I was originally going to make like a bunch of Youtube videos giving a breakdown and review for the Midgard Heroes Handbook. But I don’t really have an interest anymore. So that is why I randomly know so many of the problems in this book (I read it cover to cover a few months back). From that here is a list of all the problems I found with the Midgard Heroes Handbook.
There is a ton here and its not easy to just put it out here. So apologies for the formatting. There is no way to make this easy to read.
Part Two of this examination can be found here and Part Three can be found here.
Races
- Under Gearforged “The memory of a gearforged for all the days after its creation lives in the memory gears. Older gearforged have many such gears, and the material component for the magic to create them requires one new gear for every 10 years of life.”
- I have no idea what they were trying to say with this bolded sentence. Maybe this was two sentences that got merged together, one of which was saying that you need a memory gear for every 10 years of life. The sentence just seems really jumbled to me.
Weapon Options
- Spears and Sickles were missed here.
Subclasses
- The subclasses are concentrated far too much into a handful of classes. 34 out of the 50 subclasses here are either for fighters, clerics, or wizards. The monk gets no subclasses and the barbarian and the druid each only get 1 subclass. To me the classes needed a bit more balanced coverage.
- Most of the cleric subclasses here don’t state whether you use your action, bonus action, or reaction for their unique channel divinity abilities. The red dots on this list show which domains have this issue. This may be working as intended, but the only official subclass that does this without requiring some kind of a trigger is the forge cleric. A trigger being like someone attacking you. None of these divinity abilities have any kind of trigger though.
- This is the list of domains this applies to: The Beer, Cat, Clockwork, Darkness, Hunger, Hunting, Justice, Labyrinth, Mountain, Ocean, Prophecy, Travel, and Void domains
- I’ll highlight a few problematic subclasses in the book.
- Dragon Mask Wizard: The theme with this subclass is cool. Unfortunately, to gain any use out of it you need to do everything a wizard shouldn’t do. You need to forgo being able to reliably cast offensive spells. You need to fight in melee and use a special attack it grants you and use up spell slots to pump it up. You’ll also want to use your level 4 feat to gain the Careful Dragon Mask feat just so that you lose the attack roll and saving throw disadvantages you get when your dragon mask is even active. Ultimately, the problem I have with this subclass is that it feels too much like the Bladesinger with extra steps (and basically requires you to use up your feat just to make it not terrible).
- Edjet Martial Fighter: The main problem with this subclass is that it does nothing for you until 7th level. I mean seriously, its one sole bonus until then is that it lets you use the two-handed weapon damage for your versatile weapons while using a shield. That is a difference of only 1-2 damage and it comes with the condition of you having to use this weapon setup. Even its 7th level ability is kind of meh, just because of the number of enemies that are immune to being made prone (elementals, swarms, beholders, demilich, spectral undead, and oozes), flying creatures being able to avoid it, and the many other options your party has for control at this level.
- Mazeborn Bloodline: Why would I, as a sorcerer, want to be fighting in melee range at 6th level with horns that aren’t even treated as magic weapons? The answer of course is I wouldn’t. It subclass just feels like it wasn’t well thought out.
- Labyrinth Domain: Similarly, it seems like with the Labyrinth Domains they expect you to fight in melee range. But you get no heavy armor or martial weapon proficiencies. Also your 6th level ability doesn’t work if the enemies CR is greater than your level. Which just creates the chance for you to waste your limited abilities on a creature that is apparently immune to your ability solely because of their CR level.
Subclasses (proofreading issues)
- There were some really obvious proofreading problems with the subclasses in the book.
- It seems like Kobold Press doesn’t understand how warlocks work. Two of their patrons grant spells that they already get access to as warlocks according to Kobold Press’s own spell lists.
- The Great Machine warlock lists several clockwork spells on its expanded spell list spells that they get access to. But these are already clockwork spells that all warlocks get access to according to the warlock clockwork spell list on the very next page.
- “Lock Armor”, “Thousand Darts”, and “Steam Blast” are the spells
- All warlocks already get access to a number of different clockwork spells to choose from, regardless of if they take this subclass or not. So it’s not like a situation where the spells were included because those were the only clockwork spells they get access to. Quite the contrary.
- Also, the Light Eater warlock lists shadow spells on its expanded list spells but the class already gets these spells according to the warlock spell list at the back of the book (page 145).
- “Cloying Darkness”, “Dark Path”, “Legion”, “Night Terrors”, and “Shadow Realm Gateway” are the spells
- For the record warlocks aren’t like clerics, they don’t gain the spells on their expanded spell list automatically but instead get the opportunity to choose from them instead of just taking the usual warlock spells. At a minimum, these new warlocks would have access to these new spells anyways, so they should be getting spells they wouldn’t otherwise normally have access to.
- Then there are just some more minor proofreading problems with the subclasses.
- Edjet Martial’s level 10 ability states “For each hit die you spend at the end of this rest, add double your Constitution modifier to the number of hit points regained.” You already get to add your constitution modifier when rolling hit dice for healing. So does that mean you get the usual benefit and then you also get double your constitution modifier worth of hit points per hit dice? The wording on the durable feat is much clearer about this. Also it’s technically not a proficiency bonus so, unlike most other cases you’d see this come up, there isn’t anything in the rules stopping this from happening.
- The Rogue: Whisper Archetype doesn’t state what your spellcasting ability is for when you cast the minor illusion it grants
- Both paladin subclasses give new spells at the wrong levels.
- The Mazeborn Bloodline’s level 18 ability states that it stops working when you lose concentration. Does that mean the ability requires concentration to work? I assume so based on how Minor Alchemy works for School of Transformation wizards. But this could have been clarified.
- The Justice domain cleric gets the “Blade of Wrath” spell as a 2nd level spell when it should be a 3rd level spell.
- The Genie Lord warlock has Sleet Storm being offered as one of their 2nd level spells when it is a 3rd level spell.
- The ocean domain gets chill touch. This is a necromancy spell that deals necrotic damage by creating a skeletal hand that leaves its victim feeling as though they just got the chill touch of the grave. Ray of Frost was probably the more logical choice here. Nothing else about the ocean domain after all suggests they were going for this domain being this dark. In fact, what little it has on flavour text talks about the sea being “the fountain of life.” Plus the subclass already gives cold damage with its divine strike.
Feats
– The Star and Shadow Casting feat states you can’t ignore “vulnerability”, but given the feat is talking about ignoring enemy resistances I think they meant immunity here.
– The rune mastery feat states that you need the rune mastery feat to take it. I think they were going for the rune knowledge feat here.
DnD Detective 