I’m reading the new Manual of the Planes and enjoying it a lot. I’m really the target audience for this one – I have every Planescape product I could ever get my hands on, and I have always loved this part of D&D. When 3e loosened up on the Planescape model I was ok with it (except for the fomorians – seriously, who thinks fomorians are cooler than modrons?) because things had been left intentionally fuzzy. You could still do Planescape if you wanted, but if you wanted the drunken cosmology of the Forgotten Realms, that was an option too.

4e has come in with a more concrete cosmology that’s a bit less out there, but it also had the promise of making the planes a valid avenue for play. Since this was something I loved about Planescape – that a planar campaign could start at level 1 – I was curious to see that promise delivered on. Now that the MoP is out, it doesn’t quite deliver what I expected, but what it does deliver is enough to make me content.

So, first and foremost you basically get enough Sigil that if you already have Planescape in your head, you’re good to go. I’m not sure how that entire section reads to someone who’s not a Planescape fan but I was happy for the nod, especially compared to the passing treatment it got in the 3e MoP.

Beyond that there seems to be a general assumption of progression that you can start adventuring in the Feywild and Shadowfell reasonably early on, and that Elemental Chaos and the Astral Sea open up in Paragon play (with the caveat that all planes are available as one-offs). This is not a bad model, and they definitely have made the Feywild and Shadowfell vastly more interesting to me in this book, but I’m glad this guideline seems to be loose rather than an absolute underpinning.

Elemental Chaos and the Astral Sea are full of neat stuff, which is what I would expect. Lots of useful and fun seeds. They’re fun to read and I have only so much to add (except that I’m trying to figure out why the illustration on page 95 looks so familiar).

The mechanical material is nice, but without too many surprises. A nice monster section, with a heavy emphasis on devils and demons, and a nice mix of classics (Dispater!, the Astral Behemoth), Planescape stuff (Keepers, Bladelings) with a few new additions like the demon lord Graz’zt . The levels skew high (Graz’zt is level 32) but that is no surprise, and it nicely fills out some gaps in the monster manual. Plus, as a bonus they offer the information to make Bladelings a playable race.

The Paragon paths are a little less exciting than I’d hoped, mostly because they have a little bit less flexibility than I look for. It’s basically one new Paragon Path per class, with warlocks & wizards smooshed together and rangers getting the hose unless they happen to be eladrin. These paths really showcase some of the real strengths and weaknesses of the Paragon path system. The strengths are that some of them are interesting and flavorful, but the weaknesses are that these are broadly flavorful in a way that makes one ask “Why can only fighters be doomguard?”

The rituals are mostly utilitarian in that they’re all the things you’d want to have in play for a planar game. They do their job, but with no real surprises, except perhaps for the welcome return of Rope Trick.

The magic items are fun, with a heavy emphasis on elemental and teleportation effects. Flipping through them looking for the big red flag (which is to say: encounter powers) the armors ended up worrying me. Driftmetal Armor grants resistance to psychic and radiant and also has a teleportation encounter power, and is only mitigated by the fact that it’s limited to crappy armor types (Chain & Scale). On the other hand, Feytouched armor is basically “Rogues make you dead” armor. Comes in leather and hide, grants a bonus to initiative, and as an encounter power it makes you invisible until the end of your next turn (though thankfully it is a standard action, so there’s a little mitigation). After those, I admit everything else looked much better, with a few stand outes. There are some very clever orbs that mess with teleportation and the welcome presence of Githyanki Silver Swords. There’s also a little more rogue love in the form of shadowstrike weapons, and an unfortunately named “loadstone” stands out a little. Round it all out with planar vehicles, like spelljammers and astral skiffs, and it’s a fun collection.

The overall quality of the content is quite high, with lots of useful, playable seeds. There are some nice easter eggs (The Isle of Dread is in the Feywild!) which are good to see. More importantly, there are only a few occasions where I feel like I’m being told about someone else’s game rather than being given material for mine. That’s always my big fear with setting books, so I breathed a sigh of relief at that one.

If I were to really sit down and try to put my finger on this book in the context of other planar material, what I think stands out most is the lack of dangling threads. One of the strengths (or weaknesses) of Planescape was a design that embraced some really whacked-out stuff, and which allowed for huge, impossible things to get dropped in places with no explanation and with an expectation that you woudl just roll with it. This new MoP has much less of that (and, in fact, quietly provides answers for a great many questions that Planescape left open) and it’s a double edged blade. The cosmology has fewer moving parts these days, and everything makes more sense, while still leaving room for weirdness. That’s pretty cool, but the tradeoff is that the planes no longer feel that big. They are finite and knowable, at least comparatively. I really don’t know how I feel about that – on one hand I miss the grander sweep of things, but on the other I really dig how well this syncs with the 30 level model and creates something the players can really sink their teeth into and own.

I think it really reflects a valuable lesson from Exalted, that the thing which will determine if your characters are truly world-shaking badasses is how the rest of the world is put together. Despite my long standing Planescape love, I suspect it’s a change for the better. And without a unified artistic vision of the kind Planescape had, I suspect it’s also an absolutely necessary change.

I’m pretty happy with it as a whole, so I leave with a few random thoughts:

• The Gnomes, Halflings and Dark Ones are all one race through different filters theory remains strong. In my heart, Dark Ones == Birthright Halflings.
• There are only two cities with maps in the book (The City of Brass in elemental chaos and Gloomwrought in the Shadowfell) which has the effect of making me zero in on them as places to use as the hub or starting point of a campaign. There are interesting places in the Feywild and the Astral Sea, but the lack of maps means I think of them as places to visit, not centers of play. It’s really crazy how powerful a good map can be.
• Man, if you are a Warlock and want to flesh out the details of your pact, this book is like a giant candy shop.
• Gith. All kinds.
• There is a nice emphasis on describing powerful bad guys in terms of how they can impact your whole campaign. The advice tends to be repetitive (face their cultists, then their servants, then their lieutenants, then the big bad) but it’s nice to see it given attention.
• The prospect of doing a “The Lies of Locke Lamora” game based in Gloomwrought will not leave my head. I have already started naming the streets.
• The Air Archons look like they will be incredibly fun to throw into a fight, and I think they’re my favorite monster in the book.
• The Astral Dreadnaught is cool and all, but as far as I can tell they best strategy for beating one is “Get swallowed” since it seems like you can pretty much attack the thing with impunity once you’re inside. Easily tweaked to fix, but a little funny.
• Unlike the Gloomwrought and City of Brass maps, the map of the nine hells is wasted space. It’s technically lovely – no slight to the cartographer – but it is neither useful nor inspiring. I wish the space had been used for almost anything else.
• Man, someone likes Graz’zt. His monster entry is 4 pages long, twice as long as Dispater or Baphomet. This isn’t a bad thing – he’s a little blandly evil but nothing too bad – but it leaves me wondering if he’s supposed to be a signature bad guy or what.
• Lots of nice Raven Queen tidbits throughout, though the story that she took the death slot from Nerull the Reaper is kind of funny and kind of, “er, what?”
• Tytherion, the realm of eternal night, home of Tiamat and Zehir is a bit too close to “Tritherion” for my tastes.
• The Astral Sea section makes a big deal about how everything important in the astral sea has been claimed by someone, but then about a third of the realms presented are unclaimed. I actually like that ratio, but it raised eyebrows as I read.
• Just a general shout out – the art in this one was really solid and fun, with a number of standout pieces, especialy among the chapter frontspieces. After the uneven art in Martial Power, that was welcome.  I think the Shadowfell fronstpiece, while maybe not my favorite in the book, deserves points for managing  to sell me on the Shadowfell as a cool place just by making me look at it differently..
• Baba Yaga’s in the Feywild, and that pleases me to no end.
• I apparently need to remember that Astral Stalkers are ‘Abominations’ to find them in the MM.

The rogue is the best class in 4e. I feel pretty comfortable saying this, though I realize some qualifiers are in order. It’s not the deadliest class (ranger) or the twinkiest class (swordmage), the most versatile class (wizard), the most nuanced class (fighter) or even the all around MVP (I go Warlord for this, but that’s softer). Instead, it is the class that is, as presented, most in tune with the rules of the game.

See, first and foremost 4e is a game about movement and engaging the board. Every class has some movement capabilities and has reasons to engage the board, but rogues have a very synergistic setup with their backstabs. This ability gives a strong incentive to move and a clear lens through which to view the board that provides an array of meaningful choices as the rogue looks for opportunities to seize combat advantage. That combination is important since some classes may excel at one point or another – rangers and some warlocks are more mobile, fighters have a clearer lens and so on – but for those other classes it takes time and experience to find the sweet spot for play. Running around the edges of a fight or standing toe to toe with the big bad can be cool, but they don’t necessarily offer the same clear set of meaningful choices a rogue gets every turn.

Still, if that was all then it would really just be a difference of learning curve – other classes get rewarding too and the rogue is just the fastest route. But the rogue has another advantage – his advancement is just that much cooler than everyone else.

Now, I’m not asserting his powers are cooler. Everyone has cool powers, so I consider those to be a wash. Where the rogue gets more interesting is in the domain of feat selection. I have made a lot of characters, and there’s a pattern you start seeing with feats that is perhaps most obvious when your wizard hits 2nd or 4th level and loudly declares “These feats all suck.” And the thing is, he’s kind of right, at least for a wizard. There aren’t a lot of feats that help him do the things he does better or more interestingly (and even the ones he might want, the keyword ones, tend to have crappy reqs) so he’s stuck taking generic feats for a lack of anything more interesting (at least until he changes tiers – higher level feats are a wizards saving grace). In contrast, I have never made a rogue and not wanted more feats. So many feats interact well with how a rogue is played that you can never get enough of them.

This is a really big deal, and it exists as a sort of spectrum from the rogue at the top to the wizard at the bottom, and if there’s one reason the game needs more feats, it is to get to the point where the wizards and clerics and others of the world have more options than the same handful of feats, then nothing until they change tiers.

Lastly, and this is a point I’ve touched upon before, rogues probably have the best model for how to handle the interplay between stats and character effectiveness, allowing for one clear primary stat, and branching off from there based on substats. Building a rogue that mechanically satisfies your vision is just easier than doing so with, say, a Paladin.

Anyway, all this is important because it means when I’m faced with a general question about how something should be done, I tend to look at the rogue first as an example. That is not to say I want other classes to have powers and effects like the rogue, but rather that I want rules to introduce options that make things as clearly engaging for other classes as they are for the rogue. My hope is that eventually there will be enough support that other classes have equally clear paths to engagement (and some come close already – Martial Power was a nice bump for the martial classes in general) but doing so is going to take some work. There are a few roadblocks built into the core rules that need to be knocked down or worked around, but I think that’s doable.

I’m knee-deep in development of Poisoncraft. I recently had a design breakthrough that had been giving me some fits. One of the core features of the Poisoncraft line is the poison creation system. And one of the core goals of the poison creation system is both a unified design and the ability to account for poisons already released by Wizards. That’s not always an easy thing. I remember when I was working on the original Poisoncraft, I had a terrible time trying to account for the absurdly low cost of drow poison indicated in the DMG. In the end, I had to fudge a little.

With Fourth Edition, the designers have done a great job of applying a unified design theory to just about everything. This makes the reverse engineering job that much easier, natch. Still, there’s always some fly in the ointment. This time around, it was the discrepancy between the costing of poisons in the DMG and the Adventurer’s Vault. We have poisons of similar level and effect with pretty drastic price differences. For the longest time, I couldn’t crack the code. Until yesterday….

I identified an extremely subtle yet crucial and ultimately satisfying discrepancy between the poisons themselves. The poisons in AV are one-shot consumables; they are effective for a single target and a single attack. The poisons in the DMG are effective for an entire encounter (more on this in a bit). Though it is not expressly identified in either text, this distinction gives us two classes of poisons. Part of the confusion comes from the fact that they are both simply referred to as “poison”. To avoid this confusion I’ve tentatively titled them transient poisons and persistent poisons. Once we make this distinction, it is a relatively simple matter to develop creation systems for both.

As a bonus, these two classes of poison bring with them a larger design space as well. Now I can have poison families with rules for one class of poison, utility powers that only affect one class of poison, etc. How about a metapoison feat that allows a transient poison to last for two attacks? In play, these two classes of poison are susceptible to different strategies. A transient poison would do the trick for an assassination attempt; a persistent poison would be the better choice against the big battle with the BBEG.

Now, as promised, a note about the persistent quality of DMG poisons. The text is a little obtuse, and I’ve seen more than a few people misread it. However, I’m certain that the rule is as I read it. The text indicates:

The poison takes effect the next time the weapon hits and deals damage. The poison’s effect is a secondary attack against the same target. If a poisoned weapon hits multiple targets, the poison attacks only the first target hit. Apply a Poison: Apply poison to a weapon. This is a standard action. Poison applied to a weapon loses its potency at the end of the encounter or after 5 minutes have passed.

Some people have read the phrase “the poison attacks only the first target hit” to mean that the poison affects that first target and then stops being effective altogether. However, that interpretation improperly discounts the introductory clause “If a poisoned weapon hits multiple targets”. The term “target” has a specific meaning, i.e., the subject of a specific single attack. It should not be confused with its general use as a synonym of enemy or opponent. It is evident that the limitation is there to avoid giving a disparate advantage for using poison to classes with a greater number of multiple-target weapon attacks. Compare the impact a persistent poison that affected all targets would have on a dual-wielding ranger as opposed to a warlock.

Reading Dragon Magazine’s preview content is always interesting, but it was particularly interesting to me this month to see the preview material for Adventurer’s Vault II (you’ll probably need a subscription to D&D Insider to view it).

Those of you who’ve picked up our latest product, The Shroudborn Multiclass, can probably guess what’s caught my interest. It’s the orbs.

In the preview Wizards is offering, there are a few orb items, mostly epic tier and extreme late paragon tier, that they’ve ornately labeled as Orbs of Sequestered Conflict.  It’s a case of parallel evolution as it turns out, because just a couple weeks before Wizards leaked this playtestable peek, our own Shroudborn Multiclass came out with a few powers that feature the Arena keyword — which, in essence, is exactly what the sequestering orbs do:

The arena Keyword

A small number of shroudborn powers—howling abyss strike, howling abyss dive, and howling abyss onslaught—have the new arena keyword. The arena keyword indicates a power that, in essence, comes with its own map, by introducing a second battlefield into the fight, often with limited access for a few combatants. In the case of the shroudborn abilities mentioned above, this arena map is the howling abyss…

The howling abyss, in its scope, is in a few ways a little more ambitious (or at least a bit larger) than the sequestered areas of the orbs, but there’s a lot of overlap going on.  Both the howling abyss arena and the sequestered areas feature altered environments and the ability to isolate one or more targets from the main battlefield in the hopes of taking advantage of the opposition.  Regardless of the way you get your arena, it’s bound to have a bit of a Thunderdome feel to it: locking yourself into a separate dimension with the big bad might turn the tide of the main battle, but whether or not you’ll live to see the victory is an open question.

Regardless of whether you’re taking on the howling abyss or one of AV2′s orbs, it’s worth giving it some careful thought.  As the AV2 playtest notes, you’ll want to think twice before allowing them into your game (for one, it might feel “uncool” to allow a character to do a bit of grandstanding and seize part of the battlefield as his own; and for two, it could really bust up a well-planned set-piece).   But even if you do accept these arenas into your game, you’ll want to make sure you have the sequestered areas drawn or printed up in advance, and an area on the table where they can be set down separate from the main battlefield.

But at the end of the day, I’m just jazzed that an idea we developed separately has shown up as well in the official upcoming material from Wizards of the Coast.  A solid indication that at One Bad Egg, we’re on the right track!

Curse you Mouse Guard. I haven’t even read you yet, and already I am inspired.

So, in 4e, The disease and poison rules do a great job of handling very specific sorts of situations that can be dramatically appropriate to the dungeon. Poison and disease are extra elements of danger that can spice up encounter-driven danger, but their specific (and slightly complex) nature makes them tools of a very specific nature.

Conditions, on the other hand, have been a joy in their simplicity and effectiveness – they do one thing and do them well, and they are easy to keep track of.

Now, the reason these two points resonate with each other in my mind was really inspired by the discussion of the new Mouse Guard rpg and its handling of status, and dovetailed with one of the frustrations with skill challenges in 4e. Basically, there are only so many ways to mechanically support an interesting failure in a skill challenge. The idea of having a failure cost skill challenges is a useful one, but it can only go so far. Mouse Guard supports the idea of characters ending up hungry or thirsty or tired, and it really seemed like there’s no reason that 4e couldn’t do the same thing.

So with that in mind I suggest the idea of extended conditions. An extended condition is just like any other condition – it has rules that indicate what sort of mechanical impact the condition imposes. The sole difference comes from how they end. Extended conditions usually go away after you’ve taken an extended rest, but some of them require some additional criteria, noted as “End:” in the description.

Extended Conditions

I suspect this really just scratches the surface of possibilities, and I encourage people to think of other extended conditions. Once you have a few of these in pocket, then suddenly you have slightly more interesting currency to tie to a skill challenge than just taking away healing surges. Characters who fail their skill check crossing the desert stumble out thirsty. Guards who spend the night watching a house might end up tired.

It’s a pretty lightweight little rule, but give it a try next time you bust out a skill challenge, and you may find it gives it a little more *oomph*.

So, when WOTC previewed the Druid, I must admit that my first thought was “They finally did it – they’ve finally legitimized stat substitution for calculating AC.” That is probably not the first thing most people zeroed in on. Things like the triple at-will powers, the fact the Druids are all Shifty and the various questions surrounding unarmed attacks might be more likely to suggest themselves, but it’s something I’ve kind of had my eye on since the Swordmage came out. It’s a door I’ve been resisting opening, but that resistance is definitely strongly undercut.

Anyway, the other thing the Druid did is remind me it might be worth talking about the great feedback we got on the Witch Doctor. There was enough of it that there’s no real way for me to address it all point for point, but there were a number of questions and issues that came up, and I want to run down through them a bit.

• ‘Range Blast 2′. This is easy to describe in conversation – it’s just a 2×2 square – but it gets profoundly more convoluted when you get into the specifics of terminology of 4e. This is basically going to need a sidebar the same way close walls do. This will also probably re-open the question of whether or not we should just define a ray/bolt type for walls that go in a straight line and call it a day.
• Defenses – Yes, the Witch doctor has very high defenses, with the mask providing slightly better bonuses than any other class. The exception to this is AC, where the Witch Doctor totally bombs. That initial idea – low AC but high scores in other defenses – works out interestingly in play, but may be too clever for its own good, and this will probably need to get smoothed out.
• Masks, Implements and Weapons – The interplay between masks and head slot items badly needs clarification, and I need to make weapon and implement juggling a little more graceful. The masks also need some general tweaking.
• Cage of Lighting – This one is very clear in my head, but I apparently do not yet have the language clear on the page.

That said, there’s one big issue that came up in a small number of feedbacks, but which has really grown on me as I’ve worked on things, and that is the question of two primary stats and the impact it has on powers. Right now, about half the WD powers take Charisma as their primary stat and the other half take Constitution. This is not unique to the Witch Doctor – the Warlock, Cleric and Paladin are similarly split – but I have grown less enamored of this approach over time. I haven’t liked the things I’ve seen in play, especially the strong sense of ‘either/or’ that comes out of the needs of optimization (and I won’t pretend 4e doesn’t depend on optimization.)

What really has impressed me is the rogue (and to a lesser extent, the Warlord) for having a crystal clear central stat but for having a really strong thematic difference based on your second best stat. It creates a difference without feeling like you’re having to either discard half your class or take some middle-of-the road approach. Certainly, some powers are better for one build or another, but the difference is that for a rogue, those powers are all still available and useful, rather that pretty much entirely off the menu, as they might be for a low strength cleric.

So I have the knife and the scalpel out, and I’m seeing what I can do to retool it with that in mind. The logical thing to do is make it charisma based, with Constitution and Wisdom as the branches, but that has two problems – I would need to add or remove a mask, I suspect, and one combo doubles up on a defense (Will in this case). As such, the more difficult but possibly more interesting option will be a triple branch – Con, Wis and Int, with each secondary tied to a mask type. It’s still experimental, but I think it just might work.

We got “mini-reviewed” over on ENWorld quite favorably! You can check out the whole post here, but if you’re just in it for the One Bad Egg goodness, you can check out Adam Dray’s excerpt of the OBE-relevant stuff over on his LJ.

Here’s an excerpt of the Unbroken mini-review, just as a teaser:

The Unbroken (One Bad Egg) — I have two words for you guys. Must. Have. The Unbroken is a paladin paragon path simulating a paladin that has broken with his god, but wants to do things that must be done, be they good or evil. Thematically, it’s hardly breaking new ground, but it is IMO a very important option to have in your campaign. But the best thing about this short PDF is that it gives you a smart way to not only handle the paladin code introduced, but that you can easily use it with the normal paladins and their relationship with their god. Hell, it could fit for any character that wants some sort of code. At $1.49, it’s worth every penny several times over.
Rating: ******