Arcane Power gave us back something our spellcasters were desperately missing: Familiars.  Life as a spellcaster just isn’t the same without a little friend to share it.

The Specifics

If you haven’t checked out the details on Familiars from Arcane Power, here’s a quick run-down.  Any Arcane class can take the “Arcane Familiar” feat to gain a Familiar.  Once you have a Familiar, you can take additional feats to supplement its abilities.

Familiars are either in Passive Mode or Active Mode.  In Passive Mode, your Familiar cannot be targeted or injured; it just sits on your shoulder.  In Active Mode, your Familiar can move around, but it is subject to being attacked, which means it won’t live long with its 1 hit point.  Fortunately, if your Familiar dies, it will reappear after a short rest or extended rest.

Familiars will also grant you bonuses, depending on what kind of Familiar you have.  The list of Familiars is on pages 140 and 141 in Arcane Power, and each Familiar has unique properties, such as bonuses to skill checks and bonus languages.

Familiars Should Be Special

Familiars are fun, but they should also fit your character.  So if the standard list of Familiars just doesn’t have something to strike your interest, work with your DM to find something perfect.  For instance, while looking for a Familiar for Eaerenel, my fiery wizard, the options on the list just didn’t suit her.  Dante & I came up with a great compromise.  We took elements from the Dragonling and the Falcon, added a little twist and suddenly, we had a Phoenix.

Even if you don’t want to develop something different, I still recommend working with your DM to make the introduction of your Familiar something special.  Instead of just suddenly popping into existence, Dante & I worked out that my Phoenix would emerge from the ashes of the campfire in the middle of the night.

You are using a feat to gain a Familiar; it should be something pretty special.  So don’t hesitate to involve your DM in your decision to add that extra something to make your Familiar extra Fabulous.

This is absolutely fantastic!  It’s an early 80’s ad for D&D featuring some nerds in epic 80’s garb, a really weak dragon, and a cartoon version of Dudley Moore sniffing out treasure at the end.  It’s not really Dudley Moore, but that’s what my brain said when he showed up.  Also, I love the “part of a balanced breakfast” style money shot at the end of the commercial with all the dice nicely spaced out to display their dicely goodness.  All of this thanks to Boing Boing!

Also, their group was comprised of three guys, two girls… a pretty good ratio for a D&D game!

Dante & I received a copy of Sacred 2: Fallen Angel for the XBox 360 to review.  We had not played its predecessor, so this was an entirely new experience for us.  Due to his recent travel and heavy work load, Dante hasn’t had a chance to play it yet, but I have put in a couple of hours of game time.

General Information

Sacred 2 is designed to be an open-ended roleplaying game in a seamless world.  There is always someplace to go explore, there are always new quests to take.  You can follow the quests as they come up, or you can completely ignore what’s in your quest log and wander off around the countryside.  It is designed to be whatever kind of game you want it to be.

First Impressions

Sacred 2 is a very visual game, and the graphics are great, making it easy to become immersed in the game.  The other element that helped improve the immersive nature of the game was the fact that there were no loading screens; as you move between regions, there is only a little pause in the game play.  The most delay came in big town centers, but even that wasn’t intolerably long.

Characters & Campaigns

I have played two different characters of the six options.  First, I played a High Elf in a Campaign of Light.  The nature of the spell-caster nature was fun.  I particularly enjoyed the Blazing Tempest spell.  My only complaint with the High Elf was the clothing options; even though she was a female character, I didn’t expect to see such scanty clothing.  The second character I played as a Shadow Warrior in a Campaign of Shadow.  He was more fighter-y based, which was also fun to play; who doesn’t like to take a sword and bash the bad guys.

I didn’t play either campaign long enough to really get into the big Light vs Shadow differences, but there were minor differences throughout the campaigns.  Each starts as you make your way into larger settlements: some of the quests you complete are the same, but are different based on whether you are Light or Shadow.

Overall Thoughts

I found myself pulled into the game very easily, and before I realized it, I had been playing for several hours.  I was easily drawn into the game, and I enjoyed completing the quests; there was enough challenge to be interesting without being overwhelmingly difficult, and as I progressed, I did gain a sense of accomplishment.

However, after I had left the game, I found I wasn’t not particularly compelled to turn the game back on and continue to play.  So while it was fun, it wasn’t enough to make me want to devote entire weeks of my life to the game.

Dante’s Footnotes

I got to watch Stupid Ranger play Sacred 2 quite a bit, and visually it reminds me very much of a third person Diablo II style gameplay.  I thought that some of the visual features were nice, specifically like the in-game map showing the percentage of completed area.  Tasha liked the unobtrusive health and experience meters, but I found them a bit hard to keep track of and the little experience numbers that popped up above dispatched enemies seemed a bit cluttered.

Aside from those minor issues, this game was visually very appealing.  The spells that Stupid Ranger had earned during her time playing the game were increasingly visually interesting, several times she’d call me over to show me the cool effect that she had just gained.  I am looking forward to diving deeper into Sacred 2 myself once my Real Life workload eases up a bit.  The game is certainly worth a look if you enjoy third person fantasy styled excellence!

Our good buddy Zzarchov over at Unofficial Games has taken a crack at some system neutral Sizzle Cards.  My personal favorite: WARDROBE MALFUNCTION!

The feedback that we’ve gotten on the Sizzle Card idea has been extremely positive.  Post up those ideas for Sizzle Cards and we’ll roll ‘em up into a PDF similar to what Zzarchov has done.  I’m honestly a little afraid of what Vanir will come up with!  Thanks for taking this one the extra mile, Zzarchov!

Jonathan over at The Core Mechanic is shutting down his blog operations on July 1, and as part of his send off, he’s asking for everyone in the community to share their “I am a gamer” thoughts.

Check out his post here for more information on participating.

Over the weekend, most of our D&D crew packed up and headed out to Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve here in Colorado.  We had packed our gaming gear, however a smattering of bad weather on Saturday afternoon and some overly rambunctious children prevented us from actually getting to play D&D under the stars.  The weekend wasn’t a complete loss from a roleplaying perspective… I got all sorts of context surrounding moving through difficult terrain and what a desert ecology actually feels like first hand as we hiked to the top of some of the largest sand dunes in North America.

One of my fellow campers joked that we were probably one of the only camping groups to come to this site with a battle mat and D&D books in tow.  We all had a laugh and lamented that it was too windy and dark to play properly so we left our campaigning aside, but it got me wondering about all of the interesting places that our readers come from.

So I ask you this, gentle reader: What’s the most exotic locale that you’ve played a roleplaying game in?  Did the environment get in the way?  Did bears eat your dice?  Birds swoop in and snatch your mini off of the battle board?  Tell us about it!

Over the weekend one of our frequent commentors and all-round good guy, Todd Bradley, invited us to a D&D game that he is running.  This marks the first time that Stupid Ranger and I have played D&D with a  group comprised entirely of people we’ve never met before, so it was pretty exciting.  They have been running through a D&D 3.5 module named The Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde, and it seems to be fun so far!

Adding a little spice

Todd has employed a very fun method of adding a little flair to his already fun campaign: sizzle cards.  Each player gets to draw a slip of paper at the beginning of each session that contains a special action that the player can invoke to affect the game in some way.  I haven’t seen the majority of them yet, but I got one that said “That’s no monster, that’s a guy in a costume!” which I assume means I could’ve turned a monster into a costumed person.  Another player invoked a random rockslide.  Someone else in our group told me they had one before that caused a successful hit to cause arterial spray to blind the attacker for the rest of the battle.

The players informed me that this wasn’t all fun and games, and that the Dungeon Master had the option to interpret the card creatively.  My old DM used to do this same thing with any of the Wish spells, but it was certainly always fun to try!

There’s a lot of things that I like about this approach to adding some random behavior and fun to a campaign.  It gives the players a little irreverent control over their surroundings, and the element of surprise is there since nobody else knows what Sizzle Card you have but you.  I like that it keeps the DM on his toes too, I’m sure a lot of thought goes into the Sizzle Cards and how they can impact the planned portion of the module/campaign.  Finally, it allows the DM to use some of those random content ideas that invariably pop into mind when you have to run the game instead of play.

Todd informed me that this idea wasn’t originally his, so thanks to whoever originated this idea!  Also, thanks to Todd and his group of players for inviting us into their group.  I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of new post ideas originated from such a great group of people and much fun to be had as a result!

Kanati strikes once again with a freshly revamped Skythorn (now with 200% less Jheri-curl lampshade hair)!

As previously documented, I am currently playing an eladrin wizard who prefers fire-based spells.  Eaerenel is quite happy setting fire to the bad guys, and she can’t imagine life any other way.  This has presented a bit of a concern for character development as Eaerenel gains levels.  It’s not a problem yet, but it might be soon, because after perusing various Paragon paths, I haven’t found one involving fire.

I will say up front that I have not thoroughly examined every source book that includes Paragon paths, but I have taken a look at most of the options included in the PHB, PHB2 and Arcane Power.  And I haven’t found anything focusing on fire.

Eaerenel is not yet ready for a Paragon Path, but I like to be prepared.  I’m not interested in changing her focus from fire spells just to fit into the offered paths.  So in order to keep true to my fiery friend’s nature, I’m planning on adapting the Spellstorm Mage from the PHB (p.170), changing the keyword from Lightning to Fire.

And here’s my question for everyone out there: have any of you adapted or developed your own Paragon Paths?

During our last session of the Keep on the Shadowfell, we came to a difference in opinion regarding how much exploration to undertake, knowing that the Big Bad was still ahead of us.

The Debate

Our Explorers wanted to finish opening every door before taking on the Big Bad.  Not a bad plan, all in all; exploration leads to a higher the potential for treasure.

Our Skip Ahead-ers wanted to ignore the mundane sections and just get the combat out of the way.  Why waste time killing off minions when you could productively killing the Big Bad?

The Decision

Based on in-character votes, the majority decided to get the battle out of the way.  Not knowing if the Big Bad had any sort of early detection system in place that would give away our presence, we pressed on and skipped what appeared to be unnecessary doors.

The Result

We might have missed out on some odds and ends of things, and there might be some minions of evil wandering around the abandoned Keep.  But let’s face it, they weren’t really bright, and most were too lazy to think about leaving the dark, dankness of the Keep to seek vengeance against us for killing their leader.

The Metagaming Aspect

This debate in our campaign was a little… skewed.  It’s easy to consider the module and its specific end, as opposed to the unexpected where you don’t know what’s coming at the end, or where the end will be.  This is especially significant as the end of the night draws near… there’s extra pressure to just finish and ignore the peripheral rooms so everyone can get some sleep.

So while I sided with the Skip Ahead-ers during the session, I know that there is value to be had in the Exploration mode.  It’s important to remember as you are going through modules that just because you know there is an end, you don’t have to run straight to it.  Be aware of your character’s motivations, as well as the feelings of the rest of the group, before you decide if you want to open that door or skip ahead to the next.