I'm specifically speaking to you people over there in Japan and those other areas that usually get the products earlier. I have questions if your willing.
We have two stores that typically put them out about a week early, I'll be heading out today to see if either of them have it out. If I'm lucky I'll answer your questions. I really am hoping that they put them out early as the Primal Power Source is my favorite.
Maybe WotC smacked around the distributers/stores that were releasing them early. Typically soemone was posting to the boards with "I got it!"
Then again, didn't Trevor post that giving out early info is against the CoC?
Guess yesterday was my lucky day. One of the local bookstores put out the book early. So I do have it, and find it to be pretty good. Interesting builds, powers, and what not. Looking at the feats right now. I will answer some questions about it, but I wont be getting extremely technical. Looking foward to trying alot of things out with it though.
Any impressive new at-wills? And how many new at-wills for each class?
Each class does get a couple of new at-wills. As far as are they good, for me most of them are good, I am not a powergamer/character optimizer so for me if it can fit my character concept then it is good. For all the powergamer/character optimizers you'll have to wait for a different reviewer.
Each class does get a couple of new at-wills. As far as are they good, for me most of them are good, I am not a powergamer/character optimizer so for me if it can fit my character concept then it is good. For all the powergamer/character optimizers you'll have to wait for a different reviewer.
Right. How many at-wills each? More specifically, any new non-beast form druid powers and shaman powers, especially any that look good. But really, how many at-wills each, please?
Each gets around two. Druid does have a non-beast form at-will. The other one links into the new build.
Each gets around two. Druid does have a non-beast form at-will. The other one links into the new build.
I guess you weren't kidding about being "extremely technical..." :P
SO no exact numbers, or descriptions. Got it. How many Shaman and Barbarian builds, and secondary stats for each if you will? Thanks.
And, if you may, what is the secondary for the Life Warden? And is there a class feature for Summoner Druids?
They already told us there are going to be two new Shaman and Barbarian builds each, and for Shaman at least, two new class features. They haven't told us about the Barbarian new class features that go with the new builds, or what any of these key into.
Shaman - Eagle Shaman (Watcher Spirit), World Speaker Shaman (World Speaker Spirit)
Barbarian - Thunderborn Barbarian, Whirling Barbarian
I'd be interested in what these and the Life Warden key into (the rider for their powers, that is) is, considering we know the riders for the other three builds previewed (Summoner Druid has no riders, Swarm Druid has Con, Storm Warden has Con).
Your life Warden is a Str/Wis build. A small note of interest, their is alot of primal themed minotaur art in the book. A possible hint that the PHB3 Minotaurs will be pushed towards primal themes.
They haven't told us about the Barbarian new class features that go with the new builds, or what any of these key into.
Trevor gave us the whirling barbarian's class feature here. 
Could you give us an idea about the Thunderborn Barbarian? Secondary Stat and theme would be nice.
Oh, and do they give anything nice to Thaneborn Barbarians as well?
The Thunderborn barbarian is...interesting, but honestly in a good way. You are looking at a lot of burst abilities. When I first read some of his abilities I pictured the Barbarian out of Diablo 2 with their shout tree, only this time shouting rocks. The paragon path made for the Thunderborn works both thematically and mechanically, making an extremely fluid transition into paragon levels. The secondary stat is Con. The build itself allows you to second as a controller. I can for see myself playing a Thunderborn and multiclassing into Shaman at some point. Recommendation use a big hammer as a Thunderborn.....Hammers and Thunder just go together.
Oh, and do they give anything nice to Thaneborn Barbarians as well?
I'd be interested to know as well if Thaneborn gets any love.
What are the new shaman builds like flavor-wise.
Did you find them interesting?
I have only one question. Does primal power have ANY fluff on primal spirts that the primal classes can bond with/worship/whatever? ANY fluff on the primal spirits at all?
I have only one question. Does primal power have ANY fluff on primal spirts that the primal classes can bond with/worship/whatever? ANY fluff on the primal spirits at all?
I would think such would be the purview of the DM and the player.
I have only one question. Does primal power have ANY fluff on primal spirts that the primal classes can bond with/worship/whatever? ANY fluff on the primal spirits at all?
I would think such would be the purview of the DM and the player.
Within the same realm as all other "super powers", we need some guidelines atleast. The primal players I game with, have been complaining about a lack of offical primal spirit info. We have fluff on the gods, demonlords, arch devils and primordials, but almost nothing for the primal spirits.
K see if I can get all of these in one fell swoop.
1. Yes the Thaneborn does get some love. So does the Rageblood.
2. The Shamans do have some nice choices. A lot of stuff still seems to revolve around the Spirit Companion, but I am cool with that. Flavor wise you have a build that helps out your ranged allies. The second build is dedicated to the natural world and dealing with that (uber tree hugger mode).
3. In regards to Fluff, yes Primal Power is quite nice with the fluff. While it deals with the generic D&D world it gives good info on how each class functions story wise. Each has about 2 to 4 pages dealing with various items of interest. You also get some nice ideas for your primal character at the start of the Player Options section. Items of note are a small section on Druidic Circles, the Natural Spirits, and what not. You should be very satisfied with the fluff.
Still have lots more reading and going over. This power book is what I wanted in one. You have a very good balance of fluff and crunch, and the powers are nice. Something for the potential summoner druids, at around level 15 you start summoning behemoths, and you still can summon the legendary....FIRE BEETLE!!!!!!!!
K see if I can get all of these in one fell swoop.
Yeah, well, it's your own darn fault for sayign you got it early.
Thank you so much.
Can you tell us what the riders for the World Speaker and the Eagle Shaman builds are?
The stats for the new shaman are more or less the same for the shamans, Wisdom is you high, Eagle then goes for Dex; World is Con.
Yeah you are right I didn't have to say I got it early, but meh.
As for listing off the names I'd rather not list all but I'll list a couple of favorites.
Druid Paragon
Pack Lord: Very good summoner paragon, I was really fond of the level 20 benefit.
Coiled Serpent: Beast Form paragon that follows a cool theme. If you don't like being a giant snake you could use this as a frame for your choice of animal.
Spiral Wind Ally: This is a leader path. If I was pressured into becoming a leader I would take it, but that's more cause I'm not fond of playing leader roles. Despite that, I'd say it would be fun to play.
Epics
Sovereign Beast: This is one of two dedicated epics. You have to be a Druid and it plays on the beast form. With my preference to see a character fully developed from my original idea I am fond of this. Plus if you a beast form druid the picture also should inspire you to go this route. The other dedicated epic is for a Warden. Some things have to be surprises.
That's somewhat unfortunate that it's another Wis/Con build (I was hoping for another Wis/Int build for World Speaker), but I guess with the boistering the allies defenses and the tree-like nature of the build, Con is the right choise. It's just World Speaker suggests something other than Con, maybe even Wis/Cha, which would have been awesome (a Primal class for Kalashtar).
Wis/Dex for Eagle fulfills my hopes for that sort of Shaman. Now Shifters and Elves are actually good at being Shamans, and their guidance of ranged attacks and granting Ranged Basic Attacks and such fits in well with the Elven theme as well (as well as pointing towards a bird-like future Dex/Wis race).
Wis/Dex and Str/Con seem to be the popular combinations, both amongst classes and amongst races. There are three player races for each (four for Dex/Wis if you think that the one feat for Bladelings make them player, but yeah), and they have possibly the most optimal class combinations between them:
Great Weapon Fighter, Battlerager Fighter, Ardent Paladin, Rageblood Barbarian, Thunderborn Barbarian, Earth Warden, Storm Warden; Archer Ranger, Vengeful Seeker, Centered Breath Monk, Predator Druid, Eagle Shaman, Pursuing Avenger.
That's a lot of class builds focusing on those types. And that's somewhat good, because there are so many of those races: Goliath, Warforged, Minotaur (plus monsters, Orc); Elf, Githzerai, Razorclaw Shifter (plus monsters, Bladeling).
Wis/Con seems to be another popular build ability set, but they've only got two races between them - Dwarf and Wilden (three if you count the monster race Duergar), and Wilden are still a playtest, yet we have so many of their builds already possible, and if you don't have D&Di, then Dwarves are the only ones who can use them (again, Duergar can too, but they are unsupported and evil).
That's why I'm a little bit disappointed, because I'd like to see build options for less popular combinations, like Int/Wis or Wis/Cha (or Con/Cha for that matter), which I feel aren't adequately covered by Primal or by most classes by that matter.
Don't get me wrong. I'm really looking forward to Primal Power, and I'm glad you told me of these spoils; it'll help my class matrix spreadsheets and get my mind thinking about where racial thematics and racial abilities scores cross with class thematics and class ability scores to get optimal classes (for example, Genasi would be optimal on the thematic scale for Wild Sorcerer, but it's a poor choice on the ability scale). When I'm figuring out what races in my setting have what sort of culture, these class possibilities point the way, since they bring up ideas I wouldn't necessarily think of (for example, the fact that Dwarves are so good at Primal classes led me to a revision of Dwarven culture where instead of a priesthood leading the Dwarven people, they have a shamanic cult of ancestor reverence, while still paying homage to the gods of creation of my setting as well, but more through a personal, older connection that invokes the Invoker class).
So, long story short, I'm happy you're telling us these reveals, and will put them to use in my world-building elements immediately. Thank you.
So are these "natural spirits/nature spirits" the primal spirits? If so, could you name atleast one that the book discusses?
Primal Spirits are different from the other Great Powers of the World Axis. They are indefinite, uncountable, and are thematically made so that you can make as many as you want up as you go. They could be as small and insignificant as the spirit of a certain boulder or tree, or they could be as mighty as one of the Great Spirits like the World Serpent, the Primal Beast, the Fate-Weaver, the Great Bear, or such. I assume from other folks' discourse on the book that there are other "Great Spirits" discussed here.
Also, ancestor spirits fall into the domain of Primal Spirits, based off certain Shaman powers. Which is why I find the Cult of the Ancestors in Elven Religion in Eberron so odd and wrong - it shouldn't be a divine thing, it should be Primal. That would also link them more with classes they're actually good at. Just because it was divine before doesn't mean it needs to be in 4e. It can just as easily be Primal and still be an organisation, a faith, and important.
Alas.
By the way, my local bookstore where I preordered Primal Power from has the book behind their counter, waiting for me, but when I went there, they told me they couldn't actually sell it to me until Tuesday. Considering they used to sell them to me as soon as they got it in their hands, I find this slightly bothersome. But I know it's best for sales for Wizards, because it's not good for the books to be released early (no offence to those who got them early and are so kindly filling us in on the spoils).
Primal Spirits are different from the other Great Powers of the World Axis. They are indefinite, uncountable, and are thematically made so that you can make as many as you want up as you go. They could be as small and insignificant as the spirit of a certain boulder or tree, or they could be as mighty as one of the Great Spirits like the World Serpent, the Primal Beast, the Fate-Weaver, the Great Bear, or such. I assume from other folks' discourse on the book that there are other "Great Spirits" discussed here.
Also, ancestor spirits fall into the domain of Primal Spirits, based off certain Shaman powers. Which is why I find the Cult of the Ancestors in Elven Religion in Eberron so odd and wrong - it shouldn't be a divine thing, it should be Primal. That would also link them more with classes they're actually good at. Just because it was divine before doesn't mean it needs to be in 4e. It can just as easily be Primal and still be an organisation, a faith, and important.
Alas.
By the way, my local bookstore where I preordered Primal Power from has the book behind their counter, waiting for me, but when I went there, they told me they couldn't actually sell it to me until Tuesday. Considering they used to sell them to me as soon as they got it in their hands, I find this slightly bothersome. But I know it's best for sales for Wizards, because it's not good for the books to be released early (no offence to those who got them early and are so kindly filling us in on the spoils).
I know what primal spirits are, I just called them that because thats what the op said. I'm asking if there is any info in primal power about the primal spirits, like the world serpent and so on. We need some write ups and more fluff on them.
If primal power has info on the primal spirits, a bunch of my gaming pals will buy the book, since they love the primal classes. If not, they said they'd have no interest in it, since I will be getting it anyways, they will just use my book and save their money.
I also want primal spirit info. I don't want to have to homebrew everything.
What I've heard from other forums (which I will not direct you to here, but a google search should work famously), there is much detail on various new high level Primal Spirits.
I heard stories in them, a la the stories of the Gods in Divine Power, like how one primal spirit warned the Gods of an impending Primordial attack, and then tricked the Primordials and the Gods into fighting each other. I'm assuming these will be lot of side blurbs on various of these high echelon Primal Spirits.
Is the world tree one of the primal spirits? Cause if so, yay for norseness!
Even if it isn't, the World Tree still sounds like it would be a major Primal Spirit in any campaign that a DM would insert it in.
Well, according to the Character Concepts article that just debuted, the World Tree seems to be in fact one of the Great Primal Spirits.
I'm hoping one of the Great Primal Spirits will be The Great Pumpkin... but I'm not holding my breath.
There is a fair sized section dedicated to the various primal spirits, alas their is no great pumpkin. Yet.................
It's PumpKing! The King of Ghosts!
Jack Skelington works too.
Jack Skelington works too.
Lies! That lazy bastard has been sitting on that damned couch for nearly ten years now, always "I'm gonna get a job, I swear!" or "Quit your gripin', woman!"
Halloween Jack is a real cool cat. He lives on top of Manhatten Chase. The elevator's broke, so he slides down a rope. Down to the street below. Oh, Tarzan, go man go.
What I've heard from other forums (which I will not direct you to here, but a google search should work famously), there is much detail on various new high level Primal Spirits.
I heard stories in them, a la the stories of the Gods in Divine Power, like how one primal spirit warned the Gods of an impending Primordial attack, and then tricked the Primordials and the Gods into fighting each other. I'm assuming these will be lot of side blurbs on various of these high echelon Primal Spirits.
That would be Whisper, one of the least trusted of the Great Elders, due to her tricksty nature.
There are indeed several yellowed blurbs scattered about, such as the story of "Stormhawk Takes Flight". However, most of the details of the 24 Great Elders is in the form of an outline of several paragraphs each (some more so than others).
Mechanically, there are no feats devoted to these primal spirits, but they are evoked by certain powers. Though, in fact, you can already find several such in the Players Handbook 2. (The barbarian's World Serpent rage, and the shaman's spirit of World Serpent to name but two.)
There are a couple of epic destinies devoted to revering or emulating the primal spirits. (Fang of the World Serpent, World Tree Guardian.)
It's a very nice book. I'm enjoying it immensely. I like it how the Great Elders are not wholly defined, and the way people view them changes from culture to culture, so that they appear throughout the world. This is more in line with how shamanic ancestor and nature spirits, especially the powerful ones, would be. Raven is a herald of death in Indo-European traditions, but is the trickster who stole light from the heavens for the world in the Amerind traditions, and is a messenger of the spirit world, both of death and of spirituality in the Shinto traditions.
I also like how "The Spirit Way" is essentially Shintoism.
That would be Whisper, one of the least trusted of the Great Elders, due to her tricksty nature.
I wonder if this Great Spirit owes anything to The Chronicles of the Black Company...
I liked some of the story blurbs they had in sidebars.
I mean, those seem like the kind of stories that a tribe elder would be telling the children at the end of the day, perhaps around a pit fire, don't they?
I got to look at it, wasnt impressed.
thus I'm not getting this book
The fluff on the primal spirits and spirit way is excellent!
Dungeons & Dragons, Primal Power is the latest Game Supplement for 4th Edition by Mike Mearls. It has options for Barbarians, Druids, Shamans and Wardens. As like previous released content the art is beautiful, the printing is quality and the layout is easy to follow. Each of these classes received two new class features, about seven new Paragon Paths, some primal class epic destinies and one Warden epic destiny. The Druid class lists two Swarm and Summoner Druid but in fact the second feature really just adds more daily powers for summoning for Druids.
Primal Power also contains a large amount of new Feats for these classes (~ 10 or so), about 20 Feats for races and about 12 Tribal Feats that can be used by any class and give a +2 to skills and an added 1 for other allies who have the feat. In addition to feats, there are a few new nature rituals for druids.
Some I liked include some of the "Roll Twice" for Skill checks and a few +5 to some check or +5 to damage and I did like they added the ability to teleport your companion with an Eladrin Fey Steps.
No new magic items or other special equipment for our Barbarians, Druids, Shamans or Wardens.
I was pleasantly surprised that the sections on Primal Power talked about non-combat encounters and a lot of stuff about how to play this and that. All the stuff on how to play the classes and the spirit way, points of life and primal spirits was very nice. To me those are more of the meat of these books because honestly - with the DNDInsider Character Builder - anything in the tables of these books will show up there so for that you really don't need to buy any books. But all the other "stuff" worth reading is reasons to buy a book for me. If you like reading these parts of the book - and they are a good read - buy the book otherwise I would just wait for this stuff to show up in the Character Builder unless you're a hard core book buyer like a lot of us. However, as I write this- this material hasn't showed up in the Character Builder yet..but I am sure it will soon.
There has been a lot of talk on forums about the Barbarian's "Targeted Assault" - which gives a "+2 untyped bonus to attack rolls against any creature marked by you." But clarity on this will probably pop up soon.
The good thing is that I think a lot of things in the book are better than some of the material in PHB2 and the book feels like a "Fix" for the classes - aka - maybe they should have finished Primal Power and rolled it into the PHB2 before printing it. It would have made the PHB2 a lot better and to be honest - I was really disappointed in the PHB2 when it came out. There are a number of powers in Primal Power that are so much better than the powers for the classes in the PHB2. Rage effects that are really powerful, some powers in PHB2 that were daily now have something nice that is an encounter.
Its pretty, its full of new feats and options for these classes - I think my final comment will just be that while I enjoyed reading the 20 pages on Primal Power I can't wait for this stuff to show up in the Character Builder as I dont know if those 20 pages are worth the $30 I paid for them. Maybe they will be for you.
Don't forget, sidebars also don't come up in the Compendium. All the fluff, save for the power fluff, build descriptions, and PPath/EDest descriptions, are left out of the Compendium.
And the Spirit Way mirroring Shintoism I like a lot. I also really like the Great Elders. The stories about them would be left out of the the Compendium. I like them. Thus, I am glad I bought the book.
I also like the fact that I have the crunch material to work with two weeks before it goes into the Compendium and Character Builder (though I don't use Character Builder, as I'm a Mac Person).
I also like the fact that I have the crunch material to work with two weeks before it goes into the Compendium and Character Builder (though I don't use Character Builder, as I'm a Mac Person).
Thats really a pity - of all the things that people complain about 4E - the Character Builder is one of the greatest enhancements of 4E.
Its still buggy getting some pluses right, bugs in equipment/weights, its search is as bad as the compendium and the char sheet wont let you make updates/changes where it should sometimes but overall its a pretty nice piece of work. It gets better each update.
My hats off to them for even trying to tackle such a piece of work.
It appears that one nice side effect of the compendium is it seems to be encouraging the writers to add more non mechanical stuff to the splat books so that people who have the compendium have a reason to get the books. It's very interesting to look at the difference between Martial Power and Primal Power in this regard.
That's right. Pretty much all the fluff in Martial Power, with the exception of a couple sidebars, is reproduced in the Compendium. So if you want the crunch, and the flavour text for powers and builds, then you go to the Compendium. But Primal Power gets it just right in terms of player-useful fluff in the Power book to expand upon the Power Source. This is stuff that helps the player understand the class better - personally, I really didn't dig the Warden all that much (because I felt he was ill-defined, and thus I really didn't understand the uniting concept behind it beside the mechanical one) until Primal Power. And in Divine Power and Primal Power we got a lot about interacting with your faith or with the Spirits. So that's good.
Hopefully Martial Power 2 and Arcane Power 2 will remedy this for those classes, and get us some interesting power-source fluff and class fluff for the Martial and Arcane classes. Right now, I really want to know what WotC feels the uniting concepts behind Arcane is, because to me, it's the "I went to College" power source, and I want to see how each class interprets this and understand their relationship with Arcane Power. Similar with the Martial Classes - with Beast Mastery, the Ranger almost feels Primal. What unites the Ranger into a group with the Fighter, the Rogue, and the Warlord, besides the fact they all use weapons and armour and their bodily skill for their exploits? I have some of my own concepts, but I want to know what the developers' aims were with uniting these into these groups, because they created the classes and have a better grasp of what the classes are.
Just got the book O_o, ordered on monday, came today. They are REALLY preparing for minotaurs to be a phb race aren't they? XD At least they don't look as crazy-go-nuts-evil as before. Heck the emerald guardian minotaur chick actually looks very motherly.
I love the warden PP's o_o!!! icewrought sentinel is pretty cool, emerald guardian... THE GUARDIAN FORM TURNS YOU LARGE NO MATTER IF YOU ARE SMALL SIZE TO BEGIN WITH O_O *Imagines a 10 foot kobold* cooooooool @_@ Tribal champion is pretty cool too ^_^ The stormheart warden is neato and I like it a lot.
Haven't gotten into the other classes yet really, so I can only really report on the warden o.o!