Player's Option: Heroes of the Elemental Chaos: A 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons Rulebook [ハードカバー]

Much like some of the best and most innovative mechanics for 3.5 were released in the edition's latter days, we're in the middle of a golden age of 4e material.

Heroes of the Elemental Chaos is a tough book to nail down. It's a wonderful player supplement with a ton of fluff. I think it's a bit niche for some games, but given all the DM-oriented material that's been released for the Plane Below (in ... um ... The Plane Below, Manual of the Planes, and - to a lesser extent - the Demonomicon) it seems only natural we'd finally get a player version.

One of the main hurdles, in my mind, is that the Elemental Chaos really isn't a Heroic-tier plane. It's Paragon at best, and honestly tilts towards Epic levels. Still, the presentation here makes a good deal of sense... Elemental heroes are, indeed, fairly archetypal.

In my mind, this is a very different book than Heroes of Shadow, Heroes of the Feywild, or really anything since about mid-2010... In many ways, it's a lot more "oldschool 4e" than those offerings. This book has straight-up supplemental material for (at my count) PHB1, PHB2, PHB3, and the Essentials Heroes books. That is, they are not (all) self-contained classes and rely on other, pre-Essentials books for their use. This is great for me - but players who are sticking to Essentials-only should be advised that parts of this book could be useless to them.

The book kicks off with a ton of fluff. Some is inspiring and some not, but it's certainly good to see some call-backs to Dragon content such as the Forgeborn Dwarves and some great information on Primordials. It does a good job of stretching down to the heroic tier, which is welcome. And yes, genasi are mentioned - though not reprinted.

Next up are a bevy of wonderful themes. All told, there are 10 of them, ranging in power from middle-of-the-road to optimizer's-dream. I have a feeling the Ironborn and Elemental Initiate will be new favorites for melee-centric classes everywhere, and Primordial Adepts will fill elemental casters' ranks in the future. Most of them are new-style with a series of Level 1, 5, and 10 features and some optional Utility powers - though one, the Firecrafter, has 3/13/23 and 7/17/27 attack powers instead of some Utility powers. This is a very strong section... There's a bit which may be a little overpowered, but nothing really raised my eyebrows as much as the Fey Beast Tamer in HotF.

Next up are Races... oh wait, no they aren't! After seeing the rather tepid race offerings in HotF, I'm glad we didn't get more fringe elemental races. Genasi are fine!

Classes follow the Themes. And it's here that we find the strongest and weakest parts of the entire book.

Druids haven't gotten quite as bloated as wizards yet (though they're close!), and here they really only get a handful of pages. The first new Sentinel Acolyte feature is here, and it's basically a Dark Sun Elemental Priest.... errrr, I mean a Druid of the Wastes with a pet zephyr elemental. Unlike the Wolf and Bear, this one can fly and has a bigger aura (of concealment), but does less damage on its attacks. There's also a new Primal Aspect for the PHB2 druid, but if you blink, you'll miss it; it's an attack bonus to elemental spells. There are a few pages of druid spells, and that pretty well wraps them up. Getting a new acolyte feature is awesome; while the Sentinel has its problems, I still love to see it getting support.

Next, we have not one but two new monastic traditions for PHB3 Monks! The Desert Wind does a kind of reverse-marking with their Flurries and focuses on fire. Eternal Tide has a reach of 2 for their Flurries and pulls enemies towards them. They are really all about dealing and resisting forced movement, and not so much about damage. A few new At-Wills are provided for all monks (but are clearly inspired by these disciplines), and then a heck of a lot of new Monk powers fill the next 14 pages. Really, the support for monks is pretty remarkably deep. (Apparently this is because much of this material was being designed for a new Monk subclass called the Shugenja which WotC later abandoned. Regardless, monks win out.)

"Where is my simple spellcaster?" some people have been wondering since the Essentials line came out. "We have simple martial classes; what's so special about arcane classes that they all have Daily powers?" Well, here he is. The Elementalist Sorcerer presented next - an arcane striker who operates a lot like an Essentials-style Martial class. They have a main Ranged Basic attack called Elemental Bolt, and then pick Air, Earth, Fire or Water as their focus. This changes their Bolt, informs their other At-Will, and determines their Encounter power. This Encounter power can be used several times per encounter (like a Thief's Backstab) and gets stronger with level. Other than utility powers and some class features, that's really all there is to it. They're an incredibly simple, daily-less class with set encounter powers that looks to deal solid at-will damage akin to a Thief. I spent some time throwing together a Tiefling Fire Elementalist on the Character Builder, and I was very impressed at how deceptively potent the class is with even mild optimization. (Note: Academy Master is a great paragon path for them, with their highly-powerful At-Wills.)

Warlocks are next - and both Hexblades and PHB1 Warlocks get some love. Elemental Pact warlocks get a rather mean pact boon which lets them throw elemental vulnerability onto a target - a heck of a setup for an optimized party smackdown. Elemental pact hexblades get a falchion-like Heavy Blade and get to vary their elemental attacks every round. There's not much here, but what's here looks interesting, at least.

Finally ... sigh. It's the reason I gave the book 4 stars instead of 5. 15 pages of YAFW. Yet Another (Friendly) Wizard. Because Wizards need to get new stuff in every book, you see. This time it's the Sha'ir (of Al-Qadim fame) whose shtick is a potent familiar and the ability to swap out their spells. So it's a lot like the HotF Witch, but a little more interesting. Then there are a lot more Wizard spells, including two new at-wills - one of which (Flame Arrow) sets new standards for uselessness and I predict it will be taken by zero characters, ever. Otherwise, there are some nice 1e callbacks, like Melf's Minute Meteors, Summon Invisible Stalker, and so on. It seems that wizard support has just kind of ballooned over the past year and a half... Mages from HotFL were awesome. I was on-board with the Necromancer and Nethermancer being Wizard builds in HoS instead of new classes. I actually liked Bladesingers from Neverwinter. But between Heroes of the Feywild and this ... it's too much. Enough with the wizard goodies already, folks. Please. Other Controllers need your love, too. If you supported the Monk, why not the Invoker?

Anyway! From there, we hit paragon paths. And ... I love them! There are some targeted ones - like the Elementalist's, Sha'ir's, and Elemental Warlocks' paragon paths. And there are some great ones which relate to themes. I'm a particular fan of the Doomlord, which is the paragon version of the Ironguard. The epic destinies look both decent and pretty flavorful; Emergent Primordial is just rad in a few ways.

We have feats, as we should, and we finally get an upgraded Tome Expertise feat! It's a doozy, too - summoners will be all over it. There are about 5 feats which are more or less duplicates of one another, and seem intended for paragon-tier Elementalists who focus on a single element; they give a strong feat bonus to a specific elemental damage, and give a nice side effect when you take that same elemental damage. A few let characters pick up elemental characteristics, and astonishingly there are even a handful of epic-tier elemental feats. Yay!

There are options for elemental servants which seem ... iffy ... and then the book is rounded off with a great selection of new items and blessings, including a new category of Primordial Shards, all slotless epic-tier Rares that are worthy of their rarity. I personally like the Elemental Gifts; I will get some great mileage out of them for my Dark Sun game, I think.

So all told, it's not quite as innovative as Heroes of the Feywild, and it suffers from yet more wizard bloat, but Heroes of the Elemental Chaos is an outstanding addition to the 4e product line and well worth the purchase even as the edition sunsets in the next year or two.

Given the player focus of this book, I wasn't exactly expecting much in the way of DM elements beyond, perhaps, Hero of the Feywild's interjections. While it doesn't quite have the same charm as the Feywild supplement had, I thoroughly enjoyed what flavor was offered. The comprehensive list of primordials and choice explanations provide me with quite a lot in a small package: a headless titan wandering the chaos seeking to reunite with his severed head, which is entombed by the gods and jibbers all sorts of blasphemy and primeval magic for anyone to steal. Or how about the progenitor hydra who was utterly smashed to smithereens by Kord and whose entrails have slowly been collected by his remaining followers over the last age and fed in hopes of him regenerating. Great stuff, in my opinion. I also very much like the elemental companion rules in here, which have a symbiotic bend, actually housing inside a PC and offering two kinds of benefits. That has a TON of potential for reflavoring.

Character option wise, I was most interested in the Elementalist, which gives us an Essentials sorcerer; the elemental Monk options, which give us Benders ala Avatar (and a creative player could easily take it the rest of the way through his descriptions); and the Sha'ir, which I still wish was another sorcerer build, but like it or not Wizards are the go to for all magic, and their wealth of spells is the only reason I'm not completely sore over the topic. They use elemental familiars to great affect. There's also options for barbarians, warlocks, druids, but nothing really leaped out at me as brilliant. I thought the magic items and boons were pretty nice, as well.

Overall, I think this book is good in so far as being a player supplement, but many of us want more information on the Primordials. This book would have been great as a year 2 supplement in 4e's sadly shrinking life, not a year 3.5 product. I also believe this book should have been released in tandem with something juicy for DMs. Plane Below was nice, but more of an overview of everything in the maelstrom. Give me the specifics of the primordials and their prisons, cults and loyal servants, plots and secrets, give me all sorts of material I can work with and thus better integrate the player material. Perhaps I'll do just that in a third party product, or rather a Fourth Party.

I give Heroes of the Elemental Chaos a 4/5, because I do see plenty of material I and others will be using, I am a sucker for the primordials to begin with, and I find that 4e is taking far too many hard knocks for being such a great system. I also enjoy the departure from the 'classic' cosmology of past editions, and this book is a huge nod to that. And who can hate on the amazing cover? I'm not normally a Reynolds fan, but Cryonax never looked better.

Let us start wuith the good: The book adds some interesting options to the game. The themes are well done from both a flavor and a mechanical standpoint. The Sorcerer, arguably the squishiest character class in the game, got a nice boost with The Elamentalist build/subclass. The new druid option is really evocative of the feel of the book.

Now the bad: OIt's definitely a post-Essentials offering. While that's not bad from the class side of the ledger, the race side gets short shrift. There's really no Genasi support, the race tied to the Elemental Chaos. The art, etc. really points towards the generic, Tolkein Human/Dwarf/Elf/Half Elf/Halfling tropes and races. It really missed a golden opportunity to flesh out one of the great races in the game.