Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="JoeGKushner" data-source="post: 2010120" data-attributes="member: 1129">The Avatar’s Handbook does two things right.  It creates a new core class that’s of a good alignment.  This helps balance out so many of the ‘evil’ and ‘kwel’ classes like Assassins, Necromancers, Death Knights and upcoming Unholy Warriors that roam about.  The next thing is does is acts as a monster compendium of good outsiders.The new class, the Avatar, is a divine spellcaster whose specialty lies in summoning and binding his being with celestial beings.  The class gets the typical run down of background, races, how they get along with other classes, standard abilities like hit dice, alignment, class skills and number of spells.  The class almost seems halfway between a cleric and wizard with it’s d6 hit die and lack of medium and heavy armor proficiency.  The main strengths outside of spellcasting that this class has is Heaven’s Mantle, that allows the creature to become a celestial (power level based on character level), and Sacred Boon, where depending on the character’s level and Charisma modifier, the character gains special abilities like the Gift of Life (+3 hit points) or Sacred Focus (+4 sacred bonus on Concentration Checks).  As a core class, it looks like it’ll fall in the roll of bard or poorly played clerics in that it’s going to be doing more support than hogging the spotlight like mainstream wizards and fighters.In addition to the core class, there are new feats that augment summoning abilities.  These can be taken by anyone who meets the requirements, but since the Avatar is a summoning specialist, they benefit the most.  The base feat, Holy Summoner, increases the duration by the caster’s Charisma bonus.  The bad thing is that it acts as a ‘zero’ feat in that to gain the feats that don’t rely on a stat bonus like Rapid Summons (summon as standard action instead of full round), you still have to have Holy Summoner.  In addition, there aren’t enough feats.Being a new core class, there is a complete list that includes new spells and spells found from the player’s handbook.  I was a little puzzled that they didn’t include all the goodies from their Pocket Divine compendium but instead rely on the GM to look over it and The Book of the Righteous.  What would it have taken?  Another paragraph to add those ‘unofficial suggestions’ to the spell list?  The good news is that many of these spells are useable by other classes, like the Cleric and Paladin so GMs who aren’t interested in the Avatar itself still get some mileage out of the spell list.One of the places where this spell list succeeds is with the Banner Spells.  This class of spells creates a banner with special abilities to help those who view it.  The Banner of True Light for example, suppresses darkness effects and invisibility.  Once again the problem is that there aren’t enough of these new spells, one for each level and the best banner spells are all high level. (As normal with spells eh?)Now we’ve got a core class with its own feats and spells, but what’s missing?  While there are several archetypes, there are no prestige classes.  This makes this the first class Handbook to lack prestige classes and puzzles me.  I suspect it’s because this product is more like The Secret College of Necromancy, where it’s not really a class handbook but a compendium of themed material.  Also missing are magic items, once again making this a first in a class handbook.  I’m really hoping we’ll see some serious web expansion to make this Avatar’s Handbook a more worthy class handbook.What then is the rest of this book about?  Monsters.  Well, they’re mostly good aligned celestials and upper planar creatures so I don’t know if monsters are the right title.  Most of them won’t be attacking good aligned players but with so many options to play evil these days, perhaps the GM will get a nice ratio of use from them.So what type of monsters do we get?  How about the Season Shepherd?  These beings aren’t direct combatants but rather are allies of good who help people survive through the seasons.  Not combative enough for some so there’s the Arimrawthi, “righteous wrath incarnate”.  How about the Victarium, some of the most powerful warriors of the upper planes?Those not interested in the celestials still get plenty of bang for their buck with new dragons like the Dream, Glory, and Radiant subtypes coming into play alongside other creatures like the Living Flamestrike, a holy flame that moves and burns the forces of good.Those looking for something a little more details to add to their campaign will flip to Appendix I, Archangels and reunite with their old friend Iblis (a good old devil from Legions of Hell) and read over the stats of Mika’il, the Archangel of Righteousness and Gabriel, the Archangel of Revelation.The book closes off with new templates like the half celestial dragon, the reforged, a formerly evil being turned good, the sublime, one who attempts to overcome its enemies with questions of morality, closing with the uncalled and the wordbearer.  These templates round out the forces of good nicely and allow the GM to change almost any ‘evil’ creature to something that most players would never expect.  The last page is an addendum for the character folio that Green Ronin publishes.The internal layout is good.  The art is classic.  Liz Danforth, Jennifer Meyer, Britt Martin and Kent Burles all do a fantastic job here.  The full-page illustrations are powerful and illustrative of what a book on celestials should be.There are really only three things keeping this book from a five star rating.  The first is not including the spells from the Divine pocket book and the Book of the Righteous even as it mentions them.  The second is no prestige classes.  The third is no magic items.  This isn’t titled “The Guide to Celestials” or “Celestial Courts”.  It’s the Avatar’s Handbook and as a player guide, suffers heavily from the inclusion of so much DM material.If you’re a GM looking for a whole heaping of good aligned monsters and information on Archangels, this book is perfect for you.  Players should look over the book and determine if an 80-page book with only 18 or so pages dedicated to the class is worth the investment.</blockquote>

Verification