Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Klyden 07-07-05, 09:07 PM	Anyone have a Champions of Valor content list? Does anyone know some tiny tidbits of anything thats in Champions of Valor?
Preternatural 07-07-05, 10:03 PM	Might yet still be a bit too early, it's not even on the Previews list yet. I am so looking forward to this book, it seems I'm always the paladin in the games I play half the time, or the cleric.
Klyden 08-15-05, 09:30 AM	When is Champions of Valor supposed to come out again?
HVulpes 08-15-05, 03:56 PM	Well, Chapters says October. So my area will get it in November. Wizards says November though. I do have issue as I got my City of Spendors:Waterdeep in Early August at the Chapters store. Which was the month later than the Web July it was online at Chapters (It was on sale in late July on the web.) Wizard has it originally July then switch to June. Which caused me to have a two month mindbender. Does this help?
Yom Beekus 08-15-05, 07:28 PM	November, eh? Cool...
Dargoth 08-15-05, 07:36 PM	Sean and Thomas have let the following out 1) There will be Good Nodes 2) The Paladin orders get a good going over in CoV 3) Theres lots of good stuff in CoV for followers of Helm
conjurer_lord 08-16-05, 12:31 AM	There better be good nodes...or at least some kind of node...I think those are cool but was quite disappointed with the Shadow Weave node and evil node from Champions of Ruin. We need the other elemental nodes too.
Preternatural 08-16-05, 12:39 AM	Sean and Thomas have let the following out ... 3) Theres lots of good stuff in CoV for followers of Helm That sounds great, I look forward to it. It seems like there will never be a book on neutrality, so to sneak them in according to which extreme alignment (either morality or ethics) they tend towards is a good way to give them some page time. Helm being the obvious choice. Hopefully some of the other neutral (but good leaning) deities and organization get some coverage as well.
Zevox 08-16-05, 12:56 AM	2) The Paladin orders get a good going over in CoV This book has just suddenly made my "must have" list. :D ;) Zevox
Dielzen 08-16-05, 07:14 AM	That sounds great, I look forward to it. It seems like there will never be a book on neutrality.... Yea, we need a Book of Balance for Neutral characters.
Razz 08-16-05, 09:37 AM	"Book of Perfect Balance" is the neutral component to Vile Deeds and Exalted Deeds. This magic item was presented in FR Underdark and should become the third installment of alignment books (using new slaad, modrons, and rilmani conversions as monsters) but it seems this won't happen for awhile.
Mirtek 08-20-05, 09:37 AM	"Book of Perfect Balance" is the neutral component to Vile Deeds and Exalted Deeds. This magic item was presented in FR Underdark and should become the third installment of alignment books (using new slaad, modrons, and rilmani conversions as monsters) but it seems this won't happen for awhile. I don't think that's a good idead. Slaad and Modrons are as far away from balance as you can be. Even demons and devils are closer to balance, as they at least mix chaos/law with evil. But for modrons and slaad the N part doesn't represent a second alignment, but the lack of a second alignment. Modrons are all about pure law while slaad are all about pure chaos. No balance for them.
Demetrios 08-20-05, 01:07 PM	I don't think that's a good idead. Slaad and Modrons are as far away from balance as you can be. Even demons and devils are closer to balance, as they at least mix chaos/law with evil. But for modrons and slaad the N part doesn't represent a second alignment, but the lack of a second alignment. Modrons are all about pure law while slaad are all about pure chaos. No balance for them. While that may be true philosophically, the Book of Perfect Balance (the magic item, not the proposed accessory) affects all neutral characters who read it, even lawful and chaotic neutral. Given that, it would be wrong to exclude slaad and modrons from the book, as they are of those alignments. Realms-wise, these creatures could be covered in a third book along the lines of CoR and CoV - Champions of Balance perhaps? It could also cover neutral organizations such as the druid heirarchy and the like...
Dielzen 08-20-05, 02:05 PM	I'd be perfectly happy with a book that works for any character of Neutral alignment, be it on the Law-Chaos or Good-Evil axis. I would *really* enjoy a large amount of the book to be devoted to "NN" (True Neutral) characters however, cause of how many PCs I get that say "I cast an evil spell to do good, so therefore I'm neutral." *sighs*
BrianCritchley 08-20-05, 02:45 PM	I think a book on neutrality would be kinda hard to write.
Aphrella 08-21-05, 09:22 AM	In the FR Q&A session here at GenCon, the question of a book of neutraility was brought up, but they didn't think it would be likely -- law and chaos, however, seemed to give them thought.
Preternatural 08-21-05, 06:06 PM	That would be cool, especially if it focuses a bit more on the LN and CN aspects. That's most of Neutral covered right there.
Klyden 11-06-05, 11:20 PM	Anyone know if a Champions of Valor content list is now available?
Dargoth 11-07-05, 02:47 AM	Theres a limited version over at Candlekeep but its not the whole thing
SCMrks 11-07-05, 11:47 AM	Chapter 1 How to play campaigns with Valorous Heroes; archetypes, challenges, rewards the DM can give out, etc. Chapter 2 Regional Backgrounds; instead of choosing regional feats, languages, equipment from the country you are from you can chose your organization as your region such as your bard college, church, knightly order. Feats; most have an organization requirement such as; more initiate feats for clerics, Rangers and paladins of Mystra can cast arcane spells. Substitution levels for followers of dieties. For instance paladins of Kelemvor can detect undead instead of evil and can attack undead instead smite evil. Spells and magic item. Chapter 3 Organizations; they go into detail about a few orders but there are short one paragraph write ups on about 30 more. Chapter 4 4 new prestige classes Chapter 5 Places of Valor; temples and holy sites Chapter 6 A few NPC
Klyden 11-07-05, 12:33 PM	Damit. I was hoping for an actual content list.
ClobberinTime 11-07-05, 12:56 PM	Klyden, I have the book at home, what specifically are you looking for? Look on the Amazon site, most of the WOTC books have their table's of contents up there on the 'look inside this book' bit.
Razz 11-07-05, 03:01 PM	Darn, it didn't come in today. Stupid 2-3 day shipping, it just HAD to be 3-days for me right? :rolleyes: In any case, I heard it adapts the 3 news races from the Races series (goliath, raptoran, illumian) and I can't wait to read up on that! I'm curious. Who're the Valorous powerful NPCs of the last Chapter? I hope they're on par with those in Champions of Ruin.
The Human Target 11-07-05, 08:58 PM	An actual content list would be huge. That book is almost pure crunch.
BrianCritchley 11-07-05, 09:02 PM	as for NPCs on apr with champions of ruins.. nope. suffice to say there are no powerful good characters etc in the book, the most powerful individual is CR 13.
Razz 11-08-05, 02:35 PM	I received my book yesterday and skimmed through it. What I found was an interesting mixed emotion of both disappointment and satisfaction. First off, I thought there was going to be a lot of material for Helm worshipers? Instead, we have a horde of material for Tyr Tyr Tyr. :eek: I also thought it was stated by the designers that there was going to be Good Nodes? I see nothing of the sort within. :rolleyes: I do like the adaptations of the Goliaths, Illumians, and Raptorans however it possessed one major flaw. It gave suggestions as opposed to writing-in-stone an official representation and locale for these races. I don't want "maybe you can do this" or "maybe that". That's for a DM to decide. I was hoping for a "goliaths are here, here, and here they do this and that, and they worship so and so" with all 3 races. It also hardly touched upon what deities the Goliaths worshiped as opposed to the entire pantheon laid out for them in Races of Stone. Next was the lack of prestige classes (4 in total, as opposed to CoR's 6). I was hoping around 7 (one being the long-awaited PrC specific to Helm's clergy for a player of mine that's been waiting practically for years). Instead, what was given in place of more prestige classes were substitution levels. I like the idea of substitution levels, however, they were poorly written in this book. Many of the class features you receive in place of standard class features were horribly weaker than the original class feature. Good example would be the Vigilant Eye's 4th-level substitution switch of Turn Undead for Awesome Smite, which pales in comparison to what Turn Undead offers (don't forget, losing Turn Undead also cuts the paladin off from important Divine Feats). Another example of the weakness is giving a Ranger of the Shooting Star Order 1 bonus spell slot per spell level in place of his animal companion. Again, the loss is more than what the character gains. I've found many more examples, but listed these two to give an idea. I did like the new Initiate Feats, surprised to see a couple of psionic, but I was horrified at the amount of feats that helped a very small percentage of characters. Many of them were tailored and had prerequisites to a specific order you had to be a part of. I was hoping this would be balanced out by more generalized feats, but there were only 6 feats that did that. I guess, bottomline, not enough feats to round out a good balance between the two. Last, but not least, the Agents of Good chapter. I was expecting powerful NPCs that champion and are highly respected as awesomely good and valorous beings. What I saw was a meager collection of NPCs, none of them which are on par with the power-villains of CoR (like Eltab, Malkizid, and Soneillon). I was hoping for a unique celestial being, or maybe the Srinshee, or even other powerfully good celestial beings of unique stature, similar in CR to the champions of evil in CoR (CR 20+ range). In conclusion, my thoughts are very neutral on this book. It was good, but it could've been better. I do hope, however, that there's a WE filling in more of the material I stated were missing and should've been included. :P
Yokinobu 11-08-05, 03:39 PM	I received my book yesterday and skimmed through it. What I found was an interesting mixed emotion of both disappointment and satisfaction. First off, I thought there was going to be a lot of material for Helm worshipers? Instead, we have a horde of material for Tyr Tyr Tyr. :eek: I also thought it was stated by the designers that there was going to be Good Nodes? I see nothing of the sort within. :rolleyes: I do like the adaptations of the Goliaths, Illumians, and Raptorans however it possessed one major flaw. It gave suggestions as opposed to writing-in-stone an official representation and locale for these races. I don't want "maybe you can do this" or "maybe that". That's for a DM to decide. I was hoping for a "goliaths are here, here, and here they do this and that, and they worship so and so" with all 3 races. It also hardly touched upon what deities the Goliaths worshiped as opposed to the entire pantheon laid out for them in Races of Stone. Next was the lack of prestige classes (4 in total, as opposed to CoR's 6). I was hoping around 7 (one being the long-awaited PrC specific to Helm's clergy for a player of mine that's been waiting practically for years). Instead, what was given in place of more prestige classes were substitution levels. I like the idea of substitution levels, however, they were poorly written in this book. Many of the class features you receive in place of standard class features were horribly weaker than the original class feature. Good example would be the Vigilant Eye's 4th-level substitution switch of Turn Undead for Awesome Smite, which pales in comparison to what Turn Undead offers (don't forget, losing Turn Undead also cuts the paladin off from important Divine Feats). Another example of the weakness is giving a Ranger of the Shooting Star Order 1 bonus spell slot per spell level in place of his animal companion. Again, the loss is more than what the character gains. I've found many more examples, but listed these two to give an idea. I did like the new Initiate Feats, surprised to see a couple of psionic, but I was horrified at the amount of feats that helped a very small percentage of characters. Many of them were tailored and had prerequisites to a specific order you had to be a part of. I was hoping this would be balanced out by more generalized feats, but there were only 6 feats that did that. I guess, bottomline, not enough feats to round out a good balance between the two. Last, but not least, the Agents of Good chapter. I was expecting powerful NPCs that champion and are highly respected as awesomely good and valorous beings. What I saw was a meager collection of NPCs, none of them which are on par with the power-villains of CoR (like Eltab, Malkizid, and Soneillon). I was hoping for a unique celestial being, or maybe the Srinshee, or even other powerfully good celestial beings of unique stature, similar in CR to the champions of evil in CoR (CR 20+ range). In conclusion, my thoughts are very neutral on this book. It was good, but it could've been better. I do hope, however, that there's a WE filling in more of the material I stated were missing and should've been included. :P I both agree and disagree with this assessment. I personally like Helm's faith, especially after reading Viper's Kiss. I've ran into an arguement that, as a neutral deity of guards, he didn't have anything really valorous about him. As a deity whose realm is in a good-aligned plane, is mostly allied with good deities, and whose portfolio agrees more with morality, I think he does. I would have liked to see a PrC for Helm, because I had been wanting one. Oh well. I like what was done with Goliaths, Illumians, and Raptorans(It hasn't hit shelves in my area admittedly, but I can go off of what others tell me). I don't like the idea of tons of races being forced into the Realms just because core D&D authors decide to release a line of books that are obligated to include new races off the top of some guy's head. As soon as I get used to the anthropology of certain regions, "Oh yeah, these guys exist too. No real reason that they were never mentioned in the timeline or novels, or any explaination as to what plane they came from or which creator race they descended from. They're just there, trust me." I get tired of that. On the other hand, help with tying them into your game if you want them is just fine. It doesn't disrupt what people have come to know in the Realms at all. But I can sympathize with wanting certain ideas written in stone as far as is possible in D&D. I sometimes think it doesn't seem valid otherwise. I haven't seen the substitution levels, but if I did, I'd probably agree with you. It seems like crunch that is being released is more often than before turning out to be weak for it's price, and ultimately, the crunch just sits taking up space in the book because your not willing to use it. A good example of this is the Knight of the Blue Moon, that requires a bunch of feats you'll probably never use, including one in which the benefit is totally negated by it's penalty(Lunar Magic). Another example is the Monk of the Long Death, where the detour to that PrC is in almost no circumstance worth straying from the Monk base class. Crunch should be appealing and usable. That being said, I had always liked the idea of variants based on faith, and I feared I would be dissappointed when these variants were conducted. Funny how a particularly fair and worthy example is the one chosen to post as a sample entry on the WotC D&D page. I like PrCs too, but I don't mind the lack of them. I was satisfied with the number in CoS, as most people were. I don't think you'll find much support there, as it has been my experience that many of the more vocal players are tired of seeing tons of PrCs. In the case of the feats that only apply to a specific order, I think that was the FR answer to vows as requirements in BoED, but that's just my speculation. As with Agents of good, they could have done better. I realize there aren't as many well-known non-humanoid exemplars of good in the FR as there are supernatural villains, but at least come up with a few things we are familiar with, like, the Srinshee of course. And I haven't found any official stats for Dove Falconhand anywhere, so I think CoV would have been a good opportunity to provide info on that hero. Shoot, I can come up with NPC's, give me something canon I didn't already have access to.
Oghmanyte 11-08-05, 05:57 PM	I don't like the idea of tons of races being forced into the Realms just because core D&D authors decide to release a line of books that are obligated to include new races off the top of some guy's head. As soon as I get used to the anthropology of certain regions, "Oh yeah, these guys exist too. No real reason that they were never mentioned in the timeline or novels, or any explaination as to what plane they came from or which creator race they descended from. They're just there, trust me." I get tired of that. I couldn't agree more. If the DM wishes to use such races, it should be up to him or her how they are incorporated in a FR campaign, and not up to a supplement that doesn't have enough pages to begin with :( . It disrupts one's suspension of disbelief to have official new races added to the campaign world every time a new book is published, especially when there doesn't seem to be much of a need for new races in the Realms. Nor are the new races especially rich: playing an elf in the Realms gives one's character historical and cultural dimension that playing a goliath does not. That said, I really liked most of CoV!
GothicDan 11-08-05, 09:32 PM	I agree about the races bit, all around. It's not WotC's job to put great detail into a race that only exists in FR because they happened to appear in a core book somewhere. I'd much rather have a smaller, better quality pool of races (or feats, or classes, or prestige classes, etc.) to draw from than dozens of new races with no actual history in the Realms.
Razz 11-09-05, 01:23 AM	They've been sticking and adding things to the Realms since 1E. Continuing to do so wouldn't do any harm whatsoever. The world is just that, a WORLD! There is a place for everything in D&D. And who said these beings HAD to be in Forgotten Realms lore and history in order to qualify them for existence in the Realms? Last I checked, there isn't a FR book out there detailing every historical piece of Toril from the Dawn of Time to the present, of every single miniscule locale of Toril (not even our own world has a single book accomplishing that, because it's impossible of course). Would I want something related mainly to Greyhawk or Dragonlance in FR? No. But generalized new material such as the Races series, for example? Yes. There should be a place in all published worlds for them. They're not specific to any one setting. If you want to go the "don't stick it in the world" route, then please take out your Mordenkainen and Otto spells from Faerun while you're at it, for example. :rolleyes:
Dargoth 11-09-05, 01:56 AM	Can someone who has CoV check this for me If you take the Sub levels for the paladin of Kelemvor can you still qualify for the Hunter of the dead PrC? (Found in Complete Warrior)
Dargoth 11-09-05, 03:32 AM	They've been sticking and adding things to the Realms since 1E. Continuing to do so wouldn't do any harm whatsoever. The world is just that, a WORLD! There is a place for everything in D&D. And who said these beings HAD to be in Forgotten Realms lore and history in order to qualify them for existence in the Realms? Last I checked, there isn't a FR book out there detailing every historical piece of Toril from the Dawn of Time to the present, of every single miniscule locale of Toril (not even our own world has a single book accomplishing that, because it's impossible of course). Would I want something related mainly to Greyhawk or Dragonlance in FR? No. But generalized new material such as the Races series, for example? Yes. There should be a place in all published worlds for them. They're not specific to any one setting. If you want to go the "don't stick it in the world" route, then please take out your Mordenkainen and Otto spells from Faerun while you're at it, for example. :rolleyes: If they want to provide a "How you can incorperate this race into Forgotten Realms/Eberron" section into a book then it should be in the book in which the race is published. WOTC do this with PrCs (Complete adventurer) and new monsters (Seee Monster manual 3). It shouldnt be taking up valauble space in an FR source book
GothicDan 11-09-05, 09:37 AM	If you want to go the "don't stick it in the world" route, then please take out your Mordenkainen and Otto spells from Faerun while you're at it, for example. Some of these spells were adapted in FR to have actually been invented by Netherese Arcanists. As for the others, it's been quite well-documented for decades that the various members of the Circle of Eight have interacted with individuals (archmages in particular) of Faerun for a very, very long time. In a world where there are probably millions of different spells, and new ones being created every hour, introducing new spells doesn't require actually changing culture or history in any way. It's not the same as introducing PrCs or races.
Yokinobu 11-09-05, 04:55 PM	To anyone who has already recieved the book, are the substitution levels for the Broken One, the Phoenix Disciple, and the Shadow Sword mechanically good? I have to know. I don't want to crack open the book and be dissappointed to see that the substitution levels attributed to my favorite class and deity aren't worth going for.