Late last week, with a copy of Primal Power in hand, I decided to give people a chance to preview the book by asking questions that I would answer on Twitter as well as at our page on Facebook. Below I’ll share most of the questions and answers from those, but first I’d like to offer a quick review of the book.
Primal Power is the latest source book for 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons that focuses on the currently released Primal wielding classes – the Barbarian, Druid, Shaman, and Warden. Much like the previous three power source books, this is essentially a must have for anyone playing one of those classes or for a DM with an abundance of primal characters in their game. Each class gets two new class features except for the Druid, which instead of a second feature instead has a lot more new daily powers that provide for the Summoner Druid archetype. Primal Power also introduces a handful of new paragon paths for each class and a good number of primal class epic destinies and one Warden only epic destiny.
There are no new items presented in the book, but it does contain a lot of new feats for primal characters and even some new feats for any class to take. These new generic feats include a variety of Tribal feats that increase a particular skill by 2 with a +1 bonus for each party member that also has the feat (up to a max of +5), which provides an interesting mechanic of having a party that acts more in unison and even can generate some cool party themes depend on which feats are taken. The book also has a few new rituals that are primal and natural in theme.
As with many of the latest books for 4E, I’ve noticed they are starting to contain a lot more fluff and so far I’ve loved it all. Primal Power is no exception. Not only are there great sidebars for each class throughout the book but also there is a lot of room dedicated to discussing the primal power source as a whole and details on the spirits that interact with these classes.
Now I’ll repost some of the questions and answers, keep in mind that most of these are from Twitter so they are very short.
Q: What kind of animals does the Barbarian channel from the daily rages?
A: Tiger, Serpent, Primal Banshee, Scytheclaw, Elder Tuskbrother, Raptor, Thundering Rhino – lots of elements too
Q: What are the class features of the new shaman builds?
A: Eagle Shaman – enemies can’t gain cover adj. to Spirit Companion & count as nearest enemy, World Speaker Shaman – allies gain bonus vs OA near Spirit Companion
Q: Is there a new druid build? What’s it all about?
A: Swarm Druid turns into swarms of small animals/insects, Summoner Druid has no new feature but lots of daily summons
Q: How’s the barbarian thunder class feature? Any cool non-previewed at-will attack powers for druids or wardens?
A: Thunderborn gives you a nice Warcry, close blast 3 and pushes 1 square – Druid at-will = Firehawk, ranged 10 fire attack!
Q: What animals do the summoning druid summon? Anything nifty?
A: Very nifty! Boar, Giant Toad, Fire Beetle, Ape, Panther, Crocodile, Bear, Eagle, Bat, Tiger, Wolves, & Behemoths
Q: Is there any fluff about Earth Spirits (World Serpent, Great Bear, etc)?
A: There’s a LOT of great fluff, several pages on the Great Elder spirits including the great bear and soul serpent
Q: Any nice paragon paths for a striker-heavy druid?
A: Coiled Serpent paragon path adds 2d6 poison to melee beast attacks at level 16, it’s stealthy and quick too!
Q: Does the Shaman entry talk about whether the spirit floats? It’s a question that’s caused some debate in my group.
A: It mentions several animals that fly, but nothing I’ve seen about mechanics for flying spirit companions, sorry!
Q: Any good leader-like buffs/heals for the druid, at low levels?
A: Druid has some minor buffs/heals at low level, some utilities that help allies, but not a ton though!
Q: Does the feature of the Thunderborn (Barbarian) itself give anything, like Rageblood Temp HP?
A: Thunderborn feature – when you bloody an enemy, each adj enemy takes thunder CON damage.
Q: Firehawk is just direct damage? You can use the power for Opportunity Attacks?
A: Druid at-will – Firehawk – Wis vs Ref, 1d8+wis fire dmg – Secondary Attack within 1 turn, OA ranged 10 – 1d8 + wis fire dmg. The secondary OA attack is Trigger: target takes any action that can provoke opportunity attacks
Q: What at-wills does the Barbarian have other than Whirling Rend? What do they do?
A: Howl of Fury – barbarian at-will, normal attack + close blast 3 howl does thunder Con dmg or 3 + Con if raging
Q: Any interesting barbarian feats/utility powers?
A: Lots! Snarling Defiance Lvl 6 utility – half dmg from attack and +2 to hit the target. Several thrown weapon feats
Q: Are the ranged attack granting at-will powers of Eagle shaman effects?
A: Watcher Spirit – Spirits Prey at-will -OA trigger- enemy leaves sq.adj to spirit, effect- ally makes ranged att w CA
Q: Any new shifter abilities coming? (ie like the many 3.5 shifter traits)
A: If you’re a Shifter & Primal class – feat increases longtooth regen by 2, and allows razorclaw to shift 1 when hit
Q: Oooh, ooh, what about barbarian paragon paths?
A: Ancestral Weapon is a really cool path, adds Charisma mod. to healing surge value and has a utility that marks a target until end of the encounter.
Calm Fury is a path focused on non-furious barbarians, you can use Rage Strike when not raging, it’s not wasted on a miss, and at level 16 can use Rage Strike 3/day with +1W damage.
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Primal Power is released on October 20th, but if you have any questions that weren’t covered here please feel free to share in the comments and I’ll try to answer them as quickly as possible!
I find it telling how no one asked about Wardens. So I’ll pose the question:
Anything cool for Wardens in there? Like alternate builds or some feats that make their Mark more dynamic?
Oh and because I’m a huge Druid fan: What’s the mechanical benefit of the Swarm Druid? I’m a sucker for weird builds.
-Jared
Jared: I did get a few questions about Wardens but not on twitter, so they didn’t show up here. My take on that is that Wardens kick ass even without Primal Power, so the players aren’t left wanting too much (except for some better Paragon Paths, which they now have). To answer your questions there are two new builds for the Warden – Life Warden which can use Wisdom in place of Dex. or Int. to determine AC (when wearing light armor), and can heal allies and grant them saves when you use your second wind.
Storm Warden is the second build that lets you use your Con for AC and when you use your second wind you slide enemies marked by you and they become slowed. I think that’s a bit more dynamic use of their mark, but more so I think they made heavy use of the marks in the new powers presented (especially those for the Storm Warden build). Gale Strike is a level 1 encounter attack that does your Con. modifier to each enemy marked by you if it hits.
The Swarm Druid has a very interesting mechanic, when you’re in beast form and not wearing heavy armor you reduce the damage from melee and ranged attacks by your Con. modifier (close and area attacks still do full damage). In addition a large percentage of the new druid powers are swarm / insect themed and the Primal Swarm encounter powers all have cool abilities that let you shift through enemy spaces or move around more freely. It definitely falls firmly into the realm of “weird builds”, and the paragon paths are even cooler – Luminescent Swarm & Whirling Samara.
What’s the deal with the AC improving feats? These have me a bit worried in terms of making some builds too easy to get crazy AC with. We’ve seen Con instead of Int/Dex for Barb AC at heroic, any limits on that? Likewise with the Epic Tier hide armor boosting feat…
Are the fixes for Swarm Druid (they’re Wis/Con, right?) and Bear Shaman AC?
The thing is, 4e’s balance-mindedness means that some builds getting crazy AC and others not being able to, is kind of unbalanced. So you have to make crazy AC easy for other classes too. The Barb/Shaman having bad AC when they’re supposed to be mid-to-close range, kinda defendery classes in certain sense, is something that, with a balance-mindset, needed fixin’.
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Hide Expertise really tweaks me off, since the classes it’s really good for (con barbs, swarm druids) ought to have low-ish AC in my eyes, and have some type of compensation for it already. Whereas the Bear/World Speaker Shaman, previously considered to have a feat tax for Chain, now has the option of a two-feat tax, for hide and then this…
It really doesn’t help anyone that actually needs better AC, which bugs me. I like a lot of the rest of the book, though.
I’ll definitely be checking this out…Primal Power was one of the books on my wishlist, pending me finding out if it hand anything cool for Gimmick Weirdo Builds. I am curious to see how the Swarm Druid and all the craziness with Hide Expertise, etc plays out. My experience with my Wis/Dex Predator Druid is that unless I maximize the secondary stat I end up eating Dungeon Tile more often than I should. (Due to Low AC…mitigated by the Druid-specific armor that’s been released). The Swarm Druid looks interesting, seemingly balancing a crappy AC for a melee druid (since this build is Wis/Con) with a Resist All for Melee & Ranged attacks. Look forward to it.
It is interesting to see how things get balanced after the fact with 4th edition. New feats, class features, powers, and equipment all come together to subtly tweak AC & Attack bonuses in the higher tiers. I will say this though: Playing Dungeon Delve at Epic shows me that stuff that looks unbalanced isn’t really that crazy, depending on the circumstances. And hell, it makes me wonder how many of the people complaining actually regularly play at that level…from the DDM Skirmish crowd I can tell you that field experience trumps forum speculation most days of the week.
@Jared –
You won’t find any disagreements about field testing from the D&D designers. When we interviewed Andy Collins at Gencon:
.-= Graham´s last blog ..CriticalAnkleBites and ChattyDM pretend to be journalists =-.
@Destil, Wyatt, and Yesnomu:
I’m sorry that I can’t really speak to how the new hide armor feat will effect AC balance between classes, but I will say that I trust the designers of 4E so far that this won’t be an unbalancing thing. I think it’s an interesting decision to make Primal classes better with Hide armor, creating a sort of theme with hide armor / animals / natural characters, but I think one of the issues here could be that hide armor is the best type of light armor so many classes (mostly non-primal) strive to wear it and this seemingly gives primal classes an unfair advantage with it. I’ll probably take a look at all of the classes that can wear hide, what their Con needs to be, and how this all balances out.
lol make a con- warlock .. you’ll have one of the highest ac possible
shaman dosnt benifit from hide expertise
they have to sacrifice alot to achieve high ac
@BC –
True, but remember that the Shaman is a ranged class. They don’t need AC quite as much as melee combatants.
.-= Graham´s last blog ..CriticalAnkleBites and ChattyDM pretend to be journalists =-.
By the way, as for the feat itself, note that this increased AC will come at the cost of a lower Reflex, since you won’t put much into Dex/Int if your build includes this feat.
This also means that a Str/Con Barbarian, or Wis/Con Druid, etc, doesn’t need to pump a third stat (not much, but still) to have a decent AC. My opinion thus far is that it’s a minor balancing mechanism to counteract the MAD of some of the primal classes.
.-= Graham´s last blog ..CriticalAnkleBites and ChattyDM pretend to be journalists =-.
Is the Shaman really a ranged Class? Most of the Spirit attacks are melee-range, so a higher AC means you don’t lose your spirit and a solid chunk of hitpoints every time something attacks your spirit (and hits).
(It took my DM a few sessions to realize that he could smash the Shaman who hid in the backrow by pulverizing his Spirits. Not so much an issue, since Intelligence is an AC boosting stat but still, it’s lower than the team’s Paladin.)
So yeah, the Shaman CAN be a ranged class, just like the Druid CAN be a ranged class, depending on their power selection. But it’s a weird hybrid on the ranged/melee front, I guess it what I’m saying.
I don’t know if I would agree that the Shaman sacrifices a lot to have Hide Expertise pay off. Much like the Con-Based Barbarian, the other half of the PHB2 Shamans are Con-Shamans, after all. Then again, I’m a sucker who’s characters often have a higher secondary attribute than their primary. See my love for weirdo builds above as a slight explanation.
-Jared
@Jared –
Very true about the Shaman, but the damage actually done by such an attack is minor (about half of the damage taken by the spirit). It is also not subject to crits, bonus damage, etc. And even the bad guy’s big super power still only does 5+1/2 level damage. And even then, only if it exceeds your spirit companion’s damage threshold.
So, yes, the Shaman will be taking damage, if the DM wants to make him take damage, but it is far, far less than any melee character will be.
Unless the DM is specifically targetting him.
.-= Graham´s last blog ..CriticalAnkleBites and ChattyDM pretend to be journalists =-.
Bartoneus, one of your twitterers asked…
Q: Does the Shaman entry talk about whether the spirit floats? It’s a question that’s caused some debate in my group.
Just thought I’d mention that the shaman’s spirit companion is a conjuration, and the conjuration rules at the back of PH2 (page 220) mention that conjurations aren’t affected by the environment, “the conjuration does not need to be supported by a solid surface, so it can float in the air.”
I’m glad you’ve enjoyed the book. It was a blast to work on.