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!
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