Eberron Campaign Guide (WotC)

Let me just come out and say it right away: The ECG is the new yardstick by which every future 4e campaign setting will be measured.

Comparing it to the FRCG, It is far superior. It has way better maps, better organization, better art and better writing, and last but not least, it paints a much clearer picture of the setting. Now, do not get me wrong. It is still a campaign book that sets the tone, that provides the framework for the campaign, it is not a book that tells you what zombies Lady Vol prefers, or what High Cardinal Krozen eats for breakfast.

It does however provide the DM with some awesome tools and pointers to really make Eberron feel like Eberron. In fact, there is 11 pages of it, at the beginning of the book, where the authors go over the campaign themes (last war, draconic prophecy, dragonmarked, urban intrigue & dungeon delving) of Eberron and how to implement them in the campaign.

All this before they dive into the setting and start describing the different parts, from the national threats to the gods and passing by the countries and the 13 houses. I won't go into any details regarding the content, except to say that it definitely looks (for a non-expert such as myself) as if the new fluff of Eberron is very compatible with the older fluff. So if you have a host of old Eberron books, they should convert just fine - most of the time anyway.

As I started out by saying, this will be the new yardstick. Go buy this book, because frankly, it has everything a campaign book ought to have. And I am not even an Eberron fan. Or rather, I wasn't an Eberron fan. I still do not like warforged and shifters, but I would definitely play Eberron now. And I am most certainly going to yoink a bucketload of great ideas for my own campaign. Go buy this book, because even if you do not like Eberron, it is so full of great ideas that it is very hard for me to even imagine how it couldn't bring a lot of inspiration to any DM.
Rating:* * * * * *

Buy Eberron Campaign Guide: A 4th Edition D&D Supplement

The Indomitable Fire Forest of Innenotdar (EN publishing)

The second episode in the saga of the War of the Burning Sky picks up where the first instalment stopped. The heroes of the story are heading south, towards the Forest of Innenotdar that has been burning for 40 years. On their way through the forest, they must discover the unusual circumstances surrounding the condition of the forest and its inhabitants who are also on fire - for perpetuity, unless the heroes intervene. But things are not as they seem, and players will soon find themselves with the opportunity to strike deals with some very diverse factions...

TIFFoI is a great adventure, especially for those who tire of dungeons, dungeons and more dungeons. The story is special (as in different from many "standard" plots), many of the parts are non-linear and the encounters are varied (between draining resources and advancing the plot), challenging and dynamic. Also, (which is very important for me at least), their crunch is solid. The few issues I have seem to boil down to me finding their DC's for skill checks and challenges a bit on the low side, one of the few solos seems a tad weak and.. well that's pretty much it. There are very few "mistakes" ( a monster that is labelled as soldier but really should be a skirmisher), but they are easily rectified or do not matter much.

The adventure offers more than one ending - it is truly an adventure driven by player choices, some of which are going to be tough choices. I am so looking forward to the next installment, but this one will be hard to top.
Rating:* * * * * *

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Codex Venenorum (One Bad Egg)

To use poison or not to use poison, that is the question. The latest product from OBE breaks down the poison creation process into easily followed steps, giving us a system to create an endless stream of poisons to use on our players (or our DM's monsters for that matter). The system is smooth, and absolutely open for abuse, but they admit as much. It's still a really good system, you just need to "check" and "evaluate" the poison as a whole before you use it. Along with the rules for poisons, we of course also get a long list of nasty new poisons (more than 80, from Arsenic to Blue Deception, new mechanics to end (save ends, short rest ends, extended rest ends - it's even better than it sounds - very cool mechanics there) the effects, new conditions (exhausted and muted), a long list of special qualities to make greater variations in our poisons and a lot of fluffy advice and knowledge about how to describe the very diverse poisons, the different poison families, how to harvest poison from poisonous creatures and the rules for it, exposure, decay and antidotes. We also get tables for creating cool names and determining things like process and components and much more so that they sound and feel like real fantasy poisons. Seriously, it's poison galore, and if you like to use poisons and are tired of just ongoing 5 or 10 damage and never get to "tick" more than once, this PDF is simply a must have. But Mr. Hicks, please add a list of the poisons indexed by level in the PDF, for an easy overview!
Rating:* * * * * *

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Critter Cache: Daemons (Goodman Games and Blackdirge Publishing)

Just as I thought things couldn't be better, both on the monster front and on the critter cache front (MM2 is just out and Fey folk was awesome), we get us some daemon-love. And let me say this immediately. Daemons we need. Don't get me wrong, I love my demons and devils, but it's not always enough. The daemons are perfect to create a more dynamic relationship amongst the evil immortals. After all, a ménage-à-trois is just more fun. The lore sections getting longer and longer, and we are also treated with 5-6 pages of pure unadulterated fluff, explaining the origins of the newest arrivals on the immortal scene, as well as describing where they live. The crunch is the best I have seen from Blackdirge, with very few errors and those are quite negligible.There are some truly sick monsters and powers in there as well, especially Typhon, a 34 level solo, has some powers that will make your players cry. But I could also mention the cacodaemon has a breath that transform people it kills into larva, the chirodaemon that is immune to falling damage and thus attacks by literally kamikaze-crashing into players, the ferrodaemons that get your own sword to attack you, and the minions that explode and daze in a close 5 burst when they die, etc etc. If you like monsters, go buy this now.
Rating:* * * * * *

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Monster Manual 2

Arguably one of the most anticipated books of 2009 (for DM's anyway), MM2 has arrived in style and does not disappoint. In fact, it delivers in buckets. First of all, WotC "completes" the 4e monster list by bringing us all (or at least most of) the classic monsters who were lacking in the MM1. The barghest, Behir, good dragons, golems, cockatrice, couatl, djinns, firebolg, frost giants, nasty hydras (cause the ones in the original MM sucked), maruts., neogis, phasespider, remorhaz, rust monster, stone giants, will o wisp, duergar and the xorn. A few have been published in various adventures, but honestly, those classic monsters belong in a MM and I am happy they were included. Second of all, we get some nifty new guidelines for our combats. Solo monsters now definitely only get *4 hit points and 8 hit points per level, no matter which role it has. Some of the solos published between MM1 and MM2 left us wondering about the hit points per level. We also see solos (especially dragons) have had their damage upped considerably. At the other end of the power scales, minions have also received a boost, dealing more damage and many of them now create an effect when killed. That's just awesome. Third of all, the monsters in MM2 have a lot of new cool abilities. From the feeding powers of the barghest, to the 3 standard actions of the Behir (great way to handle solos if you ask me. You keep the damage per round high while toning down the spikes), passing by the Maw of Acamar who is just made of pure win, to the minion-spawning pod demon, going past the Couatl's radiance which allows it to pass through allies and foes, healing the former and damaging the later, to the bebilith's destruction of armor (-1 culmultative AC for the encounter, on each hit), to the neldrazu's teleport-hit-teleport-with-enemy power of abduction to the djinn's ability to get AP's when critted, to the total-sum hit point system of the ghost legionnaires and finally ending with the eldritch giant's consume magic. Those and many others should provide great moments at your table as well as great inspiration for creating your own monster powers. Nothing is ever perfect (Ankheg has the wrong hit points; there is a reference to a power that doesn't exist; the use of skill checks to tackle aura effects; a few too many pages devoted to monster versions of PHB1/PHB2 races) but honestly, those are very small issues. I love 4e and I love cool monsters, but any 4e DM would be better off buying this book. Heck, the awesomeness of Demogorgon should be enough.
Rating:* * * * * *

Players Handbook 2 (Wizards of the Coast)

Mike Mearls called the PHB2 his best work to date, and since that comment did draw its share of flames from skeptics and the like, I feel that I need to say this: The man was right. There is no longer any getting around that. It was not empty marketing or hollow words without backup. While you shouldn’t exactly expect high literary prose (the writing gets a tad corny at times but that will have little influence on my verdict) this doesn’t matter. PHB2 is a rules book with a focus on classes. I want rules and classes that work before anything else. And Mearls, Wyatt and Crawford have pulled off what I thought would be impossible. They have managed to create 8 new classes or rather, 4 remakes (bard, druid, barbarian and sorcerer) and 4 totally new ones (shaman, invoker, avenger and warden) that are fairly balanced and at the same time look incredibly interesting to play (I <3 the druid already, after playing him for some levels, and the barbarian is also a lot of fun too, although it is probably the closest thing to a powercreep in there). Regarding this powercreep that normally is so common in everything that follows the original core, it really seems that WotC have managed to make classes about equal in power to the eight original ones. No mean feat considering just how hard it seems to be to create balanced, interesting classes with varied powers. I for one am really glad they decided to wait with some of these classes, until their grasp of the system had improved. It was definitely worth the wait. Sure, we all know that the CO-boards will find new ways to break the game, but in any game with many options, that will always be possible. What I mean when I say balanced and equal, is that on their own the classes look and feel right. The PHB2 also has 5 new races (gnome, deva, goliath, shifter and half-orc). Crunch-wise they are fine, and some, like the deva also hold some interesting aspects that should translate into some fun roleplaying. Personally, I am not sure I will use them all in my campaigns, as I was never a huge fan of goliaths and shifters. But to each his own, I am pretty sure there are plenty of people out there who wanted these races, just as some people actually play gnomes ;). All in all, this is simply a book that you have to have. Not only does it double the amount of classes at your disposal, but it gives some sweet options for the classes and races in the first PHB1. I know I have given other books this rating, but the problem with a rating system is that at one point, something better, something more necessary always comes along, and how do you reward that, rating-wise? In short, “If you haven’t bought it yet, you are a fool™”.
Rating:* * * * * *

Open Grave: Secrets of the Undead (Wizards of the Coast)

Open Grave is not just a book about undead, no, it’s the undead equivalent of the Draconomicon. It’s a DM’s book. From start to finish of its 223 pages, this book is stuffed with ideas and hooks for your campaigns involving the almost-but-not-quite-dead. It contains 3 different campaign arcs, each broken up for the various tiers (I love the Vampire Kingdom idea - it doesn’t get much darker than that), 9 different lairs each with several encounters (The mausoleum of Ssra-Tauroch looks like an awesome encounter to build an adventure over, with a nasty level 17 solo yuan-ti mummy at the end), 11 templates , 7 famous undead (OMG, Vecna has an aura that deals 50 necrotic damage – this will really suck if you aren’t properly prepared), 8 artifacts, 7 rituals (quite a few must haves for when you explore ancient crypts) and monsters. In fact, there are more than 160 monsters in there (the Death Tyrant looks nasty, but it’s really only one of many that I can’t wait to use), most of which look fairly balanced, although there are definitely some (the Rotvine Defiler) where you wonder if it was just meant to be extremely nasty (minor close burst 5, grabbed, ongoing 15 necrotic and lose 1 healing surge per round until you escape grab) or if you are missing something. Either way, while I love dragons much more than I love undeads, I must admit that undeads do tend to show up a lot more often than dragons. With this in mind, it’s definitely a must-have for me.
Rating:* * * * * *

Demon Queen's Enclave (Wizards of the Coast)

The heroes find themselves (depending on which hook you use) heading to a drow settlement in the Underdark in order to stop a greater evil brewing. An rebellious drow has been lured to the dark side (as if Lolth doesn’t qualify as the dark side already) by Orcus. The drow, now a vampire, has taken over a domain in the Shadowfell which used to be ruled by an exarch of Orcus. From there, it has launched an attack on the drow settlement, breaching it defences.
So when the players arrive, they find a town-battlefield, infested by undead and demons. And drows, of course. The goal might be to stop the nefarious plans of the Orcus worshipping vampire-drow, but how do you do that. Do you ally with the lone drow necromancer, with the failed drow commander that thinks of himself as dead man walking, or do you see out the matron mother in the temple of Lolth, and strike a deal with the most unholy of all. Or maybe you just plow through everything. That would of course be a pity. Once an alliance has formed, how do you proceed to enter the realm of Orcus? There is also a personification of the plane that has its own agenda, and an artefact that doesn’t quite want what everyone assumes it wants.
The adventure is choking full of interesting encounters, awesome settings, meaningful choices, cool application of skill challenges and interesting NPC’s.

DQE (P2) is by miles the best adventure WotC has ever produced. In fact, I will go so far as to say that it is probably one of the best adventures made for D&D in many years. Buy now!
Rating:* * * * * *

The Unbroken (One Bad Egg)

I have two words for you guys. Must. Have. The Unbroken is a paladin paragon path simulating a paladin that has broken with his god, but wants to do things that must be done, be they good or evil. Thematically, it’s hardly breaking new ground, but it is IMO a very important option to have in your campaign. But the best thing about this short PDF is that it gives you a smart way to not only handle the paladin code introduced, but that you can easily use it with the normal paladins and their relationship with their god. Hell, it could fit for any character that wants some sort of code. At $1.49, it’s worth every penny several times over.
Rating: * * * * * *