some skills apply in a battlefield - in a rough way. The mini handbook will help you build characters that feal closer to soldiers from a war.

The advice, the war is the dungeon - did not need to be spread out over the book. Other then that advice, what does the book really offer?

And finally, the offering of 7 mounts.... ever get the feeling they just needed to add to the page count.

BB

 

[Flyspeck23]

All in all I give the book 4 out of 10.

A 4 out of 10 is crap?

I haven't read the book thus far, but if you think it's so bad that you need to call your thread "Heroes of Battle SUCKS!!!", why would you give it 4/10 stars?

 

[Vocenoctum]

The battlefield as dungeon... that's a good summary of the book's intent. For what it sets out to do, I like it. More flavor and advice than rules, but I think that's what they meant to do.

It's like Dieties and Demigods. It was announced and explained exactly as it is. If you bought it expecting it to be something else, then give it a bad review, that's not really the books fault I think.
So yeah, it's exactly what they meant to do I think.

 

[Felon]

IMO, a genre book should contain some tools for tweaking bases classes so that they are more appropriate to play the part of soldiers in the battlefield rather than a bunch of delvers exploring dungeons for loot. Instead, we got advice which amounted to "just treat it like it was a dungeon, and wherever that treatment becomes incovenient to accurately representing the genre, don't worry about it". I think classes like wizard, bard, or druid would need some adaptation to be appropriate for a war campaign, like substitution levels for instance. Or hell, just replace them with warmage, marshal, and healer.

They brought up potential problems like needing to get 8 hours of rest while traveling non-stop behind enemy lines, or how players will get discouraged if they don't get the traditional rewards of magic items or GP, and really didn't provide solid answers other than "fudge it"

 

[Beholder Bob]

A 4 out of 10 is crap?

I haven't read the book thus far, but if you think it's so bad that you need to call your thread "Heroes of Battle SUCKS!!!", why would you give it 4/10 stars?

Well, I'd give it a 1.

As to being what they suggested - This book gives perhaps 2% towards its goals:

1st) help a player get ready & involved in a war campaign. It does a piss poor job. This book offers a few feats and some suggestions for using skills - oh, and 3 prestige classes. Of its roughly 300 pages, perhaps 20 help a player.

2nd) help a dm create/organize a war campaign - other then telling me spread sheets, and the war zone is your dungeon - it does nothing. It gives soft advice, says things may get rough. It offers a few encounter styles - attack a supply line, etc. It doesn't actually do much for running a game, not counting the complete absence of melee/war rules - for flavor. It offers a few rough guidelines. It does not discuss the strategy, the flavor of war (war is hell, hero at the gate, last stand, rail campaign, or any other flavor), or hints for running the suggested mass battles ('do not run several thousand combatants, run 30-80 folks fighting each other instead'. They suggest some monsters and small battalions).

What I'd expect: how to create a war flavor. How to keep it feeling doom ridden, or how to make it feel that way. Basic tactics that the characters with a war history would implement in a standard campaign, as well as in a war campaign. Give a feel for what its like behind your lines. Develop siege craft to the point it can be used, not just a ghost effort.

Other then that, sure, its ok. Using just this book, the war will indeed feel like a dungeon. 4 encounters, treasure, done. Next day, rinse, repeat.

Again, 1 out of 10.

BB