The Player’s Handbook II is all about options. Weighing in at the larger page format of 224 pages for a modest increase of $5.00, this book easily outclasses the standardized 160 page book format that WoTC seems to favor these days.

Interior layout is similar to other core WoTC books. Two-column format for most of the book that switches over to three column format when dealing with the new spells. Sidebars are separated from the main text by brown lines and large headers. The color of the header matches that used throughout the text for standard headings so that’s not as useful as it could be.

Interior artist is well done and includes fan favorites like Ron Spencer, Steve Prescott and Lucio Parillo among others. The cover, an homage to one of the covers of 1st edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, is by Dan Scott. I was surprised that with a ‘core’ supplement that we didn’t see some other fan favorites like Wayne Reynolds, William O’Connor or Wayne England. Art ranges from full page spreads to illustrating spells to illustrating some of the optional rules in the game.

Let’s look at the back cover and see how the interior handles the promises.

* New class features for all of your favorite classes

Well that’s going to be more true for some than others. For example, I’m a big fan of psionic based classes and well, they get no love here. Might be because the Complete Psionic just came out. There are also no classes of the Oriental Nature like the wu-jen or spirit shaman. Classes covered include the following; barbarian, bard, cleric, druid, favored soul, fighter, hexblade, marshal, monk, paladin, ranger, rogue, scout, sorcerer, swashbuckler, warlock, warmage, and wizard.

The new class features are similar in concept to those first introduced in Unearthed Arcana. Take an existing class feature and swap it out for another. Sometimes this works better than other times.

For example, the ranger can forsake gaining an animal companion and in exchange gain distracting attack. If the ranger hits an enemy, either with melee or ranged attacks, “that enemy is considered flanked by you for the purpose of adjudicating your allies’ attacks.” Useful when the ranger isn’t actually in melee for his allies but as an ability for the class itself… well that’s not too impressive, especially if you’re playing the role of the scout where you won’t have allies immediately by you.

Some of the classes they did choose were also a little puzzling. The Miniature’s Handbook has to be one of the most pilfered books in the WoTC line up but some of the core classes like the Marshal and Healer haven’t received any support. In this book, the Marshal can sacrifice his grant move action ability and give his allies an adrenaline boost that provides bonus hit points equal to the marshal’s level.

* A rebuilding system that allows you to update existing characters.

Now before I even looked at this book, I heard many complaints about this. Usually by Game Masters who feel that the game is complicated enough and that it doesn’t need any more complications. To a point, I agree with them, but I’m always curious to see how something like this can be done.

There are a few suggestions. One of them is working with the GM so that things that you’ve never used before, either through poor feat selection or through not understanding what the campaign would focus on, can be swapped out. Sort of the no harm no foul rule under the area of ‘retraining’. GMs who feel annoyed at this can either ignore it (as they can all rules) or use the training rules where the characters have to pay for the training. There are other conditions that must be meet and some things that generally can’t be learned during the retraining process.

For those interesting in completely rebuilding their characters, “your PC must complete a significant and challenging quest.” The book includes two examples. These two examples can serve as building tools for GMs who wish to incorporate these elements into their own campaign and to customize them for the level of their group.

Rebuiliding starts off with ability scores. This isn’t a simple swap, but rather a point buy based system where you give up ability score points for building points. It’s also a negative loop so a score is never worth as much as it’s current rank. For example, If the old score goes from 30 to 29, you gain 9 points. If you wanted to buy a score up from 29 to 30, it would cost you 10 points.

Class level rebuilding allows you to swap out up to 1/5th of your character levels (rounded up) from one class to another class. You still have to follow all the standard rules and requirements. For example, you can’t go into a PrC if you don’t meet the base requirements, regardless of how much rebuilding you do.

For race rebuilding, the ideas here can also be used for reincarnation spells or similar effects. It’s pretty simple in that if you become a race that no longer has certain features, you well, lose those features. If you were an elf wizard and became human, you’d lose your proficiency with longsword and longbow for example. If the race was a requirement for a PrC, you also lose all PrC features. This also effects things like racial substitution levels and level adjustment factors. These things should be fairly obvious but are best to have spelt out.

Last covered is template rebuilding. Similar deal in that you have to follow the rules. Any changes that effect your level adjustment still effect it. Any templates that you want to take, you must be eligible to take. Things that well, should be obvious.

*New advancement options and affiliations

Affiliations are similar to guilds or organizations. It’s surprising that WoTC gave this it’s own section as almost all of the Complete Books have numerous organizations and some of those organizations even have Prestige Classes devoted to them.

In this case, affiliations are broken down into two types. We have social affiliations and racial affiliations. Characters gain an affiliation score and this is modified by different things depending on which affiliation the character belongs to.

For example, a character that wishes to belong to the Bloodfist Tribe, a group of half-orcs, must be a half-orc himself. Affiliation score is gained through character level (1/2 the player’s level), belonging to certain classes, barbarians gain +2 while druid’s gain +1, having the track feat, assisting the tribe in major battles, bringing the tribe to a rich land, or bringing the head of an enemy chief to the Bloodfist’s chieftain. In exchange the Bloodfist are known for plundering, raiding, and terrorizing.

As you gain affiliation points in the guild, you gain benefits and duties. At the lowest levels, you have no benefits. As you move up though, you gain things like a bonus to your survival checks, bonuses to influence members of the tribe, bonuses to ability scores, and eventually, even Cold Resistance and a magical weapon.

Each organization includes symbol, background, goals, dreams, enemies, allies, members, type, scale, titles, benefits, and duties. Scale represents different things. For example, in looking at how much capital the group has. Following the Bloodfist, we see that they have 6, which is a city. For looking at how useful they’d be in a situation needing violence, the scale is equal to half the rank for the Bloodfist so they’d have a violence check score of +3. For Espionage or Negotiations, because they don’t have those skills, it’s one fourth of their rank so +1.

The nice thing about these affiliations is that they allow another touch for your character that represent fictional abilities. For example, elves always seem more powerful in their forest. If you’re a member of the Elves of the High Forest and are at the higher end of the scale, you gain a bonus to your spellcasting level while in the High Forest for druid and ranger spells. Things like that make sense and add to the world setting itself.

On the other hand, it’s another source of bonuses for characters that will never be officially incorporated into any adventurers by WoTC or Dungeon magazine so the GMs who actually use this material, will have to keep track of the benefits and keep track of the opposition and insure that they when necessary have access to similar bonuses to keep things even.

* New starting equipment packages.

Uh, pretty much what it states. The new starting equipment packages are actually located with the new character options. These starting equipment packages provide some nice alternatives for those seeking to cut down on 1st level character preparation time.

* New teamwork benefits.

Heroes of Battle and the Dungeon Master’s Guide II introduced teamwork benefits. In short, each player must have some competency in a specific area and then be under the guidance of the person with the best ability in that area. From that point, the characters gain benefits due to their understanding of how each member works in the group. It’s a nice concept and adds another little flavor to the game but it’s also another bonus that the GM will have to keep track of when designing his monsters as player who suddenly don’t have to worry about providing cover to the enemy or being hit by incoming fireballs won’t waste the resources than a normal group would.

For example, Superior Team effect requires all team members to have one skill rank in which the team leader has Skill Focus and 8 ranks of a skill. The team can then attempt to aid another with a DC 5 check instead of a DC 10 check.

Team Melee Tactics requires the team leader to have Combat Expertise and Dodge and each team member to have a bab of +6. The aid another action now grants a bonus on attack rolls of +3 instead of +2.

Little things but when combined with other options, such as affiliations, can quickly add up.

*New Feats and Spells

For me, the feats are one of the things that make this book highly useful. There are several feats that are of use to high-level fighters. Things like Bounding Assault where you can attack twice while using Spring Attack, requiring a +12 bab or Defensive Sweep, requiring a bab +15 that allows you to attack an enemy that does not move that’s adjacent to you.

These feats allow a high level fighter to finally do something outside of power attack or take feats outside of the standard chain and actually do something. Two-weapon fighters may want to take things like two-weapon rend, where if you hit with both your attack you do extra damage while those fighters nearing epic level may want to take weapon supremacy that provides a wide range of bonuses from +4 to resist being disarmed to wielding your weapon against a foe that grapples you to gaining a +5 bonus to any single attack after your first strike to taking 10 with an attack. Truly a powerful feat for fighters.

The good thing is that there are more than just general feats covered. We have ceremony feats that can be used to provide different types of bonuses depending on what the group picks, combat form feats, divine feats, heritage feats, metagmaic feats, and tactical feats. No weapon styles though.

The combat form feats are an interesting take on combat and perhaps a preview of what we’ll see in the Tome of Nine Swords. These feats all have a Wisdom 13 requirement in addition to their other requirements. Combat Focus lets you enter a state of combat focus and gain +2 on Will Saves. The interesting thing is that if you have multiple combat feats, you can keep this combat focus longer and the bonus increases from +2 to +4.

Or Combat Vigor where you gain fast healing 2 while in Combat Focus. If you have three or more feats in this vein, that fast healing becomes 4.

It’s an interesting take on things and would be a good option for those who like some of the ideas from the Book of Iron Might but want something a little different.

The wide mix of feats from different areas insures that almost all characters will find some new options for them in this book.

New spells are summarized by class and level, listed in alphabetical order. For wizards/sorcerers, this is an additional breakdown by class, level, and school type. Classes included here include the core classes, as well as the DMG prestige classes like assassin and blackguard. Two features here are spells that belong to two schools. The bad news thought is that if you’re a specialist banned from one of the schools, you still cant’ take the spell. The other feature is a polymorph subschool. The target retains it’s own alignment, hit points, normal hit dice, and languages he already knows. In all other ways, the target becomes the creature.

How does that play out? Dragonshape is a 9th level wizard spell. It includes the stats that you now have. This includes a chance to armor class, spell resistance, new reach, change in ability scores, and breath weapon, but notes that you’re hit points are normal (save for a +150 boost!) and that you’re languages are as normal. It’s an interesting twist on the standard polymorph spells.

There is a nice mix of spells. This includes spells like Cloud of Knives, which seems to be a nod to the old Melf’s Minute Meteors where you summon forth a cloud of knives and fire them off at the start of your round to the summoning of mighty golems. It’s a nice mix. The only problem being how best to introduce such material. Clerics can always pray for their spells but wizards and sorcerers? Not quite so fortunate.

Strangely enough, the back of the book doesn’t mention the new base classes included in the book. Introduced in chapter one, these classes include the beguiler, dragon shaman, duskblade and knight. These classes have brief sections on background, details on making the class, including ability placement, race and alignment selection, starting godl, and starting age. Each includes a full twenty level progression for class abilities and descriptions of those abilities, as well as ideas on how to play the character, including details on fighting, advancement, religion, and relations with other classes. Each class also includes different starting pacakages including different feat and skills according to the ‘type’ of class selection. For example, a beguiler that wants to be an investigator would go for package #2 while one looking to play up the trickster aspect would go for package #3.

With information on how the classes fit in the world and information on knowledge checks and sample NPCs, the classes provide enough information to quickly integrate them into a world that will accommodate them.

The beguiler is similar to the dread necromancer from Heroes of Horror or the War Mage from the Complete Arcane. It’s a spellcasting class that specializes in a field that gains special abilities in addition to its spell ability.

While they have improved hit dice over standard arcane spellcasters (d6), their bab is still low and they still follow the traditional high Will save. They gain benefits when they catch foes unaware, almost like a rogue. For example, their spell’s DC may be increased or they may be able to overcome spell resistance easier against an unwary enemy. Like the war mage, they also benefit from Advanced Learning where they can overcome some of the limitations of their narrow spell selection.

I’ve heard the dragon shaman best described as a bard that doesn’t have to sing in combat. A medium bab and good hit dice (d10) with two good saves (Fort and Will), the dragon shaman has a draconic aura that provides different benefits depending on the aura. Some have a hard time figuring out how to place the dragon shaman into the campaign but in a standard game where dragons are in force and half-dragons lurk and various evidence of dragon heritage are evident in sorcerers, I don’t see the problem. The Dragon shaman makes a good support class due to it’s auras abilities and a decent secondary fighter due to it’s higher hit point totals and good saving throws.

One nice thing about the dragon shaman is that it’s a class you’d want to take to twentieth level. They gain a breath weapon attack that increases as they rise in level up to 10d6 at 20th level, and draconic weapons at 19th level. More classes need higher-level abilities worth taking the class up to twentieth level.

The dusk blade is a fighter mage core class.; For me, it’s almost too little too late. Arcana Evolved did a solid job with their mage blade. Arcanis’ has a spell blade. I’m sure that there are other sources out there with core classes of fighter mages. This one though has one ability that reminds me of an old supplement. Role Aids had a boxed set known as Blood & Steel. In addition to gruesome critical hits and a wound system that stacked with hit points, it had the warlock. The warlock was a core fighter-mage. One of their best abilities was a cast attack where they channeled a spell through a melee attack.

Yup, the dusk blade has it. That alone was enough for one of my friends to immediately make one in homage to his old warlock character from 2nd edition.

The screw up with the dusk blade is the spell placement. See, this book doesn’t have an index, so you have to rely on the table of contents as well as reading the whole thing a few times. The table of contents notes that the beguiler spell list is one page 11, but doesn’t have a similar entry for the dusk blade. In addition, the section about new spells only includes, yes, new spells for the dusk blade, not the ones from other resources. The spells are there on page 24, but it would’ve been nice to have more clarity about it.

The other problem with the spells is that it’s a limited list. Instead of allowing spells from certain schools or just using the wizard’s list, it has it’s own list. Since they didn’t make heavy use of outside resources, this gives the class a very small selection of spells and the spells for each dusk blade will look very similar.

The good news is that what they lack in spellpower, they make up elsewhere. Good bab, d8 hit dice, good fort and will saves and an armored mage abilities that grows as they gain levels makes this an almost too solid core class.

One class the net is abuzz about is the knight. Not because it gains a d12 hit dice, nor it’s good bab, but because it has a good will save and poor fort and reflex saves. The knight has a code of honor that has actual game effects. For example, they don’t gain a bonus when flanking. They don’t attack flat-footed opponents. They don’t deal lethal damage against helpless foes.

In exchange, they gain improved armor mastery and numerous abilities to prevent foes from ignoring them making them the center of attention. For example, they have vigilant defender at 5th level. Anyone attempting to tumble past them has the DC check increased by the knight’s level. They have shield ally at 6th level where they can take some damage that an adjacent ally suffers.

It’s an interesting class for the player who wants to make sure that he’s the center of attention, but at the same time, the inability to easily deal with things like poison could annoy some players.

Another part not touched on the back ad is building your identity. A chapter that contains some rather simple advice on picking backgrounds and archetypes. I say simple because it doesn’t include anything that would effect the game mechanics. Flavor text for the sake of flavor text seems strange when providing affiliations and teamwork benefits among other bonuses in the same book.

In addition, this is the Player’s Handbook II. This is not Basic Dungeons and Dragons. This is not “Roleplaying 101”. This is not a starter book. When I can pick up things from over ten years ago like the Complete Fighter for 2nd edition and read about the Doomed Champion and Fated Philosophizer archetypes, those in this book seem poorly written in comparisson. It’s like they took the worst part of the Hero Builder’s Handbook and placed it here for those who don’t know what a savage or gladiator might be like. Especially as these descriptions lack any details of what classes, skills, and races might be appropriate. Thumbs down on the whole section.

Despite that section, I think that book is a solid addition to any player’s arsenal. Game Masters who want to incorporate more role playing into their game might want to include things like affiliations to further expand the game past the dungeon. Spellcasters may want new options. Players who’ve recently lost characters may want to try out one of the new core classes.

In short, for a book of options, it does a good job of bringing the “new” to the table.

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