The Player’s Handbook II. When I first saw that this book was coming out, I couldn’t help thinking to myself, “This is just a gimmick, I doubt I’ll get it”. Obviously, based off of me writing this review, I was wrong. ;)
I don’t normally write reviews, but as I have really enjoyed this book, more than many I have bought recently, I decided to give it a go. Maybe I’ll write more, but I’m not counting on it.
Initial Impressions
When I first picked up the book, I flipped through it a bit, didn’t see too much of real interest. At this point I figured it was like the Unearthed Arcana book, which I bought last year but the Dndorks crew has barely looked at. A couple classes, some new feats, aha! Something interesting, looks like they’ve provided alternative class ability choices.
Advanced Class Options
I’m a huge fan of the recently introduced racial class levels. I love the idea that my shifter ranger will be quite different from my elven ranger. If you imagine D&D as a tree with X number of choices to individualize your character like I do, imagine this very expansive tree doubling itself with this new idea of class alternative abilities.
What kind of new abilities? Ok, just a few: Sorcerer’s can give up their familiar to gain the Metamagic Specialist ability. Metamagic Specialist allows your sorcerer to apply metamagic feats to sorcerer spells without increasing the casing time. I know Mark (our Army Guard player who likes nuker-types) is looking forward to making use of this ability. Clerics gain an ability I used for my recently created Elvish cleric: Spontaneous Domain Casting. SDC allows your cleric to choose to spontaneously cast from one of his domains instead of cure spells, I chose the protection domain. How often have you wished the cleric had prepared Resist Energy or whatnot when you suddenly face an elemental-based beast. My cleric doesn’t have to prepare them, he just spontaneously casts. Of course that hurt my healing ability a bit, so I took a new feat: Sacred Healing.