A top notch poster map of the Sword Coast. I miss the large beautiful world maps from the old box sets. Even as a standalone product I would buy this.
I currently have on my game room wall the 4 poster Realms map from Dragon, the 4 poster Pathfinder Golarion Map, the poster of the inner and outer planes from Planescape, and a custom printed map of my homebrew.
I hope to see Bladesingers as elves only and I hope we see a War Wizards of Cormyr sub-class.
I fully expect Red Wizard to be background, rather than a subclass.
I could see that if they replaced the term "background" with "faction" or something, and let you pick one or the other at creation. Backgrounds tend to be broad and not class based. Although I am amused by a Red Wizard barbarian who was a jock who went to wizard school on an athletics scholarship and never learned to cast spells.
Then you could have Harpers, Zhents, Knights of Myth Drannor, etc.
Agreed, but it would require a more robust rules for factions in game.
Warder
How much more robust would they have to be than the current ones? I think that abstraction is necessary for them to function properly.