I was provided with a free copy of The Consort in exchange for an honest and unbiased review
This is a story about love.
A Consort is a character who has drawn the attention of a powerful Fey Sovereign (an archfey). The fey becomes that character’s patron, muse, or similar, granting them abilities in return for their service. Their fey patron loves them, to whatever value of ‘love’ this strange, fey, creature understands. Mutual or otherwise, romantic, platonic, healthy or exploitative, at the heart of every Consort is a love story. And, to my mind, D&D is lacking in love stories, so this core concept is a bold and original move.
How you interpret the relationship at the heart of the class is entirely down to the player and DM, and your respective comfort levels: you might have a hero in love with their patron, or a poor creature tormented by their loss of freedom or the magical world they’ve barely glimpsed. In terms of flavour and story potential, The Consort is superb, though you’ll need a fairly mature group to negotiate the necessary conversations about consent, reciprocity and other concepts that sneak in when you start to talk about love across a power gap.
A Consort character is mechanically versatile, too. It’s both a half-caster and a fighter, with room for the player to customise how far their character leans in either of those directions.
There are only two points against the Consort, but they’re both fairly important.
For a class that’s fully based on an interpersonal relationship, it’s disappointing that there are only four sovereigns to pick from. A player and DM will probably have to at least reskin one of the existing four, or more likely make a new one, for every new Consort created.
Secondly, and related… there are a lot of conceptual similarities with a warlock dedicated to an Archfey patron. The mechanical package is different – a Consort will play differently from a Warlock – but you could, and may already have, tried out this character concept with an existing class.
Buy it if: you’ve always wanted more strong relationships in your D&D games (and goodness knows, that’s a good reason); you’re unsatisfied with the abilities and powers of a warlock.
Don’t buy it if: you’re opposed to re-flavouring/re-skinning, and working closely with your DM to build a character; warlocks are your comfort zone.
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