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• May 5, 2023

  Let's Read Neverwinter: Harper Agent

  

  From what I remember, the Harpers used to be a “good conspiracy” back the “old days” of the Forgotten Realms. A secret society dedicated to doing good, fighting for freedom, and keeping the many evil factions of the setting in check. Elminster was a big fan, and several of the setting’s iconic NPCs were members.

  Those Harpers got destroyed during the Spellplague, but sixty years before our narrative present a new group took up the name. This incarnation of the group is mostly focused on stopping the machinations of those Netheril survivors who came out of the Shadowfell, though they also have their fingers in other pies.

  A PC with this background has a very specific and rather tense backstory. They always dreamed of joining the Harpers, and traveled to Everlund to apply. They were given a trial mission - to go to Neverwinter and link up with a woman named Cymril. Cymril was not only a fully-fledged Harper Agent but also the leader of the Sons of Alagondar. The Sons are a group of rebels who opposes Dagult Neverember, and who fight for an independent Neverwinter.

  The PC gets included in night-time recon mission led by Cymril herself, and their group gets ambushed by a force of Neverember’s mercs. In panic, the PC hides, and then gets to witness as the rebels are massacred. The thing is, Cymril herself turned coat as soon as the fight started, and began killing her own underlings! In the end, the hidden PC is the only survivor on the rebel side: Cymril gets taken out by one of her lieutenants, who in turn dies to the mercenaries. They leave the rebels’ bodies on the street as a warning. Our PC as the foresight to steal Cymril’s Harper pin before absconding.

  So the title of “Harper Agent” is kind of misleading. The PC is actually a rogue agent, sympathetic to the organization’s ideals but operating without their official support. The PC can’t let it become known that they’re not a real Harper, and even without that secret coming out they’re already facing suspicion from the very rebel group they were supposed to help, for being the only survivor of the ambush that killed Cymril.

  A PC with this background wishes to discover the truth behind that massacre, prove their innocence, and fulfill their original mission of preventing Neverember from becoming the cutthroat merchant-king he wishes to be. This theme brings even more intrigue and spy games into the game than the Neverwinter Noble.

  There are no class or race prerequisites, though the book recommends Harper characters be good at subterfuge and say many of them multiclass into bard, rogue, ranger or wizard.

  Features

  This class gains only a single feature: that Harper Pin pried from Cymril’s corpse. It marks the bearer as a member of the Harpers, brings with it a blessing from one of their patron goddesses, and can be used as a key to secret Harper hideouts and caches.

  Mechanically, it’s a Rare Level 3 Wondrous Item, which means it doesn’t take up any slots and can’t be bought in stores. The PC chooses one of three possible blessings at character creation, and this becomes the pin’s item encounter power. Llira’s Grace lets them roll 1d6 and add it to an attack roll they just missed, potentially turning it into a hit. Mielikki’s Endurance lets them reduce incoming damage from an attack by 5 + half level. And Tymora’s Luck lets them re-roll a save with a +2 bonus to the new roll.

  Utility Powers

  This class’s optional utility powers continue to follow the themes of the divine blessings above.

  Harper’s Healing Boon is a level 2 daily power that can be used as an interrupt when the PC is hit by an attack. They take only half damage from the attack and can immediately roll a save.

  Unexpected Ally is a level 6 power that represents the PC use fast-talk to trick an enemy into believing the PC is a secret ally of theirs. This means the enemy can’t make opportunity attacks against the PC and grants combat advantage to them. The effect ends when the PC attacks the fooled enemy.

  Resourceful Dastard (yes, with a D) is a level 10 daily power. It’s a stance that gives +4 to all defenses when the PC has cover or concealment, and lets them ignore all difficult terrain when shifting.

  Impressions

  This theme is very strongly oriented towards rogue, bard, or even ranger PCs, I feel. Its blessing and utility power can help make these characters less fragile and more mobile.

  A criticism I’d make is that this one is a lot less generic than the other themes we saw so far. With a background like that, it’s a bit hard to make the PC anything other than a rogue Harper in the Neverwinter region of the Forgotten Realms. It’s also almost impossible to have more than one Harper Agent in a party unless you change that very detailed background and come up with another reason why they can’t contact out-of-town Harpers for support.

  A Harper Agent in a party has reasons to cozy up to and aid the Neverwinter Noble, and provides a good hook for the GM to introduce the group to the Sons of Alagondar (or what’s left of them). Cooperation would not be automatic, since the Sons distrust the Harper, but it would be a start. The Agent would also try to convince any other neutral PCs to oppose Neverember.

• May 2, 2023

  Let's Read Neverwinter: Oghma's Faithful

  

  Oghma is the Forgotten Realms god of knowledge and thought, occupying the roughly the same position as Ioun does in the default 4e setting. This particular PC is one of his worshipers, and for a while now they’ve been receiving dreams and visions from the god. These start as nightmares, but soon the threats are burned away by divine fire and the dreamer finds themselves in a grand hall where the sound of a water clock can be heard.

  The meaning of these visions is clear: the faithful must go to Neverwinter and restore the House of Knowledge, a big temple to Oghma that was destroyed in the eruption. Neverwinter used to produce famously accurate water clocks, you see. This, and many of the city’s other lost craft secrets, could be restored from the temple’s archive, if it still survives. This would help the city’s reconstruction immensely, and of course bring the worship of Oghma back to the region in a big way.

  This is about as lofty a goal as that of the Noble, though it’s much less concerned with secular politics. The Faithful is still going to need allies, and so has a ready-made reason to work together with any other PCs interested in restoring the city.

  Oghma’s Faithful can belong to any race or class. Though the book says the theme fits divine characters better, the actual powers printed here surprisingly good for skill-monkeys from all power sources. Essentials Clerics can also pick up an Oghma domain, shown later. The theme’s background skills are History, Religion, and Streetwise.

  Features

  At level 1, the Faithful gains the Understand Language power, an encounter power that lets the PC choose a language they’ve heard or seen in the last 24 hours and become able to understand it until the end of the encounter. Outside of combat, that would be about 5 minutes, but as this is an encounter power you might as well consider the PC constantly able to understand that language during extended exploration sequences.

  At level 5 the PC gains another power, Sudden Insight, which once per encounter lets them re-roll a skill check and take the second result. This is any skill, not just knowledge ones.

  At level 10, they gain a +4 bonus to Perception checks made “to search”, which I guess means to actively search for something (such as traps, treasure, or the right book in the temple’s archive).

  Utility Powers

  As always, these become additional options when it’s time for the PC to choose utility powers.

  Learned Response is a level 2 daily power that lets the PC use the result of an Insight check as their initiative for that combat. Even to me this feels a little too narrow in scope, but it does mean the low-Dex cleric will act much earlier once per day.

  Bad Idea is a Level 6 encounter power which can be used as an interrupt when an adjacent creature attacks the PC. The PC slides the attacker 2 squares to another adjacent space, and inflicts a -2 penalty to its attacks and saves for a turn. Good for melee skirmisher-types like rogues or avengers. Clerics probably have something better to choose here from their class.

  Tactical Inspiration is a level 10 encounter power that lets the PC shift 3 squares to be adjacent to an enemy as a move action, and also allow an ally within 5 squares to shift 3 squares for free. I could see a warlord or rogue taking this too, to help gain combat advantage earlier.

  Impressions

  This feels less spectacular to me than the Neverwinter Noble theme, as I’m not very enthusiastic about the FR pantheon. Mechanics-wise, it’s mostly about improving your skill checks, which can be awesome in the sort of campaign suggested by this book where you can have plenty of non-combat investigative and intrigue scenarios. It’s probably not going to do much for your combat effectiveness, though.

  Multiple PCs with this background are very easy to accommodate in the same party, as they would all share a common cause and would have every reason to work together.

  

• Apr 30, 2023

  Let's Read Neverwinter: Neverwinter Noble

  

  Now that Neverwinter is on the way to being restored, Lord Dagult Neverember of Waterdeep has arrived to take control. He claims to be a distant relation of the old rulers of Neverwinter, and has declared himself Lord Protector of the city until “order is fully restored”. He’s backed by an army of mercenaries, and everyone expects him to crown himself king once he stamps out resistance to his rule and controls the whole city.

  A lot of people suspect his claim to the throne is a lie. You are completely sure it’s bunk, because you are the true heir to the throne of Neverwinter.

  You are the child of a noblewoman who escaped the city as it was being destroyed, shortly before you were born. She would succumb to her wounds and her grief shortly after having you, and you would be adopted by the Thann noble house in Waterdeep. You were given a proper noble education and consumed a steady diet of heroic poems and epics. They told you about your true heritage shortly after Dagult took over Neverwinter, and by the time the campaign starts you have decided to seek your birthright there.

  This is a lofty goal, and a difficult one: you need strong allies, and the sort of conclusive evidence for your claim that can only be found in the ruins of the city. It’s up to you whether the other PCs know of your heritage or not.

  Neverwinter Nobles must be at least part human, because the historical lords of the city were human. The powers suit melee defenders and give them a leaderly bent, but there are no hard class prerequisites. The background skills are Diplomacy and History.

  Features

  The level 1 feature is an extra encounter power named Take Heart, Friend!, which lets you use your lordly charisma to rally a comrade. It’s a minor-action encounter power that gives an ally within 5 squares a +2 power bonus to all defenses and 5/tier temporary HP. The “5/tier” bit means it would remain useful even after the projected level range for this campaign, which is a nice touch.

  The level 5 and 10 features are less flashy, which follows the usual design formula for themes.

  At level 5, when you flank an enemy your allies gain a +1 power bonus to attack that enemy. This does stack with the usual +2 bonus from combat advantage.

  At level 10, you are probably close to claiming the throne and your regal mien is obvious for any to see. You gain a +4 bonus to Diplomacy when interacting with citizens of Neverwinter, and a +4 bonus to Intimidate against anyone who opposes your rule.

  Utility Powers

  These are not mandatory, as I’ve said earlier. Rather, they become additional choices alongside class powers whenever the PC would gain an utility power.

  Honorable Challenge is a Level 2 encounter power that requires a minor action. It gives you an aura 2 that lasts a turn. Enemies inside take a -2 penalty to attack anyone other than you. In other words, it’s a wider Defender’s Aura that lasts for a single round.

  Cover Your Ally is a level 6 encounter power. When an ally within 3 squares of you is attacked, and you are not a target of the attack, you can swap places with your ally as an interrupt, and become the new target of the attack. Castling!

  Pillar of Lordly Might is a level 10 daily power. It’s a move action that gives you a +2 to all defenses and a +5 to Diplomacy, but also immobilizes you. This lasts for a turn but can be sustained with minor actions. Great for all those Thou Shall Not Pass moments, and it might even allow you to negotiate peace in the middle of a fight.

  Impressions

  I honestly don’t have a lot of skill at gauging the effectiveness of PC powers in 4e. These seem cool to me. They do work much better for melee defenders, and here they work equally well for Essentials and PHB classes. I like it that none of the powers involves attack rolls.

  Regardless of the theme’s mechanical effectiveness, it gains major points for me because you get to become the ruler of Neverwinter if you follow the built-in story and succeed at it! Very few of the GMs I’ve known would just let a PC be the True Heir to the Throne if they asked it. Here, it’s just a character option anyone can take.

  Technically, multiple characters in the party could take this theme. Perhaps the mother had twins, or perhaps you had multiple nobles who fled to Waterdeep with small or unborn children. This being 4e, I would not recommend using this as an excuse for deadly intra-party conflict. After all, Dagult Neverember is already there to provide proper opposition to the PCs. Rather, players of multiple nobles should probably agree on who has the actual claim to the throne and who “merely” stands to inherit an estate and become a trusted advisor to the monarch.

• Apr 28, 2023

  Let's Read Neverwinter: Character Themes Introduction

  Chapter 2 - Character Options is the one players will be most interested in, and the reason the book strongly recommends creating new characters to play a Neverwinter campaign. It’s divided into four major sections: Character Themes, Racial Backgrounds, New Domains, and the Bladesinger class.

  In this post, we’ll introduce the concept of character themes.

  What is a Theme?

  Character Themes are described here as the “third pillar” that defines your character alongside race and class. I also describe them as the “thing” you have in your Heroic Tier, just like Paragon Paths are the “thing” in Paragon and Epic Destinies are the “thing” in Epic. They were first introduced in Dark Sun, and I think we also got a few generic ones in Dragon before this point.

  Here, themes are meant to give each character special knowledge and social ties that firmly ground them in the Neverwinter campaign. Unlike a character class, a theme is a thing that always exists and is acknowledged in the setting. People will never really call you “a fighter”, but they will definitely notice if you happen to be the lost heir to the throne of Neverwinter!

  Aside from these narrative hooks, a theme also has several mechanical widgets. At levels 1, 5 and 10, you gain a Feature specified by your theme, which gets added on top of everything you already gain from your class. It gives you access to a few optional utility powers which you can take instead of a class power at levels 2, 6 and 10. And it also works like the backgrounds from the Dungeon Master’s Guide 2: each theme lists a handful of skills, and you pick one. If it’s already a class skill you get a +2 bonus to it. If it’s not you can make it into a class skill, and become able to choose it during character creation.

  These features and powers can act to reinforce a character’s mechanical roles, or to broaden it in ways that weren’t possible before. The narrative bits can provide excellent reasons for the party to work together beyond the usual “you all meet in a tavern”. They’re not exclusive either. Several PCs can pick the same theme, and you could theoretically have a party where everyone does that. Some of the themes are better for this than others.

  Technically, themes are entirely optional. A heroic-tier character without a theme would be just as viable. In practice, I’ve never seen anyone refuse to choose a theme once they became widely available. A hypothethical edition that refined the concepts of 4e would probably include them right in the PHB.

  The next few posts will be dedicated to looking at the Neverwinter Campaign Setting themes in detail, and we’ll start with the most spectacular one.

• Apr 24, 2023

  Let's Read Neverwinter! Chapter 01: Jewel of the North

  

  This is another introductory chapter that goes into a little more detail about the setting, but not too much more. It starts with a summary of the relevant places in the region, then moves on to the obligatory super-long historical timeline, and ends by offering campaign advice.

  Neverwinter

  Despite assuring the reader that no knowledge of the wider Forgotten Realms, this section kind of assumes you’re familiar with the region already, probably from reading the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. Having played the Neverwinter Nights games was enough for me, but as they’re very much In the Past at this point I would have preferred if they assumed no prior knowledge and had a more basic summary of the region. In the following paragraphs I try to summarize it for people who wouldn’t necessarily have prior FR kwowledge.

  Neverwinter is a coastal city-state located in a region referred to as “The North”, with seems to be a typical Frozen North type of deal but with less vikings. It’s built on the mouth of the Neverwinter River, which is warmed by underground heat sources and thus never freezes. This makes the city’s port viable year-round, and brings it great wealth from trade. A series of canny lords invested this wealth to make a solid industrial base for the city and strengthen its defenses. It became a beacon of prosperity and stability in a dangerous region full of monsters and slumbering ancient threats.

  The computer games end up being mostly about keeping it that way, but in this book all of this is in the distant past. The Neverwinter in our book is a destroyed city struggling to get back on its feet and threatened by foreign interests and evil conspiracies alike.

  The Forgotten Realms setting has a tradition of marking edition transitions with world-shaking metaplot events, which usually try to give in-setting explanations for why the rules changed. They tend to make lasting changes to the world’s geography and pantheon, usually involving the death of the current goddess of magic. The big change that heralded 4e was The Spellplague, which caused a bunch of horrible mutations and a planar conjunction that brought in a whole continent from a parallel dimension. That was a hundred years ago, and it actually didn’t affect Neverwinter all that much.

  What destroyed the city was the eruption of the nearby Mount Hotenow, about thirty years ago. The eruption caused a river of pyroclastic magma to flow through the city, killing half its population outright and leveling whole districts. Over the next decades, the people who fled the city began to return, along with new waves of opportunists who came to loot and decided to stay, and together they’ve managed to start rebuilding.

  There are still plenty of scars from the eruption, including a huge chasm torn into the earth, but Neverwinter managed to rebuild enough that it drew the attention of one Dagult Neverember. This guy is one of the Lords of Waterdeep, a big metropolis to the south, and he has an expansionist streak a mile wide. He arrived with a dubious lineage claim and a mercenary army, and then declared himself the Lord Protector of Neverwinter, clearly intent on adding the city to his personal domain. The people who live here are divided over whether that’s a good or a bad thing, and it’s one of the main plots of the campaign.

  Other Nearby Locations

  Several other places in the region should be familiar to Neverwinter Nights players, though the combined damage from the Spellplague and the eruption means they’re generally in a worse situation than they were back then.

  Lots of smaller towns and cities have simply been emptied or abandoned. Port Llast became a ghost town after its port was ruined by the appearance of the nearby continent of Abeir. The mages that ran Luskan were killed off by Drizzt in some novel, and now the city is just the pirate-riddled cesspool it always appeared to be. Other towns and locations that were important because they facilitated regional trade were abandoned after the destruction of Neverwinter halted that trade.

  The mysterious Neverwinter Wood now contains both an eladrin city returned from the Feywild (Sharandar), an ancient sky island crawling with remnants of its original owners returned from the Shadowfell (Xinlenal), and an incomplete necromantic fortress of unspeakable evil inhabited by people trying to complete it (the Dread Ring). The Mere of Dead Men has grown bigger and more dangerous, making it harder for supplies or help to arrive by land from the south.

  There are legends of some ancient dwarven city named Gauntlgrym, but no one has managed to find it yet. And then you have your standard stretches of hills and mountains infested with ogres and dragons. The general thrust of this section is that the Frozen North has gotten even more “frontier-ish” and dangerous than it already was.

  Regional History

  While Neverwinter is extremely focused on the region’s current situation, it wouldn’t be a FR setting book if it didn’t include a historical timeline stretching back tens of thousands of years. I’ll try to summarize this whole thing and focus on the bits that are relevant to today’s adventurers.

  In very ancient times this region was dominated by an elven empire (Iliyanbruen), which after thousands of years of hegemony fell after fighting back an enormous orcish invasion. Most of its inhabitants called it quits and “traveled West” much like Tolkien’s elves do, but some of them fled into the Feywild instead. These refugees built a city over there, and this is relevant because that city has returned to the world and is the region’s main source of eladrin characters.

  During the time of the elven empire, you also had a dwarven empire (Delzoun), which had several big underground cities in here. Its fabled capital was Gauntlgrym, which started out as a big mine and got converted into a city later. The empire collapsed after the big orcish invasion and the underground mind flayer invasion that followed. This is relevant because it leaves a whole bunch of lost dwarven ruins underground.

  You also had a human empire (Netheril) that was ruled by archmages who loved to show their power by building flying islands. This one fell quite suddenly due to Metaplot Shenanigans elsewhere in the world, and one of their flying islands crashed into the Neverwinter Wood. It’s still there! The survivors from this empire are the ancestors of most of the present-day humans native to the region. This includes the Uthgardt barbarians, but also other groups. Some of these survivors settled the city of Illusk, which would become present-day Luskan after being sacked and rebuilt a few dozen times. Neverwinter would be founded much later by other descendants of Netheril who first settled islands to the west and then sailed here.

  The “Modern-day developments” section includes quite a few spoilers, so players beware! I do find it cute that it made a point to mention the plot of the first Neverwinter Nights as a significant historical event.

  Anyway, after the Spellplague pulled the Realms into Fourth Edition, the descendants of Netheril survivors who had fled to the Plane of Shadow came back and started conspiring to take over the region by infiltrating Neverwinter’s power structure. They got sidetracked when another conspiracy crashed into theirs, but are still hanging around the ruins of that flying city.

  That crashing conspiracy is a doozy, by the way: a bunch of evil wizards (the Red Wizards of Thay) tried to build a necromantic fortress of ultimate evil in the Neverwinter Wood and caused the volcanic eruption to destroy Neverwinter and use the deaths to power the fortress. Their plan was foiled (probably in a novel), so the fortress was never completed. It’s still there, half-finished.

  Gauntlgrym is lost but still inhabited, and over the last few centuries it changed hands several times. The current owners are duergar. Its big secret is that it houses a slumbering primordial (Maegera the Inferno), who in ancient times was used as a geothermal power source by the dwarves and the mages of old Illusk, who cooperated on the operation of the power plant.

  Running a Neverwinter Campaign

  This section describes how the book works as a tool for running a campaign. It restates much of what was said in the introduction, and it does so in a way that makes it clear it’s taking a different tack from your traditional FR supplement or adventure.

  As we already know, it focuses on the Neverwinter region; it also only includes details that are useful sources of inspiration rather than trying to list the names of every innkeeper in the city. The characters presented in the book are active and won’t sit around waiting to respond to the PCs. The PCs, in turn, will have access to character themes that will get them involved in the campaign right away. The campaign is also open-ended - it doesn’t assume an end state that the characters must work towards. PCs are free to set their own goals, confident that their actions will have an actual impact on events.

  There’s a text box here that should make critics of previous versions of the setting quite happy: it’s titled “Killable Villains”. It says that while it might make sense to stat up the main villains of the campaign as epic threats due to the scope and reach of their machinations, this often results in the players feeling like they can never truly defeat those villains until they are themselves epic. Until then, they remain trapped in conflict with an endless series of underlings.

  For this reason, every opponent here, even the main villains was given stats that are “within reach” of heroic tier adventurers. While some of those major villains might make for tough boss fights for 10th-level characters, those characters still have a chance of defeating them. Of course, GMs who want to stretch their campaigns beyond the heroic tier are free to level those villains up or use other appropriate stat blocks for them.

  GM advice for running the campaign centers mostly around being flexible. There are a lot of plot threads flying around, so it’s okay to remind players of where things stand (from their PC’s point of view) if they get lost. It’s also okay to change the facts of the campaign if your players end up coming to a “wrong” conclusion during their investigations - particularly if their theories are more fun than what’s written on the book! And finally, it’s okay to do what feels right even if it contradicts what’s been written. Don’t sweat it if you forget some detail and end up changing it in play.

  Finally, the book really recommends that players make new characters for this campaign, so that they can take advantage of the several themes available to them. It does have some advice for bringing existing characters into the campaign, but my feeling is that this is a very sub-optimal approach.

  Impressions

  I’m not the biggest knower or enjoyer of the broader Forgotten Realms setting, but I do have good memories from the games, so a lot of the places mentioned here were familiar to me.

  I loved the emphasis the book put, both in its introduction and here, on the fact that your PCs will get the chance to do important and world-shaking things on their own, and that even the top villains of the piece have no plot armor and are defeatable. There’s a reason why I often refer to an excess of invincible official NPCs as “The Elminster problem”, and I’m happy to know they’ll be trying to avoid it here.

  The material here does a lot to bring this region closer to the “points of light” model prevalent in 4e, as a lot of what used to be safe places are just gone, and there are a lot more dangerous ones. There’s quite a lot going on in the Neverwinter Wood, and inside Neverwinter proper as well. I could have done without that timeline section and its attempts at summarizing novels, but I suspect we’ll see more details about the region’s present situation soon.

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