My FLGS got their copies of the Adventurer's Toolkit in today, and I stopped by and picked my copy up after work.

Here are some of my impressions and thoughts on the contents after just a quick once-thru:

1) Careers! A nice variety and selection of additional careers. It's nice that several of the careers can be taken by high elf and/or wood elf PCs, not counting the swordmaster and wardancer careers. I do think that the Ironbreaker and possibly the swordmaster are potentially a bit more powerful than other starting PCs. Their career card is Gromril Armor, or Sword of Hoeth respectively. These items are quite a bit better than the majority of career ability cards that I've seen. I like the concept ... but I am unsure of the play balance of them. I'm also a bit confused as to the usefulness of the Wardancer's career ability, at least from first glance anyway.

2) Party Sheets! Some nice new party sheets, with new concepts and really help to fill in the holes of party dynamics!

3) Some cool new talents! I especially like the talent that lets you gain a fatigue to PARRY ranged attacks. It's called, appropriately, "Untouchable".

4) SBVD. Coolness. Some neat mechanics, some nice tricks for the dog, and action cards for the ratcatcher (that require a pet).

5) Some new critical cards, one of which is *very* nasty and has 2 copies.

6) A good amount of additional tokens, to include stance puzzle pieces, fatigue/stress, and tracking tokens.

7) Action cards - I haven't spent a lot of time with them. There are some cool new ones, like Immobilizing Shot.

Overall, it's a good addition to the Core Set. It certainly adds enough materials for a fourth player, and some new and exciting choices for players and groups alike. I'll try to find some time to look through the materials more thoroughly later.

dvang said:

First of all, I don't think that the Sword Master or the Ironbreaker are more powerfull because their career ability is an object that can be broken, stolen, corrupted, destroyed or simply taken back if you don't finish the career. So being material I think that fact pull their effectiveness a lot.

As for the Wardancer ability, I think it's really strong. You can switch the stance of a card even if you don't switch your stance. Be it social, combat or defense the stance is really different for some action and you can't be in both stance at the same time, the wardancer can and that's what make them so powerfull. You can have all your combat card in the reckless stance while keeping defence and support in the other stance. Quite useful in my point of view.

The toolkit open a lot of possibilities and I'm very eager to see what FFG has in mind for the rest of the franchise.

dvang said:

Just for a fraction of a second I thought that said Immobilizing Snot.

Boo !!

I want my copy

Not even in the country yet....

R00kie said:

I should... no... I MUST have a Troll in one of my upcoming sessions with this special Action.

dvang said:

The wardancer is all about constantly shifting back and forth between conservative and reckless stances. Many of the dance action cards derive some benefit based on how many other dance cards are recharging from the opposite stance. The Wardancer's career ability lets him get the most these benefits.