teej ordered a new book (and has questions about it)

[big teej]

any members of the wingate university gaming group kindly leave now.



as for the rest of you.


I ordered Heroes of Horror earlier today.


I'm curious, what are you favorite things from this particular tome?

[LTwerewolf]

Archivist hands down.

[big teej]

Archivist hands down.

which is and does what exactly? :smalltongue:

[LTwerewolf]

It's essentially a divine caster that learns spells like a wizard, and can learn any divine spell. Its normal list is the cleric list, but can find scrolls and learn them from any divine caster. Druids, blackguards, paladins, rangers, etc.

[Jeff the Green]

Archivist is nifty, but it's available for free online (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20051007a&page=3). (Legally, even!)

To my mind, there are two things that are truly awesome in HoH: Dread Necromancers and Death Delvers.

The former is a base class that does necromancy right. It has rebuke, an increased HD cap for animated undead, a fixed (but good) spell list and the ability to augment it in the same way as Beguilers and Warmages, and some pretty nice defensive abilities, including infinite free out of combat healing for your minions (and you, if you're undead or burn a feat).

The second is a PrC with mostly mediocre abilities, but it gives Rebuke Undead at 1st level. Why is this awesome? Because you can dip it with a DMM cleric to double your attempts/day. It's also not alignment-restricted, so you could be a good cleric of Pelor and still get rebuking.

[Dumbledore lives]

Honestly I just love the ideas presented in the book, they spring so many ideas into my mind, and once I finish my current book I might just read through it again because it has so much good fluff. And the crunch is pretty good for the Dread Necromancer, and the Dread Witch. Those are the two elements that I've used, though I've taken feats and spells from it occasionally as well.

[Kelb_Panthera]

It's hard to pick a favorite thing in there tbh. The advice on generating a horrific atmosphere is stupendous, most of the crunch is interesting and useful (I particularly like the change to the frightened condition), and taint is a very intriguing mechanic and plot device.

Just about the only thing that really rubs me the wrong way is the inclusion of yet another version (the most recent and therefore official) of tainted scholar. Go ahead and ban that before the book even arives in your mailbox. Yes, it's that broken.

[eggs]

The big draws are the fluff and taint rules. After Oriental Adventures and Unearthed Arcana already did the latter, I don't think I've even read HoH's take on it, but the most I can say is it's there, and it takes up somewhere between a third and a half of the book's crunch.

Of the stuff in the book, the fey and the corpse golem can be fun (one of the fey buries creatures in swamps; the other spams hideous laughter, drops area charisma drains and turns people into will-less automatons; the golem can grab body parts off creatures and characters and adopt some of their traits), and most of the monsters at least have some action to make them special (but this again tends to tie back into the taint rules). And from the player's end, the Archivist, Dread Necromancer, Fiend-blooded, Dread Witch classes and Haunting Melody and reintroduced deformity feats are all useful (Archivist is like a divine wizard, Dread Necro is a spontaneous undead-leading caster, fiend-blooded is spontaneous caster with bonus spells and minor fiend-flavored benefits, Dread Witch is a caster based entirely around fear, Haunting melody turns bardic music into a fear effect, and deformity feats provide a variety of benefits like blindsense, extra reach and extra attacks).

Overall, it's mostly fluff and taint, both of whose usefulness is going to swing wildly by user.

[Flickerdart]

Deformity (Tall) is a favourite of trip-monkeys, and Deformity (Teeth) is handy for a natural attacker. The prerequisite feat kinda sucks, but an Imperious Command Barbarian won't mind the extra Intimidate, and synergizes quite well with the extra reach (if he has Wolf Totem) and the bite (if he has Spirit Lion Totem).

[big teej]

Just about the only thing that really rubs me the wrong way is the inclusion of yet another version (the most recent and therefore official) of tainted scholar. Go ahead and ban that before the book even arives in your mailbox. Yes, it's that broken.

again, what is it? and what's it do. :smalltongue:

[Flickerdart]

again, what is it? and what's it do. :smalltongue:
Tainted Scholar powers its magic (DCs and bonus spell slots) based on a Taint score rather than an ability score. Theoretically, having high Taint carries a bunch of drawbacks, but if you can get around them you can walk around with an infinitely high Taint score and infinity spells with infinite DCs.

[tyckspoon]

again, what is it? and what's it do. :smalltongue:

It's a caster PrC that draws power (eg, it can derive its spell DCs and bonus spell slots) from Taint (the mental and physical corruption detailed in the book.) Taint is much, much easier to gain than casting stats are to improve, and certain kinds of characters can ignore the usual limits on how much Taint you can handle (normally, if you get too much, it kills you/renders you permanently and un-playably mad.) This makes Tainted Scholar one of the more approachable ways to make your number spell slots into All Of Them and your save DCs into LOLYOUFAILED.

(One of the more hilarious parts of this is that Tainted Scholar has a 'drawback' that can cause it to gain mental Taint from casting spells. Physical taint is a bit harder to come by, but if you're playing with Taint you can probably find a way.)

[Kelb_Panthera]

I gotta admit, I don't see how people get around the new limitations on taint.

Can somebody clue me in?

Even with the built in limits though, the bonus spells and save dc's of a tainted scholar reach an absolutely rediculous level.

[tyckspoon]

I gotta admit, I don't see how people get around the new limitations on taint.

Can somebody clue me in?

Even with the built in limits though, the bonus spells and save dc's of a tainted scholar reach an absolutely rediculous level.

Be a Necropolitan, usually- Undead and things with the (Evil) subtype do not experience negative effects of Taint. There is some question about whether they can actually gain more Taint, tho, or if their Taint score is simply permanently set at the default level of ~half Charisma score. If you fall on the side of it being a set and unchangeable number, then you can simply increase your Con and Wisdom scores- getting those to 18 gives you a Severe taint capacity of 30-69. Which means you can do a Tainted Scholar with a 'casting stat' of 50ish and still have a very comfortable margin for gaining unintended Taint points before you are at any risk of ending the character.

[willpell]

One thing that I don't believe anyone has mentioned is a story snippet which is interesting to those who like to pretend there's continuity among the books. I don't want to spoil it for the OP...

Remember that Symbol of Pain Jozan casts in the corebook? Maybe he did it after he became a vampire.

[Vizzerdrix]

I really like the cover art of this book. When you get it, take a good long look at it. The implications just creep me the heck out. :smallwink: