Woo-hoo! Heroes of Horror preview!!

[Borlon]

I'm happy to see that they've finally fixed the Summon Undead line of spells! No more Large Skeletons!

 

[Vocenoctum]

And that's certainly your call to make. Given what you already have, it makes sense.

I'd encourage you to at least take a look at it in the store, of course. You may find that some of the tips for working horror into an otherwise "standard" D&D campaign are useful, or you may like some of the new monsters, spells, etc.

But if not, hey. There's no obligation, and there are no free steak knives for ordering early if you're not sure.

What about a Stake Knife?

I've been waiting for this book since the announcement it would exist. I never bought Book of Vile Darkness, nor the FR Villain stuff, but I think Heroes of Horror will be what I want.

The only problem now, is that I'm doing Age of Worms, so introducing the material might be odd in some ways. WHenever I get a book like this I tend to want to reboot my game to indulge myself in New Book Syndrome.

 

[DMH]

Hate to derail the thread, but I was considering getting the Book of Unremitting Horror. How is it? I haven't seen any reviews for it.

It puts the V in vile. Though it is meant for a modern setting, all but one or two could be tweeked for a typical D&D one. Several of them are not straight combat machines and those that are are pretty damn scary (one is called the organ grinder for a reason). I think all of them are Lovecraftian enough to include in CoC and they also have a place in Dark*Matter.

 

[Banshee16]

If they don't do a Heroes of Swashbuckling Adventure book, there will be consequences.

I hope so as well. I'm one of those who actually likes Swashbuckling Adventures.....though I'd like to see what WotC would do with it. I am concerned that we'd get guys with a rapier in one hand, wand of lightning in the other, jumping around battling sorcerers and dragons.....what I prefer is something more like the Three Musketeers. So maybe I should stick to Swashbuckling Adventures. Of course, we don't know for sure how WotC would address it.

Banshee

 

[Mouseferatu]

So, what's the best thing you have in here?

Hard call. To quote the cliche, I'm proud of almost all the work I did on that book.

If I had to pick, though, I might actually say my stuff in chapters three and four. I like all the monsters, feats, and other hard-core rules stuff I did. But I think, in terms of really getting the most out of the book, I'm most proud of the advice, and the minor rules tweaks intended to help implement that advice.

 

[tetsujin28]

I'm happy to see that they've finally fixed the Summon Undead line of spells! No more Large Skeletons!

What's wrong with large skeletons?

 

[comrade raoul]

The archivist? Best new class I've seen in a WotC book. It might just replace the cleric in any campaign I run, horror-themed or not. (Though perhaps I'd change the name, and base spellcasting on Wisdom instead of Intelligence.)

 

[Blastin]

The archivist? Best new class I've seen in a WotC book. It might just replace the cleric in any campaign I run, horror-themed or not. (Though perhaps I'd change the name, and base spellcasting on Wisdom instead of Intelligence.)

I was wondering about that last part as well...I noticed they did this with the devine soul class as well. I wonder what the reasoning is for making the class dependant on two different abilities. At least with this class it has a good flavor mechanic behind it.

EDIT: oh...and anyone have a street date on this yet? It's gonna be a must buy.

 

[Finster]

yeah, when's this hitting the selves? I like what I see. I just hope the preview isn't like one of those movie trailers where you see all the best parts before going to the show, because this might just be what I've been waiting on.

 

[Staffan]

What's wrong with large skeletons?

The problem is that in 3.0, where the Summon Undead spells were introduced, zombies and skeletons only differed in size. A large skeleton had 2 HD, Speed 40, AC 13, and attacked with 2 claws at +2 (1d6+2). It didn't matter whether it was a horse, an ogre, a fire giant, a large dragon, or whatever in life - a large skeleton was a large skeleton.

In 3.5, "skeleton" became a template. Even just using the examples given in the MM, Large skeletons range from 5 to 10 HD, and their attack routines can vary a lot. However, Summon Undead still summoned a "Large skeleton" instead of specifying exactly what sort of Large skeleton it summoned. Errata later weakened the spells slightly, limiting any summoned undead to having HD = caster level+1 or less, but that still left a lot of room for abuse (especially when using high-level spells to summon multiple lesser creatures, such as an 11th level caster using Summon Undead V to summon four 12-headed hydra skeletons).

Now, I'm thinking the spells might still be a little too powerful (a 2nd level spell summoning a creature with 5 HD, 32 hp, reach, 2 claws +6 (1d6+5) and 1 bite +1 (1d8+2) - compare to a dire badger summoned by a druid with SNA II: 3 HD, 28 hp, 2 claws +4 d4+2 and 1 bite -1 d6+1, no reach), but at least the enormous loophole has been closed up.