Review of Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved
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Arcana Evolved
Monte calls it a "director's cut", various gamers have called it "Arcana Unearthed 1.5". Neither label suits it very well, in my opinion. Arcana Evolved is big. Not World's Largest Dungeon big, but still respectable at 430 pages in a hardbound cover; it could easily be a high-school textbook. The most immediate change to hit a viewer is the cover itself; gone is the dignified yet fingerprint-attracting matte black cover, replaced by a garish red diamond checkerboard. I consider it to be a great step backwards, having the two books side by side in front of me now leaves no comparison in just how much nicer the original cover appearance was. But black covers don't attract eyes in gaming stores, so I imagine that AE's 1970s velvet wallpaper appearance was a marketing decision, because I can't conceive of it being a decision of aesthetics.
Inside the book, voila!, color. Malhavoc's editors didn't try to replicate D&D's weatherbeaten yellow pages, instead having a very modern sort of layout that you'd see in a Powerpoint presentation. It works out nicely, with shaded boxes and colored header text to help break the text into manageable sections. I complained about AU's mass of stark black type on brilliant white paper, as it had very little for the eyes to focus on for sorting the information and seemed to just blur into a solid block of text on each page. The leap to color has solved that problem admirably, along with some tweaking of the fonts. All in all, AE is much easier to read, the page layout people did a great job.
Unfortunately, color comes with a few demons, too. AU had excellent black and white artwork inside, with a few exceptions, and someone at Malhavoc saw fit to perform the crime of Ted Turner and put colored versions of the same artwork in AE, in some cases resulting in a degradation of quality. Some black and white art stayed, some art that I was especially fond of was yanked, all the art that I hated was yanked, some art was colored well, some art was colored not so well. And, of course, there's plenty of new color art, some of which is very, very good, and a couple of which are... I don't want to hurt feelings, so I'll leave it at 'I disagree with the art style of the color pieces from one of the artists'. I can hardly draw a stick-figure and have no high ground in the art world to be speaking from, but the very simple style used by that artist is very jarring when the book has some gorgeously-detailed color work in it.
By and large, AE has a very good, very professional feel to it. Malhavoc is obviously a game company with experience under their belt, and it shows in AE's overall high quality. My complaints about the book's style are matters of personal preference rather than objective faults, and other people might love the cover and love the sketchy color art. As the saying goes, your mileage may vary.
Content
Now, to the meat. Arcana Evolved combines the content from Arcana Unearthed, Diamond Throne, and the little AU Player Handbook that came with the DM screen. If you flip to any of about ninety-five percent of the pages in the book, you'll be seeing recycled content. The first two books I've reviewed for your convenience, and the third wasn't of any grand importance, containing nice writeups about the cultures of the races and conversion tips for porting over D&D stuff to AU, so if you've never read it, you aren't missing out on anything vital.
The strengths of Arcana Unearthed still hold. The weaknesses of Diamond Throne also hold. However, Monte has announced his intentions of publishing Diamond Throne setting books with the details that were so desperately lacking in the original Diamond Throne book, so the vagueness of locale information in Arcana Evolved is much more forgivable. It's enough to give players a good idea of the world, while the DMs can get the setting sourcebooks with the details necessary to lift some of the burden off of their shoulders. In the past, there was some lively little debate about whether Diamond Throne's sparse details was as DM-empowering as Monte had enthused; rather than awaken dead conflict, I shall simply state that as an AU DM with full-time employment and part-time studying, I care less about being empowered than I do about not having to come up with every last detail myself while planning for which direction the party may move in. Being able to simply consult a book rather than come up with something off the cuff if the party goes to city B instead of city A is something I value in a setting book. So, time-hungry DMs like me can get the upcoming setting books, while the more empowerment-hungry DMs may continue to fill in the blanks themselves. Sounds fair.
What's the new stuff?
...I hear you asking. Well, from the front of the book backwards, we start with 'evolved levels' for the races. AU had the great idea of racial levels, little three-level blocks that improved upon the base race in unique ways. AE takes that idea one step further with a second block of levels for all races, including the ones that don't have racial levels. They continue the trend of the racial levels, providing a nice bit of kick if you want to really play your chosen race to the hilt and play up their advantages to the fullest extent. Of course, the cost of that is the sacrifice of higher-level class abilities, and in some cases that is a mighty sacrifice indeed. It would behoove one to look very closely at their chosen class's abilities at and beyond 20th level and decide whether it's worth it before embarking towards evolved levels. Also, people taking evolved levels suffer a penalty on social situations, as they start to look a little freakish, so some people may not want to take the evolved levels for roleplaying reasons.
Next up are the Dracha, the new race in the book. They're dragon-people. "Wait. What?" is the immediate response that statement got from about all of my friends. AU already has dragon-people in the Mojh, why on earth would they stick in a second batch? Well, these are different dragon-people, more oriented to kicking ass while the Mojh are more the bookish, nerdly sort. The Dracha have wings and can glide by default, with their racial and evolved levels going towards improving their flight ability and giving them a breath weapon. I'll touch more on them in the setting stuff later on.
The addition of the Dracha fosters a change in the Mojh, with the interlopers having stolen the Mojh's breath weapon ability right out from under them, along with a point of natural AC. In exchange, the Mojh racial levels now provide new spell-like abilities, and two of the three racial levels count as caster levels. Full caster levels, as in 'gives access to more spells', as opposed to the 'your caster level rises, but you don't get new spells' from AU. The other spellcaster-heavy races get a similar benefit for their racial levels, making it much less ruinous to take levels in Mojh or Verrik if you want to be a Magister; no more losing out on precious 9th-level spell slots. Of course, some people weren't playing spellcaster Mojh and will be perhaps a touch upset about these changes messing with their characters. It's not a difficult thing to house-rule that they keep the original Mojh stats, though, so I don't foresee any real firestorms about it.
Moving on along, we reach the class section. Right up front, here's the kicker: Classes now progress up to 25th level instead of capping at 20th. And whooo boy, those five extra levels pack in some ungodly power. I personally rather hated the Epic Level Handbook; the 'um, okay, so now you'll get a feat every X levels, your attack bonus rises every Y levels, have fun!' struck me as being terribly boring. Yay, a new feat and a +1 on a class ability, I'm running with the big dogs now. AE, on the other hand, did a bang-up job of making the post-20 levels truly drool-inspiring with lots of unique and fun abilities. To work with the new scale, the major spellcasters get 10th level spells, and the minor spellcasters get 8th level spells. And because I'm a nice guy, here's a quick rundown of what each class gets for goodies now:
Akashic: The ultimate Jack-of-all-trades gains mind-reading powers that provide some heavy advantages in or out of combat as free actions. Their spellcasting ability improves, and their ultimate power is to be able to choose another class's special ability once per day, with the ability lasting for the entire day.
Champion: There are two new champion flavors, Justice and Knowledge, and all champions now can summon temporary minions to fight for them, summon very powerful weapons and shields, and all carry very formidable ultimate powers that hinge on their devotions.
Greenbond: On top of gaining access to the all-crushing 10th-level spells, Greenbonds eventually become immune to crits and enjoy a very close relationship to spirits, as opposed to the somewhat-tricky relationship at lower levels. However, there's a couple of groan-inducing caveats in there, namely that epic-level Greenbonds must turn into treeform to sleep. This can be somewhat problematic depending on one's location. Also, it claims that plantform Greenbonds don't need air. Monte? Plants breathe too. But that aside, epic-level Greenbonds are powerful and fun.
Mageblade: They seemed to be a little bit at a loss about what to give Mageblades, as evinced by getting a lot of bonus feats in their epic levels. They get access to 8th-level spells, though, and a couple of very, very powerful attacks with their Athames, so I doubt many players will be complaining about their lot.
Magister: Epic-level Magisters become spellcasting machines, as one might expect. Their ability to use intelligence in place of strength improves, and they receive a choice of some very potent abilities, but primarily their power is in their spells. No big shock.
Oathsworn: Bad news: They lost their flurry of blows power and a little bit of their AC bonus. Good news: They gained access to combat rites, which more than make up for those losses. Oathsworn are now not only more interesting in principle than monks, but far more fun to play with a whole host of new combat options. RIP monks, you won't be missed. (The explanation for combat rites is forthcoming.)
Runethane: Runethanes now get a free template that forces someone to use intelligence in place of the usual stat for their saving throw, but at the cost of taking longer to cast, just like a sorcerer using metamagic. The price for making a permanent rune doubled, conjuration runes are now no good for summoning multiple critters, the hour time limit on making runes is still inadequately clear, but epic-levels get to make multiple ultimate runes, and the level of spell they can emulate rises to 8th. Unfortunately absent is even one new rune.
Totem Warrior: Beware killing a 25th level Totem Warrior; they'll instantly return to life, reincarnated as their totem animal. They also receive a pretty hardcore totem ability at 24th level, and a handful of bonus feats for good measure.
Unfettered: On top of Improved Evasion appearing at 19th level, epic-level Unfettered become whirling parry machines, eventually applying their parry bonus to all attacks and spells coming at them instead of just from a single source. An intelligent Unfettered becomes a nigh-untouchable machine of sneak-attacking death. A stupid Unfettered, well, they miss out pretty heavily on the great new parry powers, but there is a ray of hope, because certain weapons now boost their weilder's parrying ability. So nobody needs to worry about their Unfettered being stuck forever with a useless class ability just because they're a little slow.
Warmain: The walking siege engines of the Arcana Unearthed world remain mostly-unchanged as far as class abilities go, except now they have access to combat rites. Do not taunt the Warmain.
Witch: Sorry Witch-lovers, there's no new flavor of Witch in AE. However, chin up, because all Witches now have a new witchery manifestation that they can choose from. On the odd side, Monte has persisted in decreeing that it takes a standard action to dismiss a Witch's blade manifestation, when they can simply let go of the thing and have it vanish as a free action. Why any Witch would waste time in dismissing their blades is beyond me.
annnnd we have one new core class!
Ritual Warrior: Remember when I mentioned combat rituals? Well, this class makes heavy use of them, they're its primary ability. What are combat rites? They're free-action abilities, like little one-round spells that make the user move faster, crit easier, attack more people, and so on. Think of them as the ability to pick and choose combat feats to use at will, on the fly, a limited number of times per day. You can only use one per round, also, so no burning out a whole day's allotment of rites to blow through a big combat in one round. However, when used cunningly, those rites can make a character into a very, very dangerous combatant.
Skills
Not much new on this front, though some 3.5 revisions have seeped into AE, namely the removal of the useless Intuit Direction skill and the renaming of Wilderness Survival to Survival.
Feats
Mostly in the same boat as AU feats, with a few changes. Some feats now stack with themselves to provide greater benefit when taken multiple times. There's a couple of new feats, too, some new templates for the spellcasters and a feat that gives access to combat rites.
Equipment
The big changes on the equipment front are the addition of the goods from Diamond Throne, and the addition of the parry bonus to weapon stats. Everything else is largely unmolested. Overall the illustrations in the equipment chapter have improved, but the weapon drawings no longer have labels of the weapon's name next to them, instead having a bizarre code, such as GG or RK, that doesn't seem to conform to any pattern discernible by man. Why they did that is anyone's guess.
Playing the Game
I didn't notice any changes in this section during my browsing, but I notice that AE still says that standing up from prone doesn't provoke an AoO, which is just silly, that's a 3.5 change that I entirely agreed with. If nothing else, they should at least make someone take a Tumble check to stand up quickly and not provoke AoOs.
Magic
I have two problems with this chapter. One, they stuck things like spellcasting and spell templates in front, and magic items in the back. The spell section is in the next chapter. So instead of having spellcasting rules nestled up against the spell list, where it's easy to find, you need to flip back across all the magic items to get from the spell list to the spell rules, and vice-versa. [Disclaimer: rant]Two, the Programmed Spell template was subjected to a senseless change, now requiring a 500gp per spell level gem to use. The template I'd been encouraging the casters in my game to take in the hopes of inspiring them to rig up clever traps is now utterly useless, there's no way they could cough up that sort of money. I can see where there is the potential for munchkinism in that template, but I strongly disagree with the change for the same reason I disagreed with the munchkin-cutting measures D&D 3.5 took: It's the DMs place and authority to stop players from exploiting the rules. If one of my players had attempted to abuse the template, the mighty hammer of Me would come down on their heads in an instant. I don't need Monte to screw a very good and creativity-inspiring feat to save me from my players, I can handle them myself, thank you very much. Where's the DM empowerment now, hmm? You can empower me by not giving me details for a campaign setting, but you need to hold my hand by hosing up a fun gimmick? Needless to say, that change is preemptively house-ruled back to the original state in my game, but, like the 3.5 changes, it puts a bitter taste in my mouth that I have to be house-ruling the 'new and improved' stuff when the old stuff worked just great.[/rant] Anyways.
Spells
Tenth level spells, baby! Okay, now I know you'll all be checking this too, so I'll break it to you gently: Invoke Apocalypse doesn't have a heightened form, instead it was raised to a 10th level spell. Not that I ever actually expect to see someone trying to cast that monster of a fireball, but morbid fascination lead me to hope that it had been made even more insane with a heightened 10th level version. Nope. Ah, well. There are new spells across the whole list, not just the 10th level ones, but I'm sure that most players will immediately start looking up the shiny new epic spells. One nice thing, there are now 'racial template' feats that give access to spells, just like elemental templates. Dragons, for example, are considered specialists in defensive spells, and taking the Dragon Mage feat gives a simple spellcaster access to complex spells with the Dragon descriptor. This allows a whole new variety of spell mixes depending on what paths a character chooses, and anything that allows for wider ranges of options is good in my book.
This chapter also holds the combat rites, which I covered back in the class section.
Diamond Throne
This is essentially the setting section from the old Diamond Throne book, word for word. There have been some changes, however, to reflect the 'recent history' of the dragons coming back, their Dracha servants in tow. They weren't very happy to find the giants sitting there, and the giants weren't very happy to see the dragons coming back to set up shop, conveniently timed after the Dramojh had been killed off for them by the giants. This has lead to some tension, which I will sum up for you:
Dragons: Hey, look, it's giants. Uh, guys, we appreciate your cleaning up our mess and all, but you promised, like, a million years ago never to come here, so how 'bout you get back in your sissy boats and go home?
Giants: How 'bout no? We didn't see you lending a hand while your demon kids were enslaving everything, we kicked 'em back home to mommy and saved everyone, so this's our place now. You snooze, you lose. Jerks.
Some tension isn't a bad thing for the setting; a couple of my players complained that the setting was too utopian for their tastes, with all of the races basically getting along. With the exception of the monsters, of course. Now there's some hostility and the threat of immense violence thrown into the mix, and it's morally-ambiguous hostility with no clear-cut evil Sauron figure. I approve, think it has great potential to go far.
Prestige Classes
The bulk of these are straight from Diamond Throne, but there are some new ones:
Dragon Kith: Followers of the newly-returned dragons, the prestige class gives access to draconic-flavored powers. Just don't expect to be popular in giant-controlled areas.
Esoteric Mage: A five-level class that gives four shots of the Exotic Spell or Unique Spell feat, and a bonus to resisting spells. A nice little class for the dedicated spellcaster.
Knight of the Axe: An organization mentioned in the Diamond Throne book, these knights are essentially good people who want to defend the weak, but are opposed to being ruled by another race, making them an odd but flavorful combination of champion and outlaw due to having to hide from the giants and dragons for their unpopular political leanings.
Nightwalker: Criminals, thieves, assassins, this class has a rogue's skill list, sneak attack progression, and some assassination-friendly abilities.
Rune Lord: Not a new prestige class, but it bears mentioning that a Runethane would have to be insane to take this class; they'd give up far, far more power by losing the epic-level Runethane toys than they'd gain by getting the Rune Lord abilities. I could see some odd multiclassing combinations where this class would work well, and it's still decent for Runechildren, but it needs some revamping to provide any benefit to your run of the mill Runethane.
Creatures
Straight from Diamond Throne, but with the addition of rules for Dragons and a template for evolved creatures.
Overall
I'm a little torn on what to say about Arcana Evolved. If you're a big AU fan, buy it. If you're not a big AU fan and already own AU, save your money. You can download a free PDF with the rules tweaks (but not the new content like the Dracha, Ritual Warrior, etc.) here. Fifty bucks is a big chunk of change to put down, especially if you already own AU and DT. If you don't own AU or DT, buy it. It's expensive, but it's loaded with good things and you'll see a good amount of use from it.
I feel that it's a little disingenuous of Monte to refer to AE as a director's cut. It contains a lot of new mechanics, rule changes, setting changes, and new content. RPGs aren't movies, and changes of that magnitude essentially demand a purchase of the updated material. I'm betting that most AU groups will feel obligated to purchase at least one copy to get at the new stuff, it's not as take it or leave it as 'director's cut' implies. On the other hand, the changes made aren't as sweeping as the 3E to 3.5 changes, you don't need to throw out all of your old sourcebooks and buy a new set. People calling AE a whole new edition of AU are exaggerating. Of course, Diamond Throne aside, AU only has two sourcebooks, so being able to keep them around doesn't make for much of a difference in the long run.
I have some gripes with AE, but all in all I'm happy with it and don't regret the purchase, and given that I'm saying that after spending fifty bucks to essentially buy my AU books a second time, it should be a pretty strong endorsement of the value of the new content.
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