Chatty's Inter-Review: Yan on Forgotten Heroes

I decided a few weeks ago that weekend posts would be experimental in nature.  This is where I would test out new concepts or potential series, a writing workbench so to speak.

This week, I’m posting a review of a product a friend of mine read and I interviewed him on it. I’m calling this an Inter-review!

The Capsule Review

Forgotten Heroes: Famg, Fist and Song by Goodman Games is a D&D 4e companion book that features 4 Core classes that were not in Wizards of the Coast’s Players Handbook: The Barbarian, the Bard, The Druid and the Monk.

All presented in a thoroughly professional, high quality manner in a 90 page PDF.

Those who have bought the new principles of simplified mechanics of D&D 4e class designs may feel that the classes are overly complicated by charts, too numerous options and voluminous prose of the product.

On the other hand, fan of the previous edition who feel uncomfortable/unimpressed with the way things are done in the newest edition and/or that decry the loss of favorite character classes will likely find what they are looking for in this product.

The classes are very well written and organized in a style reminiscent of D&D 3.X. The apparent depth of treatment of class options and description can definitively meet the needs of those who want/have to play D&D 4e but are still on the fence about the new design paradigm.

Where you can find the Book:

At RPGNow

At DrivethruRPG

The Inter-review

A few weeks ago, I got a copy of Goodman Game’s Forgotten Heroes from Tavis Allison, one of the authors (and one of the RPG writers that sneaked in one of my Gen Con Pathfinder games).  While I was initially supposed to write a full fledged review of it, I realized that being a D&D 4e Dungeonmaster almost exclusively, I was not all that qualified to evaluate Character Classes.

That why I turned to my good friend and 4e Scholar Yan.  He’s a software engineer and he’s quite the amateur game designer, I value his input in my games a lot! He accepted to go over the book and answer a series of questions.

Let’s start shall we?

The Book Overall

If you were asked to choose a character class to play in an upcoming D&D 4e game, would you play one from this book?

When compared to the Player’s Handbook, this book is not all that innovative.  It mostly stayed within the confines of the PHB’s design space. The most innovative class is the Bard at the level of the songs the player can choose. The monk also shows some interesting originality.  The other two can basically be mapped to existing classes.

Based on that, and since I have not yet played all PHB classes yet, I would not play one from Forgotten Heroes in my next game.  Maybe later, I’d try the druid since there are few controller PCs.

The Barbarian

What struck you the most about the class? What’s your gut feeling about it?

The barbarian is a fighter that uses animal totems, either Eagle, Wolf or Bear.

Each totem shapes how the barbarian’s powers function, although I have had trouble seeing the differences between the Wolf and Bear totem paths.  Both seem to do the same thing, but based on a different abilities.  This seemed to be an unnecessary complexity.

As for powers, mechanically speaking, most of them were reminiscent of the fighter.

What did you like about the class?

This class is the first one to allow a character built on Constitution.  For example, one ability allows you to switch your Dex/Int bonus to defenses with your Con bonus and several attacks allow to use the Con Bonus to Damage. That makes it an interesting concept for people who want to play high HP characters and not lose on the STR vs Con trade of a melee character.

What did you dislike about the class?

Some powers are written so that game mechanics are used only to portray the power’s flavor with no significant game effect.  For example, one power allows you to push an opponent 2 squares then making the barbarian charge the target.  This creates apparently necessary intermediate manipulation of miniatures just to provide a +1 bonus to attack.

Interviewer’s Aside: I pointed out that such a power is actually versatile, allowing both pushing an opponent, possibly into a battlefield hazard, and then allowing an attack with a bonus.  He agreed, saying that you can hunt for subtleties he initially missed in the powers, but the way they were worded felt to be too complicated to him… He mentioned that clear templating of powers seemed to be missing.

Another such power allows a Barbarian to chuck his melee weapon at a target and then charge it, drawing another weapon. The power also allows the barbarian to pick up the thrown weapon as a free action.  The thing is, a barbarian will either have a two-handed weapon in hands at that point, or have a Shield and Melee weapon.

Huh, which hand takes the thrown weapon again?

Hmmm…

The Bard

What struck you the most about the class? What’s your gut feeling about it?

It’s a character that uses musical instrument to accomplish various feats of power.  The use of instrument augments powers with added effects.  It is an interesting and innovative take on the 4e class model, however it comes at the price of numerous tables that must be during play, which is a clean break with current 4e thinking of using power cards and not having to open the books while playing.

Interesting class, too complex is Yan’s take on it.  (It bears mentioning that Yan prizes simplicity of design over breadth of features, making him a less than ideal customer for the product)

What did you like about the class?

The innovation brought by the different effects each song bring to a power or to allies.  They are all built on the same model of affecting people within 5 squares of the Bard, like giving an ally a buff, allowing a save roll or allow to move an ally.

They are all relatively minor effects that combine with attacks to increase flexibility of all bardic powers.  It’s a fresh take on the power and makes it very interesting.

What did you dislike about the class?

The complexity of using tables and multiple cross-referencing to link an instrument’s effect to a power.  This causes a lot of page flipping and slows down the game’s pace.  The decision tree approach to fitting a number of songs to a given power precludes the use of power cards (or would make them more complex).

The Druid

What struck you the most about the class? What’s your gut feeling about it?

The Druid is a controller like the wizard. In fact it’s a wizard whose powers have been re-fluffed to be based on nature themes. It’s an interesting alternative to the wizard since there’s only one controller class available in the Player’s Handbook.

It also has an animal companion, that  plays out much like the wizard’s flaming sphere spell, which is also an innovation at this point of the game’s life cycle.

What did you like about the class?

It’s a nature-themed controller that sufficiently different from the wizard to be worth playing. The powers, while similar are still rather varied.

The character has 2 main builds, Control or Damage.  The control elements are mostly plant-based while the damage-dealing powers tend to be, predictably, elemental in nature.

What did you dislike about the class?

The wild-shape element added to the class does not, mechanically speaking, feel like wild shape and is somewhat disappointing.  It remains unclear how transformation works, if you took the night vision transformation, that’s what you get without clearly defining if just your eyes change or if you are now shaped like a night predator.

This vagueness permeates the application of the Wild Shape ability. Does the druid lose his ability to use weapons? What happens to his equipment?

The Monk

What struck you the most about the class? What’s your gut feeling about it?

(Yan Sighs) It is an interesting class but there’s a barrier to entry in regards to it that prevents full appreciation of its possibilities.  While it aimed at trying to emulate all forms of Western/Eastern martial artists, there’s a lot (and he meant a LOT) of complexities in that class to achieve that.

For instance, the list of weapon allowed to the monk is a hodgepodge of specific weapon in order to build a custom weapon list that hits the Martial Artist concept square on. Instead of making a straight list of weapons (like A D&D 1e), the class description lists each category of weapons and brings out what weapons from each category is allowed.

(At that point Yan starts to Rant a bit) It’s like they took everything from the Players handbook and created a series of Powers and Feats all over the spectrum to allow the possibility of creating any marital artist that a player would want!  While a good idea, the execution makes this class the furthest one from 4e’s philosophy of straightforward roles and builds and is headache inducing .

It’s a ninja, Samurai, Kung-fu monk! You name it, it can do it!

Aside: Again, I see this not so much as a problem.  Yan, who’s a fan of black box design, hates this kind of heavy, all encompassing way of creating a class.  He’d rather just play Gurps.  Players who dislike 4e’s blackbox design could very well be enchanted by the way the class allows such flexibility of character builds.

What did you like about the class?

There are a lot of excellent ideas in the class.  Had the authors decided to focus on one or 2 builds of a martial arts monastery order and develop them fully, the class would have been more appealing from a 4e design standpoint.

There’s enough material in there to make it in two different classes.

Still, there’s a lot of cool stuff you can do with weapons, the presentation of different styles is rich and engaging.  In fact the fluff is so well written that to creates an incentive to play the class…   

What did you dislike about the class?

…However, the rules to bring about a character as described in the fluff is convoluted and complex beyond belief.  In order to understand the class to build a character, you need to study the class features, the powers and the feat  since they are all intimately related.  You need to make an extra effort and choose carefully to make the character as playable/effective as the other 4e classes (Chatty: again, more in line with D&D 3.x).

The fluff promises, but the crunch does not deliver.

Yan: It’s just too (bleep)ing much!

Chatty: Mwa HA HA HA! I’m so quoting you on this, the only English part of the interview!!

Chatty’s Conclusion

After having spoken with Yan and Tavis, I got the feeling that the authors were restrained by the design space established by the Core rules at the time of writing this supplement.  They decided not to invent a Primal power source or push the boundaries of design to let their product live regardless of future WotC products.

Thus, the book has definitive appeal for players who miss these classes and don’t want to wait for WotC to give out their own version.  It also is a good choice for people who long for some of 3.5′s feel and breadth of choices while still being able to play 4e and follow the same Class feature/powers/feat path of the new game.

Post Scriptum:

If you like this type of review, let me know!

You are a D&D 4e-compatible publisher that would like to have their product reviewed like this?  Feel free to contact me and send me a PDF copy at chattydm@chattydm.net.  I don’t guarantee I’ll pick it up, but I will choose my review out of the material that was sent to me.

Special thanks for Yan who had to wade through a book in less than one week so I could interview him.

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