any experience with Heroes of Battle? [3.5]

[Kol Korran]

hey there people. My DM is running our group in the module "Shadowdale: Scouring of the land" (please! no spoilers! we have just begun this). we understood there might be some big battle between us the PCs and the dale folk against the Zhents. the DM asked us to read Heroes of battle, since he doesn't have much time to read it itself. problem is- neither do we. so my questions are as follows:

1- what would you recommend to read, both to DM and to player, out of the book? if possible, then concerning the adventure topography, forces and so on (don't give examples... spoiler again)

2- any modifications/ house rules you found effective for this kind of thing that aren't in the book?

thanks, Kol.

[DragoonWraith]

The War Weaver PrC is awesome. Unfortunately, that's all I've read from the book.

[AslanCross]

1. It's not for everyone, but its primary idea is that you want to keep the RPG in the RPG, even if you're in the middle of a war. You take small-scale but vital missions to swing the course of the bigger battle. Victory points are the key reward here. The prestige classes (War Weaver and to a lesser extent, Dread Commando) are pretty cool. Also, not sure about how Shadowdale works, but I think it's a good idea to master the terrain effects. See the "Building Battlefield Encounters" chapter.

2. Houserule: Change the amount of victory points you have to get. HoB has specific formulas (EL x 10) for awarding victory points. I find this kind of awkward and arbitrarily high. I like how Red Hand of Doom did it---Victory Points were only awarded in single digits: 1 for completing a certain objective, 4 for killing a certain commander, etc. Having hundreds to crunch is kind of annoying.