Player's Guide to Wizards, Bards, & Sorcerers

[Kichwas]

Was just noticing the new familiars in the back of this book...


Isn't the scythe falcon a bit much?

If they score a critical on even an ancient red dragon, they have a 1 in chance of an auto-kill...

At lower levels though, this is the ultra familiar for taking out your enemies given it's feats, movement, and special attack ability.

Hookwings could also be a bit dangerous in the first level or two.

Otherwise, glad to see somebody finally include a monkey...

What's the world without monkey familiars after all.

 

[Nightfall]

Well I think about the other two, it's depends on the DM. (Course I'd still say such a thing as a dragon being cut to ribbons by a scythe falcon is a little much.) But glad to see some likes the familiar section. Not that I had any thing to do with it.

 

[Kichwas]

Well remember that a scythe falcon has a 1 in 6 chance of auto killing -ANYTHING- it criticals - no saves. Otherwise it just takes 50% of their hit points (3 in 6) or 33% (2 in 6).

In the hands of a player, this is an ultra deadly animal.

 

[mossfoot]

Bards!

I'd like to know more about the Bards in this book. Are there any variations of the bard type or just Prestige classes?

My stupid RPG shop has EVERYTHING wraped in plastic... no browsing possible!

 

[Kichwas]

Lots of Bard prestige material, and a lot of flavor text on what to do with the Bard class.

There are a lot of organizations which work as career paths with suggested feats, skills, and spells to take in order to theme your Bard. There's a lot of text on the nature of Bards, and a lot of optional rules like Bardic Enchantment, noise, metamagic, and composition. A good portion of the equipment section is devoted to instruments.

Another great book for Bard variants is FFG's path of Magic which has a whole chapter on different types of Bards - based around non musical forms of performance.

 

[mossfoot]

Like mime? (I think technically according to the rules you could make your primary perform skill mime... and thus have a mime-based Bardic song )

 

[Nightfall]

Well pretty sure you could do mime...but you might end up being attacked by large scale mobs.

arcady,

Think I'll fix that so it doesn't have a 1 in 6 but a 1-100 chance. At least if they become a familiar.

 

[Holy Bovine]

I think I'm going to have to get this book before I go back to work. It'll mean not eating for a few days but......

One of my players, after the untimely death of his Druid, made up a Forsaken Elf Bard. I think I am as excited about his character as he is. He choose violin for his instrument (which, I'm surprised to note, is not detailed in Song and Silence!). He described his character as rather fatalistic - he feels the impending death of his race is not a bad or good thing. Death comes to everyone eventually. Also he has a 'sprinkle' of serial killer in him

Should make for an interesting character!

 

[Trickstergod]

The Scythe Falcon would be better served with it's Dismemberment ability being something along these lines:

* Only works on creatures size large or smaller. Anything else simply has too much to cut through for the falcon to effectively dismember it.

* Dismemberment only threatens on a roll of a natural 20, regardless of the falcons critical threat range.

Of course, this may have been fixed in the Creature Collection Revised. If not, then the Scarred Lands are still trudging up through the dregs of crunch towards something a bit more balanced, when semi-vorpal beasties make it onto a list of familiars (regular ones, out of curiousity, or ones gained through a feat, or spell?).

In either case, this puts the new guide under a suspect light, in my eyes. Eh...

 

[Nightfall]

Only if you use scythe falcons.