So I have the Martial Powers book.


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This I remember. The dark wanderer can travel anywhere on any plane within 24 hours by simply setting off walking in a random direction. Somehow he always arrives exactly where he wants to go. Also, when a dark wanderer dies his body vanishes. 24 hours later he walks out of the shadows alive and well having traveled back from the shores of death.

It is flavorful and really neat. I want to build a ranger for this destiny.

This, this I love. Epic destinies are one of my favorite features of 4e because of stuff like this.
 


Any Heroic Tier fighter feats or powers for polearms? Yes, I know the Polearm Master PP is in there.

(Subsequently, I had preordered MP from Amazon, I'm just anxious for the dang thing to get here).

Yes. Polearm Momentum (knock pushed or slid enemy prone with polearm, if target is pushed or slid more than 1 square)
 

Except the ranged powers would still require you to use Dexterity for attack and damage, so there is no advantage to using Heavy Thrown weapons with them. The using Strength for Heavy Thrown weapons only applies for the Ranged Basic Attack.

Dang! There goes my evil plan of world domination via strong Rangers... Good catch. ;)
 


Having picked up the book, I find it quite useful, though I was hoping (as always, in vain) for more outside-of-the-encounter material. Less than 30% of game time (for my group, at least) occurs in "encounters", but 95% of the 4e rules focus on them. (You have a Guildmaster Paragon Path, and all it does is give you More Ways To Kill People -- where's the guidelines on, y'know, running a guild? Making contacts/connections? Bribing guards? Anything beyond "You can borrow some action points"? Sheesh. Anyway...)

For that part of your game that DOES take place in encounters, this book provides Yet More Ways To Do N[W]+Effect, something you can never have too many of. The beast build for rangers is excellent, one of the first things I'd say 4e does BETTER than 3e in terms of building a true "pet using" class, ala EQ's Beastmasters, WOW Hunters and Warhammer's White Lions/Squig Herders. (4e now lets me build two of my all time favorite MMORPG characters, and if they follow the pattern for necromancers, a third.) The book also starts having some hints -- not enough, but some -- about how to flavor text your powers, how to think about what you're DOING when you use things like Hunter's Quarry, etc. And it has, frankly, the perfect PP for my PC, the Ruthless Avenger (or something like that). Fits perfectly.

About half the stuff in this book REALLY should have been in core. Given that, I'd call it damn near essential for anyone playing 4e; it fills in a tremendous amount of missing/overlooked options.
 




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