How come no reviews on WOTC Mini handbook
- Thread starter DarkShiv
- Start date
diaglo
Adventurer
MerricB said:
it contains no content at all about alcohol?
never judge a book by its cover nor its title.
i buy all the stuff so i can keep up and so i can see if there are any new ideas to port over.
i can honestly say i felt jipped with this purchase (and i got a 40% discount)
it may, and i'm and not even sure about this, be worth 1/4 the retail value. but that is for a page here or there. you have to dig to find something.
edit: and i played, as i'm sure many others did, with a WotC employee at Gen Con (Dave Noonan) during the demo games. i won a trog.
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My comments (long... very long)
I am not a professional reviewer, but I will add my 2 cents, mostly from the role-playing side.
Presentation:
The book is well-constructed and feels as sturdy as other recent WotC books. Interior art is interesting, and the pairing of photos of the finished minis with the original concept sketches for them is a nice motif. The RPG material is set off in its own chapters, making most of it easy to find regardless of whether you are using the minis rules or not.
Content:
Base Classes
Four new Base classes are presented, but only 1 feels right to me. The Marshall fills a niche (the Captain or Squad Leader role) that my players and I have sometimes tripped over. The mechanics seem Ok, but it will require some playtesting to be certain. Of the others, they generally seem over-simplified. The Healer pretty much ONLY heals; the Warmage is an armored Sorcerer whose spells are ALL (and ONLY) the Ka-Boom combat ones.
The Favored Soul ... well, there are already some who feel that the Cleric is over-powered; now, there's a new top dog: the Favored Soul. The FS gets the Cleric armor & weapon proficiencies, BAB, d8 HD, and 2 skill points/level; all saves are Good; and casts much like a Sorcerer. Their limitations are two-fold: 1) they need both Charisma and Wisdom for their spells, and 2) their spell selection is limited to a small number "known" from the Cleric spell list. However, over the course of their career, they get Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, Resistance to 3 energies, Damage Reduction, and Wings. They do not get to Turn Undead, nor do they get access to Domains. All-in-all, I think the balance still comes out tilted toward the Favoerd Soul (as compared to the Cleric).
Healer and Warmage have their own spell lists, which severely limit the abilities of the Healer while focusing those of the Warmage.
The Healer is allowed only Light armor, and loses his/her powers when using Medium or Heavy armor. The Healer has Wizard BAB, d8 HD, 4 skill points/level, Fort and Will are good saves, and all class features are healing oriented. Many class features are 1/day uses of 'Remove X' (Blindness, Disease, etc.). The Healer, being a dedicated walking first-aid-kit, seems better suited to a role as a Cohort than as a PC.
The Warmage will appeal to those who have long wanted to see Mages take a more front-line approach to combats. They learn to negate the arcane spell failure chance of Light armor and shield, and later can do the same with Medium armor. The Warmage has Wizard BAB, d6 HD, 2 skill points / level. Warmages cast like Sorcerers ... Charisma based, spontaneous casting. However, there is no mention of a limit to spells known; presumably, because the spell list is so small, all Warmages learn all Warmage spells as soon as they are able to cast that level of spell. The Warmage, when casting a spell that does hp damage, adds his/her Int bonus to the damage. Over his/her career, the Warmage may learn 4 additional spells not on the Warmage list -- provided it is a Sorcerer/Wizard Evocation spell of a level s/he can use. Additionally, at various levels, the Warmage gains the Sudden versions of some metamagic feats as class features - Empower, Enlarge, Widen, and Maximize. The Warmage does not get a familiar.
In a heavy-combat game, the Warmage outshines the Sorcerer as the arcane battle-platform. The Wizard remains king of versatility, but in a game where that is not a factor, the Warmage becomes a serious alternative. However, I fail to see much value to the Sorcerer in ANY game with the Warmage present, unless Wizards are removed. Both Sorcerer and Warmage cast spontaneously, and have the same spells/day chart. The Warmage works from a smaller list, but it includes all of the hefty combat spells. The Warmage and the Sorcerer get the same number of feats. The Sorcerer has a familiar, but the Warmage can wear armor and shield. The Warmage gains essentially bonus Sudden Metamagic feats that the Sorcerer will not. The Sorcerer's saving grace is that s/he still gets to choose any spells; however, if there are Wizards in the campaign world, that ceases to be as much of an asset.
I am going to skip the Prestige Classes; they seem about as Ok a mix as any other Wizards product.
Spells
Some spells are new, some are revised from Tome & Blood.
The Lesser [Energy] Orb spells are present, and have been revised. I am puzzled, though, at the omission of the [Energy] Orb spells themselves. The existence of a Lesser {something} spell implies that there is a non-Lesser version somewhere, but these are not found in the Miniatures Handbook. The originals were 4th level spells; the Miniatures Handbook includes up to 5th level spells, so unless the new versions went up 2 levels, the omission seems odd to me.
The Swift X spells are 1-round-duration versions of some other spells. They seem like a cheesy way to let someone do a cast-move-attack routine. The Swift spells use the Swift action (almost a Free action, but not quite ?!? ), which leaves the caster with both Move and Standard actions still avaialble. Now, correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't the point of revising Haste so you could NOT cast, move, and attack ? Looky, here's "Haste, Swift", which lets you cast a 1-round haste then use its benefits while you move and attack.
The Legion spells are basically "Mass X" spells. We needed another term ?
There are decent nuggets in here. Guided Arrow, which negates partial cover bonuses to a ranged attack, is a rather nice spell. Bigby's Slapping Hand is ... amusing.
Feats
As mentioned, the Sudden X Metamagic feats seem unbalanced. I am not so sure they are 'broken' as much as too easy to get. They are usable once per day, and it does not seem you can take the feat more than once. If they all required that you have the 'Regular' version of the feat as a pre-requisite in addition to the ones listed, I think they would be fine.
Other feats... well, your mileage may vary. Double-Hit allows you to use both your primary and secondary weapons for Attacks of Opportunity. That adds some value to the Two-Weapon Fighting tree of feats.
Magic Items
There is a discussion going on elsewhere about the merits of the Belt of Magnificence. +6 to all stats, 200,000 gp. Uhm... yeah. That seems... wrong. But, there have been some interesting 'practical' arguments in its favor, countering the 'theoretical' arguments against it. In the end, it serves as a marvelous illustration that DMs should think about what they are giving out -- decide whether it is right for your campaign BEFORE you give it so someone.
On the other hand, the Weapon of Transmutation becomes whatever it material it needs to be to defeat a foe's DR. Uhm... doesn't that make the whole point of the revised DR system moot ? Look, Ma ! A magic sword that changes materials. Now, I'll NEVER have a less-than-optimum weapon for a fight.
Summing Up
Some of the materials feels like the Miniatures authors wrote stuff to deliberately counter what the core RPG revision team was doing. All of it is designed with the Miniatures mindset, of course, but things like the Swift spells and the Weapon of Transmutation seem like they were designed to get around limits that improve the RPG (I like the new DR, for example, and the revised Haste).
I am not a professional reviewer, but I will add my 2 cents, mostly from the role-playing side.
Presentation:
The book is well-constructed and feels as sturdy as other recent WotC books. Interior art is interesting, and the pairing of photos of the finished minis with the original concept sketches for them is a nice motif. The RPG material is set off in its own chapters, making most of it easy to find regardless of whether you are using the minis rules or not.
Content:
Base Classes
Four new Base classes are presented, but only 1 feels right to me. The Marshall fills a niche (the Captain or Squad Leader role) that my players and I have sometimes tripped over. The mechanics seem Ok, but it will require some playtesting to be certain. Of the others, they generally seem over-simplified. The Healer pretty much ONLY heals; the Warmage is an armored Sorcerer whose spells are ALL (and ONLY) the Ka-Boom combat ones.
The Favored Soul ... well, there are already some who feel that the Cleric is over-powered; now, there's a new top dog: the Favored Soul. The FS gets the Cleric armor & weapon proficiencies, BAB, d8 HD, and 2 skill points/level; all saves are Good; and casts much like a Sorcerer. Their limitations are two-fold: 1) they need both Charisma and Wisdom for their spells, and 2) their spell selection is limited to a small number "known" from the Cleric spell list. However, over the course of their career, they get Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, Resistance to 3 energies, Damage Reduction, and Wings. They do not get to Turn Undead, nor do they get access to Domains. All-in-all, I think the balance still comes out tilted toward the Favoerd Soul (as compared to the Cleric).
Healer and Warmage have their own spell lists, which severely limit the abilities of the Healer while focusing those of the Warmage.
The Healer is allowed only Light armor, and loses his/her powers when using Medium or Heavy armor. The Healer has Wizard BAB, d8 HD, 4 skill points/level, Fort and Will are good saves, and all class features are healing oriented. Many class features are 1/day uses of 'Remove X' (Blindness, Disease, etc.). The Healer, being a dedicated walking first-aid-kit, seems better suited to a role as a Cohort than as a PC.
The Warmage will appeal to those who have long wanted to see Mages take a more front-line approach to combats. They learn to negate the arcane spell failure chance of Light armor and shield, and later can do the same with Medium armor. The Warmage has Wizard BAB, d6 HD, 2 skill points / level. Warmages cast like Sorcerers ... Charisma based, spontaneous casting. However, there is no mention of a limit to spells known; presumably, because the spell list is so small, all Warmages learn all Warmage spells as soon as they are able to cast that level of spell. The Warmage, when casting a spell that does hp damage, adds his/her Int bonus to the damage. Over his/her career, the Warmage may learn 4 additional spells not on the Warmage list -- provided it is a Sorcerer/Wizard Evocation spell of a level s/he can use. Additionally, at various levels, the Warmage gains the Sudden versions of some metamagic feats as class features - Empower, Enlarge, Widen, and Maximize. The Warmage does not get a familiar.
In a heavy-combat game, the Warmage outshines the Sorcerer as the arcane battle-platform. The Wizard remains king of versatility, but in a game where that is not a factor, the Warmage becomes a serious alternative. However, I fail to see much value to the Sorcerer in ANY game with the Warmage present, unless Wizards are removed. Both Sorcerer and Warmage cast spontaneously, and have the same spells/day chart. The Warmage works from a smaller list, but it includes all of the hefty combat spells. The Warmage and the Sorcerer get the same number of feats. The Sorcerer has a familiar, but the Warmage can wear armor and shield. The Warmage gains essentially bonus Sudden Metamagic feats that the Sorcerer will not. The Sorcerer's saving grace is that s/he still gets to choose any spells; however, if there are Wizards in the campaign world, that ceases to be as much of an asset.
I am going to skip the Prestige Classes; they seem about as Ok a mix as any other Wizards product.
Spells
Some spells are new, some are revised from Tome & Blood.
The Lesser [Energy] Orb spells are present, and have been revised. I am puzzled, though, at the omission of the [Energy] Orb spells themselves. The existence of a Lesser {something} spell implies that there is a non-Lesser version somewhere, but these are not found in the Miniatures Handbook. The originals were 4th level spells; the Miniatures Handbook includes up to 5th level spells, so unless the new versions went up 2 levels, the omission seems odd to me.
The Swift X spells are 1-round-duration versions of some other spells. They seem like a cheesy way to let someone do a cast-move-attack routine. The Swift spells use the Swift action (almost a Free action, but not quite ?!? ), which leaves the caster with both Move and Standard actions still avaialble. Now, correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't the point of revising Haste so you could NOT cast, move, and attack ? Looky, here's "Haste, Swift", which lets you cast a 1-round haste then use its benefits while you move and attack.
The Legion spells are basically "Mass X" spells. We needed another term ?
There are decent nuggets in here. Guided Arrow, which negates partial cover bonuses to a ranged attack, is a rather nice spell. Bigby's Slapping Hand is ... amusing.
Feats
As mentioned, the Sudden X Metamagic feats seem unbalanced. I am not so sure they are 'broken' as much as too easy to get. They are usable once per day, and it does not seem you can take the feat more than once. If they all required that you have the 'Regular' version of the feat as a pre-requisite in addition to the ones listed, I think they would be fine.
Other feats... well, your mileage may vary. Double-Hit allows you to use both your primary and secondary weapons for Attacks of Opportunity. That adds some value to the Two-Weapon Fighting tree of feats.
Magic Items
There is a discussion going on elsewhere about the merits of the Belt of Magnificence. +6 to all stats, 200,000 gp. Uhm... yeah. That seems... wrong. But, there have been some interesting 'practical' arguments in its favor, countering the 'theoretical' arguments against it. In the end, it serves as a marvelous illustration that DMs should think about what they are giving out -- decide whether it is right for your campaign BEFORE you give it so someone.
On the other hand, the Weapon of Transmutation becomes whatever it material it needs to be to defeat a foe's DR. Uhm... doesn't that make the whole point of the revised DR system moot ? Look, Ma ! A magic sword that changes materials. Now, I'll NEVER have a less-than-optimum weapon for a fight.
Summing Up
Some of the materials feels like the Miniatures authors wrote stuff to deliberately counter what the core RPG revision team was doing. All of it is designed with the Miniatures mindset, of course, but things like the Swift spells and the Weapon of Transmutation seem like they were designed to get around limits that improve the RPG (I like the new DR, for example, and the revised Haste).
dagger
Adventurer
Here is my extensive review:
I liked the core classes, the prestige classes, and the new feats. I liked the book and I felt it was a good purchase.
I didn’t care for the 2nd half of the book, because I will get no use out of it.
I don't mind though, since I some times purchase my books through Amazon or walmart.com, so it was under or around 20 when I bought it.
I liked the core classes, the prestige classes, and the new feats. I liked the book and I felt it was a good purchase.
I didn’t care for the 2nd half of the book, because I will get no use out of it.
I don't mind though, since I some times purchase my books through Amazon or walmart.com, so it was under or around 20 when I bought it.
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Greatwyrm
Been here a while...
I basically agree with Dagger. The D&D section of the book looked pretty well done to me. I liked the new classes and feats. I'm not sure about the Sudden metamagics - I'll probably end up putting level limits on them like in the Dragon Magazine sidebar the idea comes from. Most of the spells look okay.
The minis stuff looks okay, but I'll get pretty much no use from it.
If you only want the D&D stuff or only the minis info, and can get it for half price, it's a good buy. I probably wouldn't have paid full price for it, given how little I plan to use.
The minis stuff looks okay, but I'll get pretty much no use from it.
If you only want the D&D stuff or only the minis info, and can get it for half price, it's a good buy. I probably wouldn't have paid full price for it, given how little I plan to use.
I'd really, really like to know why the Sudden Metamagic feats are broken, though. Very good, yes, but they are all 1/Day affairs.
If you are comparing them to standard metamagic... well, I don't think the normal metamagic feats are compelling enough at all!
Cheers!
If you are comparing them to standard metamagic... well, I don't think the normal metamagic feats are compelling enough at all!
Cheers!
Ashrem Bayle
Explorer
MerricB said:
Ditto. I don't think the Instant Metamagic feats are overpowered mainly because I think the standard Metamagic feats are underpowered.
jester47
First Post
I read it at the bookstore.
Warmain is cool. But should have been a PrC. I was not too turned on about the other "core" classes. The swift action is lame only because it reminds me of the partial action. Ergo, any class built around the swift action by nature becomes lame. The battlemage is a character class that fills two roles, and every other class that tries to do so is forced to suffer penalties. So even though it might be a cool idea, I will stick to Cormyrian Battlemages, Spellswords, and Arcane knights. The prestige classes and feats I thought were ho hum.
The monsters in this book are great, they rock. I especially liked the idea of the aspects. I wish they had told us how to make them for the gods, demons and devils that were not listed. Hopefully these make it to the next monster book.
If I can get it cheap enough, I might just rip the monsters out and use those.
However, I find thisbook to not be nearly as onother one that was released about the same time. (Its not Underdark or Draconomicon.)
Aaron.
Warmain is cool. But should have been a PrC. I was not too turned on about the other "core" classes. The swift action is lame only because it reminds me of the partial action. Ergo, any class built around the swift action by nature becomes lame. The battlemage is a character class that fills two roles, and every other class that tries to do so is forced to suffer penalties. So even though it might be a cool idea, I will stick to Cormyrian Battlemages, Spellswords, and Arcane knights. The prestige classes and feats I thought were ho hum.
The monsters in this book are great, they rock. I especially liked the idea of the aspects. I wish they had told us how to make them for the gods, demons and devils that were not listed. Hopefully these make it to the next monster book.
If I can get it cheap enough, I might just rip the monsters out and use those.
However, I find thisbook to not be nearly as onother one that was released about the same time. (Its not Underdark or Draconomicon.)
Aaron.
We've had swift actions from Day 1 of 3E: Quickened Spells. It's a free action, but you can only take one swift action per round. They've just expanded the mechanic a bit.
"Legion's" is somewhat different from "Mass" - there's no limit on number of creatures affected, it's just "all within 20' burst" or similar (rather than a limit like 1 creature/level). I find having such terminology in the spell name saves much time in looking up effects.
Cheers!
"Legion's" is somewhat different from "Mass" - there's no limit on number of creatures affected, it's just "all within 20' burst" or similar (rather than a limit like 1 creature/level). I find having such terminology in the spell name saves much time in looking up effects.
Cheers!
Olgar Shiverstone
Legend
Olgar's opinions here:
My gripe with the Sudden Metamagic feats isn't so much a conceptual one -- it's a good concept -- but with poor execution, particularly the erratic application of prerequisites. Some metamagic feats are better than others, and might have different prerequisites -- I can buy that. However, the 1/day limitation is meaningless in many cases -- IME, you often fail to see more than one application of a given metamagic feat in a day anyway. Why take Enlarge or Extend Spell when you can just take the Sudden version?
From a concept and flavor standpoint, I'd prefer that the "Sudden" version of a feat have the normal version of that feat as a prerequisite. Call it a personal flavor quirk, But I'd like to see a sorcerer/wizard know how to Empower something, before they can Empower instantly with no cost.
As to "swift" actions, my gripe is that if they were going to introduce a new action mechanic (which in this case is arguably intended primarily for the minis game) they could have done it in the 3.5 revision much more cleanly. Limit free actions to one per round, and redefine many of the current free actions to "no action" -- dismiss a spell, for example. It allows the same effective mechanics while keeping the system simpler (paricularly given the effort to eliminate move-equivalent and partial actions for simplicity, which I applaud -- why take a step backward?).
And given that we just removed the two-spell-per-round mechanic with the haste revision -- to encourage the use of Quicken Spell -- adding the mechanic back in with "swift spells" seems a little, well, hypocritical. Yeah, the swift spells aren't particularly exciting and certainly aren't gamebreaking as printed, but it sets a precendent for future abuse.
"Broken" is too severe a term -- "in need of refinement" might be a more polite way to put my opinion of the mechanics.
My gripe with the Sudden Metamagic feats isn't so much a conceptual one -- it's a good concept -- but with poor execution, particularly the erratic application of prerequisites. Some metamagic feats are better than others, and might have different prerequisites -- I can buy that. However, the 1/day limitation is meaningless in many cases -- IME, you often fail to see more than one application of a given metamagic feat in a day anyway. Why take Enlarge or Extend Spell when you can just take the Sudden version?
From a concept and flavor standpoint, I'd prefer that the "Sudden" version of a feat have the normal version of that feat as a prerequisite. Call it a personal flavor quirk, But I'd like to see a sorcerer/wizard know how to Empower something, before they can Empower instantly with no cost.
As to "swift" actions, my gripe is that if they were going to introduce a new action mechanic (which in this case is arguably intended primarily for the minis game) they could have done it in the 3.5 revision much more cleanly. Limit free actions to one per round, and redefine many of the current free actions to "no action" -- dismiss a spell, for example. It allows the same effective mechanics while keeping the system simpler (paricularly given the effort to eliminate move-equivalent and partial actions for simplicity, which I applaud -- why take a step backward?).
And given that we just removed the two-spell-per-round mechanic with the haste revision -- to encourage the use of Quicken Spell -- adding the mechanic back in with "swift spells" seems a little, well, hypocritical. Yeah, the swift spells aren't particularly exciting and certainly aren't gamebreaking as printed, but it sets a precendent for future abuse.
"Broken" is too severe a term -- "in need of refinement" might be a more polite way to put my opinion of the mechanics.
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