Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures Game
 

D&D Miniatures Handbook

By Mike Donais, Skaff Elias, Rob Heinsoo, and Jonathan Tweet

This book is due out on 17 October 2003. The cost should be about $29.99.

192-page D&D hardcover for expanding combat in your RPGs and playing skirmish-, squad-, and mass-battles with miniatures.

A brand new D&D handbook that details all aspects of miniatures use in roleplaying and head-to-head combat. The Miniatures Handbook is the newest accessory for players who want to add depth and dimension to their roleplaying game or their miniatures experience. As with other D&D accessories, this title contains new feats, spells, magic items, and prestige classes, and is one of the few titles that adds new base classes to the D&D realm. In addition to these features, this handbook gives expanded rules for three-dimensional, head-to-head miniatures play for both skirmish and mass battle conflicts and is instantly usable with the new D&D miniatures product line, There are new monsters presented with both full D&D and head-to-head statistics, and the book provides competitive scenarios for engaging miniatures combat.

More Information

Here is my review of the Miniatures Handbook.

The Wizards website has some previews of the book.

• Gallery of artwork in the book.
• Nothing Small About It - an excerpt from the book including Sudden Empower (new feat), Swift Invisibility (new bard and assassin spell).
• Marshal - new base class.
• Dragon Samurai - new prestige class
• Aspect of Hextor; Nothic - two new monsters
• War Hulk - a new Prestige Class, part of the Previews article by Mat Smith. (See the note below).
• An interview with two of the designers of the Miniatures Handbook: Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet.

Contents:

The new base classes are as follows:

• Favored Soul, a divine sorcerer
• Healer, divine caster, gets his Cha bonus to all cure spells
• Marshal, has auras that improve his allies
• Warmage, arcane caster, gets his Int bonus to spell damage, can cast in light armor without arcane spell failure

You can find Epic Level Progressions for the classes on the Wizards website.

The new prestige classes are as follows:

• Battlefield Warlord
• Bonded Summoner
• Dragon Samurai
• Havoc Mage
• Skullclan Hunter
• Tactical Warrior
• War Hulk

From the Designers

Mike Donais:

[The base classes in the D&D Miniatures handbook] are designed to fill certain niches for certain styles of players. They are in some cases simpler so that they can be made into miniatures. One of the advantages of the simpler spellcasters is if a friend who hasn't played D&D before says he wants to play a spellcaster you can use these ones. In addition to the two 'simpler spellcasters' there are 2 moderately complex classes with interesting tactical choices to make for the more advanced player. All 4 classes were designed and developed to fill specific niches.

The miniatures handbook expands a lot on things like scenarios and campaigns. It is about 50% D&D content related to skirmish battles and 50% D&D miniatures content like scenarios and campaign rules etc.

Rob Heinsoo:

It's a hardcover. I think the cost is around $29.95. The cover is great, one of my favorites, ever. The book is presently being typeset. (24 Jul 2003)

I know that press releases are in the works, probably being given out at Gencon, so the full news should surface soon if it hasn't already.

The basics: lots of great D&D stuff useable in any D&D rpg campaign (classes, spells, monsters, feats); full head-to-head skirmish rules (including scenarios and campaigns); mass battle rules; random dungeon rules.

The Miniatures Handbook contains an expanded version of those D&D minis skirmish rules (more examples, more abilities, many more scenarios, expanded campaign rules, etc.).

The Miniatures Handbook also contains a great deal of D&D roleplaying information: feats, classes, monsters and spells that we created partly to give future minis effects we wanted and partly to give D&D players cool new toys. (Not to mention some mass battle rules.)

Do you need the Miniatures Handboook to play the game?

You can play minis skirmishes without buying the Miniatures Handbook, using the Entry Pack rules. If you get into the skirmish system seriously, you'll definitely want the MH for its improved and expanded glossary and its scenarios and its campaign system.

There's a bunch of terrain info in the upcoming book. [L]ots of terrain types.

Mike Donais:

The Marshal in my campaign has been using a longbow and many bow feats. He also has a polearm which he occasionally uses to aid someones AC or attack. He didn't roll very good physical stats but has a very high charisma. He is maxing his Use magic device (cross class) since it is charisma based and is now able to use some scrolls and things. He also has found some wierd magic items like a rod that he helps out with. He wears full plate and walks behind the party so if we ever get attacked from behind there is someone with armor on between the bad guys and the casters.

He uses the dex or wisdom aura out of combat to increase our initiative checks or our spot/listen rolls. During combat he changes to the charge aura for the first round and then to the flanking aura. His major aura is usually the AC aura.

One of our goals was to allow for low level simple marshals.

If it was a prestige class then we'd have to make the character higher level and more complex (because he has 2 classes).

It is something we discussed at length though.

On the War Hulk prestige class listed in the Preview article on the WotC webpage:

One of the class abilities was listed on the chart and is not described in the text so here it is incase they haven't updated it yet.

No time to think (Ex): A character with levels in the war hulk prestige class is considered to have 0 ranks in all Intelligence-, Wisdom-, and Charisma-based skills (whether or not he has bought ranks in them previously). The only exception is Intimidate skill, which works normally.

When evaluating the class keep in mind the loss of iteratives since you have no base attack.

(20 Sep): There is a lot of other cool stuff in the MHB. If you liked the Marshal and War Hulk then you will like the Favored Soul, Warmage, Skullclan Hunter, etc.

We included as much D&D content as any Hardcover supplement (probably more) and we had some really great designers working on the product (like Jonathan Tweet the guy who was in charge of the 3.0 PHB).

Lots of Feats, Spells, Prestige Classes, Cool and different base classes, and even cool monsters. Also included are more Scenarios for your minis games, campaign rules for minis, a larger minis glossary and much more good stuff.

Obviously I am biased because I worked so much on the book but I think the fact that you liked the Marshal and the Warhulk means you will like the other stuff too.