Heroes of Battle! PCs in the thick of combat, fighting for the cause, fighting for their lives! Sounds exciting, right? Sounds like a natural for Greyhawk what with the Greyhawk Wars and the regionally quarrelsome aftermath, right?
Wrong.
The new Heroes of Battle carefully echews Greyhawk, steering clear of an immediate, obvious and ostensibly authorized (in the "default" setting) application. Heroes of Battle has ZERO Greyhawk content of any note.
It is also one of the most famously padded products I have seen. The "crunch" of the Prestige Classes continues the "expanded" treatment that is nothing more than useless verbiage. At least the crunch was useful if you chose to adopt it. The other specific entries are too much talk and flabby "advice" and not enough actually useful material.
I am now done "keeping up with the edition." After Sandstorm, the Book of Madness (which at least did have significant GH content) and now Heroes of Battle, I will no longer subsidize Wotc' lazy design. I will finger the FLGS copy looking for GH and if it does not leap off the page, my dollar stays in my wallet.
Normally I try to stay away from amplifying my concerns with WotC products, but I must say thank you. I too have become incredibly disheartened with the...lazy attitude the designers have fallen into. Actually, I apologize to those folks, it may be they are very creative, but their talents are placed on a short and tight leash by management. Take a look at Erik Mona; he is certainly trying to take Dungeon and such in the right direction, but sees far too much political infighting within the company that he must follow WotC dogma (he needs a paycheck too). WotC must have money to burn b/c their recent products are less than apetizing. It would be nice if they created some work that actually focused on WoG, given all the rich background material. Anyway, back to my "thank you." If you suggest that it doesn't have anything worthwhile in it concerning WoG, then I won't even pick it up (like so many other WotC products that sit on my local hobby stores shelf, just gathering dust). Word of mouth, good to know!
Good review GVD, I think I will pass on that one too. And the line about 'keeping up with the edition' does make me remember your post on the paizo boards about Dungeon being a marginal purchase. Heroes of Battle should if anything make Dungeon look like an essential purchase. Even on Dungeon's worst GH day it has more content per dollar than any WotC book to date. What can you get, six or seven Dungeons per hardback wizards book? I think even the non-GH related material therein would amount to more well written and useful info than those mainstream publications can throw together. I think at the heart of it is a lack of passion behind a product. Most WOTC core products now are formulaic to a fault, sometimes I get the feeling the authors just write to collect a paycheck and nothing more.
And the line about 'keeping up with the edition' does make me remember your post on the paizo boards about Dungeon being a marginal purchase. Heroes of Battle should if anything make Dungeon look like an essential purchase. Even on Dungeon's worst GH day it has more content per dollar than any WotC book to date.
ROFL! You read my mind. I was thinking this exact same thing yesterday! That darn worm keeps turning. _________________ GVD
Heroes of Battle! PCs in the thick of combat, fighting for the cause, fighting for their lives! Sounds exciting, right? Sounds like a natural for Greyhawk what with the Greyhawk Wars and the regionally quarrelsome aftermath, right?
Most of what was needed to be said, was seen above... Heroes of Battle is worthless.
However, tactically there might be some use with this book. If you play in a game where combat is the predominant portion of the experience, then this book may be for you. Lots of new "stuff" to be added to the fighting aspect of D&D... it seems. I didn't really spend more then 10 minutes on this book, becuase of my lack of interest in it.
For Greyhawk purposes, leave it alone.
....................................Omote
FPQ[/b] _________________ Prince Omote Landwehr, Holy Order of the FPQ ~ Castles and Crusades Society
Unlike most people, I actually feature large epic battles in my campaign. Will I use all of the rules in Heroes of Battle as my sole reference, throwing out all of my home grown rules? Hardly...
But still, even though Greyhawk is being utterly snubbed as to actually citing anything Greyhawk directly in the book, there are a few sly references made to Greyhawk here and there. One of the most notable is within the sample Giants Army, particularly how such an army might be formed of, oh, let’s say hill giants, fire giants, and frost giants. And then we can say that this combined army is led by a cloud giant, or to be more specific a female cloud giant priestess! That's the ticket!
This is what amounts to Greyhawk material in this most recent book. It seems somebody on the staff is either taking a poke at Greyhawk fans, or there is a dissenter among the ranks at WOTC who is slipping in some sly references. If a book merely doesn't state somewhere within its covers "Greyhawk Stuff Here!", that doesn't mean that it doesn't have some usefulness. If you just look for Greyhawk content in heroes of Battle then you will be diasappointed. I simply take it for granted that supplemental books won't have Greyhawk material. If they do, that's just a bonus.
One very useful section of the book is the Appendix of "leveled-up" monsters with everything figured out for them(feats, stats, skills, etc.) for easy reference. Therrs is also the battle magic, feats, prestige classes, ans some other bits. Doing things on the fly is not as easy in 3.5 as it was in 1e-2e, so I like the monster section quite a bit. All in all not too bad a book if you are into the mass combat thing or you are interested in running pc's through just a key portion of an important battle. Pc's can be made to break a city wall's defenders by attacking from a siege tower, or in the reverse preventing an attack from a siege tower, OR given the task to defend a key gate or attack such a gate.
The main point is, you as a dm do not have to fight out an entire battle, but rather just the key points of it. Heroes of Battle provides some decent rules for doing this. If the pc's succeed in their appointed tasks then the battle swings their way. If the pc's fail, then things will go badly or merely less well- more npc's, and even key npc's, might die instead.
For a generic book, Heroes of Battle accomplishes what it sets out to do. That being said, the book will not be as useful to most people due to the fact that most people do not run mass battles in their D&D games very often. This is a book that most people will only open up every once in a while. But its pretty good. It will come in handy if you are currently playing, or have yet to play, the Greyhawk Wars and are inclined to add in a few epic battle to make your players' gaming experience that much more interesting. Be ready for a good amount of planning though if you decide to do this.
The book is a bit padded(it is if you already know anything about medieval warfare), but for the complete mass combat novice, you will not need to go hunt down a book on medieval mass combat and siegecraft, though that is always recommended just because! _________________ - Moderator/Admin (in some areas)/Member -
Heroes of Battle! PCs in the thick of combat, fighting for the cause, fighting for their lives! Sounds exciting, right? Sounds like a natural for Greyhawk what with the Greyhawk Wars and the regionally quarrelsome aftermath, right?
Wrong.
The new Heroes of Battle carefully echews Greyhawk, steering clear of an immediate, obvious and ostensibly authorized (in the "default" setting) application. Heroes of Battle has ZERO Greyhawk content of any note.
Yeah, I'd heard there isn't going to be any Greyhawk references in any WoTC book product, and darn little in Dungeon. We have to face facts: we are the Star Trek fans of the gaming universe: the producers never give us what we want. I buy hardly any WoTC product, and the only book they've done lately that I've really gotten excited about what the Draconomicon (really well done book, if you have a thing for dragons).
Quote:
It is also one of the most famously padded products I have seen. The "crunch" of the Prestige Classes continues the "expanded" treatment that is nothing more than useless verbiage. At least the crunch was useful if you chose to adopt it. The other specific entries are too much talk and flabby "advice" and not enough actually useful material.
I am now done "keeping up with the edition." After Sandstorm, the Book of Madness (which at least did have significant GH content) and now Heroes of Battle, I will no longer subsidize Wotc' lazy design. I will finger the FLGS copy looking for GH and if it does not leap off the page, my dollar stays in my wallet.
WoTC isn't the only company guilty of "crunching" products with Prestige Classes. Lots of other products are guilty of it as well. I guess PC's are just easier to write to get the product out in a certain page count to make the publication financially worthwhile--I can't imagnine how well they could possibly have been playtested.
I think the major problem with Heroes of Battles is that while it defines what it wants to do, it falls short of actually doing.
It gives lots of really interesting rules for setting up a system of determining how players can affect a battle, but it does not give sufficient guidelines or examples for employing them.
It also uses the unfortunate premise of the DM determining the default outcome of the battle first, then assigning the various tasks and objective to the players as a means of affecting that outcome. While that might be an easier way to do it, the wargamer in me sees that as putting the cart well before the horse in terms of design. It also just strikes me as a peculiar way to do adventure design.
"Here's my story. Here's how you players can screw up my story and make it turn out differently. Go for it!"
Perhaps it plays better than it reads, I can't say for sure right now.
Beyond that, overall the book remains too light on what it should contain (more siege engines, more guidelines on using the new rules in adventure design, and more examples of it in action), and too heavy on what it doesn't need (detailed instruction on how to play the prestige classes, feats, spells, and prestige classes that may be unbalanced outside the specific environment).
Apt points Sam. I too would have liked to have seen a bit more in the way of battle crunchiness. This really is a book for the beginner. Veterans will get some use out of it, but not as much.
Here is how I go about laying down the outcome of a major battle:
I start by first writing down what will happen if the battle goes one way or another. If the pc's lose, then this happens; if they win, then this. There are usually a few gradations in there as well, based on key events within the battle, such as follows:
The battle is won/lost: win- the enemy is pushed back to its previous position in disarray/ Lost- the city falls and the king may fall with it.
The crown prince is preserved/killed during the battle: preserved(battle won)- the royals reward the pc's; preserved(battle lost)- the crown prince escapes the city/ killed(battle won)- the aged king is without an heir- plotting begins within the nobility as to who will be the successor; killed(battle lost)- the royal line is eradicated, major boost to enemy morale; kingdom forces suffer from low morale until winning a large scale battle against the enemy.
The enemy general is killed/lives: killed(battle won)- the enemy army is routed back to its own lands, killed(battle lost)- another enemy officer of lesser skill succeeds the general but cannot organize a fully functioning defense of the subjugated area due to consolidating their position first(the area is open to counter-attack)/ lives(battle won)- enemy army retreats to its previous position in good order and will be able to launch further attacks soon; lives(battle lost)- the enemy army sets up in the captured territory in good order and subjugates it completely; any counter-attacks will be made against a well established position.
Those are just a few examples, but the general idea is apparent. I look to the eventual outcomes of multiple minor events within a battle, but in the end, the biggest factor is who won or lost the battle; the other stuff usually functions as a means of giving the pc's a chance to influence a battle's overall results in more subtle ways, in addition to possibly providing hooks for future adventures as well. _________________ - Moderator/Admin (in some areas)/Member -
I have Heros of Battle and while admittedly there is no Greyhawk content within it, I would not really have expected any in what is a rules supplement.
While I have yet to finish reading it there is certainly some interesting content in HoB, particularly the section on siege engines which greatly expands on the information in the DMG.
For a generic rules supplement, any Greyhawk material would be a bonus. Heroes of Battle is as generic as they come, offering tips and tricks for DMs wanting to run PCs during war scenarios. It doesn't mention Greyhawk, nor the Forgotten Realms, nor Eberron.
Is it a great book? No. I'm not even sure that it is a good book - there are some interesting things in there, but I'm not sure as to their usefulness in running a real game.
OTOH, there are Greyhawk references in books like Frostburn and Sandstorm. Some very useful references, I must say. Both of those are excellent books - I'm currently running an adventure in the Bright Desert and between Rary the Traitor and Sandstorm I have a wealth of material to use.
(Sandstorm also makes mention of my favourite ever D&D module series - the Desert of Desolation. :))
Lieutenant Wellast Huldane is from the Nyrondal Cavalry 1st Regiment.
Yippie, huh? Not that I would call that Greyhawk content... _________________ There is no problem that cannot be resolved with the application of more firepower.
I just found the reference to the Giants series - and I'm now quite sure that Cebrion's reaction to it is inappropriate.
Consider what is actually in Heroes of Battle:
Against the Giants
Many lands are in constant war against giants. In some cases, the giants simply raid once or twice a year, but in other instances the giants form massive armies that march down into civilized lands. Giant armies led by hill giant chieftains, frost giant jarls, or fire giant kings can easily destroy most mundane troops or defenses. Though the armies of giants typically consist of one kind of giant, occasionally various kinds of evil giants might unite under the generalship of a charismatic leader (say, a cloud giant priestess) to wreak havoc on neighboring nations. OGres and trolls fill out the ranks of these massive armies.
###
Does that slight Greyhawk in any way? No.
What is interesting is how close Cebrion's method of running a battle is to that of Heroes of Battle.
HoB just presents it for all D&D DMs to use - although there are variances, of course.
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