Power Classes VIII - Explorer

[Simon Collins]

This is not a playtest review.

Power Classes: Explorer is the eighth book in Mongoose's Power Classes series introducing new 20-level classes in a short space.

Explorer is a mono softcover product costing $2.95. It consists of 16 pages, which are the same height as A4 but only half the width (equivalent of 8 full pages). The inside covers are used for credits, contents and OGL. Unfortunately, information from the back cover is repeated on the first page but margins, font size and white space are all within reasonable limits. The artwork, including the front cover showing Lara-Croft-gone-mediaeval, is average. Writing style is serviceable. Editing seems good, apart from one or two simple spelling errors.

I like the concept of the explorer - there's a touch of Indiana Jones about the whole idea that sparked my interest when I read through the introductory remarks, and the basic roleplaying information.

These are the class features given to the Explorer:
* Speed like a barbarian
* Resist effects of thirst and starvation
* Take 10 or 20 on Intuit Direction
* Cross wilderness areas in reduced time
* Bonus languages
* Bonuses to Bluff, Diplomacy and Intimidate
* Woodland Stride like a druid, but at mid-level
* Immune to diseases at mid-level
* Cross-class skills or exclusive skill can be chosen as class skill at higher levels
* Take 10 on stressful skill at high levels
The Explorer has a HD and BAB of a cleric, with save progression of a fighter, and 4 skill points. Proficient with simple and martial weapons, and light and medium armour.

This all fits quite nicely with the concept, but doesn't quite have the appeal from a game rule perspective that the roleplaying information conveyed.

Several new uses for old skills are discussed - creating healing balms and antitoxins using the Profession (Herbalist) skill, breaking ciphers and codes with the Decipher Script skill, and some new knowledges (like archaeology) for Explorer's only.

17 new feats are put forward including concealment (hiding an object or another creature), detect poison, disease resistance, and master tracker (move normal speed).

Conclusion:
I felt that this was maybe a weak class compared to the other core classes from a rules perspective, mostly stuff that could be recreated with some multiclassing and feats. However, there's nothing overly powerful in the class features and GMs should have no problem allowing a player to run an Explorer if the roleplaying concept appeals to the player. It would fit nicely in Thunderhead Games' Bluffside setting.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

The explorer is a gifted adventurer, dedicated to breaking into lost tombs, avoiding traps and finding fortune where others fear to tread. More than any other clas, the explorer is truly self-sufficient, able to rely on her own abilities to see her through danger from any source.

 

[GameWyrd]

Mongoose’s Power Classes are, I think, one of last year’s surprise hits. The books are tiny, too small really to be called books and I’m surprised they’re allowed to claim an ISBN. They’re booklets, 16 thin pages between a card stock cover and stapled together. They’re actually rather robust. The idea behind the power class is value for money. US$2.95 gets you a single new core class, a little crunch dressing in the form of new feats or equipment and nothing else. In other words, just what you need to use the class.

There’s no question that the nature of the Explorer makes it a suitable character class. Whether the game centres on exploring dungeons, finding new lands or even intrigue at court the explorer fits in. Sir Walter Raleigh, after all, was an explorer.

The Explorer class here is blessed with plenty of special character abilities; only once does the class go two levels without a new ability being learnt or a current one improved. A pet peeve of mine is trying to work out whether a special character ability is magical or not. I’d say that the Druid’s Woodland Stride is magical. The non-magical Explorer picks up the Woodland Stride ability at level seven. Is that magical? Is the Iron Constitution ability that the class gets at the next level magical? It grants the Explorer immunity to all diseases, mundane or not. An Explorer can shake off mummy rot and has nothing other than blood and teeth to fear from a werewolf’s bite.

It is that pet peeve that holds first place among my whines about the class. I mutter concerns about the way the Fast Movement (+10 feet in speed in the right circumstances) and Pathfinder (reduce travelling time) sort of overlap in a hazy sort of way. The Explorer is a specialist class too; the special character abilities really are geared towards roaming through unexplored (duh) wilderness areas and making contact with new people. The Explorer might well suffer in a game that doesn’t feature much of this. However, I would say that explorering is something that comes naturally to people, that being an explorer could almost be described as "in the blood". I think an explorer might well complain if she’s stuck sitting in a familiar city and if the mechanics of this class encourages that roleplaying then that’s a plus point, not a fault.

There’s a page and a half of that fair weather friend "New Uses For Old Skills" too. Remarkably one of the new skills introduced isn’t available to Explorers! Decipher Script is only available to Bards and Rogues (I think the Explorer is more likely to know it). As it happens one of the Explorer’s special class abilities is to take non-class skills, even restricted ones, and turn them into a class skill. That’s right, Decipher Script is used as the example of the sort of non-class skill that the Explorer might want. Heh. That’s a little cheeky.

Fortunately most of the extra pages in the back of the booklet are crammed full of new and suitable feats. If you have the Mongoose tome Ultimate Feats then some of these feats might not be too new to you but that doesn’t detract too much from this Power Class booklet’s ability to give you all that you’ll need for a few bucks.

* This Power Classes: Explorer review was first posted at GameWyrd.

 

[trancejeremy]

This is the eighth in a line of mini-books from Mongoose, "Power Classes", each of which introduce a new core class (that is regular class, like fighter or wizard or cleric, not a prestige class). By mini-book, I mean basically like the various mini-modules from AEG and FFG - an 8 page regular sized book folded in half so it's 16 small or half pages. It's priced at $2.95.

Mongoose seems to be releasing these suckers in groups of 4. I had bought the first 4 power classes sight unseen, because my local game stores didn't carry them (and I really like core classes). However, they carried the second batch. This is the only one I bought, because I flipped through the others and wasn't all that impressed.

This details the Explorer core class. Just what is the Explorer? Well, the cover pic has a pneumatic young women with a bare midriff with a hand crossbow in each hand. So it seems to imply the Exporer is a Lara Croft sort. Unfortunately, the reality is, that isn't so. It's a solid class, but it doesn't emulate her.

I only played the first Tomb Raider game (which made Lara Croft a star), and that was on the Sega Saturn (the most under rated console ever). In it, besides exploring, and fighting, she would dodge a lot. And climb and do all sorts of acrobatics. And fight. (Don't see the first Tomb Raider movie BTW, it's beyond awful. Not even any camp value.)

The explorer class in this is an okay fighter (average progression, like a cleric or rogue), with a d8 for hit points. It gets 4 skill points per level, and has a decent selection of class skills. Most of the special abilities relate to exploring. Which is probably a good thing, given the name of the class, but it doesn't quite fit the cover image, I would have thought perhaps the class would get the Rogue or Monks evasion abilities.

There's a mini-page and a half on new uses for old skills (nothing exciting). Rounding out the booklet are several new feats, all explorer related, oddly enough.

So, despite a misleading cover, this is actually a pretty solid class. Perhaps not overly suited for PCs, because most of the special abilities are not useful in combat, but certainly playable.

B+

 

[Krug]

Power Classes VIII - Explorer is the eighth book in Mongoose Publishing's Power Classes line; 16-page mini books that detail a new core class.

The Explorer, despite the Lara Croft inspired cover image, is more of a rogue + expert + bard combination. It has a d8 HD, some cross-class skill abilities and has a base of 4 + int mod for skills. Oddly enough, it doesn't have a set of skills I thought would be core for an explorer; disabling devices, open lock and use rope. Surely all this would come in handy when you're navigating ancient tombs. (though they do get to choose two cross-class skills to become class skills at 11th level) Neither does it have evasion abilities.

What it does have is an additional 10' movement rate, an ability called Honeyed Words that give a bonus to Bluff, Diplomacy and Intimidate checks and an Iron Constitution, which equates to immunty to all diseases, including magical ones such as mummy rot and lyncanthrophy.

The actual details of the class run 10 mini pages, and then we get a section detailing new use for old skills and a few new feats, such as Poison resistance. I found this of mild interest. Some details of Explorer-related eqpt would have been nice.

Overall, this class doesn't look interesting enough for most players to want to take up. It seems conflicted about what it wants to be. I would have thought a class that's similar to the rogue, , retaining the skill levels, removing the sneak attack bonuses, maybe throwing in some bardic knowledge like features would be sufficient. The new abilities just aren't persuasive enough to convince one to take up this as a core class.

 

[John Cooper]

Power Classes VIII: Explorer
Edited by Daniel Bishop and Paul Tucker (no author listed)
Mongoose Publishing product number MGP 1108
16 half-sized pages, $2.95

The 8th in Mongoose's "Power Class" line of booklets, this one takes the concept of the explorer - think Indiana Jones - and turns it into a 20-level character class.

It's pretty obvious where the cover (by Nathan Webb and Scott Clark) got its inspiration from: take Lara Croft (from the Tomb Raider games), give her a weightlifter's muscle tone, crank her cup size down a notch or two, and replace her pistols with hand crossbows, and there you go! Nathan also provides the two interior black-and-white pieces, a male elf (or half-elf) reading a map and pointing ahead on page 6 and male human holding a torch on page 16. Both pieces are about average.

The explorer class presented here has d8 Hit Dice, 4 skill points per level, a cleric's Base Attack Bonus, and gains snippets of class abilities from other classes: the Barbarian's fast movement, the Druid and Ranger's woodland stride, plus bonus languages and some interesting bits like being able to take two cross-class skills and make them class skills and gaining an immunity to all diseases (the rationale being that the explorer's built up an immunity after having been exposed to diseases from all over the world). It's an interesting and varied skill-set, but as diverse as it is it seems like there isn't much combat-related stuff in there, and anyone who's seen an Indiana Jones, Alan Quartermain, or Lara Croft movie knows that explorers end up having to fight for their lives all the time!

I like the flexibility that's built into the class: not only the "cross-class to class skills" switchover mentioned above, but the fact that each explorer, over the course of 20 levels, gains 4 bonus languages and skill mastery (ability to "take 10" under any conditions) on a number of skills means that each explorer is more of an individual, standing out from others of his kind. I always like it when the character is given choices when he advances in level; it gives the character a chance to be unique.

One of the explorer's class abilities, Pathfinder, is a little confusing to me, however. Why is it more difficult for an explorer to Intuit Direction when accompanied by a larger party? (Every five people traveling with the explorer cause a -1 modifier to the explorer's Intuit Direction check when finding the quickest way to get through unexplored territory.) The rules laid down even mention that this applies to ocean travel, but this makes even less sense: I can kind of posit a "weakest link" theory of traveling through a jungle, where the more people you have with you the odds are that somebody's going to slow you down, but on a ship everybody travels at the exact same speed over the ocean and having more people with you (manning the rigging, turning the sails, doing whatever it is that sailors do to make the ship go faster) would seem to be a bonus, not a hindrance.

After the class write-up (I was somewhat disappointed not to have seen an "Explorer Starting Packages" section), there are some "New Uses for Old Skills" (a feature very common in Mongoose's "Collector Series" of books) and 17 new feats. Oddly enough, some of these feats are poor choices for explorers: why would an explorer take disease resistance or greater disease resistance when at 8th level he gains the Iron Constitution class ability, making him immune to all diseases? (I think I'd rule that any explorer who had taken disease resistance or greater disease resistance before 8th level could swap them out for a new feat or feats upon reaching 8th level - in which case I suppose they make some sense being on the list of new feats, I suppose.)

One final quibble, having nothing really to do with the explorer class at all (as it's found early on in the booklet, in the description of explorer races): "The most significant exceptions are the merfolk and the locathah, both of whom produce noteworthy explorers of both the undersea and surface worlds." Maybe it's just me, but I don't see merfolk doing much in the way of exploring the surface world - you know, what with the having no legs and all.

Power Classes VIII: Explorer is an interesting attempt at building a generic explorer class. It has a bunch of little things throw together that aid an explorer overall, but seems like it's lacking some really important "explorer bits" - like combat abilities and detecting/disarming traps (again, think back to Indiana Jones: apparently he must have picked up some rogue levels somewhere). Actually, I suppose the best well-rounded explorer of all would have to multiclass a little to pick up the necessities not found in this class.