While the supplement may be short, there’s no shortage of great material contained throughout. This multiclass provides a number of new options for playing a more humanistic setting, introducing royalty into a campaign, or simply creating another unique character for the players to explore. One thing to note is that the Noble multiclass is meant for those with strength in melee and not magic as the majority of the powers are Melee Weapon based with a mixture of ranged Psychic attacks.

For a small publisher, the quality of the layout and presentation of the content is superb! Alea Publishing has followed the high quality displayed by the Player’s Handbook and keeps true with its purpose and material. The new powers are in-line with what is presented in the Player’s Handbook but with new ideas and flavor text that enhance this new multiclass. The only thing it truly lacks is an expanded description of what a Noble truly is, be it narrative or by presenting “build” options. The publication could benefit from a more 3-dimensional look at the Noble as a character and not just a multiclass. To add to all this wonderful material, Alea Publishing has included all the Power Cards for these new powers in the back of the supplement.

Needless to say, I really like the idea of being able to create a Noble as a multiclass, especially a Noble Warlord. Not only are new powers presented, but these powers draw upon a new “source” (bloodline). I find this to be a fantastic way of presenting original ideas into a system that already is filled with lots of powers and mechanics.

It’s tough to add to the comments already stated about the new material added throughout. The option to create a Noble character can be quite valuable to those seeking more role-playing opportunities or those looking to make their characters more unique than the ones otherwise found. The Noble multiclass also has a more humanistic feel for those looking to move away from the standard fantastic races or those trying to recreate a typical feudal system from Medieval times.

Overall I highly recommend GMs and players taking a look at the Noble multiclass not only for it’s possibilities but for the setting that could be created around the use of Nobles. Just taking a look at this supplement makes me want to see more of the Feudal Lords setting for Dungeons & Dragons.

Having used this product in the game I am playing in; I can honestly say good job to the Alea Publishing Group and it's authors, Cameron and Josh. I agree that while not all the powers mesh 100% with each other or a real game, it's a well written and useful multiclass.

This is a good but not great way of doing a noble multi-class only class. By making noble a class you dabble in, any character class can be a noble. This is a great design goal but the implementation is unfortunately lacking. Weapon based characters are much better represented than implement based characters. The level of disparity in power a Noble Fighter would have over a Noble Cleric for instance is a bit jarring and detracts from what would otherwise be an excellent product. Also, the non-weapon powers don't have the implement keyword although adding that as a houserule is easy enough to do. The Paragon Path and the DM Noble templates are very good.

There are a number of significant changes between the new 4e GSL system and the OGL rules, one of the more notable ones being the class system and the associated system of powers. Under the OGL system, designing a class wasn't a particularly cumbersome task, as long as you could create an interesting and viable class with 20 levels and provide the associated spells, abilities and feats for the class as required. Under the new 4e GSL rules, designing a class takes more time and effort simply because you need to provide enough powers and feats for the class, including associated material like builds, class specific abilities and the like.

When I first saw Alea Publishing's Feudal Characters: Noble, I'll admit I wasn’t sure what to expect. A 'noble' as such is not really a class, at least not within the classes and their roles as defined in the GSL system. On the other hand, given the very much perceived weaknesses of the GSL's social system, I was intrigued to see what Alea Publishing would offer for an inherently social class. Most powers, barring sometimes the utility powers, are largely associated with combat, so the combination of a social class by definition and 'combat' powers would be interesting. Having seen what Alea Publishing have done, I was pleasantly surprised by the approach, creativity and neatness of what they'd done with the class.

Feudal Characters: Noble is a 16 page pdf product that presents a new class for the Feudal Lands campaign setting from Alea Publishing Group. This product is one of the first Feudal Lands products for the 4e GSL system, although several products have been produced for the campaign setting under the OGL rules (which I believe are to be updated to 4e GSL rules). This product is excellently presented, with a high standard of writing, layout, editing and general style of presentation. Some good illustrations are provided by Denise Garner, and the product includes a excellent cover, useful bookmarks and an attractive bordering to the pages in the layout. Overall, the product has a bit of eye-candy associated with it, and is done to a professional quality standard.

The noble class as a concept is fairly self-explanatory - a character born into or bestowed nobility and likely with that associated land, titles and other benefits of the status. The class itself is implemented as a multiclass rather than a base class, and I think that's a neat way of using the GSL multiclassing system. After all, nobles are not associated with any particular class, but the benefits of nobility can be obtained via a noble multiclass. In this way, more powerful nobles or lesser nobles can have varying degrees of multiclass powers, further providing a good solution to how to mechanically implement the noble class. I think this is an elegant choice, and whatever your thoughts on GSL multiclassing, I think this is an instance where it works really well.

Barring providing the multiclass noble feat for access to the noble's powers, the majority of the product, as one would really expect, is a long list of various daily, encounter and utility powers. Power cards are usefully provided at the end of the product for all the noble's powers. The powers are all based on a new power source, the bloodline power source, and a fair number of the noble's powers deal psychic damage. The powers themselves contain a fair mix of different flavors and descriptions, although the majority of them are unfortunately very combat focused. Some of the utility powers are focused on skill challenges, which I thought was a useful way of building the social aspects of the class.

Of the combat powers most seemed fairly balanced, although if you've read all the powers in the core books, the majority of the noble's powers are similar abilities in a different guise. Powers are based on such aspects of the noble's stature such as speech, commanding presence and the like, much like one would expect. In a way, and likely a good way, the noble's combat powers are very similar to those a knight would have. As always, roleplaying goes a long way in developing these powers for a specific character or noble concept. The latter half of the product includes a noble template as well as a new monster, the typical human knight. It's a rather odd, but descriptive name for a monster, but useful nonetheless.

Overall, I think this is a class where the approach taken as a multiclass pays of, and illustrates a good way of using the GSL multiclassing system. The powers themselves are mostly good, though perhaps a bit repetitive, but I'd hoped to see more playing with the social aspects of what the noble class entails. Nevertheless, I think the few social utility powers, the training provided to nobles in social skills, and general roleplaying will make this a multiclass that can work well in game. Alea Publishing Group have provided a clever approach to creating new concepts and classes by using the multiclass system. A good, strong product, with clever design and a very usable class.

I have to agree with Robert. This is by far one of the best third party classes I have found. It's well balanced without being weak and it adds some flavor into your games. This is definitely a buy! Especially if you want them to be able to afford to keep making these :)

This is a gorgeous, well laid out and well presented product, possibly the best produced 4e product I've seen from a third party publisher yet.

The contents are strong, but not quite as strong as the production. Designed as a multiclass (like the spellplagued in the Forgotten Realms Player's Guide) rather than a full class, it offers all the powers necessary for that, but also provides a template and a sample NPC, both of which greatly increase the utility of this product. The inclusion of power cards for the abilities are a very nice touch.

The powers themselves are clever, though a little uneven. I am not 100% sure they are all intended to work exactly as they read, with the biggest disconnect coming from powers that require the target can hear you. There are also a few 3.x-isms that could be shaken off. Still, they're definitely much more good than bad.

With another round of smoothing of the powers, and the inclusion of either some at-will powers or a paragon path (the lack of these being a little jarring against he otherwise very complete contents) this could easily be a 5 star product, and even without that, it was worth my three bucks. I definitely will be lookign to see what Alea Publishing does in the future.