You may think that you know what the Player’s Handbook 3 is all about if you’ve got a DDI subscription, but the preview content was just the tip of the iceberg. If you’re a DDI subscribers who’s considering passing on the PHB3, think again. This is one of the coolest 4e D&D books that’s come out so far.
The PHB3 comes out next week on Tuesday, March 16, but for those of us living in the Greater Toronto Area it came out this past Friday. I visited three gaming stores and a major book selling chain and they all had it proudly displayed for sale. I don’t know if this complete disregard for the street date is limited to my area or if this is the case across the board. All I know is that I was fortunate enough to get my copy of the PHB3 Friday and I haven’t put it down since.
I took some flack for my Martial Power 2 review last month. Some readers didn’t think I spent enough time giving my opinion. With my review of the PHB3 I’m going to listen to the readers and do more than just tell you what’s in the book. But given the amount of material in the PHB3 it’s going to take more than one article to cover everything. So as seems fitting, I’m going to break my review of the PHB 3 into three parts. Today we’ll look at the new races and one of the new classes – the Runepriest.
With the release of the PHB3 we have four new player character races to add to our available choices. Today I want to consider the Shardmind, beings of raw psionic energy barely contained in a body of gleaming crystalline shards.The Shardmind is built for the purpose of supporting the new psionic power source classes. Of course the Shardmind is also capable of doing much more than this as the player can select how they’d like their ability scores distributed. I’m of mixed minds about the Shardmind, part of me wants to love this race, another part isn’t too sure.