Posts
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Wealth in D&D and Dungeon Fantasy
One thing I’ve done pretty often these past few years is converting D&D and Pathfinder adventures for use with Dungeon Fantasy (either version). These conversions didn’t have nowhere near the level of rigor of my Dragon’s Dogma adaptation, but that larger project did give me a solid grounding on the basics.
Converting from one tabletop system to the other is fairly easy, for the most part, but there are some aspects of it that I found harder to do, especially on the fly. One of these is converting wealth between the two systems.
In this post I’ll be comparing the Dungeon Fantasy RPG and Pathfinder 1st Edition and trying to come up with a way to convert monetary amounts from the latter to the former. I chose the DFRPG because I use its monetary system in my games, and I chose Pathfinder 1e because I want to convert Hell’s Rebels. Pathfinder 1e, of course, shares most of its base assumptions with D&D 3.5, the system from which it is derived.
What Money Looks Like
Dungeon Fantasy purposefully makes its coins have the exact same dimensions as those of D&D, and therefore Pathfinder. They both use chunky standardized coins that weight 1/50th of a pound (around 10 grams). These come in copper, silver, gold, and a few other exotic materials that we don’t need to look at right now.
These dimensions are apparently universal standards, and their value comes from their precious metal content. If you find a chest of thousand-year-old gold coins from an extinct civilization in a dungeon, you can carry them back to town and spend them on the market right away. Finding “non-standard” coins is usually a rare special case.
Unfortunately, though their physical dimensions are identical across both systems, their values seem to be derived from completely different assumptions.
What Money Buys
Like all variants of GURPS, Dungeon Fantasy expresses its prices and values in “GURPS dollars”, or “$”. The exact value of this unit of currency varies with the setting. Here, $1 is the worth of a copper piece. Silver pieces are worth 20 copper pieces each ($20). Gold pieces are worth 20 silver pieces each ($400). This means GURPS is effectively on a copper standard. The vast majority of Dungeon Fantasy characters gets $1000 to buy their starting gear.
For Pathfinder we have the classic decimal setup where 1gp == 10sp == 100cp. The most common coin is the gold piece, and nearly everything in the core book’s gear chapter has its price expressed in gp. So here we’re on a gold standard. Starting money is determined by a random roll that varies per class. Fighter-types start with an average of 175gp, others start with less.
In both cases, this starting money is meant to let you buy your main weapon, perhaps a backup or shield, a suit of armor, and the miscellaneous sundries that make up your typical adventurer’s kit: a pouch or pack, some camping supplies and rations, and maybe some tools like the thief’s lockpick set.
From there on out, things start to diverge quite sharply, and the way I see it it’s mainly the fault of Pathfinder’s Wealth By Level table. It subjects PCs to the tyranny of inflation. This plus the difference in base value means that while a haul of a thousand gold pieces is a fantastic fortune for even veteran Dungeon Fantasy delvers, it starts out at “pretty nice” for low-level Pathfinder adventurers and quickly becomes “pocket change” for high-level ones.
So What’s Our Exchange Rate?
We can start with the guidelines presented in the Exploits book: an adventure should pay at least enough for the party to recoup their expenses with consumables, power item recharge, and the cost of staying in town during downtime. It’s perfectly OK for it to pay more than that, even much more than that, because it’s relatively easy to get rid of “excess” money by giving them opportunities to spend it. Maybe a weird old man has a treasure map to sell, or a mystical artifact or something. Magic items don’t count as part of character wealth for this, as the game’s attitude to them is more similar to early D&D than modern Pathfinder.
So after all of that I think we can safely say that a Pathfinder 1e gold piece should be worth around $5 in Dungeon Fantasy. This leads to amounts of money that are sufficient to cover expenses with a little left over in low-level adventures, and to increasingly bigger hauls in higher-level ones, but as we established that’s OK. Some of those Pathfinder adventures even helpfully provide us with domain mini-games of their own that can soak up that extra cash.
Performing the Actual Conversion
With that basic exchange rate in mind, we can think about how that affects the actual treasure our delvers find in the adventure.
Coins
Piles of coins change to reflect their new value. The two main approaches you could take here are to prioritize keeping the same value, or prioritize keeping the same weight (which means keeping the same number of coins). Getting both value and weight to match is very hard, so I strongly recommend sticking to only one unless you like solving multi-dimensional knapsack problems in your spare time.
Prioritizing value means those coin piles will end up smaller and lighter than the originals. This will make hauling them off easier. I recommend against condensing the pile as much as possible, because you don’t want to make logistics too easy. Also, finding a single gold coin can be a bit of a letdown even if it is worth a lot. This is the easiest approach to take on the fly.
Prioritizing the number of coins means the pile will have exactly the same size and weight, but it will be made of a smaller denomination coins. Its actual value will probably be a little higher or lower than that of the original, but that’s OK as long as the value remains close. This could lead to a situation where the group only takes the most valuable portions of the pile, but I guess that’s true to how it was done in Old D&D too.
Example: A chest containing 100gp in Pathfinder should contain $500 in coins when converted to DF.
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Prioritizing value might give us a bag containing 25 silvers. That’s a satisfying number of coins that still has a non-negligible weight.
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Prioritizing weight might give us a chest containing 80 coppers and 20 silvers, with a total worth of $480.
Gems, Jewelry, and Art Objects
These things tend to have pretty arbitrary values in both systems! The biggest difference in how they handle selling this stuff in town.
In Pathfinder, you can generally exchange them for their full listed value in cash, making them perfectly efficient forms of portable wealth. PF adventurers are quite likely to convert their coins into fancy jewelry when they need to travel long distances, since it’s much lighter for its value.
In Dungeon Fantasy, the only thing that fetches its full value is coin or bulk precious metals. Everything else, including gems, jewelry, and art objects, is subject to the rules for appraisal and haggling. This means typical delvers are likely to get less than full value for this stuff back in town.
My recommendation here is to use a doubled exchange rate: each gp of gems, jewelry and treasure is worth $10. That’s the treasure’s real value, which means a typical party will get half of that on average when they sell it back in town. I feel this preserves the “original intention” of the adventure.
Magic Items
Both systems have a lot to say about magic item pricing, so my strategy here is to not attempt a conversion of the price at all. I convert the function of the item and figure out how much that would cost in Dungeon Fantasy if it was a new item. Saying it like this makes it sound easy, but this can be complex enough to warrant its own post.
If an item can be replicated with the standard enchantments from DF, it has those enchantments and is priced accordingly. Items with unique functions might be a bit harder, but I always have the “easy escape” there of just not assigning a fixed price to these. Like DF Artifacts, they’re either impossible to sell in the first place, or will be worth some arbitrary amount that matches what I want the PCs to have at that point.
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Let's Read Hell's Rebels Adventure 3, Part 3
Here we come to the final part of our Let’s Read of the third Hell’s Rebels adventure, “Dance of the Damned”. With the “regional support” missions complete, the Rebellion’s stats can grow to their maximum values. We’re almost at the point where things get real serious in Kintargo.
The revolution starts with a party.
Part 5: The Ruby Masquerade
Barzilai Thrune has been organizing a grand masquerade ball to be hosted at the Opera House ever since the start of this adventure. He advertises it as a way to reconcile with his critics and to show everything is fine in Kintargo, but of course it’s a dastardly trap. After the PCs close the Menador Gap he steps up his time table and announces a date for the event. He might also end up doing it on his original schedule if the PCs take too long to complete that key mission.
His plan is to use a troop of dottari and disguised devils to massacre the ball’s attendants at the party’s climax, and doctor the evidence to blame the Silver Ravens. This will give him an official excuse to begin hunting them down in earnest.
Barzilai sends invitations to every noble or other prominent citizen he knows does not support him. He’s not stupid enough to believe the PCs would attend if he invited them directly, so he makes invitations relatively easy to acquire by other means as well.
It’s at this point that the private investigator Tayacet Tiora makes contact with the PCs. Barzilai had hired her to look into the Silver Ravens, and it’s even possible they ran into her in previous adventures if the GM decided to use that scene. This time, she’s found out enough to become convinced the PCs are in the right, and she comes to warn them that the Masquerade is a trap. Her recommendation is for the PCs to not attend, but she promises to help if they insist.
Simply not going is certainly an option. It ensures the safety of the PCs but lets the trap spring on the innocent guests unopposed. The book also contemplates the possibility that the PCs will want to break into the Opera House early, which is actually a good call. The same security forces will be present and they will be patrolling more aggresively, but there will be no bystanders. The PCs would miss out on a few extra hob-nobbing opportunities but would be in a much better tactical position.
The rest of the adventure assumes the PCs do attend, however. It should be fairly easy to get invitations for the whole party plus any allies they wish to take. Tiora will also attend in this case, and be ready to help if necessary.
The Masquerade starts at 9 PM, and whatever day is most convenient for the GM. The PCs should have ample time to prepare for this one, growing the rebellion and aiming their NPC teams at the Opera House to provide information. It’s even possible to plant an infiltrated saboteur among the guards. With good rolls they should have a pretty good idea of the security inside the place, and an extra ally on the inside.
Party Mechanics
The actual ball is a bit of a skill challenge in the same vein as the Vyre banquet. There’s an official dress code: outfits should include the color red, everyone must wear a mask, and both should be fancy. Fortunately they can pass anything up to medium armor and shields as part of the costume, but it’s definitely worth it to have it adorned and to splurge on extravagant masks. These give bonuses to social skills during the event.
Just like we had Banquet Points in Vyre, here we have Masque Points. PCs start with an amount between 4 and 16 depending on how fancy their costumes are. NPC allies they bring with them also affect this total. The ball is split into half-hour segments, and each PC can perform one of several available actions during this span of time. Some of these actions cost Masque Points, some can be used to acquire more with good skill rolls.
Unless the PCs have been making an effort to ingratiate themselves with the noble houses during “strategic” play, this is their last real chance to do so before things heat up. The Kintargo-aligned house heads should all be here, so the party’s socialites can identify them and chat them up. Having to do this now does add a layer of complication to the procedures, which is why I like the idea of introducing this element early in the campaign instead and let players make their own interaction opportunities.
Opera House Layout and Security
The Opera House has three floors and an extensive basement. The main seating areas had all of their seats removed to host the ball. Most guests stay on the ground floor, but the nobles gravitate towards the second floor balcony because they like to look down on commoners.
The first two floors have a lot of backstage areas off to the sides, and the third floor and basement are all “backstage”. Many of these areas were converted in living spaces for Barzilai and his staff. All backstage areas are off-limits to party guests, so PCs need to be sneaky when exploring them.
There are a total of 22 dottari in the house, half of which attend to the guests while wearing smiley masks. The other half stands in reserve, waiting for the trap to spring. The dottari here use the same stats as the Menador soldiers, with slightly different gear. This means the PCs should be able to handle small groups of them just fine - the challenge is doing so without raising an alarm.
There is also a troop of devils in here: two bone, six bearded, and a single erinyes. One of the bone devils, Crizmerkis, has a few class levels on him and is wearing an illusory disguise to look like Barzilai. The real Thrune has relocated to the temple of Asmodeus, and does not appear in this adventure. The other bone devil is in the orchestra pit, using his illusion magic to provide the music for the ball. The remaining monsters are scattered through several side rooms.
One of the rooms also contains suspended cages for Barzilai’s pet cockatrices, which can be released at the press of a switch. Unless the PCs or an ally break the switch, these creatures will be released when the trap is sprung.
Finally, there are a bunch of secret rooms in a sub-basement that used to belong to the original Silver Ravens. Barzilai is using them to stash his treasures and house his “prize” henchthings. Former Mayor Jilia Bailinus sleeps here as a vampire, and the long-missing singer Shensen is also here as a statue.
There are a couple of additional secret chambers Thrune’s lackeys haven’t been able to find, and which contain valuable Silver Ravens stuff. This includes the crypts for the original Ravens, which confirm their fates and the fact that Jackdaw, the last remaining member, might still be alive. And it also includes the musical score for the Song of Silver, a potent ritual that will greatly help the PCs in the climax of the rebellion.
Using rebellion actions the PCs can arm themselves with plenty of information before going in: a Covert Action can give them the map to the whole building, even the secret-secret chambers with a good enough roll. And a Sabotage action can place an infiltrator among the dottari. Once the PCs link up with the infiltrator during the party, they can learn the composition and location of the place’s entire security detail, devils included. The saboteur can also break the cockatrice release switch.
There are several rooms that are noted as being rarely visited by both guests and patrols, which makes them perfect places to hide bodies. So yup, time to Assassin’s Creed it up.
“Delving” the Masquerade
I would say those covert actions are so vital that the GM should push for them to happen if the players have been neglecting that aspect of the game. The PCs are on the clock here and every little advantage helps.
The party starts at 9PM. At 10PM, they have a special “Dance of the Damned” event that takes up half an hour. At midnight an unmasking ceremony happens and Crizmerkis springs the ambush with the aim of killing every single guest in the house.
PCs should carefully manage their masque points, with some of the party making an effort to mingle and gain more while the rest spend them on exploration actions. It’s important that the minglers manage to maintain the point total above 0, and that the explorers avoid raising a general alarm. Either of these things will cause Crizmerkis to spring the trap immediately.
Participation on the dance is optional, but winning the contest gives a ton of Masque Points so the minglers will want to participate. This leaves them with 5 other segments on which to decide their actions before the trap is sprung.
Explorers who refuse to take part in the contest have 6 segments on which to act. Their priority target here should be taking out the dottari, because they’re weaker and have less means of raising the alarm (several of the devils are telepathic and can do so instantly). The less enemies there are at midnight, the easier the final fight will be. Looting and detailed exploration of the basement should wait until after the main ambush force is defeated. There are a few extra monsters down there that will not take part in the ambush, so they can be safely ignored for the moment.
The Stroke of Midnight
At midnight, Crizmerkis (disguised as Barzilai) will stop the music and make an ominous speech. During the speech, the dottari will split into 11 pairs and stand guard over every one of the building’s exits, locking those doors in the process. Attacking them before the speech is done will cost the party a bunch of Masque Points but will give them a surprise round and a tactical advantage.
The gist of the speech is that the guests present here have graciously volunteered themselves to help maintain public order, by being massacred so the blame can fall on the Silver Ravens and Barzilai can go after them. As soon as it ends, the devils attack.
There are 300 guests in the house, not counting the PCs. The “spare” bone devil and the erinyes will focus on slaughering them, while the bearded devils and Crizmerkis will come for the PC directly. Most of them will be disguised as good outsiders using illusions, but additional summoned devils and such will not have disguises on. The PCs can draw the attention of the bone devil and erinyes by engaging them in combat. If cornered, Crizmerkis might summon the vampire Jillia Bailinus to help.
This is why killing the dottari early helps: if there are less of them, they’re going to leave some of those exits unlocked and unprotected. The PCs must open the exits so guests can leave: 1d6 guests escape every round for every unlocked exit. With no open exits, 2d6 of them die every round to sheer crushing crowd pressure. Those two devils kill even more per round if left alone. If you’re using GURPS, read “every round” as “every six seconds”, otherwise things might get a little impossible here.
Results and Consequences
The event will go down in history as the Ruby Massacre. Whether the PCs or Thrune are blamed for it depends on how well they do in this final fight.
If the PCs win the big fight they should have plenty of time to explore the rest of the opera house. They’ll get to fight a pack of hellhounds being used as guard animals in the basement, find Vampire Jilia’s coffing and stake her, and find Shensen and the Song of Silver. There’s also a lot of other cool loot to be had, including a scroll of resurrection that can be used to bring the former Mayor back to life after she’s destroyed as a vampire.
If the PCs loose, they’ll find themselves waking up inside a cell in Castle Kintargo. Either way as soon as they leave the opera house we transition directly to Volume 04, where we go full Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood.
Notes and Impressions
The book makes that final battle sound quite difficult, particularly if the PCs didn’t prepare for it by coming into the party armed and taking out some of the opposition ahead of time. Even if they did, it’s going to be hard to save all the bystanders. Dungeon Fantasy delvers should have it a bit easier because the GURPS version of these opponents won’t have HP in the triple digits, but it’s going to be tough even for them.
The same emphasis on etiquette from the Vyre banquet is present here, but here it makes less sense given the surrounding context. The Silver Ravens only get diplomatic/strategic benefits from thwarting the ambush if they have more than 20 Masque Points by the time the ambush starts. I guess this is supposed to represent the final impression left on the survivors about who is to blame for the massacre, but it feels odd to have the party save these people in a very obvious manner and not be recognized for it. I’d say that saving the heads of the noble houses at least should be more than enough to get them on-side for the next adventure, if that hasn’t happened yet.
If the PCs have been buttering up the nobles on their own initiative prior to this point, then the best strategic decision they can make is to break into the opera house days before the ball, preferrably during daylight hours so the vampire isn’t a factor. All the same enemies will still be there, but the whole party can focus on exploring the area and taking them out. They’ll completely forfeit the possible diplomatic rewards from the Masquerade, but not having to split their focus between delving and socializing or rescuing bystanders is more than worth it.
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Let's Read Neverwinter: Bladesinger
Copyright 2011 Wizards of the Coast. TL; DR
Play a swordmage or hexblade instead.
Introduction
I first heard of bladesingers back in the days of 2e, when they were first introduced as an elf-only character kit that gave a lot of powerful combat bonuses.
I was a member of a couple Brazilian RPG mailing lists where people either loved or hated them. Their fans were also elf fans in general, and their haters were usually GMs who thought it made the character “too anime”.
I never actually read the original bladesinger writeup, so I didn’t take sides in that fight. But having read the Bladesinger class as presented in the 4e Neverwinter Campaign Setting, I have to say I’m not their greatest fan.
They’re probably the greatest departure from the design principles established in the PHB classes, far more extreme in that regard than even the Essentials classes from the “Heroes” books. They feel very much like a return to the design philosophy of previous editions. Or perhaps they’re “foreshadowing”: while 5e hadn’t come out yet when this book was published, it was probably already in development, and one of its major goals was to recapture the feel of those older editions. In either way, they feel very dissonant to me when placed alongside other 4e classes.
The Lore
The book spends a whole page describing bladesingers as the epitome of elven superiority. The text feels like it was written by a sun elf. The term Tel’Quessir is used a lot here but not explained. I assume it means “the elven people”, but I am not sure.
According to the book, the art of the Bladesong was developed by Corellon himself, and has been passed down among the elven people for an untold number of their extremely long generations. Even among elves, few individuals are worthy of receiving its teachings, for one must have the mind of a great wizard and the agility of a great dancer to even comprehend its awesomeness.
Their techniques are passed directly from master to student, and were never written down anywhere. When the last bladesinger dies, so does the mystery and beauty of their art.
All bladesingers are completely devoted to upholding and defending the ways of the Tel’Quessir, for such is the purpose Corellon gave them. Few bladesingers deign to leave their homelands - those who do so are surely in pursuit of some mission or relic vital to the Tel’Quessir.
See those last three paragraphs? They’re almost direct quotes from the book. I’m barely paraphrasing.
Basic Information
Bladesingers are presented as a Wizard subclass, which is the kind of presentation I would expect to see in 5e but not here. The book says you should play one of them if you want to be someone who can both participate in melee combat and cast arcane spells. So you could perhaps see them as the Essentials version of the Swordmage, at least in theory.
Despite this, they’re described as arcane controllers, because of the “wizard subclass” thing, and they get Striker-like HP and healing surges. They still get the wizard’s +2 to Will, and a fairly large list of class skills: Acrobatics, Arcana, Athlethics, Diplomacy, History, Intimidate, Nature and Perception. A bladesinger’s key abilities are Intelligence and Dexterity, in that order. They’re proficient with cloth and leather armor, with all simple and military weapons, and with wizard implements (wand, orb, staff).
This is probably the only class in the entire edition that seems to have a hard racial requirement: no self-respecting Bladesong master would teach it to anyone who is not an elf or eladrin. Once in a great while, a half-elf might earn the honor, but even that’s a bit scandalous.
Eladrin are pretty much ideal bladesingers since they get bonuses to both Int and Dex. Other Int/Dex ancestries are likely to be just as effective.
Powers and Features
We get a full 30-level writeup for the class. Like the other Essentials classes, this one comes with an exclusive Paragon Path (Sorcerous Sword) and you have no reason to pick anything else. You have a little more freedom of choice for your epic destiny.
Level 1
This is an incredibly front-loaded class, with a very long list of level 1 features. They all have slightly different requirements to work, but the combined result this: you want to wear at most light armor, and you want to wield a light or heavy blade in one hand, and either a wand or nothing at all in the other. Let’s call this the Bladesinger Requirement.
When you do fulfill the Bladesinger Requirement, you can use your the following list of benefits:
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You use Int instead of your Strength for both attack and damage when making basic melee attacks.
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You gain a +2 shield bonus to AC.
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You don’t provoke opportunity attacks when using ranged or area attacks. This is a bit less awesome than it sounds because of how your powers work.
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You can use your sword as an implement for powers that require one. As usual in these cases, you don’t add its proficiency bonus to the attack roll, but you do add its magic item bonus to attack and damage, and its critical dice when you score a critical hit.
You then pick three Bladespells from a set of six - these are your at-will powers, and they all work the same. They don’t use actions, and trigger when you hit an enemy with a melee basic attack while fulfilling the Bladesinger Requirement. Each is a Ranged 10 attack that does automatic (Dex Mod) damage of a different elemental type and has a different controller-y rider:
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Dancing Fire: Fire damage, target grants CA until the end of your next turn.
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Dazzling Sunray: Radiant damage, target has -2 to attack until the end of your next turn.
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Frost Bite: Cold damage, target is slowed until the end of your next turn.
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Lighting Ring: Lightning damage, target gets damaged again if they move before the end of your next turn.
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Shadow Sever: Necrotic damage and you knock target prone if it’s the same size as or smaller than the target of the triggering melee attack.
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Unseen Hand: Force damage and you slide the target 3 squares.
Because of the bonuses above, Bladespells don’t provoke an opportunity attack. They also don’t have to target the same creature you just hit, but you can only use one of them per attack. Their damage increases by 2 per tier past Heroic. Looks like Shadow Sever and Unseen Hand are more or less automatic picks here, their riders are much better. The third pick would depend on your party’s abilities and what benefits them the most.
We’re not done with the Level 1 powers yet. You get three cantrips chosen from the traditional list of Prestidigitation, Ghost Sound, Mage Hand, Light and Suggestion. And then you get the errataed version of Magic Missile, the one that always hits for minimal force damage. That’s another spell I like more in its PHB 1 form.
And finally, you get the Bladesong encounter power. If you’re fulfilling the Bladesinger Requirement, you can use this as a minor action to slip into a fancy bullet time trance that gives you a +2 power bonus to attack rolls and all defenses, and a +5 power bonus to damage rolls. This lasts until the end of your next turn, which means you can get 2 turns’ worth of Bladesong if you use it as your first action on your turn. There is no other way to extend its duration. The word rolls there means it doesn’t benefit your bladespells or Magic Missile, but it does affect your basic attacks and spells that have damage rolls.
Spellcasting and the Rest of the Levels
That huge list of level 1 stuff seems pretty nifty, and there’s so much of it! Unfortunately it also represents most of what you’ll be doing through your whole career, because the rest of your powers are kinda underwhelming.
Let’s start with spellcasting, the main reason why this is presented as a wizard subclass and also the main way in which it breaks from this edition’s usual class design philosophy. You see, bladesingers bring Vancian spellcasting back to 4e.
They get to pick encounter and utility powers as they advance in level, but these are treated much like wizard spells were in 3e instead of being a set of class-specific powers. While their possible choices are all detailed in the class description, they are also literally “taken from the wizard spell list” in that they’re copied from that class’s list of powers.
There is a table showing at which levels they learn new spells. At set levels, they get to pick either two encounter attack spells or two utilities to add to their spellbook. After finishing a long rest, a bladesinger can prepare a number of these spells, detailed in another table. There is no mention of replacing spells with higher level ones as you level, so I guess they just accumulate in your spellbook. A level 1 bladesinger knows 2 encounter attack spells and can prepare 1. A level 30 character knows 14 encounter attack spells and 10 utilities, and can prepare 3 and 5 of them respectively.
I say “encounter attack spells”, and they get presented in red boxes, but they’re only encounter powers for standard wizards. A bladesinger treats them all as dailies, and even gets them when other characters would normally get daily powers. This means the level of the powers lags behind your character level. At level 5, you pick from a list of level 3 wizard powers, and so on. So yeah, even “spell level differs from character level” makes a comeback here. Your reward for reaching level 20 is that you get to pick a single spell from a list of actual daily attack powers.
Utility powers are less wonky. You get them at the same levels as everyone else, their level matches yours when you get them, and their frequency of use actually matches the one in their descriptions.
At the levels where other characters would get encounter powers, you gain new class features. These either make your bladespells a little better, or give you extra bonuses and triggered abilities that only work while your Bladesong is active.
Impressions
Mechanics-wise, bladesingers feel like the many 3e attempts at making a class equally skilled at swordplay and magic. Like them, it gives us a class that’s not that good at either thing as a specialist, and as a result might feel less powerful and fun in play.
They’re labeled as controllers, but they’re not great at it. The majority of their control ability is going to come from their three bladespells, which will usually only affect one enemy at a time. They need to wait until level 24 to be able to target multiple enemies with a bladespell, and they can only do that once per day.
Those “encounter as daily” Vancian spells can let them exert more control, but they’re weaker and scarcer than what a “proper” controller of the same level has access to. In a party with a wizard, invoker, or psion, the bladesinger will be overshadowed as a controller.
They’re better when viewed as strikers. Bladesong’s bonuses to basic attacks and damaging spells provide an appreciable damage increase. However, I don’t think they do so as consistently as the powers and features of a dedicated striker class.
My conclusion here is the same one I added to the helpful TL; DR section at the start of this post: play something else. Like a swordmage, for example! These great PHB-style arcane defenders do a much better job of letting you play someone who is equally skilled at swordplay and magic. Their lore is also far less snobbish, though you can still call your swordmage a bladesinger if you want without changing anything about their mechanics.
Swordmages can be found in the 4e Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, which as a bonus includes a lot of information on the wider world of Toril where Neverwinter is located.
Alternatively, if you want to be a elf-flavored striker, you could go with a fey pact Hexblade warlock, who can be found in Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms. One of the characters labeled as a bladesinger here was in fact a hexblade warlock in that book.
Story-wise, I guess they intended this to be the class of choice for the Iliyanbruen Guardian, but I would probably choose Swordmage even so. The only thing that could make me play a bladesinger would be if I could something other than an elf or eladrin, just so I could make fun of the snobbish flavor text. A pixie from the Player’s Guide to the Feywild would be ideal.
The bladesinger class is the last section of Chapter 2. In our next post we’ll begin looking at the GM-focused material of Chapter 3, Factions and Foes.
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Let's Read Neverwinter: Torm Domain
Torm, the Loyal Fury, seems to be your typical “paladinic” god of justice and honor. His warpriests pursue justice in an unjust world and act with honor towards those who have none. His domain is by far the most recommended for the other FR gods, being applicable to any god who has a militant or compassionate bent, from Bahamut to Ilmater.
Mechanics
Warpriests of Torm are pretty much Wisdom-based warlords. Their riders boost ally attacks and defenses or allow quick repositioning, in much the same way the different warlord powers do. The optimization forums say this is probably the most varied domain around in terms of what it lets you do - it’s hard to get bored playing a warpriest of Torm.
One thing that jumped out to me is their Level 1 utility power, which they get to keep throughout their whole careers: True Strike! This is an at-will power that lets them spend a Standard action to grant a +4 bonus to an ally’s next attack. It’s not quite as fun as the Lazy-Lord’s signature ability, but it’s the closest you can get to it in an Essentials-only campaign. It’s also super-useful for setting up big attacks with encounter or daily powers.
Impressions
Just as in FR, this power set could fit a lot of different core deities. The lore’s focus on justice make it a good fit for Bahamut and Moradin, and the tactical nature of its powers could allow it to stand in for the domains of non-Good “strategist” gods like the unaligned Erathis or the evil Bane.
That’s it for domains. Next we’ll look at a full class, the infamous bladesinger.
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Let's Read Neverwinter: Selûne Domain
Selûne is the FR goddess of the moon, and is quite an important figure in the setting’s pantheon. She originally created the world alongside her sister Shar, the goddess of darkness. Together they also witnessed the “fissure of reality” that split that world in two, Abeir and Toril. That fissure is the reason why the Realms were Forgotten.
Shar is responsible for a lot of evil shit throughout FR’s metaplot, including the events that happened during the Spellplague/edition transition to swap bits of Abeir’s and Toril’s geography around.
Selûne used to be a goddess who took the path of forgiveness, compassion and self-sacrifice, but the last century has seen her become more aggressive and proactive in battling evil. Light must battle darkness if it is to prevail.
The book doesn’t suggest using her domain for priests of any other FR god. I don’t think any of them are moon-themed enough.
Mechanics
Warpriests of Selûne benefit from having a high Constitution, since a lot of their power riders use the bonus for that attribute. These riders usually focus on granting allies damage resistance or bonus damage, and in penalizing enemy damage or attack rolls.
Her signature damage type is “cold and radiant”, which means PCs can potentially benefit from two of the edition’s most infamous feat combos (Permafrost and Radiant Mafia). That’s the domain’s greatest feature according to the optimization forums. It helps that their Channel Divinity power makes enemies vulnerable to radiant damage.
Lots of radiant damage makes this domain powerful against undead, which is true for most others. Its Level 1 Utility is a daily that makes the warpriest’s weapon count as silvered for the entire encounter, also making it a good counter to lycanthropes. As we saw on the character themes, there are quite a few of those among the possible foes in the Neverwinter campaign.
Impressions
You would think this would be an appropriate domain for clerics of Sehanine in the core setting, but I think this version of Selûne is a bit more aggressive and militant than the trickster-ish Sehanine Moonbow. Corellon’s domain would fit her better.
You could say this is the domain for priests who worship Sehanine’s wrathful face, perhaps. And it’s a good pick for any player who wants their central concept to be “fighting evil by moonlight”.
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