I am flabbergasted you dont have any reviews. I used this recently in my 1 shot AD&D game with my 5e players. Its a great set of encounters and an excellent way to remove Ranme as the "dues ex-machina". Thanks!

I tried the hardcore rules over a dozen sessions before changing it. They add a layer of complexity for the DM (recalculating monster HD and Damage on the fly) and the slotless spell casting breaks the game. I ended up reverting to standard slots (actually I went full Vancian), didn't change any monster stats but just capped PC hps at level 10 - thus not adding any extra work on me as the DM and providing a super deadly monster encounters once they hit the CR 10+ space, and the PCs die if they start their turn on 0 hit points - no saves. Oh I also got rid of resurrection magic

Even though WOTC released a ruleset in both UA and Saltmarsh I was not happy with those rules. Seemed fiddly. I wanted something that leaned more towards Theatre of the Mind since I may need to run the odd naval battle but I am not running a naval campaign. This fits the bill. Its just complex enougth to give the right feel for naval combat without turning into a minis game. Thats all I was expecting however the book also has example weather conditions the ship may need to deal with and, much more imptortently, example encounters. Saltmarsh has very little in the way of example naval encounters (I think its none unless I missed it) which makes this book worth a lot more to me than Saltmarsh.

My only suggestion is to convert the weather conditions (or add a new section) into skill challenges. I use these liberally in my 5e game and that would seem to work better with what you are trying to do with weather than the "complex trap" you have setup. Though the complex trap works when you are using a grid, not so much when its TotM.

5/5.

Testament is one of those rare books that manages to find the sweet spot between history and fantasy in the field of d20 RPG. I tend to echo the other reviews and agree the presentation and new rules (like piety, mass combat, mythic feat etc) are excellent. Very little “feats for feats” sake that many other supplements suffer from. It’s not a splat book. My introduction into the Mythic Worlds was actually the Medieval Players Handbook which I bought when it came out. However Testament has sucked me in in a way that the Medieval Handbook did not. It’s especially useful to me personally as I run a mythic earth campaign (unbeknownst to my players - yet) in the antediluvian age for the past 10+ years.

One thing I need to mention that hasn’t in the other reviews (who do a good job covering the feats, classes etc so I wotn repeat what they say) is the mass combat rules.

I love them.

I have been looking for something like this for a while now and bought a few supplements just for their mass rules. However others went from being too abstract with little to no PC input (like the Malhavoc War supplement) to being too detailed where every piece is an individual NPC with stats (ala D&D miniatures) and is therefore way too time consuming to play out as part of a D&D campaign. The Testament system strikes the perfect balance (again) between the heroes who lead the battle and the mass troops who are “extras” but still important to the storey and battle being fought.

However it’s not perfect. Some Bible passages are interpreted way out of left field when compared to both Jewish and Christian cannon. For some I can understand this. The Genesis quote about the “Sons of God” and “daughters of men” uses an ancient and now defunct view that the Sons of God were angels who bred with humans. I can understand using this unusal interpretation since I do exactly the same thing in my campaign. The tertiary, albeit incorrect, view makes for a much better RPG. However other quotes suffer from the usual problem of the idea that somehow Israel ripped off storey/myths from Babylon etc. For example the reference of Tiamat and the primordial sea during the creation week. All of this has been refuted by scholars for centuries. Changes like this doesn’t seem to add anything to the game unlike the Genesis interpretation.

One last quibble is the seemingly random design decision of reducing the God of Israel to the equivalent of Baal, Amun-Ra and Tiamat. I am not sure what the logic is here. Did they not want to offend Babylonians or Caanites ….? It seems to me it would make more sense to make the God of Israel supreme above the other gods since there isn’t anyone to offend and, in reality, He won – those other religions are dead. I can understand why you would do this in the Medieval Handbook since all the beliefs in that game are still around today. The only reason I can see a designer would do this is because of their own personal bias. In fact I have to commend the authors since they are clearly not Christian or Jewish adherents that they did a great job of veiling their own personal views. Only peeping through here and there in the manual.

Apart from the issues I listed previously I would recommend it to anyone. It does a good job of representing the Biblical Israel and that nation’s peers at the time. Probably the best things its done to me is introduced me to the Mythic Vista line. And those fantastic mass combat rules.

4.5/5. Almost perfect.