Arcadia 2 arrives. This cover is by Ejiwa “Edge” Ebenebe. There are certainly elements of psychedelic style here that make my mind go to the beauty and distortion of the Feywild.
Arcadia 2 cover.
While the inaugural issue featured four articles, this issue settles down into the more normal three article composition for Arcadia. Due to this, it comes in about six pages shorter. James Introcaso writes the introduction and notes the effort placed upon the art in this issue that serves to enhance an article providing season-themed subclasses, new elemental monsters, and an adventure.Subclasses of the Seasons, by Joshua Mendenhall serves up four subclasses (one for each season). These are the Order of Hibernation mage, College of Springtide Bard, Child of the Sun Bloodline Sorcerer, and the Horned One Warlock. The art by Marlowe Lune is reminiscent of very nice playing or collectable cards to me. My personal favorite of the four pieces is the image of the Horned One Warlock. I'll admit I was a bit confused initially that with the theming these were all subclasses for different base classes. Perhaps that's some unconscious bias caused by the season changing abilities of the eladrin ancestry option. I haven't had the opportunity to playtest them myself, but they seem to lean quite heavily on supplying additional spells as part of subclass features. Part of the reason I particularly enjoy the Horned One Warlock is that it dovetails nicely with a deity of the same name in Kobold Press’ Midgard setting.
The Periodic Table of the Elementals, is by MaKenzie De Armas, another well-known 5e designer currently working for Wizards of the Coast. While I've noticed De Armas author and design credits several times now, I hadn't looked into her bio until finding the link to her website. Her work is impressive, and the first time she played D&D was in 2018. It's encouraging to see such success from someone who's essentially a contemporary of mine in both age and adoption of TTRPGs. There is room for the new generation. But enough soapboxing, how are the new elemental monsters in this section?
The Comburo is a volatile burning elemental, with some interesting traits that can allow it to do damage to enemies that hit it within a certain range, among other things. It has both a slam attack typical of elementals, but also a unique recharging ranged attack. If I were to do my best Keith Amman impression, I’d note that this thing has the profile of a brute, and as a force of nature isn’t very smart. If we follow the fantasy, it’s a ferociously reacting elemental, likely to use its first volatile burst attack once it recognizes a threat, then probably uses slam attacks. As its reaction continues to burn, it doesn’t retreat or withdraw, instead fighting until it is extinguished. Next are Conducere, which are basically composed of conductive metals. The art for this one is by the talented Grace Cheung, MCDM’s on-staff artist (and I feel bad saying this, but the Conducere is probably my least favorite piece from her. The other elementals are alright, but something about the contrasts in the Conducere art just doesn’t do it for me). The ability scores reflect a strong, resilient brute, but there’s less interesting here than the Comburo. The most interesting thing is the Conducere’s reaction that will allow it to redirect a spell or magical effect at another creature once a round as a reaction (they “conduct” it through themselves, get it?)
The next elemental is the Elektron, essentially electricity themed. Once again, essentially a brute with high DEX to model a highly maneuverable creature composed of pure energy. The real unique thing for this CR 4 monster is its lightning charge trait, which allows it to increase its size by one category each time it is hit with a metal weapon. There is some clever design here, as it gains multi attacks and a passive effect to demonstrate the increasing energy as it grows in size. This is balanced essentially by its lower hit points. This isn’t a smart or very wise creature, so it’s likely to focus on those adversaries attacking it, perhaps with its average WIS, it is capable of recognizing that being attacked with metal weapons increases its size and power.
Finally the Noxa, made of the “toxic, odorless gases,” according to the flavor text. Because of this, the elemental is invisible. Once again, this creature is not very intelligent, meaning that based on it nature it may not even intend to engage with the party and simply wanders into the same space, beginning to suffocate them. In any case, I’d probably have the Noxa get a surprise round to use it Asphyxiation feature against one party member in its space, then calling for initiative. This elemental is particularly difficult because of the invisibility, and I wouldn’t use it unless your party has access to fire or lightning damage that causes it to glow, otherwise I see this very easily being a TPK. The Noxa also has my favorite art of the four.
Finally the article provides some unique additional rules on reactivities, basically giving Legendary Action-type powers to elementals working in combination. This is a really unique design and I quite like it as a way to turn an encounter with creatures relying upon their slam attacks into something more special. These don’t just use the new elementals, instead also enhancing the SRD versions of the four normal elementals too. Great theming for an Elemental Evil campaign, or dipping into the Inner Planes, or even exploring the reactions when bound elementals in a setting like Eberron get loose.
The final article is an adventure for eighth level characters, Well of the Lost Gods, by Rich Lescouflair, the lead creator and designer behind Esper Genesis. Art is from three different creators, Nick De Spain, Faizal Fakri, and Jason Hasenauer, with cartography by Diana Muñoz. Anomalies like green smoke and crystal is appearing and strange objects are falling out of the sky. Some other adventurers found a strange portal they’re calling a well in the mountains. The characters are contracted by leadership of the town to investigate. One thing I dislike about this adventure is the first puzzle included in it. My issue with the puzzle is that it amounts to "push all the buttons on this handout." Is there a specific order or pattern? Nope. The adventure just says "When the buttons are pushed along the linear pattern [it opens]." Did the author intend for something more robust? If so then it's unclear to me. Helpfully, the adventure also provides directions of your players decide to simply smash it open, triggering a battle with what is essentially a CR 10 robot.
I don't know that the adventure overview outlines the adventure structure very well either. The beginning feels a bit disjointed to me. Although I do appreciate that two nodes were included in the initial investigation of the strange anomalies occuring in the town, allowing for a bit of player choice, even if it's ultimately circular in structure, looping the players between only two situations to ultimately direct them to a dungeoncrawl. However, the two dungeon maps are linked by a portal, taking the party to the second dungeon portion that in the tradition of Expedition to the Barrier Peaks seems to be a genre-bending lab from an ancient civilization or from an ancient spacefaring people of high technology or magic.
Once again, we also have a puzzle--this one is better, involving exploring the dungeon and activating various panels (more like a Legend of Zelda dungeon design). However, it still has some clunky prose description on the feedback mechanism to tell that you're unlocking a door: "A 10-foot-diameter metal plate is set into the north wall.Three crystal orbs are embedded into its surface in a diamond-shaped pattern." Don't three points make a triangle, Dave? There are four rooms to explore, activating panels to light up these orbs, but the adventure notes that "only three need to be activated in order to open the door..." But perhaps this confusion is just personal. Once again too, if your characters fail their intelligence checks to activate the panels then the room seals and they get to fight more robots and what are essentially small lightning (electrical) Elementals, which then causes the light to come on instead of completely halting progress. Opening the door brings on a final boss fight with another robot and then a skill challenge or slugfest to break the labs generator and make all the weird anomalies that were the adventure hook to stop.
The enemies included with the adventure are interesting, but nothing crazy to write home about. They're use abilities similar to many monsters and are primarily brute-types. The maps are again a bit monochromatic and don’t have any dead space or looping in anyway, but understandable with space constraints.
That sums up Arcadia 2. Some interesting topics and monsters here, but overall not quite as heavy hitting for me as the first issue. Onwards to Arcadia 3!
No comments:
Post a Comment