In Forgotten Realms: Heroes of Faerun, 5.5E’s first Campaign Setting book for players, WotC finally remembers the rest of the Realms.
Release day is here for both of the Forgotten Realms campaign setting books. Players have Forgotten Realms: Heroes of Faerun, while DMs can sink their teeth into Forgotten Realms: Adventures of Faerun. Between the two books, WotC hopes to give everyone enough of a taste of Faerun to reignite the spark of what makes the Forgotten Realms distinct.
Unfortunately, there’s not a ton of Ed Greenwood’s horny, sex-positivity hiding in the lore. But there are a few other things that make the Forgotten Realms distinct, like the various factions. You might not know the difference between Silverymoon and Myth Drannor, or the Dalelands and Cormyr, but I’d bet you have at least heard of the Harpers. Or the Zhentarim.
And players will find names like these scattered throughout the book. In fact, Forgotten Realms: Heroes of Faerun is packed with a surprising amount of lore for players to bite into. Within its six chapters, you’ll find all the info you might need to delve a little deeper into making a character that lives and dreams in Faerun.
Forgotten Realms: Heroes of Faerun – A Big Book Of Player Options
First and foremost, Heroes of Faerun is a sourcebook full of new player options. Because even if you aren’t interested in the lore, you’re still going to have new stuff to play with. That’s the hook, right? The lure in for players who aren’t already bought into the Realms.
And what a lure. This book has eight new subclasses. It also has 18 new Backgrounds, and 35 new Feats, including a bunch of new Origin Feats that I think offer a lot of flexibility for player characters. It’s a huge addition of new player options, and quite early into the life of D&D 5.5E.
All of this is heartening. If you have been playing 5E from the start, there weren’t that many player expansions. WotC course-corrected a little too much from the 4E days of glut and bloat. But hopefully there’s a little more frequency of new options in the 5.5E cycle. Especially since it’s not just player options for the sake of adding new stuff. All of these explore the Forgotten Realms, if you want them to.
You could just focus on the rules and leave the campaign setting stuff to your own imagination. But if you want to get flavorful with the Forgotten Realms, Feats like Zhentarim Tactics or Harper Agent, or subclasses like the Bard College of the Moon or the Scion of the Three Rogue give you a way to tie your character to specific parts of Faerun.
And it doesn’t hurt that the options in Heroes of Faerun are pretty strong, in general. There are a few misses. We’ll dive into the new subclasses and feats a little deeper in another batch of articles. But by and large, these are fun. The new Bladesinger is sure to be a favorite. The Banneret proves that WotC is too afraid to return to the halcyon days of the Warlord, even though that’s what the fanbase desperately wants.
But this book is a solid addition to any player’s suite of character tools.
Lore Galore And More In Store
The rest of Heroes of Faerun is about getting your character involved in the Forgotten Realms. You get a list of Regions, each with noteworthy events and places that your character might be from or familiar with. Don’t worry, the Sword Coast aka the Remembered Realms is still very much present.
But so are lesser known regions of the Forgotten Realms. It’s not a huge tome of lore the way the old Campaign Setting books used to be, but many of the regions of Faerun get written up. In the Lands of Intrigue, you’ll find Amn and Calimshan and Tethyr, along with little blurbs about what life in each place is like. Each of the Realm entries flavors your character and campaigns. Like a handful of spice.
And of course, you’ll find a ton on the various deities and demigods of Faerun. Campaign settings need info on their pantheons. And in Faerun, the gods have been through and done so much. It’s hard to find a place that hasn’t been marked by the hubris or love (or sometimes both) of a god.
Applied Lore – Or How Circle Magic Might Break Your DM
One of the things that strikes me about this book is how focused it is on what’s useful to player characters. Which is why after the lore, there’s even more stuff to do and use. There’s a whole new list of magic items and mundane gear that’s centered in the Realms. There’s a whole chapter on magic.
And real quick. Circle Magic is a chaotic possibility. I love it, I think that it’s a fantastic addition to the game. But it needs a DM who isn’t afraid to say “no” to their players. Because otherwise you end up in some wacky situations and then you have an arms race as players try to cheese their way through encounters with the magical equivalent of the noob tube.
But I like the swings and the risks that WotC is taking. The Forgotten Realms has always had the problem of feeling generic. When it became the official setting for TSR and later WotC, it needed to be a catch-all. Every kind of character needed to fit in there.
So Faerun had to broaden itself to the point of losing some of the identity. Generic fantasy tropes abound. But I think this book does a great job of grounding players in the Forgotten Realms with a sense of what the lands and people are like.
Is it worth it? For the player options alone, certainly. But especially so if you want to get inside the head of a character from the Forgotten Realms.
Forgotten Realms: Heroes of Faerun is available now!
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