Excellent DMs Toolkit! This is a fantastic piece of work for any DM who runs lower-end games or games with a lot of role-playing with the "locals" in a game world. These are TYPICAL commoners... stats average at 10.5, most of them are commoners, like 99% of the d20 populace are supposed to be.

It's NOT rich and lush, but it is detailed. Each type of character has a nice description of their role in a medieval game world, as well as notes on rules to remember when using the characters.

While the on-screen version is beautiful, the printer version is utilitarian, and my printed copy is already dog-eared from being flipped through during urban encounters and bar-scenes.

This product is incredibly utilitarian, but not useful to everyone. This isn't a product for an epic campaign, this is something for the little people. But just about every DM should have a copy of this.

Disclaimer: This review is based on reading this PDF at my friend's house. I don't own it and do not have it open before me as I write this.

With the exception of the actual 101 spellbooks (about 6 per page), I was able to identify just about every spell in this book from various other books or from the author's web page where they are available for free. Effectively, half the book is a reference document so you don't have to dig up the spells referenced in the first half of the book.

Aside from that issue, the book is nice looking and feels complete, although I would have rathered more detailed descriptions of the spellbooks in question, and less space dedicated to spells from other sources.

Amazingly good work.

I was initially surprised that there are less classes in this volume of Librum Equitis than in the first volume. But then the size of the work struck me. This volume is about twice as big as the previous work, with more detail given to each class, and FAR better texture. One of the major changes is there are less "generic" classes and more with interesting backstories and organizations behind them.

They also include ideas on how to adapt the prestige classes in the book for use in other campaign worlds.

The art is super-sweet too.

The classes are:

Bokor - Voodoo priests and wizards. Dark evil guys with a penchant for curses and voodoo dolls. Nice mechanics for making and using voodoo dolls. (includes a new poison)

Bone Archer - Necromancer / Archer crossover. In initial feel it's like an evil Arcane Archer, but way cooler.

Brotherhood of the Golden Blossom - This is sweet. Paladin Monks who battle outsiders and undead.

Children of the Snake - Ever had an obsession with the yuan-ti? These guys did... and they are slowly becoming yuan-ti themselves now. A nice alternative to the yuan-ti template in Monsters of Faerun - it makes the transmutation process from human to yuan-ti painful, long, and full of oportunities.

Circle of the Lute - A secret society of bards turned to spies in the service of the Bardic College.

EarthBound - Dwarven arcane casters who have found a connection to the earth and stone around them. This is a 12 level class and has some great new spells and abilities.

Elite Cavalry - "Generic" prestige class for any elite mounted troops. The sample given is for Goblin Worg Riders. Pretty cool.

Forge Singer - Dwarven or Orc bard / priests. Interesting mix, but probably doomed to being used for NPCs only. Includes a new "Iron Elemental" template.

Mad Tailor - The king of creepiness for this book. An arcane spellcaster who makes constructs out of living beings. Uber-creepy! Includes monster manual style entries for five different categories of "Mad Constructs". Still uber-creepy. Flavor text is creepy too. Top Dog in this book.

Order of Cordun - Evil paladins, counterparts of the Initiates of Cordun from LE1. They get armor made from a dead monster that they improve over time using a mechanic similar to that of the Samurai in Oriental Adventures.

Riders of the Duras - Mounted rangers and outriders. These guys should be easily "tweaked" to fit into any campaign. Looks like the border patrol in Karameikios just got upgraded in my game!

Sacred Paladin - FINALLY. A Paladin for every alignment!

Siege Mage - Mages of siege warfare and buildings. The mechanics seem a little odd to me, and the powers a bit disjointed.

The Society of Heavenly Movements - Wizards of the skies. Interesting mechanic combining what feel like clerical domains with arcane spellcasting. Great texture.

Timer - Uhmmm.... Psions in "the Matrix"? Really cool, but they feel really derivative.

Tribal Berserker - Remember the Berserker class WAY back in Best of the Dragon, Volume 2? It's back!

Troll Hunter - WICKED. This is the king of crunch, specialized in fighting regenerating creatures. Probably could have more stringent prerequisites. (Includes a new feat, Hardcore)

Venomous - Assassin class for people with poison attacks. Looks like a prime candidate for medusae and members of the Children of the Snake class.

Chapter 2 is a bunch of new spells (five pages) and some new domains (Forge domain from the Forge Singer class, Stone Domain and Weaponry Domain). Most of the new spells are for the EarthBound class - but many are also useable by Druids and Sorcerers.

Chapter 3 is some new psionic items and a new metapsionic feat (Chain power - make a psionic power into a chain-lightning derivative). What's nice is that these items are perfectly useable in a non-psionic campaign too. Nice to see people working with psionics but keeping it non-psionic friendly.

Overall, I was VERY impressed, and found the overall product to be superior to volume 1.

My first impression of this book was primarily negative.

It's UGLY. It is obviously the output from a wordprocessor slapped right into PDF format. Nothing pretty to it at all.

U - G - L - Y.

Time to take the sales money and buy some publishing software. Also consider publishing in a SLIGHTLY smaller font. 12 point arial is huge, especially when you print it. Exported to RTF and reformatted in a word processor with the margins reduced and the font reduced to 9 pt Times New Roman or 8 pt Arial, each page of my version of the document held 3 full pages of the original. The full document is slightly under 27,000 words, definitely not worth 62 pages of dead trees to print.

BUT. Then I really started to work through the content, and I was impressed! This has obviously seen some major thought and work and probably playtesting too! New classes, prestige classes and so on. It really feels like a complete work, definitely infinitely superior to NightShift Games' nasty foray into the d20 supers market. Better than that, it is presented as a complete RPG (minus the character generation rules, as per the d20 license), not as a tack-on set of rules to turn another game into a superhero RPG.

Basics:

Vigilance uses the Wounds / Vitality rules. Which means it's most likely in violation of Wizard's latest decisions against other companies who were going to use this system. But it works better for the genre than straight hit points (at least, if yu want a more "realism-based" supers game... but then again, plain hit points should be fine considering the amount of abuse a super can take in most stories).

Instead of Races, there are origins. Classic to the genre. These include 'Advanced Training', 'Alien', 'Artificial Life', 'Mutant', 'Mystic Encounter', and 'Scientific Experiment'. I was surprised not to see 'Robot' on the list... but pleased to see the munchkin's choice from Marvel ('God') to be missing.

The classes seem fairly typical for a non-fantasy game. One has an odd saving throw progression, but otherwise they seem balanced and appropriate. Brick, for example, gains a bonus Wound point at every even level. I was surprised to see Gadgeteer here instead of as an Origin.

The feats and powers are what make the book truly part of the genre. I would have appreciated more powers (looks like it's time to crack open the Ultimate Book of Powers from the old Marvel RPG again), but the ones here are well done and the feats are very nice.

The equipment section seems lacking. The vehicle rules are rudimental and the weapons are about the same. There is more detail for the six types of hand grenades than there is for all the firearms thrown together. While the introduction to the document mentions that armor provides DR instead of AC benefits, NO body armor is included in the rules, and in the section on buying material from the PHB, it doesn't say how to handle the switch from AC to DR.

The next chapter is Prestige Classes, and they are Golden. Behemoth, Mentor, Mind Master, PowerHouse, Secret Agent and Speed Demon all feel perfect for the game. Just by expanding on this chapter and the powers chapter, this could evolve into a masterpiece of a game.

All in all, this BARELY rates better than a 2 as it is really an incomplete work being sold as a finished product. But the groundwork is excellent and later editions should be something to watch out for.