Heroes of Code review
Heroes of Code is the first in a series of products from EN Publishing that offers new base classes and alternate versions of core classes. This one offers two new classes, the knight and the scourge, and an alternate version of the paladin, all classes that have some sort of code to follow. Heroes of Code is 24 pages and is priced at $4.95. Marcin Adamczyk is the author and illustrations were handled by Matthew Cuenca.
The first class up is the knight. The knight is, as you might expect, your chivalrous, clad in heavy armor warrior. At first glance, the class looks quite similar to the fighter. It gets bonus feats that are drawn from a list not dissimilar to the fighter bonus feat list, though not as often (every third level rather than every other level). The great thing about the bonus feat list is that EN Publishing got permission from Wizards of the Coast to mention feats from books not in the SRD. There is a list of bonus feats available from Complete Warrior. The knight also has the same hit dice, BAB progression, and save progression as the fighter.
The knight does have some unique abilities such as courage, which offers a bonus to saves against fear effects, and confidence, which gives a bonus to Will saves. It also has a list of special abilities that it can choose from starting at 5th level and every three levels after that. Many of these abilities are tied to the knight’s code of conduct (more on that in a bit) such as Charity, which grants a bonus to the knight’s saves when he donates to someone in need.
Some of these abilities are awkward. Three of the abilities grant the knight bonuses when he is battling an enemy who has more hit dice than he or she does. I don’t like this because the player shouldn’t know how many hit dice every enemy has, nor should he have to ask the DM every time a combat arises, “Does this one have more hit dice than me?” I also don’t think it’s the DM’s responsibility to remember bonuses like this for the player and mentally add them when the player announces his roll. Another ability grants the character a bonus when he needs a 19 or 20 on his dice roll to succeed. When I run my games, I don’t usually announce what the DC is, especially in combat. Again, the player either has to know, or the DM has to add it in for the player. I find this cumbersome.
In addition, the knight is a leader and, starting at 10th level, gains the ability to issue commands to his allies that grant bonuses to different activities. The knight learns one command at 10th level and one every two levels after that. Commands last a number of rounds equal to the knight’s Charisma bonus and grant things such as a bonus to Fortitude saves or ranged attacks.
The biggest difference between the knight and the fighter is the code of conduct. The knight must choose from a list of commandments such as courage, mercy, piety, and truth. Each commandment is given a short description of what it entails for people who follow that particular code. Taking the truth commandment means that the knight “may not tell a lie and must do anything to fulfill any oath he swears.” It says that a knight usually chooses three from the list (there are twelve listed), but he may choose any number.
I think that the list of commandments is a great idea and a good way to customize a belief system for a character. The problem I have with it is that the code of conduct is used to balance many mechanical abilities of the class. Not balancing mechanical effects with roleplaying effects has been a mantra of Third Edition design, and I think it is a good one. Many of the knight’s special abilities may be used a number of times per day equal to the number of commandments he has. Of course, many of these abilities are lost if the character violates his code of conduct, however that comes down to DM fiat.
Overall, I think the knight is slightly more powerful than the fighter. Compared to the fighter, the knight has more skill points, a better list of class skills, more starting funds, and more abilities. The code of conduct is presumably supposed to be a balancing factor, but, as I mentioned, I think that is a poor design decision.
The next class in the book is an alternate paladin class. The biggest difference between this paladin and the one in the Player’s Handbook is that this one is much more customizable. In fact, it is probably better to think of this paladin as a champion rather than a paladin. The alignment requirements are any good.
The HoC paladin has the same hit dice, skill points, skill list, and weapon and armor proficiencies as the core paladin. It also has the aura of good ability. The first difference is divine resistance, the divine grace replacement. Divine resistance lets you use your Charisma modifier instead of the relevant ability modifier when you make a saving throw if your Charisma modifier is higher than the relevant ability modifier. Unless the relevant ability has a penalty, in which case you add them both. I had to read this a few times to make sure I had it straight, because it’s worded poorly and it’s just awkward. I never felt that divine grace was so strong that it needed to be watered down, and even if I did, I would want something a lot simpler than divine resistance.
One of the biggest changes with this version of the paladin is the force of good, which is the type of paladin you are. There are five choices: Exemplar (fight evil and be an example of goodness for people to follow), Follower (zealous champion of a deity), Glimmer (bane of undead and fighting the darkness with light), Scholar (learners of enemy techniques and weaknesses), and Smiter (destroyer of evil, at any cost). Each of these grants the paladin an ability at 1st, 5th, 10th, 15th, and 20th level. These abilities range from casting detect evil, to smite evil, to domain power (grants the paladin a domain power from one that his deity offers). I liked this idea, however the execution for some of these wasn’t always excellent. The Follower, for example, seems to be clearly weaker than the others.
The next big difference between the core paladin and the Code Paladin is the dedication ability. This stands with the force of good as the backbone of the paladin’s code of conduct. The dedication is an ideal that the paladin has dedicated himself to. The choices are freedom, life, love, order, peace, and truth. Dedication dictates the paladin’s alignment (usually), a good chunk of your code, and gives the character a bonus power related to it. The paladin of freedom must be chaotic good, “respect individual liberty, and punish those who threaten or curtail such liberty,” and gains a bonus to saves against enchantment spells and effects. I also liked this ability. It is a little odd, though, that you don’t choose your dedication until second level. This is such a major part of the paladin’s belief structure that it seems as if it should be chosen at first level. Some of the strictures that are listed are also too vague. The paladin of freedom’s restriction of punishing those who curtail individual liberty seems bound to create arguments. Aren’t law’s, by definition, a curtailing of individual liberty even if they are for the greater good? I think this needs to be clarified.
Starting at 6th level and every few levels after that, the paladin may choose an ability from a list. Similar to the knight’s special abilities, some are tied to the paladin’s dedication. Others are more general, such as the special mount.
Spellcasting is the same except for two things. One, the paladin’s dedication adds a small number of spell’s to the paladin’s list. The other change is a little bigger. The paladin can only learn 10 spells of each level she can cast. She doesn’t have to choose them all right away, but may instead choose them over time. Now, the paladin doesn’t have that many spells in the first place, so this doesn’t even make that big of an impact.
Overall, the Code paladin seems slightly stronger than the core paladin. My guess is that this is why divine grace was replaced with the awful divine resistance and the paladin’s spells were curtailed the way they were. This is a poor trade off to me.
The last class is the scourge. This is the opposite of the new paladin in that it is a champion of evil. Many of its abilities are the same as the paladin’s or are evil counterparts. The scourge gets an aura of evil, dark blessing (the same as divine resistance), aura of fear, etc.
The scourge chooses a vile nature which is just like the paladin’s force of good. The scourge’s choices are Exterminator (seeks out and kills good creatures, especially paladins), Minion (zealous champion of an evil deity), Slayer (kill all living creatures), Tormenter (sadists), and Tyrant (dominate those who are weaker). The scourge does not choose a dedication.
They cast spells as the paladin (with the same 10 per level restriction) and have their own list of evil spells (which includes spells from the Book of Vile Darkness and issues of Dragon). They also have their own list of special abilities to choose from. Some of these are quite powerful such as Corrupted Strike, which allows the scourge to ignore damage reduction against living, non-evil targets.
Overall, this class seems slightly stronger than the core classes. Since it is an evil class, it might not matter too much for games where evil characters are not allowed, however I would caution DM’s who use one of these characters against their players to carefully evaluate the abilities they choose for the character when deciding the CR.
The last couple of pages are taken up with new feats. Most of these improve or expand the many new class abilities for each of the three classes.
One thing I must mention as being a major part in my decision to grade the book as I did is the grammar. Simply put, it is atrocious. As I sat down to start reading this the first time, I noticed a few and I thought I would make a list and send it to Hellhound, so he could get them fixed. I ended up with eight and a half pages of grammatical errors. I would be upset with that many errors in a 300-page book, but this is only twenty-four pages! Most of the errors were the same thing: no articles (as in a, an, and the). I’m not sure how this was missed, but it needs to be fixed.
Another problem, I had, though not nearly as big as the grammar was the naming conventions. Many of the names of special abilities and feats are very uninspiring. Things like Extra Best Effort, Smiter, Thrill of Kill, and Keep Up with Attack, really jar me. I don’t expect every name to be inspiring and evocative, but it’s hard to imagine getting excited about writing Scary Protection on my character sheet.
For all of that, what did I like? Well, I liked that permission was gained from Wizards of the Coast to mention books that are not in the SRD. This makes me very happy, in fact. I would like to see more publishers do this as it makes my books that much more useful. I liked that the knight had a list of commandments and could choose from them to customize a belief system. I liked the number of choices for the classes making it easier for a player to differentiate mechanically his or her character. There are only three pictures in the book, but they are decent (I like the dwarf paladin, especially).
In fact, I did like this book, overall. If it wasn’t for the horrible grammar, I would give this book three stars. I won’t use much of the book as is, but there are enough things here to borrow that I will find it useful.
Shane E Noble
. I would have given it 3 stars, but if it'd had a good editor (eg. me 
) it would have easily netted 5 stars. I've always liked Szatany's Ultimate Classes, and to have them with such generous Open Content (flavour text is open as well as rules text) is a godsend. A lot of the abilities were misworded or flawed in concept/presentation, but the ideas are innovative and clever and if I were running a D&D campaign I'd definitely include them.
