I made sure to pre-order Player’s Handbook 2 so that I could review it for MEGATONik as soon as I came back from spring break.  Today, I had plenty of time to peruse the information in its pages, and I now think that Wizards was justified in producing this second volume.  If Wizards of the Coast had instead packed all of the content in the Player’s Handbook 2 into the original Player’s Handbook, the authors and designers would have had to ship sub-standard content in a terrible rush, and the titanic tome would have been daunting to new players–a result totally not in keeping with the mission of 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons.

Instead, we have two books filled with well thought out and interesting material, some of which you have likely heard about.  Perhaps the biggest reasons to shell out twenty-some dollars for the Player’s Handbook 2 are the return of fan-favorite races and classes not present in the 4th Edition Player’s Handbook, like the gnome race and sorcerer, bard, and barbarian classes.

These are excellent reasons to purchase the book.  However, I would like to highlight some of my personal favorite content that hasn’t received much publicity, but will nonetheless be high on my priority list for incorporation into my character designs.  In this way, this article is not so much a review as an examination of several elements found inside the cover.

The “Control Weather” Ritual: The most powerful ritual in the included ritual list is also the most interesting.  It is one of the best methods I’ve seen through which the player characters can wrest control of an upcoming battle from the dungeon master.  With the clever application of this ritual and crafty role-playing, inventive ritual casters can substantially decrease the difficulty of upcoming encounters.  I can imagine so many things I’d like to try in-game.  Can I weaken the villainous fire titan with summer hail?  Instead of attacking the red dragon head-on, perhaps I’ll summon a thunderstorm instead–and attract a rivalrous blue dragon to stake his territory.  The enemy’s camp is well-guarded; I could fight all those thugs, or I could cover the land in fog and let our rogue slip past to the objective.

Of course, this ritual works best when the dungeon master is skilled at the art of saying “yes”.

New rules information: I can’t speak for everyone, but I always found the stealth rules in the Player’s Handbook to be a bit confusing.  No more!  The writers of the Player’s Handbook 2 thoughtfully included the most important rule changes and clarifications from the past nine months in the back of the book, and among those explanations was a replacement of the stealth rules in a way that assuages my doubts about the skill.  Every loophole seems to be covered.

Other previously unclear elements receive the same treatment.  There’s also a handy list of power keywords that’ll surely prove to be of great use to home-brewers, PC and DM alike.

Scion of Arkhosia: A lot of dragonborn fans became a little curious in June 2008 when they looked at the dragonborn champion in the Monster Manual and noticed that it had a fly speed of 8.  I personally flipped back and forth frantically through the Player’s Handbook in an attempt to figure out just what character configuration would lead my dragonborn warlock to sprout wings like the female dragonborn in the MM picture, but alas–there was none.

Now I think that I’ll take the Scion of Arkhosia paragon path.  The Versatile Breath path feature is tempting; who doesn’t want to be able to breath five kinds of breath six ways from Sunday?  The Dragon’s Wrath path attack power is undeniably useful, as it transforms any dragonborn into a limited caster.  Best of all has to be the Dragon Wings path utility power; with this at-will technique, my dragonborn warlock can finally take flight, as Scions of Arkhosia literally grow dragon wings to represent their heritage.

I can’t wait to see what they feature in the Monster Manual 2.

…Also, what’s with all these categories?