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Natural Wonders Flora
Plants and special materials can be a fun detail for any fantasy game. Most people I see do not really look into this type of item for treasure or as equipment. But especially in a game that wants a little lower magic these are the types of things that can add flavor and ability without the feat of getting too powerful. It is also a nice way to get a little more out of the skills the characters have and can be a good reason to place points into skills the characters do not have.
Natural Wonders Flora is a new PDF by Tangent Games. The PDF is eighty one pages long though the layout makes it seemed like they stretched it out some. The art is a mix of colored pictures, clip art, and what looks like altered clip art. The book is well book marked and it has two very useful tables at the end. The first summarizes the use, skill and DC to make, cost, and weight of the items that can be made from it. The other table is how much the plants are worth per pound or other unit of measurement.
The book presents fifteen new types of plants and the many uses and other great information about each one. Each plant is shown where and how they can found. Specific info on where in the setting of Ados they can be found with enough info so people using other settings can easily place the plants in the proper locations. Each entry has a rarity associated with it. This effects how easy it will be to find the plant as well as how easy it will be for someone with a successful knowledge check to know something about it. Each plant has a hardness and hit points. It also lists the special qualities of the plant.
Each plant has a full paragraph or two that does a nice job of describing the fauna. These are the often over looked details that can really add a nice level of detail to a campaign. Each plant is giving a list of DCs and what skills can be used to locate and identify the plants. It also has what skill to harvest the plant and knowledge checks with information on the plant of a few different DCs. It includes the cost and then the many uses of the plant. There are mechanics for traps the plant can be used for, different items the plant can be used to make, and weapons and armor that the plant can be used for. Each plant seems to get a full three or four pages of information devoted to it.
Natural Wonder Flora is one of those rare books that can really add a nice level of depth to a game. I see it being more useful at lower levels and in low magic games as nothing here seems all that powerful. Magic will eventually make these absolute for a normal D&D adventuring party like it does with most mundane equipment. The book is good and does a nice job with the information surrounding these plants.
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<b>LIKED</b>: Great level of detail<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: layout and art could have been better<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>
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Fire in the Hole
A little while there was an adventure called Weekend Warriors. It is a good military adventure that takes some military personal on a base and puts them the ringer of supernatural. Fire in the Hole is the follow up to that adventure though it is a good stand alone adventure as well. Fire in the Hole assumes new characters will be played though so it is not the type of adventure previous characters are assumed to be used. Of course it can be done that way if that is what people want.
Fire in the Hole is a new adventure by the guys at 12 to Midnight. They have really shown to be able to do modern horror game supplements. The adventure is written for d20 modern and that book will be needed for character generation and to use as a rule set to run the adventure. The adventure is only about forty pages long and has a good lay out and some okay art. It is fully book marked and it is written for fifth level characters. The cover of the book is really cool and looks like a field manual that is shot up with a bloody handprint. It reminds me a bit of the cover of Dread.
The adventure is set up really well. It is designed to be a one shot though it has enough extra material and adventures around the core adventure for this to be the basis of a campaign. Characters play military characters sent in to figure out what is going on after the events of Weekend Warrior happen. One of the great things this does is gives the characters clear cut goals depending on the orders of their superiors. It also allows players to easily switch to other military personnel if their character dies.
The adventure is very supernatural in origin. From the first scene where the players watch the Air Force napalm the place before the characters playing the point team go in. The DM can make this easy or hard as there are many encounter ideas and ways to make the adventure more complex. The maps from Weekend Warriors can be used and those are available as a free download.
I think this is going to be the type of adventure that works best the less the players realize what is going. Everything is explained in the module for the DM, but there is not a lot of explanation the players get. They will see a lot of weird things and might figure some of it out but I like that the module does not include an explanation for the players automatically.
Overall, this is going to be a fun modular module. It is short enough and written well enough to easily be a one shot. And then it has plenty of great ways to build off of that. I really like the way they have that set up. This is the one shot that can be a campaign and that is just not something I ever see let alone this well done.
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<b>LIKED</b>: Very versatile and great follow up module<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>
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Permafrost
What happens in a world that is overrun with ice and snow? Permafrost is that answer. It is a new setting by Valent Games. It is a new setting that is in the midst of a terrible Ice Age. It is the perfect excuse to get a lot of work out of Frost and Fur and Frostburn.
Permafrost is a new PDF written by Colin Fredericks. The PDF does come in a print and on screen format. It has a nice soft snow like background that helps the book out a lot since there is no art in the forty three pages the book has. I do like that in the credit it says ?Total Lack of Art: Colin?s bank account? so a little humor in admitting why he does not have art here. The background does help make up for the lack of art and the shortness of the PDF makes it so it is not so bad. The PDF does not have book marks and that is a worse sin for this book.
Permafrost is an idea that just is not taken to proper level. As a Setting this is a book of a solid idea and theme but it does not take the detail the setting enough to really make it easy to use. There are no maps and only three cities left. And they are really not given the level of details to make them useful. This is a jumping off point. There are some good ideas and ways to run a campaign in the setting. But a DM will need to do a little or a lot of work to really flesh out the cities, NPCs, and come up with full adventures. In addition to the lack of some details the author has a questions and answers section in which he states that he will probably not be writing any more for this setting. That is a pity because there is a lot of really good potential here. That is one reason I mention those two other cold related books. Such resources will be helpful if one wants to use Permafrost.
The majority of the book is spent on new classes. None of the classes from the Players Handbook are in this setting anymore. The circumstances of the Great Ice Age the setting is in have gotten rid of them all. Instead the book has ten new base classes. There are no prestige classes, no new feats or spells, or other mechanics in here. The writer choose base classes instead of prestige classes as he felt they were a better way to showcase the class abilities he came up with. In this case I think prestige classes might have been more useful since having just base classes really cuts the setting off from the wide variety of mechanical options the game presents.
The Core Seekers are like a subterranean ranger. They have a lot of good specialized abilities that really make them good underground. Elsewhere they will be a little more limited in what they can do. I do like they get trap finding as it really fits the idea of the class.
Crystalhome Adept are the new version of Monks. They are not as powerful as a normal monk and seem to be part security force.
Iceborn Raiders are like rogues that live in the frozen places and steal and do whatever it takes to survive. They get invisibility powers and some have some neat ideas dealing with tokens.
The Knights of the Snow are like a less restricted Paladin. They have made an alliance with a Fey god who helps them survive in the cold north and they basically help people out. They can carve weapons of ice and enhance weapons with ice.
Mad Hermit is a person who has snapped under the horrors of trying to survive when his family and the people he knew have not. It is the most creative class in the book.
Magma Mage is a fire bases caster. They are spontaneous casters. One odd thing the writer did is lower spell level slots go away. The writer felt it was too much book keeping for higher level casters to worry about all those spells. The known spells of the lower levels never goes away, the caster just has to spend a higher spell slot on them. I have never felt it was a problem with all the spells so this is one of the few design elements I disagree with.
The Naga Cultist are another underground group. The Naga went underground away from the cold and so did their people. That is what this represents.
Planar Initiates are psionics based class. They have no high level restrictions on using their lower level powers like the other casters do. They are looking for a solution to the cold on other planes of existence.
Reborn Archon is another creative class. This is like a cleric with really good healing abilities. They have no ability to turn undead. In fact, none of the classes has that. I like that the author choose to get rid of turning.
Servants of Death are casters that deal with necromancy and death. They are not good or evil.
The book has a template for making monsters cold in type and shows haw they have adapted and survive. The book also has a few pages of dealing with the cold and the weather. This is good and useful information. Lastly there are some basic adventure seeds. They are enough to get the DM?s mind going in what to do in Permafrost but I would have liked more with a little more detail.
Permafrost is a good book for someone wanted a start to a cold base campaign. The world is really not that defined so taking the ideas here and placing them in another cold based setting will be really easy. But unfortunately since this is a setting unto itself I just cannot recommend it. It has some good ideas but it just fails at what it is trying to do.
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<b>LIKED</b>: Some creative classes<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Just not enough of the setting to be a setting<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Disappointed<br>
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Creator Reply: |
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Wow, that was a very fast review - up the same day!
I appreciate your comments. I think you might have missed the "Invoke Signature" ability that all spellcasters in this setting get, which allows them to keep their favorite low-level spells and cast them all day long.
As for the bookmarks, I can easily put those in. I'll take care of that soon and post an update.
In the end, game mechanics are something I'm much better at than I am at setting. Most GMs I know are really good at taking an implied setting and running with it (as with, say, Arcana Evolved), and I hope that others will feel the same way. |
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Divine Forces Benton
Gods can be an important part of a fantasy game. It is a tightrope of information to walk though as people want different things from gods. Some wants lots of information but for me it is not the amount of info but how useful the information is. A nice creation myth is nice to read but usually has little bearing on a campaign or character. Lots of times it seems mechanical information is the most useful but then there is a solid group of gamers that despise stats for gods. Obviously a writer and book can not hope to please everyone but this one does a nice job of giving a wide amount of useful information.
Divine Forces Benton is a PDF by Interactive Designs. It is a sixteen page PDF. The book has a very basic lay out and it does seem shorter then the actual page count suggests. It also has basic book marks.
The strength of the book though is in the writing. The PDF is all about Benton, a goddess of luck, love, music and other performing arts, material wealth, and the sea. Those are quite a bit of areas for the goddess to cover and they do not really seem to go together all that well to me. The book explains her connection to a group of gods called the Seven Golden Gods.
It has a nice section of Benton in art work. This is a descriptive section but these types of details can be difficult to use in a game. It would be nice if the writer would include ideas to make use of some of the things they place in books. Not all players and DMs are going to be able to find uses for them and might need a little help with it. They have a section on the clergy and it is just a little longer then the section about the art. It has the domains for the clerics but it does not list the deity?s favored weapon.
The book has the avatar?s stats for those people that want them. More importantly though it has two unique items of the good listed. The items have the usual defining characters that items have with one really good addition. Each item specifically lists how the items can get in the hands of followers and what happens if the items are stolen or used in ways Benton does not approve of. These are nice details that easily lend themselves to adventures.
There is a prestige class called the Priest of Benten. It is actually not the easiest of classes to get into. It requires a level of Bard, 3rd level divine spells, BAB of +4, certain domains, and certain skills. The Bard level though gets mostly wasted as the class offers no bard spells or bardic knowledge. It has a few things that can be done with the perform skill but not much else. The class though is pretty good as it has a good list of class skills, full divine spellcasting, and it gains something every level. Saves are as a bard, attack bonus is as a cleric, and it has hit points as a cleric. The class gets some bonus domain and one thing I find a little odd is that they can get domains that are not domains of their deity.
This is a good and complete god that should be easy to add to one?s campaign. There is quite a bit of information here and really the only big thing I feel is missing is ways to adapt the god to one?s own campaign setting and pantheon of gods. But then few books seem to try to come up with other ways in which they can be used.
<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>
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Buy the Numbers
Dungeons and Dragons is an RPG game that has some very set ideas. Each character will have a class and one progressed through gaining levels and getting set abilities defined by the classes. There are some options now like feats and skills, but for the most part the classes determine most of a character?s abilities. Well, that?s not the way it is going to work if Spencer Cooley has anything to say about it.
Spencer Cooley is the author and publisher behind Buy the Numbers. He has written a few d20 books but this is by far the most radical. This is one of the most radical books I have read for the system. It takes two of the so called sacred cows, classes and levels, and tosses them aside. Almost. It is a class and level base system that this is based off of. Classes and levels do make their way in here but only to keep things balanced and to figure appropriate challenges.
Buy the numbers is a sixty two page pdf. It comes in a zip file a bit over seven megs and unzips to two pdf files. One is made for printing and is under a meg and size and the other is full color with borders and art. The color file is a bit over eight megs in size. There is a nice color border on alternating sides of the book, but with no border opposite it it really makes the other side look bare. The art is okay and the layout is well done. However, the important part of this is the rules.
The idea is simple but the construction of them is complicated. One takes all the abilities that go into the classes like hit dice, saves, base attack bonus, skills, etc and assigns costs to them. The costs are in experience points. There is no longer the waiting between gaining levels to gain abilities. Just take the experience points one gained in an adventure and spend them to improve the character. Every ability in the Players Handbook is given a cost in here. The book also gives good guidelines and formulas for figuring out the cost of any ability presented in the thousands of d20 books.
Personally, I really like the idea. The numbers and formulas are easy to use and while there is some math involved it is not nearly as complex as I was expecting. There are basic rules given for the costs and then there are usually a few options for alternate costs. For instance raising an attribute costs 400xp the first time and then 800, 1200, 1600 etc for each other time. The options though provide ways to have the cost increase only if one is increasing the same ability over and over. If one wants to just increase all abilities once the cost stays cheap under this option. A second option is to make the cost dependant on how good the ability will be after it is raised. Under this option it is cheaper to raise an eleven to a twelve then a twenty to a twenty one for instance. And the third option combines those two ideas. The options presented here should allow any group to find a way that works for them.
There are of course some problems that can arise from this type of system though. A character can easily buy a lot of the cheaper abilities and have a wide range of options for him. A character might be able to acquire a huge base attack bonus at the expense of not learning skills. Obviously it is really up to the DM to watch over what the characters are doing and to hopefully show them that certain types of min maxing while possible will not produce a character that can meet all the obstacles.
There is one thing that is missing from the book though. I would like to see a character generation sheet that can be used to keep track of the experience costs and what the experience has been spent on. I think this type of sheet would be very useful with this kind of character creation and advancement.
A second thing it does not handle is races with level adjustments.
One interesting thing that the author does at the end is show how much experience it would cost to use this system and progress just like the base classes do. The classes are not equal and the levels are not equal. This system will help balance that out and allow the characters to feel more on the same ability level with each other.
Overall this is a fascinating product. It is one of the rare books that can truly say it covers something no other d20 book has. It really has the ability to change the way people play the game without altering the campaign world.
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<b>LIKED</b>: It makes the game a point system while keeping what makes the game great<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>
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Chunky Dungeons
On to another pdf that uses miniatures. I have seemingly got a good amount of these lately, and most of them have been pretty good. But none of them are like this one. Chunky Dungeons is not about printing out alternatives minis or battle maps like many of the others. Chunky Dungeons is about printing out props like furniture, weapon racks, and having good three dimensional full color objects for your maps.
Chunky Dungeons is an electronic product by World Works Games. This is the first product that I have seen of theirs, but a quick look on their website reveals that these guys have a lot of ideas and some exciting stuff coming along. Chunky Dungeons is a collection of different things that anyone can print out and create. It comes in a sixteen meg zip file and is filled with many different files. All together these files are a bit under twenty megs in size. The fifteen dollar price tag might be a bit pricey as there are other things on needs to have to be able to use this product.
Chunky Dungeons is a little more involved then any other item like this I have seen. These are not designed to be printed out on normal paper. They recommend 110lb card stock, what most business cards are made from. When putting these together one needs a hobby knife, white craft glue, straight edge ruler, wooden ruler or pencil (for hard to reach areas), cutting pad, and of course the card stock. So, while one does not need to be a craftsman to do this, it does take some time, skill, and effort.
What is made using this product though is pretty good. They have all sort of walls: Columns, corners, curved walls, doors gates, etc. However, there are not many to a page so to get a lot of these one will need to print out a few pages worth. The props can have a bit more to a page. They include stairs, torches, torture room, treasure chests, beds, libraries, etc. Everything is full color and the art is really good.
Lastly, is the Pro Masterboard section. This stuff is more time involved, needs some equipment like Velcro, and seem one will need to be a little more careful in doing this. The purpose of the Pro Masterboard is to create a way for the floor and props to stay put if the boards get accidentally knocked. Anyone how has used similar things knows that it is not hard to ruin a set up that took a bit of time to create.
Chunky Dungeons is a nice product designed for those who want a little bit more for their miniatures but does not want to spend the money for a full terrain. It will be good as it is easy to print out more and the cost per individual item is not high, so if they do get ruined it is not that big of deal. It does take a bit of work, and costs a little extra for the paper and if one doe not have the available tools on hand. It is also a little more dependant on the skill of the user, so hopefully with a little patience and practice anyone can create they things.
<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>
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17 Bard Spells
Bard spells seem to have the most flavor and depth. The class has a solid foundation for its archtype more so then any of the other major casters except perhaps the Druid. The spells though are less combat oriented many times and this can cause problems for some groups. I am not one of them so I lo0ok at this product with high favor because of the ways it can help expand the Bard to even more non combat bits of fun.
17 Bard Spells is another in a long series of PDFs by The Le Games. The PDFs have a nice lay out and come in a variety of options so they can be used on screen, printed out, and even use the copy and past options. The Le Games seems to be the only or one of the few that still makes multiple files versions of his books.
17 Bard Spells is a book that gives one seventeen new bard spells. These spells I find to be more creative and a better fit then many other bard spells. They are the types of spells that a player can get creative with but not the type that are going to be useful in a dungeon crawl. The rules on some of them are a little odd and could use some refining. But I think a player that enjoys a bard for being a bard will really get a kick out of many of these spells.
The book is in itself a magical bard book so it has a built in simple way to get these spells to a bard player. It is a neat idea but since bards do not learn spells like a Wizard and are so limited to the amount of known spells I think something better could have been done here. The three cantrips are all pretty interesting. The first is groom which is a good idea since it cleans someone. It does it better then prestidigitation does. Invitation is very creative spell that creates invitations to invite people to a Bard?s performance or something like that. It is a spell that can easily bring new plot lines to the party. The last cantrip is Switch and it switches whatever is in two places like buckets. I can see it being useful for con games and the like.
Of the first level spells the first seems a bit powerful. Honest Aura allows bluff checks to succeed unless a natural one, two, or three is rolled. There are spells that just give bonuses to bluff and I think those are just easier to deal with. Walking Echo is a simple illusion that will help a Bard avoid pursuers.
Seductive Kiss is a second level spell that is a far more interesting version of Charm Person. I would love to see some of the classic spells done like this with more flavor and character in them.
Those are some of the fun spells in here. Not all of them are great and many will take a more clever player to find a fun and good use for them. For people wanting Bards to have more bard like spells and not just the occasional wizard spell that kind of fits their niche; this book is for you.
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<b>LIKED</b>: Creative spells<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Rules not always the best<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>
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Ptolus Deluxe Maps
Maps are usually a hard thing for people to do. They are rare in books these days and a bad map can really be a major turn off. A good map on the other hand can be a thing of pure beauty and inspire ones imagination. Ptolus is of course the new major deluxe city setting from Mont Cook. These maps are of the city and many of the typical places inside. The maps though can easily be used with other places and there is nothing really limiting this to just this one city.
Ptolus Deluxe Map Pack is by SkeletonKey Games. This is Ed Bourelle?s company and he is one of the best cartographers in the RPG business today. The maps are in color and look great. However there are no bookmarks at all with this PDF and it really needs them. The PDF is one hundred and sixty eight pages in length. And on each page are maps, maps and more maps. But they are not really that well organized. There is no table of context or index. There is no way to know that one page nineteen is the map of the Griffon. So, if a DM knows he needs a certain map the only way to locate it is to look through the whole book page by page. The book is probably meant to be printed out but book marks in this and a list of the maps and where they are and maybe even a sentence or two on them would have made this one of the most impressive map books the RPG industry has ever seen.
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<b>LIKED</b>: Very impressive and well done maps<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: No bookmarks or easy orginazation<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>
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Spells of Stealth
Stealth can really be an advantage to characters and magic is one of the best ways to be stealthy. The normal ways deal with invisibility and spells like that. Spells of Stealth presents new spells that aid in stealth and many are invisibility based. This collection of spells is pretty good and gives the reader what they say they are.
Spells of Stealth is a PDF by Red Anvil Productions. They have a line of PDF in the series that take a single topic and present wizard spells for it. The PDFs are small this one is only six pages long. The layout and writing are basic and simple. There are no book marks in the PDF as well.
There are spells of first to ninth level and three epic spells that they also identify as being tenth, eleventh, and twelfth circle spells. The first spell is Sneak. It is a scaling spell that does not seem start working until fifth level the way it is written. The second level spell is Flour Cloud. It is kind of amusing since I have seen and read people that use flour to figure out were invisible creatures are. This spell does basically the same thing.
Invisibility Plus is a third level spell. I like this one as it takes the invisibility and also has it affect an additional sense. So the character can be invisible and also not make a sound or perhaps not have a scent. Phalter is a neat fourth level one that makes people not remembers the wizard has been to a place. Invisible Evocation is another cool spell that allows a wizards spell to be totally invisible though the effects are still easily seen.
The epic spells are very interesting. One makes everything of a certain type invisible for miles. It would last for many weeks and could have some impressive uses for a clever player. Another one makes the Phalter spell permanent on the caster. No one would remember seeing the person at all anywhere he went. That is a good spell that has many plot lines a DM can use to really have some fun. .
The higher level spells I think might be a little weak for there level and lack the creativity of the earlier ones. Some of them build off the earlier ones so it is just a better version of another spell. The lower level spells here though are nice variety for stealth and should be the type most stealthy wizards especially arcane trickster types will really be able to make good use of.
The book does the job it sets out to do. It gives the reader a variety of new stealth type spells one of each spell level. It does not give any history and context to which the spells are creator or who uses them. There is a little bit on one of the epic spells that should limit its availability but without any more context it is hard to do that. A DM though can easily make up information to fill in the information gabs.
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<b>LIKED</b>: I like the low level spells and the epic ones can be creative<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: I want more context and some better high level spells. <br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>
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Untapped Potential
Psionics have always felt like an add on to D&D and to the d20 game. They exist in there own book and get little support in the many additional books for the system. Here is a new book that expands on psionics and does so in a very standard and good way. I say standard since the book gives one more of the usual material. There are new classes both base and prestige, new powers, new feats, new monsters, new items, and info on psionic races. And while this is all well done it does not branch out and present things that are not in every other book these days. This is more of the same of stuff though it is nicely done.
Untapped Potential: New Horizons in Psionics is by Dreamscarred Press. The PDF is one hundred and seventy eight pages long and has a really basic layout. There is very little art in the book and the look just is not that good. There is a lot of extra white space it is just a lot of text with nothing to really break it up. It should be noted though that the company is hoping to be able to generate some money by selling this PDF to get some good art and even get the book to print. It would be nice to see that happen as the lack of art and the layout are really the biggest complaints I have about what is otherwise a finally written gaming book.
As a book on psionics it does a very good job of building on the options that are already presented. It gives the reader the options that exist for other classes and races but have not been given nearly as much to the psionic end of things. It starts with giving some good paragon racial classes for the psionics races. There are ones for the Dromite, the Duergar, the Elan, the Half Giant, the Maenad, and the Xeph. These are about of the same power levels as the original ones presented in Unearthed Arcana. Then each of those six races gets a pair of classes that they get racial substitution levels for. Again these are very similar to the ones found in many of the Races of book Wizards of the Coast has put out. I like the options her e and they are enough like what people see in the other books that one should easily be able to tell if they like them or not.
There are three new base classes that deal with psionics here. The first is the Devoted Psion that is a variant on the psion class. It seems pretty good but I am not a fan of just variations on old classes as I am with new classes. The Marksman is a very cool class that is similar to the Psychic Warrior. They deal well with ranged combat and use their abilities mostly to that ends. Then there is the Society Mind possible the most creative item in the book. It can tap in the worldthought as they call it, the collection of thoughts of everything. They get abilities that reflect this though as neat as the concept is I would have liked to seen it taken a little farther and perhaps take a few more risks with unique abilities.
The book has plenty of new feats and this should make psionic fans happy. There are also plenty of prestige classes and new powers. They are well done but I feel the strength of the book is in the first half. For the prestige classes they have:
Amalgamist: Master of Crystalics and the Crystalic limb
Anyform Savant: Infinite Flexibility in Form
Energist: Energy powers are his forte
Enlightened Exemplar: Scholarly student of peace and reason
Enlightened Protector: Guardians of the Exemplars
Knight Meditant: Calm of Mind, Strong of Body
Maverick Voidshaper: Reality bends at her whimsy
Phenotype Impressionist: Reshape Constructs as you do your body
Psicrystal Imprinter: Psicrystal becomes more like its master
Sighted Seeker: Ultimate
Inquisitive and bounty hunter
Those descriptions are straight from the book.
Over all I like what is here. This will greatly aid people looking for good and solid psionics options. It is nice that is nothing here that is way out in left field so much of it will easily be useable. But at times I do like to see some of the more wide open creativity that writers have. It will be nice if this is successful to get some art and hopefully a better lay out as it would really benefit this book greatly.
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<b>LIKED</b>: Solid work. It builds on the psionic rules with a wide variety of familiar options<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Lay out and lack of art are the big thing. I would have liked to see a little more out there creative options<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>
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Faerys Tale
There are many different type of role playing games out there. There are the well constricted encyclopedias of rules and options to create worlds and characters. Then there is the more simple games that exist in a single book and place the emphasis a bit more on the people playing. That is what Faery?s Tale is. It is a small RPG that knows what it is and does not try or pretend to be anything else.
Faery?s Tale is a game set in the world the Faery?s live in. Unlike other such games like Deleria and Changeling the Dreaming, the Faery?s here are more child like and small and perhaps simple. It is a game aimed a little more towards children but it is not a game only for children. It is like Meddling Kids though in that it will be a good and fun game for the younger generations. The book does a nice job with sidebars prepared specifically with children in mind and how to make the game a little more accessible to them.
The book comes in either a PDF or print format. The print book is a small sized book making it a little easier for kids to handle. The art is the book is very impressive. There is a gorgeous full color picture as the cover and the black and white art on the inside is equally impressive. The lay out is equally well done. When looking through this book it appears like a small work of art in itself. Some very creative and visual pleasing ideas found its way into this book. The PDF has book marks but it is not well book marked. It does have a very well done index in both versions of the book and that will be very useful. There is also some very nice fiction of a typical band of Faeries on an adventure through out the book.
The game allows players to play simple child like Faeries. One can play a Pixie, Brownie, Sprite, or a Pooka. Character generation is really simple with a more complex point buy option for those that want that. Pixies are small flying mischievous faeries. Brownies are more earthbound being secret helpers of humans in the place they live. Sprites are valiant warriors and unlike the other fairies they do not practice magic. Pooka are the most wild of the fairies and have the ability to become an animal.
The system is not as simple as I would have hoped. It is a simple system but when dealing with children of six years it can still be a little complex. There are a lot of nice options so each Faerie even ones of the same type are not going to be carbon copies of each other. There are three attributes: Body, Mind and Spirit. Each of these has a number that represents a die poll. One rolls that many d6?s and an even number is a counted as a success. A roll of a six is a success and allows a reroll. The more success one gets the better they do. A character also has Essence equal to twice their spirit. Faeries do not die they just run out of Essence. I like that bit. Essence is also used to power spells and can do other things like be used to count as a success. Essence is gotten back by role playing, clever thinking, and a character can earn more essence then the started with. This will be a good way to encourage certain types of behavior. All that is fairly simple but the complicated part I feel is in combat when dice pools can get split. I know grown ups that still can struggle with the idea of splitting a dice pool.
Adventures seem to pretty easy and straight forward here. They have a nice section that uses kid safe versions of some fairy tales. So, no need to worry about the dark Fairy Tales like in Grimm. They are presented pretty well with plenty of action and ideas for the players to take a hold of. There is only one adventure and it is based on Jack and the Beanstalk. But the story telling advice is well done, short, and simple.
Faery?s Tale is a good solid game especially for people that have children they want to slowly get into gaming. It can also be a nice rules light game for adults. It has plenty of options to take the simple kids friendly basic game and make it a little more complicated or even go completely diceless.
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<b>LIKED</b>: Great art and well written.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Might have aspects a little complex for the children in their target audience<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>
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Neo Rangers
Neo Rangers takes the ranger class and gives it change in concept. Unlike many other alternative rangers though, this one goes someplace new into the spider?s domain. That is new and different and creative. There are still interesting things that can be done to the core classes and I like that this book takes us there.
Neo Rangers: The Spider King is a book by The Le who is the also the owner of the company The Le Games. The PDF is seventy pages long and has a nice and clear lay out. It uses some good clip art that really helps the pages flow visually. There is an on screen version and a print version of the PDF. It is easy to read and to use. The book is also nicely book marked.
Neo Ranger: the Spider King presents a new version of the ranger core class. It is very much like the ranger going up to twenty levels. It still has spells and many of the core abilities like favored enemy are still there. The creativity of a ranger based on spiders though does not match the mechanics. In place of the archer or two weapon fighting style this ranger gets Arachnid Style Combat. It is more defensive granting a bonus to AC and a miss chance. I like the defense style but I do not feel is very spider like. I also think more could have been done to make this class different from the ranger. I like the inclusion of a spider for an animal companion and the alternative spell list from a normal ranger. It just needed more to make it mechanically different. Detail wise, the class is well described and I like the beginning where it talks about the alignment and gods of a typical spider king. It is obvious the concept is very solid and well thought out.
The book also reprints the track and endurance feat which that class gets. It also reprints the spider climb as it is another ability the class gets. The class does have spell casting ability but it is a little weaker then the normal ranger. The Spider King will only be able to cast two plus bonus spells of each spell level one through four. The normal Ranger eventually gets three plus bonus spells. The Spider King because of that and some of the other things does seem weaker then a standard ranger.
The Neo Ranger: the Spider King is a nice and refreshing piece of creativity. I think mechanically the class can be better and stronger but I really enjoy the writing and the concept is very strong. The Le makes sure that most of what a person needs if in his PDFs with the inclusion of feats and spells that the class specifically uses. I really like that. This will make a good addition as a character for someone looking for a character a little different and strange and not necessarily one that is a powerhouse.
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<b>LIKED</b>: THe creativity of the concept and writing<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Mechanics ar ea little weak and do not fully support the concept<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>
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Mirror Image Behind the Spells
In this book of the series we see the established form of the books still being used and not that I expected that to change. The book starts with an entertaining history of how the spell was created. This one has a young man who never felt recognized for being himself in his large family. So, he choose to rebel by becoming a Bard and showcasing his talent on an important night for his family causing them some embarrassment and problems. His version of the spell was different but far more entertaining. The book then goes on with some rules involving Mirror Imagine and some new spells that are similar in theme. It is a very simple and well constructed format for the material.
Behind the Spells: Magic Mirror is another in this series. It is written by Bret Boyd who has done them all in the series. The quality of writing has been very consistent because of this. It might be interesting to see a guest writer from time to time but as the series is close to being done I doubt we will see that. The PDF is put out by Ronin Arts. The PDF is very small and there is no art or a lot of extras in the book. It has a tight focus and never sways from that.
The history of this spell and the way it came about are a nice and simple solution. Unlike some of the other spells in the series there is not a lot of secrets of controversy with this one. As with most of them in the series I would like a little more info. I know the PDFs are meant to be kept short and they have enough information here to explain the basics and make a cool little story. I just think the book could benefit with a few more pages that takes a look at the spell a little after its invention. How did the magic community embrace and learn of its existence? Was it spell that was the inventor taught freely to anyone that came to him for it? Ort was he a picky about it?
Magic Mirror can be a pain to try to figure out which is the caster and which are the illusions. The book offers some basic advice like the use of multiple magic missiles to target and destroy some of them. It then gets a little more creative by showing how the scent ability will just detect the real person since figments have no substance and thus no smell. It also has a clever way to use detect thoughts to zero in on the caster as again the figments have no thoughts of their own. And lastly is the clever use of deathwatch. It was the only one I had not seen used in this way.
There are two new spells. The first is actually the original spell that was created that mirror image was derived from: Sudden Chorus. It creates versions of one self that will sing in harmony with you. This is a great bard spell that really fits that class. The other spell is called Distracting Image. It is a nice first level spell that creates a copy of someone that will distract them. It is an interesting idea and can have use in combat as well as for fun.
Behind the Spells Mirror Image is another good book in the series. It gives on a nice behind the scenes look at the spell and gives it depth and character.
<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>
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APG City Tiles
Props at the gaming table are a nice way to enhance play and with the prevalence of minis being used in the game these types of tile props can be very useful. Here we have printable tiles that are in black and white as well as color. One of the nice things on them being printable is one can write on them and print as much as they like. Of course printing especially in color can be expensive as these tiles are going to consume quite a bit of ink.
City Tiles is done by Alea Publishing Group. They have slowly been producing a nice range of PDF products for the d20 game. The book is in black and white and color so it can be printed either way. It is not that big only being nineteen pages long. Fifteen of those pages have a single full page tile on them and two of the pages have a pair of half page tiles on them.. The book has no book marks which are expected as the product is designed to be printed out and not used on a computer screen. The book does include some advice for printing it out. It suggests printing it out on card stock and even getting them laminated. That will make the tiles a lot more durable but also drives up the out of pocket cost to use these.
The tiles look good and are easy to use with a square grid on the maps. The book gives one stone roads on grass with straight roads, cross roads, and a tee intersection. There is a full page grid on plain grass and the rest of them are of buildings. The maps given are of inns, freeman?s homes, merchant homes, taverns, wealthy homes, and other basic places. The maps look good. It is easy to tell what the different items on the maps are and they are not cluttered with items.
While everything in it is good it does need more. The title is City Tiles and there is not a city in this product. The buildings are surrounded with grass and there is plenty of room in the buildings. There is no sense of the conservation of space and the claustrophobic nature of many old cities. Also, the buildings they give are just a small selection of what one would hope to find in a city. There needs to be stables, blacksmith shop, armory, general stores, temples, public baths, and other city exclusive buildings that one doe not find in most villages. This product though does work for someone wanting the buildings for a village and other smaller communities.
In the end the maps are well done and about what one finds in other similar products. I would not get this if I specifically wanted city tiles. However, for a few more buildings to add on to a collection of tiles or to just have a few buildings for a village or town this will work as well as any other tile product on the subject.
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<b>LIKED</b>: Well done tiles<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Not really a city<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>
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This will be my second monster book in as many days. I usually try to space out books of a similar nature but this one and the last are pretty darn different for being monster books. This is a really good thing as it means some publishers are finally starting to break away from the boring Monster Manual format. It is the standard but a really boring read. If it did not have so many of the typical monster I like to use I would have left it behind a while ago. There are lots of monster books out there these days and it really takes something a little extra to break away and get noticed. Brixbrixs Field Guide to the Creatures of Ados is very much like Creatures of Freeport in that it gives a lot of information on the monster and includes adventure ideas for each one.
Brixbrixs Field Guide to the Creatures of Ados is a PDF by Tangent games. The book is two hundred and twenty pages long but there is a bit of wasted space in there. The monster take up two or three pages each with all their information and the next monster appears on the next page even if the previous monster only takes up a quarter of the page. It would have been better if they filled that space with art or something. I do like that each monster starts on a new page though. It makes it easy to just print out the monsters that I am going to use if I do not want to print out the whole book. The art in the book is not that great but they do have art for each creature. The book also has no book marks which are a problem for a book of this size.
The book has over fifty new creatures in it. The book organizes the creature by creature type. I think this is the first book that I have seen do that. Most obviously just list them alphabetically and there is one publisher listing theirs by challenge rating (Expeditious Retreat). Each monster starts on a new page. There is the stat block for the creature, a color picture of it, a section of the world map of Ados showing where the monster can be found, sample treasure, description of the creature, plot hooks for using it, and a sample encounter. I really like the map section showing where the creature can be found. This of course can only be done for monster books that are tied to a world but I really liked when I say Kenzer do this and I really like to see it here. Sections of the monster descriptions are in different color making them easy to locate. The sample treasure is on a green background, the description of the creature is on a tan background, the Sample encounter is on a purple background, and the plot hooks are on a blue background. Many of these are great time saving devices. The sample treasure is obviously useful and easy to use. The plot hooks are pretty creative and offer a variety of different ways to use the creature. There seems to be three plot hooks for creatures. The sample encounters are short but complete. They describe where and how the encounter takes place, have a shortened stat block of the creature, and are ready to be used with ease.
The book has some other things in it besides creatures. The first appendix has a template for Disciple of Pain. It is a template that changes monstrous humanoids into undead creatures that inflict pain on others. There is the messenger template that changes any animal into a magical messenger, spy, and translator. There is the Moon Shadow template for creatures that are devoted to the god of the underworld. There is the Soul Stealers, a template for animals that have been killed through indifference. It is another undead template. Each of the templates has a sample creature along with the full description.
There is an appendix that has the creature alphabetized. On the table it also includes creature type, where in the world it can be found (name of places), type of terrain it can be found in, subtype, challenge rating, and page number. Then there is a table that has the creature names alphabetized with name of the sample encounter and also the encounter level of that encounter as well as the page number. Lastly, there is a table that has those encounters organized by the encounter levels from lowest to highest.
The book has a few new items, their costs, and different services. There is a table for payment on exotic materials from some of the creatures. There are some new spells. One great thing they have done is define some new spell effects. They introduce a new creature type, the undead plant. And then they list all the spells from the core rules that can effect them and how the spell effects them if it is different from the standard spell effect. There are supplemental summoning tables and supplemental reincarnation tables. Lastly, there are quite a few NPCs presented.
This book has really good content, great organization, but not good presentation. There are a bunch of great creatures and useful information in this book. It serves well fo9r the world it was designed for but also makes a good took box book allowing someone to pick and choose from the many different things presented in here. At first I was thinking the book was not going to be that good based on the look, layout and art. But as I read I quickly discovered that the writing and ideas are solid. The extra table in the back like the summoning table, the way spells work on the new creature types, the encounters, the plot hooks, and all the other little extras in here that other monster books simply do not have make this one of the better ones. The books is very DM friendly and quite simply a nice surprise.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>
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