Forgotten Realms: Heroes of Faerun Review

Is the brand new player book for the Forgotten Realms worth getting?

At a glance

What to expect from Heroes of Faerun

The first thing to know is that Heroes of Faerun isn’t a stand a lone release, it’s actually being released alongside another book called “Forgotten Realms: Adventures in Faerun”. Heroes of Faerun is the more player-centric book. It includes character options and a lighter dose of lore. Adventures in Faerun on the other hand, includes much deeper lore and it’s own adventures, making it a more DM-centric book.

But that’s not all! There are also 3 digital supplements to go alongside these 2 Forgotten Realms books (DLC, if you like):

• Astarion’s Book of Hungers – A 32 page guide to vampires, including vampiric character options and adventures.
• Netheril’s Fall – Another 32 page guide, this time to the ancient nation of Netheril, including lore and some adventures set here.
• Lorwyn First light – A Magic the Gathering supplement like Theros or Ravnica, but shorter and again, only available as a digital release. How this relates to the Forgotten Realms is lost on me.

Clearly, Wizards of the Coast are squeezing every last penny out of these releases, and trying a few new formats for these things.

But what exactly is in Heroes of Faerun itself?

Contents	Heroes of Faerun	Xanathar’s Guide to Everything	Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything
Pages	192	192	192
Species	0	0	1
Subclasses	8	27	25
Backgrounds	18	0	0
Feats	34	15	15
Spells	19	95	21
Magic items	3	48	48
Items	12	0	0
Monsters	2	1	3
Maps	13	0	0

In terms of length, Heroes of Faerun is equal in size to rules supplements like Xanathar’s Guide to Everything and Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. However, it compares very differently in raw character options.

Subclasses represent the meatiest and most influential new character options in the books. Xanathar’s and Tasha’s guides both have loads of these (25/27), but Heroes of Faerun only has the 8. Heroes of Faerun fares better on backgrounds, but these are more influential now and makes more sense of setting specific backgrounds.

When it comes to spells, the number seems reasonable while the number of feats perhaps feels a little excessive (I’d have probably preferred more subclasses). When it comes to magic items, it’s pretty bare bones and this feels like a missed opportunity to include some Forgotten Realms specific artefacts (they don’t do this). You might wonder whether these have been tucked away in the DM-focused Adventures in Faerun… They haven’t.

A direct comparison is a tad unfair though. Unlike the other 2 books, Heroes of Faerun is also a setting guide and includes a broad, but top level look at the Forgotten Realms, which is a rather vast place. On that basis, the volume of content seems reasonable, even if I might have preferred it to lean a little more heavily towards certain options.

How good is the content?

But it’s not all about the numbers. None of that matters if the content itself isn’t great.

Subclasses are a mix of new ideas, streamlined mechanics and missed opportunities

I’ve run mechanical deep dives into all the subclasses presented in Heroes of Faerun. The first thing to note is that they are all balanced (just about). Yes the oath of the noble genies is quite powerful (but not excessively so) and yes, the banneret does suffer from one turn wonder syndrome, but it’s also not as bad as many have made it out to be.

The banneret is the one that’s received most of the attention. Mechanically, it has some really interesting team play options where you buff allies. These are actually potent abilities that can really shift a battle. This makes it a viable option just for these big moments. The part that is challenging with the banneret is it has one good turn, and then you have to take a rest before you can use your main banneret features again. This is fine for some features, but all the important features suffer from this problem.

Having said that, I like that the banneret actually does something different. And I think players can have a decent time with it. It’s just a shame that they can’t do a couple of things a little more consistently.

In many cases, the subclasses are definitely hits. The college of the moon, oath of the noble genies, Scion of the three, spellfire sorcerer and bladesinger are all mechanically interesting and strong subclass options.

On the flip side, you have a couple of perfectly serviceable subclasses that feel a bit less inspiring. The knowledge domain cleric is fine if you want knowledge powers, and it’s definitely an improvement on the previous version, but it’s still a little unexciting. The winter walker kind of feels like every other ranger, but with an arctic inclination. It’s fine, but hardly exciting.

Feats are hit and miss options that attempt to fulfill niche needs

Some feats are designed with fairly broad appeal. This goes for things like tough or magic initiate. Everyone likes more hit points and the spell options are so broad for magic initiate that anyone can find it useful. Even the less magically inclined.

There are also feats that fit a more individual need. The grappler feat is there for those using unarmed strikes, dual wielder is for two weapon fighting and so on. These are still quite common needs.

For Heroes of Faerun, there’s a focus on niche feats. That’s not to say the some aren’t broadly useful. Genie magic is great on any spellcaster while purple dragon commandant works nicely on most martials. But many of these feats do attempt something more niche.

Mostly, this has led to fairly average feats. They’re OK. Most aren’t too exciting (though a few are). Some are borderline pointless though, like Harper agent, Harper teamwork and tyro of the gauntlet (the Harpers did not do well out of this book).

If I’m honest, I wish the feats had been cut in half and that space used on more meaningful options (like a couple of extra subclasses) and we could have just removed some of the pointless options from here.

Species don’t get updated

There’s an entire section in here on species. Most of these have been recently updated in the Player’s Handbook and we wouldn’t expect new traits for these species anyway. A few are mentioned like Duergar and Deep Gnomes and point players back to Monsters of the Multiverse (a book published for D&D 2014, but potentially with an eye on the 2024 rules).

It’s an interesting move to talk about these species but not provide mechanics on them. This may frustrate some that don’t own Monsters of the Multiverse. I do have it and don’t think these species necessarily need an update, so maybe this is fine, but what we get here is essentially lore, but no mechanics.

Spells feel balanced and mostly satisfying

Not all the spells land well. Summon constructs feels weak compared to other summon spells to the extent of being pointless, Deryan’s helpful homunculi is a failed attempt at improved crafting and Sylune’s viper just lacks clout. Outside of these 3 though, are some really good inclusions.

Some are variants on other spells like cacophonic shield which is a spirit guardians alternative or backlash which tackles what hellish rebuke does a little differently. Others are fairly unique like death armor with its damage increases or Elminster’s elusion as a defence against spellcasters.

Largely, I’m happy with the spells in the book and think they’re broadly good inclusions. With one exception, they’re also brand new spells for 5e (blade of disaster is the one returning spell).

Circle magic surprisingly isn’t broken!

When I first heard about circle magic, my instinct was to think that this would be an easily exploitable mechanic as there are just too many variables to consider when giving blanket enhancements to spells like increased range or duration. However, I’m pleased to report that barring any very niche use cases that I’m yet to discover, that it actually works quite well.

Essentially, you can call on allies to assist you in enhancing a spell. This will require their actions and perhaps other requirements as well. In this, the cost is already reasonably high. Why cast a bigger fireball when you can cast 2 fireballs?

It means that there’s always a cost Vs benefits aspect to circle casting. You can definitely sway those benefits in your favour with some clever considerations, but there is a cost required.

What this means is that you can now think a little more outside the box and do some things that were less practical before. Defensive spells with a lengthened duration can now be cast ahead of combat, spirit guardians can spread further and fireballs can be cast in the region of your barbarian without harming them.

I have seen some point to ideas like flying around with a friend and casting long range fireballs down from the sky, but to be honest, these tactics are available outside of circle magic. 120ft range while flying is enough to be a big problem for a lot of enemies anyway so I don’t think this problem is new. Realistically, this also ignores the fact that DMs can use flying monsters, or cover, or dungeons, or surprise encounters or a whole host of mechanics to deal with these types of tactics. Circle magic perhaps enhances the problem, but it doesn’t create it. And if I’m honest, in my experience, it’s rare enough that my players cheese encounters this way that I’m happy to give them credit for ingenuity when it does happen.

So circle magic is the mechanic I expected to hate, but actually kind of like for it’s broad ingenuity. Now we just need Wizards to give martials some exciting teamwork mechanic.

Items seem lacklustre and tacked on

The section for items sort of felt like someone said we need to fill a few pages with some extra stuff and decided items don’t take up much space so they crammed in a handful of them to fill it out. The biggest problem is that while these items feel relevant to Faerun and it’s regions, they also feel barely worth bothering with. Maybe if you end up in a certain environment, you might consider some of these things, but realistically I can’t see many people bothering with them.

The section here on travel at least feels useful to know what kind of transport is available and for how much, but that’s it.

Broad lore that lacks depth

This sounds like a criticism, but it’s not really. This is the player’s guide for the Forgotten Realms and as such, is appropriately light on detail and fairly sweeping in breadth. It gives players a flavour for Faerun without overwhelming them on detail and it means that they can travel and converse with enough understanding to not seem like they’re from another world (even if they are).

We’ve got the major regions and locations tackled in here as well as the gods and major factions of the setting. The factions are perhaps the most fleshed out part of the lore, and there’s even useful bits in there telling you what benefits you can expect by progressing through the ranks of a faction.

There is perhaps one surprising omission in all of this. The Shadow druids are not mentioned as a faction (even among the more minor factions) which feels disappointing considering their role in the Realms. Perhaps with the Emerald Enclave included, one druid faction was seen as enough, though I think I’d disagree there.

Great artwork blemished by a few prominent exceptions

The vast majority of the artwork in the book looks great, as is the case for much of Wizards of the Coast’s artwork. There’s a few misses. I’m not a fan of about half of the subclass artwork. The spellfire sorcerer and knowledge domain cleric for example, don’t look quite right to me. But mostly, the artwork is great.

Because of this, it’s even more of a shame that the cover art doesn’t manage this same level of quality. It’s not to say that it’s bad artwork as such, but the style isn’t quite right. Fortunately, they don’t maintain this style throughout the book.

Overall though, the artwork is great.

Overview

Heroes of Faerun is a decent enough book. The lore is fine for newcomers to the setting (which is its core audience), the character options vary between pointless to great, but tend to be well designed and offer something unique (which has actually been a common criticism of recent playtest materials).

And I think this is the essence of the book. It’s fine. It doesn’t get too much wrong, and when it does, it’s in small ways. It’s kind of safe and when it comes to player options, I might have wished they’d done a bit more (except when it comes to feats, there were too many of these).

Some may want some meatier lore (especially DMs). This is supposed to be the remit of Adventures in Faerun and in some ways, that’s fine. But it does beg the question, did we need 2 books for this?

My gut tells me that a more generous Wizards of the Coast could have released this as a single book, more at the size of other setting books and it would have worked perfectly well. But can I really begrudge a business trying to make money? After all, it’s my choice to purchase these books, and Wizards have been grappling with the dilemma of how to produce books for DMs and players, which represent different audiences with different needs. So perhaps this allows them to meet those players where they are.

I suppose what perhaps draws my ire more is the DLC Wizards have produced. At $15 a piece for 32 pages of digital content, that’s a steep price per page compared to the main books. Especially as they could have been included in these books themselves (it’s not like they’re the longest books Wizards have produced). I’ll take a look at those digital supplements separately, but this is essentially a 5 piece pack to purchase the whole bundle which definitely feels like Wizards trying to squeeze every penny out of their players.

So do I recommend Heroes of Faerun? If you’re looking to play games in the Forgotten Realms and want some new character options and to learn the lore, then yes, its a decent enough book that I don’t think you’ll regret purchasing. And considering that not all of Wizard’s supplement books have landed right lately (I’m looking at you Spelljammer), maybe that’s a decent enough place to get to for now. I’d have liked to have been wowed, but I’ll settle for being satisfied.

3/5

---

Spotlight on the Forgotten Realms

Our latest guides on the Forgotten Realms books.