Customer Reviews

Masters of the Wild: A Guidebook to Barbarians, Druids, and Rangers (Dungeon & Dragons d20 3.0 Fantasy Roleplaying Accessory)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Finally, the last of the class books has been released. This one is unique in that it tackles three classes, instead of the standard two. On top of this, two of the classes -- the druid and ranger -- are considered by many gamers to be in need of some serious work. How well did WotC do in answering this challenge? Here's my breakdown:

1) Barbarians: Considered by the majority of gamers to be a pretty well balanced class, but perhaps lacking a little diversity.

New Feats: Most new barbarian feats revolve around rage. You can rage more times, for longer duration, and destroy stuff even better, along with intimidating opponents in battle. Other barbarian feats explore their toughness. These include greatly increased hps, better damage reduction, and even elemental resistance.

Prestige Classes: Most of the barbarian prestige classes are pretty interesting. Power gamers will enjoy the frenzied berserker. The forsaker would make a memorable NPC. The other barb PrCs are decent too.

Overall: An already solid class now has more options. Well done.

2) Druids: Many gamers (including myself) consider wildshape to have been nerfed (ruined) under the polymorph rules. Well, no longer! Wildshape has been redone, and definitely for the better. Animal companions (which you can now advance) are expanded on, and awakened animals are detailed. Finally!

Feats: Most of these pretain to wildshape. You can now cast while wildshaped (though using foci is still tricky)! You can take the scent feat from the DMG -- that is huge. All in all, the new druid feats are quite nice.

Prestige Classes: Also well done. Most have a unique feel. My only grumble about the druid PrCs is that several of the cool ones require that you be evil! In other words, fine for NPCs, but not as useful for the average adventuring group that tends to be good or neutral. Look for the verdant lord, geomancer, and shaper to become instant favorites.

Overall: Essential upgrade for druids. DMs - don't be surprised when your druid players want to majorly retool their characters after reading this book.

3) Rangers: Another class that many gamers consider to be seriously lacking. In fact, of all the core classes, I've seen more ranger rewrites than any other.

Feats: Most revolve around favored enemies and two-weapon fighting. You can now get critical hits on otherwise immune creatures, such as undead. That's really nice. The other ranger feats are decent too.

Prestige Classes: The sniper is a solid archer PrC. I think a lot of ppl will really like that one. The bloodhound is the ultimate tracker -- good for PCs and would make a wicked NPC too. Power gamers will appreciate the foehunter. The other ranger PrCs are decent too, aside from the tempest, which I found to be a bit stale compared to its great-sounding name!

Overall: Excellent upgrade for rangers. Just my opinion, but I don't like the 3E ranger (3 feats at first level encourages taking just 1 level in it). I'd take the upgrades from this book and use them on Monte Cook's variant ranger in my game.

4) Other Features:
New magic item type: Infusion. Cool idea. Could be especially useful in a low magic campaign, or if you wanted a more shamanistic feeling to your curative magic.

Legendary animals: Powerful animals for high-level druids and rangers to enlist as companions. It's hard to not be impressed by the dire elephant!

New equipment: Some neat things there, but pretty thin.

New spells: I really like the new spells. They add to the druid and ranger's natural magic. I'll be adding just about all of them to my campaign.

Overall: Thumbs up for Masters of the Wild. I'd rate it up there with Tome & Blood -- the only other class book I consider fairly solid. Anyway, enjoy! As with all WotC's products, keep your eye out for the downloadable errata on their website!

It's like they do their best work for divine spellcasters.

Masters of the Wild is the last of the D&D3 character class splatbooks, being for the barbarian, druid, and ranger. I happen to think that it's the best one of those that they put out, too; loads better than Sword & Fist or Song & Silence.

You'll find the usual content: Discussion of each class's party role, stereotypical interactions with other classes, and ideas for play strategy, new feats, new magic and mundane items, new uses for skills, prestige classes, and new spells to cast. New to this supplement are the legendary animals...amazingly tough animals to replace dire animal companions when your druid gets to a high level.

What's good? Almost everything. The prestige classes, which I've always thought were the best indicator of quality of these books, are very nicely conceived and presented, and are in fact quite creative. I'm particularly enamored of the Tempest (the ultimate two-weapon fighter). Even those prestige classes obviously meant for NPC usage (Eye of Gruumsh, Bane of Infidels, Blighter, Oozemaster) are good. They have a tremendous feat selection, many of which are applicable to all classes. The legendary animals are useful (our party currently includes two), and the magic items and spells are good. Even the class discussions are entertaining and have good insights.

What's bad? Honestly, nothing to prevent me from giving it 5 stars. The Deepwood Sniper pales in comparison to Arcane Archer (from DMG) or Order of the Bow Initiate (S&F), and the Watch Detective suffers from something of a too-modern viewpoint in regards to evidence, but that's it.

By and large, this is well worth your purchase, even if you don't play a barbarian, druid, or ranger. (If nothing else, you never know when your character will wind up in a Bane of Infidels' wicker man...)

This is truly the grand finale to this hit-and-miss series. Some great advice is provided on when your barbarian should rage, what favored enemy will give your ranger the most mileage, and on what animal companions to pick up. Don't bother playing a druid without this book. The book provides a snotload of handy feats, though some of these are repeats. Legendary animals are detailed. (These are like dire animals, but better. Check out the Legendary Tiger!) The spells are on a par with those from Tome & Blood. The prestige classes are better than those found in Sword & Fist. The rules update on the Druid's wild shape ability is as good as the trap rules in the relatively disappointing Song & Silence. This is the best paperback product out of WOtC since the advent of 3e, including Hero Builder's Guidebook!

This book is nice, and I think that the main place where it suffers is that it has to spread itself between 3 classes.

A good effort was made to be inclusive, but if you count the number of classes available for each, it isn't that huge. However, you get a lot more bang for each one because, unlike Song and Silence, most (almost all, even) of the classes are playable. The only real hole I see is that there is no class that allows a Druid to maintain both wild-shape progression AND spell casting.

Highlights:
Shifter class,
Hexer class,
Frenzied berserker (Mmmmmm...Vampire Troll barbarian/frenzied berserker...scary),
Bloodhound class,
Verdant Lord class,
Windrider class.

Feats are solid, with the usual spread of awesome,... and 'flavor.'

Legendary animals are neat but very contrived; they basically come out and say, "Oh, by the way, here's this whole new kind of animal so that high-level druids can have better pets." Cheesy, but whatever.

They do a really good job of making classes that flow naturally from ranger (a much-maligned class), but unfortunately they can't overcome the simple fact that Rogue1/Ranger1/Fighter1 is way better than Ranger3.

They did a good job keeping feat requirements low, which was a problem in some of the other books where they seem to think everyone gets the fighter extra feats and is human to boot. The only class where this is a real issue is the Frenzied Berserker, but everyone is allowed a little slip.

Over all, highly recomended! Buy it if you have any interest in it at all.

The troubled series of 3e class books come to a close with Masters of the Wild.

As most readers probably already know, each of the previous installments of the series has been marred by some significant flaw. Sword and Fist was inventive and creative, but laced with broken mechanix and editorial errors. Defenders of the Faith was a little more rules-solid but boring and uninteresting. Tome & Blood was rules-solid and had significant additions to the game, but stepped all over the minimal Mary Janes of the Psionicists (the many Meta-Psionic feats which are cloned for wizards in T&B), had some organization and editorial issues, and had some very poor pClasses. Song & Silence turned out to be the most polished product from an editorial and rules standpoint but was thought by many to be content-deprived, with limp prestige classes and not much else to make up for it.

So, how does Masters of the Wild measure up? Well it might just be the best of a mediocre lot. Tome & Blood has heretofore been my pick for the best of the set, but MotW seems more solid typographically (from a cursory read thru), and I didnt notice any of the glaring editorial flaws that were so apparant in several of the past books, plus the organization of the book seems to be better than the others in the set as well. From a content perspective, MotW steps up with a slew of great feats, most of which are actually attainable by most characters (as opposed to some of the feats in Sword & Fist frex), a whopping 20 pClasses, some awesome Druidic spells, variant rules for Rangers (including the Urban Ranger and 3 variants for favored enemy) and Barbarians (Intimidate based on Strength and an Intimidation bonus when raging), some new weapons and magic items, and the obligatory 'advice' on the three classes covered by the book.

In an improvement over the previous class books, MotW is thankfully short on describing Organizations, opening up quality page space for useful additions such as a new category of Animals: Legendary Animals. Also presented is a full page errata'd version of the Druidic Wild Shape (much needed), and an expansion on Animal Tricks rules.

The feats are great. Ill say it again. The feats are great. Even if you discard all other portions of the book, the feats are a great expansion of the core rule set. Some of the feats are retread from other products, but unlike some people I actually prefer the subject-applicable reprint methodology; its so much easier to find things if they are grouped together logically. There are a lot of Rage oriented feats, some Wild Shape oriented feats, an expanded list of Toughness feats with scaling Base Fort requirements that grant correspondingly higher hitpoints. Of course, some of the feats are so-so or of questionable usefulness, but they are many, varied, and flavorful. My fave is Instantaneous Rage, which lets a Rager rage whenever they want, even if its not thier turn yet; thus a Barbarian about to be dropped below 0 hp can choose to Rage for the extra hp on his enemies turn, of if a Barbarian really needs to make a Fort save he can rage for the +2 bonus before he rolls the save; while not massively powerful, it certainly opens up some interesting scenarios for a Barbarian.

The magic items & equipment is actually the weakest part of the book, but the items that are here are on-theme and the addition of a new kind of magic item, the druidic Infusion (similar to potions), along with a pretty cool interpretation of Standing Stones shores it up.

The prestige classes run the gamut, and are mostly useful with only few odd-ball ones such as the Ooze-master to tarnish the tally. With 20 to choose from however, the couple of losers dont stand out as much. Some of the classes seem a tad underpowered unless in a specific terrain, but then they are nature-oriented classes. One strange pClass is the Exotic Weapon Master, which seems much more roguish or fighterish in nature; its only connection to any of the three classes covered in this book is an inexplicable (and unnecessary) prerequisite 'Ability to Rage' despite the class having nothing to do with raging; looks suspiciously like an add-on slipped in to get it printed with a single prereq added to make it look on-theme. The Forsaker is an eyebrow raiser that eschews magic in all form (in fact, thier damage reduction class ability only works if they destroy a magic item worth at least 100gp each day), and inexplicably gets much tougher (a +1 ability score bonus every level). Hmmm.... Anyway, there are some real winners here, including the Frenzied Berserker, the Shifter, Tempest (a Ranger-friendly dual-wielding...class), Foe Hunter, Deepwood Sniper, and Bloodhound. Some of the other classes can be easily made good with a little tweaking, such as the above mentioned Exotic Weapon Master (uh....drop the Rage preReq; viola: great general purpose pClass useful to some Rogues and many Fighters).

Finally, a short but solid list of new nature oriented spells wraps up the book.

There are some really great spells in here for a Druid. There is a new chain of Regenerate Wounds spells which grant Fast Healing to a recipient for 10 rounds + 1 round/lvl but only vs damage inflicted during the spells duration; these spells scale identically to Cure spells (ie Regenerate Light, Mod, Serious, Crit). There are several viscious offensive spells such as Thunderswarm and {shudder} Epidemic. Several variant buff spells that grant a flat bonus to one ability at the cost of a flat penalty to another for the duration. A real key spell is Embrace the Wild, a 3rd level spell that allows the caster to take on aspects of a chosen animal without actually changing shape into that animal. There is even a sidebar expanding the Adept spell list.

So; all in all, much better this time around. Im very happy with my purchase of this class book (whereas I regret having shelled out 40 bucks on Defenders of the Faith and Song & Silence), and have even toyed with the idea of playing a Druid since I got it, which is my least favorite class.

I highly recommend its purchase or at least perusal to any D&Der interested in Barbarians, Rangers, or Druids.

3 classes noticably underplayed in the d&d world are represented here.

The barbarian comes out the poorest in this book, because much of it focuses on the druid. But all in all, it's a good book for me, because I play druids and bards best.

The new classes are interesting variations on the way the game works. Queen of the woods, beastmaster . . . it's most interesting to say the least.

If you play druids and rangers, buy the book. You might want to buy the book if you're playing a barbarian and are stumped for ideas.

I bought this book expecting to beef-up my ranger. I was a tad dissapointed to see that the main focus was mostly on druids(at least in my opinion) seeing as how they got most of the good stuff. Rangers and barbarians don't exactly get the shaft but I feel that they could have been given so much more. As far as the prestiege classes go they....well..... don't exactly fill me with glee. Most of them seem to be intended for the druid, some of which are pretty good, but there is a definite lack of decent ones for the barbarian or ranger. Overall, most of the prestiege classes are much better suited for NPC opponents because of their limited focus and appeal. For every Deepwood Sniper, we have a 99% useless (as a PC) Watch Detective, for every Bloodhound, an oozemaster (if you're the DM, make sure everyone has finished eating before you bring that one out).

If you play a druid or barbarian (who gets a large portion of the new feats in this book) then this one is your ticket. Anyone expecting to use this book to give their ranger a good boost may be a bit dissapointed, you might be better off just borrowing it from a friend first.

This books just doesn't have a whole lot going for it.

The items list is, well, uninspired. Not a whole lot happening there. It's mostly items that smart DMs have already had in their campaigns for a long while and the scale of power is less than impressive. I was hoping we'd see the ranger equivalent of a paladin's holy avenger but, no, they get goggles. Neat. Still, the items are useful, I have to say that, just not particularly original.

The feats are probably the best section. They really flesh out the druid and the barbarian well, giving players the chance to do something unique and different with the character. Often overlooked are the really hideous things you can do with the feats. With minimal effort, you can have a ranger that can drop critical hits on undead, which is a very good thing.

The prestige classes are the most uneven portion of the book. They vary from the munchkin class to the excellent.

The spells are a very nice, earthy bunch that bolster some class weaknesses and work on some established strengths. I particularly like the regeneration spells for the druid and have already started working them into magic items.

Masters of the Wild isn't too bad for a supplemental book. Frankly it is geared heavily toward druids but it does give bits here and there useful for barbarians and rangers as the guidebook implies. Prior to this book I had found it very hard to find prestigue classes that'd work for druids and it gives more details about animal companions, which is handy for both druids and rangers. Useful either for PCs or NPCs, but naturally only get this if either characters are druids, barbarians, or rangers.

As most other reviewers have stated, this is above the overall usefullness factor of the previous classbooks. Druids, Rangers and Barbarians will love some of the feats, although as with everything, all of the material is optional and subject to the DM's discretion according to his gameworld (I'm wary of the Wildshape Spellcasting myself, it is very, very powerful).

But taken as a whole, there are tons of interesting prestige classes, although most of of these are best suited to NPC's (with a few exceptions). The spells are great, and the overall enthusiasm that the writers injected into the next really stands out. This is a book that can really make these three classes a lot more fun to play.