Rich Baker and Rodney Thompson discuss the contents of Martial Power 2 in this interview (Insider subscribers only, sorry!), and it’s full of interesting insights.
Of particular note is their discussion of the skirmishing warlord – a version of the warlord that uses ranged attacks, not melee, as its primary means of attack. For those who have looked at 4e – or have played a lot of it – one of the chief departures that it has from previous versions of D&D is that weapon use is a lot more restrictive than before due to the needs of powers.
A fighter can use a long sword without trouble, for instance, but if that same fighter were to pick up a long bow, suddenly all of their powers fail to work with it and they become a substandard combatant.
Unfortunately, Martial Power 2 doesn’t now give the option of playing a fighter wielding a longbow (well, not as far as I know), but it does allow a warlord to use a longbow. This gives the skirmishing warlord… and the warlord is using Strength to fire the longbow, not Dexterity (even with basic attacks). This is fascinating design: by changing the key attribute for the longbow, you also permit the warlord to still take advantage of the array of melee-based powers which make up most of his armoury.
I’m still hoping for a longbow-wielding fighter, though!
Of note to the fighter players out there – and I mean you, Josh – taking a crossbow or bow is a really bad option at present. There’s a big gap between the effectiveness of the crossbow vs a thrown weapon. It’s far better to have a throwing axe or javelin as your secondary weapon – with a magic javelin, it returns to hand after being thrown, and you’re looking at similar attack & damage to the sword, if not the option of using powers with the attack. What you don’t have is a great range. Take Far Throw, and the range increases a massive 2 squares… but 7/12 range is still better than 5/10!
Consider the numbers (assume Weapon Focus (axe), Weapon Expertise (axe), Far Throw, Str 22, Dex 12, level 16 Fighter)
+4 Battleaxe: +22 vs AC, 1d10+12, versatile
+4 Greataxe: +22 vs AC, 1d12+12, high crit, 2-handed
+4 Hand Axe: +22 vs AC, 1d6+12, range 7/12
+4 Crossbow: +17 vs AC, 1d8+5, range 15/30
+4 Longbow: +17 vs AC, 1d10+5, range 20/40
Rodney also explains how their thinking on combat style feats have changed and, delightfully, it mirrors my own thoughts on the matter. In brief: “if… then…” conditional feats suck. They’re a real pain to remember. There are enough conditional effects in 4E already – I’ve seen on EN World how some people already don’t enjoy keeping track of temporary bonuses from leaders – so stuff that works all the time is preferable.
However, “all the time” doesn’t actually mean that. You see, if you attach a permanent modifier to a power then you can modify the power’s description for your character and every time you use that power the feat kicks in. Far, far better than “I gain a +2 to hit while grappling creatures that are large”. Boy, I hate bonuses like that.
Rodney notes some interesting developments with these feats: if you have a feat that alters a single encounter power, it’s boring. It works once per fight, and then you forget about it. (Worse, when the power goes away, you have to retrain the feat). So, instead they made the feats work on a related set of powers. Of course, they then had to make the feats class specific rather than listing massive sets of powers for each feat, but, hey, anything that makes them easier to absorb, I’m all for it.
I’m not sure when Martial Power 2 will become available in Australia. (The Dragonborn book and Underdark have only just arrived), but thanks to my DDi subscription, they should soon appear on our computers for us to play around with. (Which probably means that Josh and Nate will spent a lot of time online instead of playing the game at our next Sunday and Friday games, respectively).
In other roleplaying news, I now am the proud owner of the (expensive) Doctor Who Gamesmaster’s Screen. Yes, it cost me over au$20, but at least it’s one thick piece of cardboard comparable in solidness to the D&D 4E screen – might even be thicker, actually. It’s certainly one well built piece of cardboard. It’s in portrait mode rather than landscape, which I find odd after so much play with the landscape screens of 3.5e and 4e, but I should get to use it on Friday in my first ever session of the Dr Who RPG, assuming Martin and Josh are up for it.