D&D NExt final playtest review: More Classes

Mages

Wizards and Sorcerers seem to be no more, now there are only Mages. They are the sole primary arcane spellcaster in the playtest packet. They are, as usual, the simplest of the classes in terms of unique mechanics. Their big power is obviously their spellcasting.

Because of that I finally began to read the spell mechanics in a bit more detail. I'll still wait until I reach the Spells section for a full evaluation but there are some interesting differences. First, high level spells seem like they're going to be extremely valuable. Any spells above 6th level seem to be limited to once per day. 5th level and lower spells seem to be more common and it's relatively easy for a wizard to regain them between encounters. It's an interesting method of "balancing" wizards, limiting them to a small number of really powerful effects but making their low level effects much more accessible. The same seems to go for the cleric and the druid, although they don't get as many low-level effects.

Wizards use a school specialty as a "path", much like Pathfinder. They seem like pretty useful, and distinct specializations but some of them also seem a little bit too focused. For instance at 20th level the evoker gets to basically cast fireball and lightning bolt at will. Obviously those two spells are classics but that doesn't mean every evoker necessarily wants to make those his go-to spells. There's lots of fun ways to blow things up and it's nice to be able to define your own style. Overall I like the wizard but I'll have to see the spells to find out more. Seems like some effort is being made to limit their ability to dominate the game.

Monks

I'm currently playing a monk, so I'm definitely interested in seeing what's going on in the new edition. Monks have always had the problem that they spend a lot of their "powers" on being able to do what everyone else can do with a bit of easily available equipment. Sure, they're awesome when everyone else is forced to give up their equipment but that's perhaps 5% of the time in a normal game, at best.

D&D Next Monks seem like they're a bit more impressive than 3e's. The biggest problem they had originally was although they got lots of attacks their low BAB and general multiple-ability-score reliance meant that many of them would miss. In Next it seems like most people will have pretty similar levels of accuracy, using their proficiency bonus, and Supreme Flurry means that they can turn Advantage on for all of their attacks in a round.

The monk traditions are interesting but they don't seem to be that impressive. They're not bad but they certainly don't match the power of many other class paths. The elemental path is particularly underwhelming since many of them just give you some variety of elemental attack which just doesn't compare very well to spellcasters. The Way of the Open Hand basically duplicates most of the abilities of the standard 3e monk, done better but still unlikely to be amazing. All told, probably going to be better than 3e but it still doesn't compare well to most other combat classes, especially when you consider just how impressive the fighter can be.

Paladin

Looking over the Paladin entry its good to see that they got rid of a lot of the more useless or problematic class abilities. There are no mounts, and the paladin can sense demons and celestials (and similar phenomena) but not evil in general. Divine Smite and Lay On Hands is also extremely potent compared to the standard. Paladin spellcasting has also been beefed up. Since they are no longer limited solely to Lawful Good they are essentially a highly militant priest variant. Likewise Paladin auras are significantly more potent.

Well, I say they're not limited to good...but honestly I don't see how their theme fits anything but. They heal, do extra damage to undead/fiends and protect their allies. It seems like standard paladin through and through, especially the Oath of Devotion (which is the only one that they have). Of course, the thing about paladins is they're awesome in the right game but much less so in the wrong one. Fortunately it seems like the paladins are much more "generally" effective than before, their smite isn't limited to evil and many of their most impressive powers are defensive or support-based.

Ranger

The ranger was always kind of odd. Even more than the bard they never quite seemed to know what they were doing. They were generalists who were also oddly specific with their nature-focus and their two-weapon fighting. 3e expanded that to archery, but it was still a pretty bizarre requirement.

Next rangers do not have a hard-coded fighting style anymore (although like fighters and paladins they can select a general style). Instead they focus more on terrain advantages, stealth, spellcasting (which like paladins is improved over 3e). Their favored enemies are also more significant, becoming their class "path". They're also more generalized, rather than picking specific species or categories they are focused on broad categories such as hordes of weak monsters or killing big, giant monsters. These broader definitions make favored enemy more applicable.

Overall, rangers are decent. I'm not amazed or anything but there's definitely work that has been done to make them more useful rather than cripplingly specialized.

Rogue

Finally we have rogues. These guys are all about success on rolls. They minimize bad rolls, have plenty of bonuses and lots of defensive abilities. Honestly though, they haven't changed much. They've still got their sneak attack. They still have plenty of skills and bonuses to skills and they're going to be good sneak-attackers and skill monkeys

So, not much to say about them, but they're still pretty good.


Overall I like all the classes, even the ones that aren't too different from the original. The druid is the exception and the monk still seems fairly underwhelming. But overall still good. I'll be interested in seeing if there are any more coming for the core books like Sorcerers.

D&D Next final Playtest review. Part 2, Classes

So, Classes are of course the meat of D&D, so this may get long. I'll go in order and give my evaluations as we go down the list.

Barbarian
So, we'll start with Mister Angry. Looking over the class abilities I notice a few things. First, it seems like they are taking every effort to simplify things, cutting down abilities to their bare essential functions compared to 3e. For example, barbarian rage no longer gives a bonus to strength, con and will saves and a penalty to AC. Instead you get advantage on any Strength rolls and temporary hp equal to twice your level and a bonus to damage based on level (starting a +2).
   In addition to simplicity it seems like the philosophy behind the racial design is still holding true: the character abilities seem like they're meant to be something that are functional at any character level. Many are designed to give your character Advantage (I still really like that mechanic) and function without needing to be "scaled up" or recalculated at higher levels. I definitely approve of this change.
  I'm also seeing what looks like some pretty clear inspiration from Pathfinder. Classes seem like they'll have specific "paths" which function a lot like class-specific "feat trees" or Pathfinder's Archetypes. The barbarian for instance gets the "Berserker" path which focuses on ignoring negative effects and inflicting more damage and the "Totem Warrior" path which focuses on quasi-magical bonuses. Presumably they'll be more available in the final product and I'm certain there will be plenty of expansion books which will include lots and lots of extra paths.
  Overall barbarians seem like solid bad-asses. We'll see how they compare to the other classes.


Bard

Like always the Bard is focused on doing a little bit of everything. Still a bit roguey, a bit fighty, a bit casty and of course musical. One of the first things I notice is their spell list is much smaller. At 20th level they know 11 spells. Compared to 30ish at 20 for 4th edition.
   The bard's performances seem serviceable. it's a little odd that they've replaced a flat bonus to damage with a dice-based bonus. But rolling extra dice can always be fun and I can see it easier to just hand out an extra d4 to everyone rather than trying to keep track of an extra bonus among all the others. Inspire competence might be really powerful or fairly meh, depending on whether the bard's proficiency bonus would stack with the other characters.
   I also notice that spell DCs are quite low, unless the bard is holding an instrument to give themselves their proficiency bonus to the DC. Which seems to indicate singing/chanting/speech-based bards aren't really viable anymore. It could also really hamper combat bards since I don't know that there are many instruments that are "one-handed" so to speak. Expect to see a lot of bards with a sword in one hand and a maraca in the other.
  One of their early abilities is Expertise which grants a whopping +5 bonus to 4 of the Bard's skills and/or instruments. This is impressive but it brings up some questions...a bard's tool proficiencies are all musical instrument and skipping a bit to the equipment section I can see that if you're proficient with an instrument you add your proficiency bonus to ability checks with it. If you're proficient with a skill you add your proficiency bonus to your ability check...so what does that mean if you're proficient with both a skill and a tool...double dipping? Do you get both? Then what about expertise with both a tool and a relevant skill. Does a bard with the performance skill, a proficient instrument and expertise in both get twice his proficiency bonus and a +10 bonus on top? If not then why bother with proficiency in an instrument at all when you can just be proficient in Perform? Of course, not that a massive Perform skill is going to ruin any games...it's just a curious situation.
   Despite their small spell selection bards end up with an impressive set of magical abilities...at 11th they automatically Quicken their spells and they are apparently masters of dispelling magic for some reason at 16th level. They actually remind me a bit of the Pathfinder's Magus.
   The bard is one of the classes that never seemed to have enough going for it to appeal to me, but I could see myself playing one of these guys. Definitely good.

Cleric

reading through the cleric description at first they seem pretty unchanged...then I notice at 10th level they have a % chance equal to their level to successfully call upon divine intervention. Well, that's a hell of a thing.
   Although the cleric is still primarily a spellcaster I do notice that their domain powers are now, very, very significant parts of their class as opposed to just a source of bonus spells. A "life" domain cleric is very different from a "War" domain for instance. I quite like this. It's not quite the sort of miracle-casting I've talked about in the past but it's much closer. For example, Life gets quite a few significant healing feats (channeling divinity to heal level x5 hp divided as you choose among multiple allies) or at 20th maximizing all healing rolls. War on the other hand gets extra attacks a round, or channel to add +10 to an attack roll. At 20th you halve all bashing/slashing/piercing damage against you. Daaaamn.
  At this point I'm just hoping the clerics don't come out too powerful. I haven't gotten a chance to look at spellcasting yet but the domain abilities alone make a War cleric pretty damn powerful...adding spellcasting on top of that is going to make them a pretty amazing fighter.
  Speaking of spells they seem to be doing something new with spell preparation. You prepare a list of spells for yourself at the start of the day and then cast freely from the list...some kind of hybrid between spontaneous casting and memorization.

Druid

Next we have druids. Frankly I've always found druids a little odd. They never quite seemed to fit into the D&D theme and they always seemed to have the least reason to take up the "adventuring" lifestyle. Shapeshifting has also always been one of "those" abilities. The kind where you can pick two out of three: simple, useful, or balanced. It'll be interesting to see how they turn out.
   They seem to be handling shapechanging by giving the druid a set of generic "shapes" they can assume as they rise in level. So for instance, at 2nd levels druids can assume the shape of the Hound, which seems to include all dogs, wolves, coyotes, dingos, foxes, etc. While in most shapes you keep your own ability score, but some include modifications or replacements of ability scores.
   Frankly, looking over the shapes most of them seem...pretty lame. The Hound for instance has your exact same attributes, an attack that inflicts 1d8 damage and you lose any armor while in the shape. The one advantage is a high speed and good senses. I guess it's helpful if you want to run away or find someone hidden but otherwise there's not much reason not to stay human. At 5th level you can change to the Steed (basically any Large, herbivorous quadruped). The steed has the same high land speed and low-light vision. They also get a +2 to Strength, but their only attack is a 1d6 + strength slam/gore attack. I guess it's a slight improvement on the Hound but only just barely. Then you can turn into a Strength 5 Fish at 7th level (a creature with zero offensive or defensive capability) or a Rodent which only boasts a Stealth bonus, or a bird which can fly.
   I know the druid was often criticized as overpowered in 3e, but honestly if this is the shapechanging options then I don't know why anyone would ever want to be a druid. The "baseline" druid has a very limited selection of shapes and frankly they're only useful in very specific situations (none of which are combat). Now, druids do have paths (or circles) one of which is the circle of the Moon which gives access to "battle" forms like Bear or Cat and finally the Behemoth shape. Now, that's cool...however that means that you're only going to be changing to those shapes if you pick that one, specific Circle. At that point why even give baseline druids shapechanging at all? The limitations are also fairly arbitrary. A 7th level druid can become a dog, bird, fish, rat or horse...but can't become a housecat, snake, monkey, or a turtle.
  Other than that the druid seems to be a slightly more martially focused cleric. The Circle effectively replaces their Domain and their other abilities aren't worth much mention. Frankly this version of the druid is pretty disappointing and I'd probably just write them out of the system at this point. But at least no one needs to worry about them being overpowered anymore.


Fighter

When I last reviewed the playtest material way back when I found the Fighter the most intriguing. They seemed to focus on giving the fighter lots of choices as well as their own, fairly unique mechanic.
    The "meat" of the fighter seems to be in their "Paths" however lets look at how they stack up to the other classes in some more general ways first. Most other martial classes like the Barbarian or Druid get an extra attack per round at some point. The fighter gets that at 5th level, like the barbarian, however they continue to get more. A third attack at 11th, and a 4th at 20th. Keep in mind these aren't 3e's iterative attacks...all of these use your full attack bonus. So it's pretty clear that a high level fighter is going to have some significant advantages...the barbarian may hit harder but the fighter is going to be unloading a ton more attacks as time goes on. The fighter is also looking very tough to kill. They can give themselves temporary hp, and at 9th level they can make a DC 15 con save to avoid being reduced below zero hp from any attack that wouldn't kill them outright. And at 13th level they have Advantage on all saving throws.
   Clearly fighters have the "tank" role down, their offensive abilities (aside from a buttload of attacks) are handled mostly through their Paths. Two paths are presented. The first is the Path of the Weaponmaster which is where the "Expertise Dice" from the original playtest document went. You get a handful of dice (d6's at first, increasing to d10's at higher levels) and on a successful attack you can spend one to add an effect to the attack if you roll well enough on the dice. If you fail then you just get to add the dice result to damage. I really like that mechanic, it doesn't require you to worry about declaring the action before attacking or "wasting" attempts, and even if you fail to pull off your special move you have a nice damage bonus to compensate.
  The one issue is it seems like it's kind of awkward to have this unique and distinct mechanic used purely for just one of the fighter's paths. In comparison the Path of the Warrior is mostly about increasing the frequency and deadliness of your critical hits. No dice, no combat options. It's a little lopsided, but honestly I still find the fighters to be impressive battle-masters and so far they seem like they'll hold their own against other classes...in fact in comparison the Barbarian seems fairly unimpressive...hopefully the other martial classes will manage to make a decent showing compared to these gods of war.

 Well, that's enough for now. I'll go through the other classes soon.

D&D Next Final Playtest review

Been a good long while since I posted anything huh? Been having some family medical issues which haven't really given me time to do much outside of work and a very small amount of relaxation. I'm still planning on finishing CARDS, the Wizard has been sitting half-finished in my drafts for weeks. Speaking of wizards though...

The thing that brings me here is the final D&D playtest packet which has just been released. Now, I've mostly been too busy to investigate the playtesting material other than the thorough examination I gave a bit over a year ago.

So, I actually have very little idea of what the evolving game has looked like, but since this is the last playtest packet I figure this will be a good time for me to look it over so I can see the changes that have been wrought since I first flipped through it and share my opinions. I'll try and make things a bit more concise than last time.

I'll be going in no particular order here as I read through the packet...


Races
So, first we have the races. I mentioned last time that I liked that they seemed to be avoiding the "cultural baggage" of the different races (namely things like racial hatred/training bonuses, etc) and fortunately that still seems to be the case. There's still racial weapon proficiencies but that's about it. They're also making sure that the racial abilities are almost universally useful at any level. Halfling luck is an excellent example of this...rather than just a flat, +1 bonus to saves (something that will be less and less important as time goes on) halflings get to reroll any time they roll a 1 on a d20. Now, is that mathematically superior to the +1 bonus? Maybe, maybe not. But it is something that remains consistent throughout the halfling's career and it will be just as useful at level 20 as it was at level 1. Other racial abilities grant things like Advantage or resistances which will likewise be universally helpful, no matter what your level is.
  I do see the Dragonborn are sticking around from 4th edition. I've always been conflicted about them. On the one hand I find the idea of them as a "core" race somewhat silly and they always feel more tacked on. However, on the other I know from experience that half-dragons/dragon-kin/etc are very popular and frankly there are probably more people who've played a dragon-something than have played a gnome...even before 4e. 
  Overall, the races seem good. I like the fact that the difference between a dwarf and an elf is still significant no matter what level you are. The one exception seems to be humans sadly. Their racial ability is a +1 to all 6 ability scores rather than a +1 to two like most other races. One the one hand it's neat that humans are no longer just the baseline, but are actively superior in their ability scores to most races. On the other I've peeked at the class descriptions and...well ability score modifiers get handed out a lot. A human who starts the game with good rolls may actually be in a situation where they hit the maximum value (which seems to be 20) on all their relevant ability scores. Time will tell but human exceptionalism may not be as great as it seems. Oh, they also have half-elves in this one...sadly not too impressive. They're basically elves with a different ability bonus set up and less abilities. Half-orcs are much more impressive. 


Backgrounds

So, when I first reviewed the playtest packet I was pretty rough on backgrounds. I really liked what Wizards was going for, but I felt like it didn't live up to it's potential. I've had a chance to read over some of the refurbished background rules and I've got to say that I see improvement...but the Backgrounds are still somewhat unsatisfying. 

Let's start with the good. They've ditched things like the commoner's house. And a lot more of the backgrounds are focused on what you know and how you interact with others as opposed to the more generalized and harder to use "reputation". This means that for the most part your background can't be taken away or rendered irrelevant by your own actions. 

However, it quickly becomes clear that they could not come up with many new background ideas. For example, a good third of the backgrounds basically boil down to "you can get food and shelter from X" where "X" relates to your background. Some come with a few vaguely useful other aspects or limitations...but that's a lot of sameyness and frankly a pretty minor benefit. The thug notably is almost completely unchanged. 

But the changes have at least upgraded backgrounds to "acceptable" levels. I doubt most of them will be more than window dressing for your character (and a source of skills of course), but for the most part you at least can't claim it's not fairly even across the board. 

Specialities...I mean Feats

So, originally these were Themes then they became Specialties, only to be replaced with entirely optional Feats. You see as you level up you get the option to take 2 ability score points or take a feat. An interesting choice and it becomes more interesting as a flip through the Feats. Unlike previous editions these Feats are big deals. They're big, character-defining bonuses. For example, Alertness (more or less the poster child for the useless feat in other editions) makes you immune to surprise, grants +5 to initiative and gives you the perception skill (or another skill if you have that already). Nice. 

Other Feats are basically substitutes for prestige classes (Arcane Archer for instance). While I'm here I'll note that there's an important thing that makes Arcane Archer a bit...overpowered. First the spells imbued in an arrow last until you next rest...second they don't require you to be the one to shoot the arrow. A wizard with this feat could easily give a more combat-focused archer a huge arsenal of magical arrows to use throughout the day. 

Overall I quite like feats. It's nice to have big, chunky bonuses that grant significant abilities rather than gaining them piecemeal. Some are pretty darn weak (toughness is extremely unimpressive for instance as are the Arcane/Divine/Druid adept abilities), but for the most part they look like a lot of fun. 


I'll tackle the rest soon. 
 

Out-Of-Print Review: Hercules and Xena The Roleplaying Game

So, thanks to Netflix I've been rewatching most of the Hercules and Xena series. It's a shame it took me so long, I had forgotten just how great the series were. The perfect combination of melodrama, anachronism, questionable special effects, and complete goofiness. So needless to say, when I realized that there was an RPG I had to own it. Although the book has been out of print for quite a while I quickly found a cheap boxed set on ebay:

The only thing it's missing is the set of 6 custom d6's featuring chakram and hydras rather than numbers. It's too bad, but 6 dice wouldn't be nearly enough to meet the needs of a play group so it's no great loss.

It was delivered yesterday and so I've sat down and read through it and figured I'd share some of my thoughts with y'all. It's a boxed set that comes with the Hero's Guide (character creation), Secrets of the Ancient World (The core rules, monsters, etc), a GM's screen and a set of three adventures.

The Hero's Guide

So...just reviewing this as I thumb through it. Mildly impressed with the production values. Almost all the art are clips from the show, so I guess they took the budget they saved and tried to make the book fairly pretty. It doesn't look fancy compared to WoTC's work with books for 3rd and 4th edition, but for a late 90's book by a small publisher it's not bad (other than some contrast issues making some text hard to read).

By the way, I should mention that this is my first exposure to the D6 system, so I'm just looking at the system as it appears in the book. I hear lots of good things about D6, so maybe this will make me a convert.

First we start with character creation. There's about 7 pages of "Hero Types" (about 9 of which are close synonyms of "fighter") for your character. I've looked closely and as far as I can tell these don't have any actual impact on your character. They're more or less just a selection of suggested skills or specialties. Seems like a lot of space to dedicate to something that doesn't really have much effect.

Next we have Races (humans, centaurs, satyrs and nymphs). honestly, I don't see much appeal to the races...nymphs are closely tied to their element and weaken away from it, centaurs would run into a ton of issues as adventurers, leaving satyrs as the only really feasible race and their only notable feature is increased awareness.

Each hero also has a Goal and a Unique Possession. These have no real mechanical effect (other than a free piece of gear), but it's a good idea for starting with some roleplaying hooks.

Next we come to the meat of the system. Attributes and skills. The attribute/skill system is pretty straightforward: you create a dice pool by combining your attribute + skill. rolls of 1 or 2 (or hydras) are failures and 3+ (chakrams) are successes.  There's plenty of skills, some seem a bit...overly specific (I'm looking at you juggling). Given that it's a game base on Xena I'm glad to see the Battle Cry skill.

After that there's gear, some sample characters, special moves, etc. The back of the book features a big list of future products that never happened.

Final Thoughts: Overall it seems pretty good, but I'm noticing two things. First is that there are touches of realism that are distinctly unwelcome such as the chakram having a chance of damaging people who use it or the torch + booze flamethrower trick has a similar risk of hurting the user. And in the second half of the book you've got the stats for Herc, Xena and their companions all of whom have much better stats than your starting character...all except one...

Yeah...


The Secrets of the Ancient World

So, this is the GM's book and it's got the bulk of the rules. After browsing through it here's a quick list of my first impressions:

I like the core system. It's a good "rules medium" with enough crunch for satisfaction but simple enough that you don't get bogged down and can just roll the dice. The combat system isn't perfect...I don't like any system that requires you to declare defensive actions ahead of time, but aside from that it's pretty good. It has the best ranged difficulty chart ever:

There's some stuff that's interesting, but way too vague to be useful. The Hero's Challenge is mentioned several times but never elaborated upon. Likewise the gods are represented as far too omnipotent considering the series involves regular duels with them.


Final Review

So, after reading things I think it's a cool system, with a fun attitude but not exactly what I'm looking for when it comes to doing justice for the Hercules and Xena universe. Starting characters are not even at the "sidekick" level for the shows and there are no easy rules for starting characters at higher power levels other than simply dumping loads of character points into their laps. Likewise there's no rules for playing demigods (just a small handful of special powers), battling gods (or godlike beings), which is disappointing considering the source material.

But the core system is fun and worthwhile, it would make a good low-fantasy or sword-and-sorcery style game...but if I want to run an actual Hercules and Xena game I'd probably use Truth and Justice.

Another Shallow Review: Hell on Earth Reloaded

So, is horror-slash-fantasy-slash-steampunk-slash-western not enough for you? Then what about some horror-slash-fantasy-slash-dieselpunk-slash-western-slash-post-apocolyptic RPG gaming? Well, then perhaps you're the target audience of Deadlands' Hell On Earth setting.

I'm a big fan of Deadlands, if you recall the first full-length campaign I've ever completed was a Deadlands game and it was a hell of a good time. So once I heard today that Pinnacle was releasing their post-apocalyptic version, Hell On Earth, as for Savage Worlds then I was all over it. So far I've only skimmed it but just like the Savage Worlds Horror Companion I figured I'd give my first impression chapter by chapter. 

Introduction

For such a nutty, kitchen-sink setting Deadlands has always had a rather complicated to justify it's zombie cowboys on steamcycles. It's interesting stuff but I often steal from far too many different sources to keep the canon intact. Besides I already know the general background (ghost rocks fall, everybody dies) and I'm just doing a quick skim to make sure I got my money's worth so I'm skipping most of it for now.

However, the writers should be commended for how completely they address various important setting issues such as "what is used as money?" or "are there still any satellites" and how people get around the place after the disaster.

Definitely an interesting read and probably pretty essential if you want to run the setting without any modification but for now let's move on.

Makin' Heroes

Character creation is pretty familiar, no big changes and it'll be even more familiar with it if you've got experience with the original Deadlands Reloaded. All the g's are removed from skills and you've got some familiar Hindrances along with some new ones like Rad Intolerance and Mutations. All good fun.

Now one of the things I liked most about Deadlands Reloaded was that a lot of it could be used for other settings. Many of the Edges were useful for other settings and they weren't at afraid to play around with the Arcane Background rules and came up with a lot of interesting variations that could easily be used in other ways. The hucksters for instance make a good set of "wild magic" spellcasting rules and the Blessed were an interesting departure from the regular Powers-and-power-points rules.

Unfortunately so far Hell On Earth doesn't quite seem to share that potential. The majority of the Edges are pretty setting-specific things like Rad Resistance or starting off with a car. I was especially interested in the Kung Fu edge because the martial arts rules from Deadlands Reloaded were very useful for other games. Unfortunately it's clear that the rules here are meant to work with Hell on Earth's higher tech level. The Kung Fu abilities range from "Too powerful for non-fu
turistic settings" to "too powerful for any setting". Mainly because a lot of them don't actually involve martial arts or even hand-to-hand combat. A cyborg cowboy with a laser pistol is just as likely to benefit from Kung Fu as an unarmed fighter, probably more because the cowboy has the benefits of his weaponry on top of it. The worst is that one of them grants the Hardy advantage, which anyone familiar with Savage Worlds should know is way too powerful to give away as just an Edge.

Equipment

Now, the equipment chapter I quite like. It's full of some useful gear for modern or close futuristic settings like specialty ammo, modern body armor and so on.

In general when it comes to near-future settings like post-apocalypse and cyberpunk gear tends to go two ways. Either they take into account the march of current technology (see the most recent edition of shadowrun where everything went wireless) or they go with the future of the past. Technology that, while futuristic in style, is often fairly unimpressive compared to actual modern devices. Hell On Earth is definitely of the second category which I find quite nice. It's got a kind of odd charm to it and much of it makes some sense when you think about it (after all most smartphones can't survive being sat on much less a supernatural apocalypse. So what's left is the clunkier and more durable bits of tech and things cobbled together from bits and bobs.

That said some of the more advanced equipment is fairly unimpressive. Compare for instance the gyrojet rocket pistol (2d6+2 damage, 24/48/96, half damage vs armored targets) to the Peacemaker (2d6+1 damage, 12/24/48, AP 1). Now, the gyrojet has slightly higher damage (very slightly) and impressive range it's six times as expensive and much more expensive to reload not to mention even a leather vest would render it useless.

But like I said, for the most part the equipment is solid and useful. The vehicle rules especially are going to be a godsend for a lot of Savage Worlds players who might be looking for some rules on tinkering with or customizing their vehicles. It's far from completely comprehensive but it's a good start.

Setting Rules

This extremely short chapter doesn't have much to comment on, except for the scavenging rules which I'm sure will see plenty of use and seem quite serviceable, although I probably would limit the scavenging to one player with others aiding them (otherwise players are likely to rack up huge hauls).

No Man's Land

So here we have the setting's Arcane Backgrounds. You've got a pretty big variety, Doomsayers (mutant radiation priests), Junkers (techno-wizards), Sykers (psionicists), Templars (holy knights), Toxic Shamans (shamans of pollution and garbage). You've also got the harrowed who are basically unchanged from the original Deadlands.

Unfortunately unlike the basic Deadlands setting the Hell On Earth ABs are pretty darn setting-focused. The Junkers are far more powerful than your average mad scientist for example and Toxic Shamans and Doomsayers are tied integrally to the setting. The Templars seem like your average Miracle wielders but they get a selection of Edges that make them truly impressive when battling evil. They might work in a modern setting (think the Knights of the Cross from Dresden Files) but otherwise they're far too kick-ass in for most settings. Psykers are amusing (baldness is an unfortunate side-effect of their powers) and they have some good new powers (like the ability to wipe memories or mentally communicate).

The powers are fairly useful and can easily be harvested for your own use or used as-is just fine. The only one that struck me as odd was the Slow Burn power (designed for Psykers to bust up heavily armored vehicles and the like). Unfortunately it doesn't actually work very well. For instance against a toughness 10, armor 70 vehicle the power inflicts 5d10 damage...now the probabilities of dice in savage worlds can be tough to calculate but to beat 80 on a 5d10 is still pretty damn astronomical odds. Also, as written it can't even hurt an unarmored target. But otherwise some fairly useful stuff and the AB's are fairly well-designed for the setting.

Marshall's Section

There's some pretty interesting stuff going on here. We've got weird weather, rules for mutations and fear levels. All of it seems okay.

Then we've got the setting info for specific cities and locations throughout the West. I don't have anything like the time needed to actually read through all this yet but what I do see is fairly interesting.

Then afterwards we've got a big collection of monsters. Some mutated, some mechanoid, some undead and some all three at once. Again, it looks serviceable but far too detailed for me to plunge into yet.

Quick Overview

There's a couple of things that bear mentioning in regards to the quality of the book. First, the art is quite nice and although there's plenty that was probably recycled from older Hell On Earth books it's all cool and evocative. Unfortunately the layout is pretty rough. The gear is pretty awkward (the tables of gear stats are all clustered at the end of the chapter) and the No Man's Land chapter is worse. It starts off immediately with one of the arcane backgrounds with no intro or explanation, then jumps to the rules for the Harrrowed, then back to the rest of the Arcane Backgrounds. Then we've got various rules scattered throughout the book like the (extremely bare-bones) bionics rules stuck in one of the city descriptions.

The other thing that bears mentioning is price. For some reason Hell On Earth pretty darn expensive, about 40 bucks for a 200 page book. That's quite spendy when you consider how reasonably priced the core Savage Worlds material tends to be. The Print and PDF package together is over 50 dollars when many companies include PDFs for free with their book (or at least at a very small extra price). All that was too rich for me so I went with the PDF alone which is a better deal at (a still quite high) 25$.

Final Thoughts

 So, all in all it's a pretty mixed bag. There's a lot of stuff in Hell On Earth that's interesting or potentially useful but at the same time it's pretty darn expensive.

If you're a deadlands fan and you know for sure that you want to run or play in a Hell on Earth game then I'd say that the book's definitely worth picking up. You'll have a lot of fun. With minor editing it could easily be adjusted to various levels of post apocolyptic adventures. Some aspects of the setting bear a more than passing resemblance to Rifts for example (notably a high-tech conquering nation-state called the Combine with robotic minions with a skeletal motif).

However, if you're just a general fan of Savage Worlds and you're hoping to chop up the setting to use in completely different games then I don't think you'll find it very worthwhile considering the minimum price of 25 bucks.