As I write this it's for the Version 2 of the book. I helped kickstart this setting because the idea sounds amazing. For the most part it's executed amazingly. While certainly not always feeling like a professional level book, the artwork and ideas presented are fabulous in flavor and design. In particular, I like the approach to armor. Instead of being made directly of metal, armor are 'modules' that you wear, up to your strength score. This increases your AC based on the material, but gives a penalty to dexterity saving throws, making armor an interesting tradeoff.

While I have great praise for the setting and mechanics, there's a definitely sense that the makers don't have the best grasp of 5th editions systems, nor a solid grasp of the wording used. For example, one interesting quirk of the setting of Farwood is that there are these 4 cantrips that anyone who has the spellcasting feature can cast. Each cantrip, known as a "song" in-setting, represents one of the 4 gods. So far so good. Then, for some reason, two of the cantrips have the 'ritual' property. Anyone who knows how ritual casting works knows this makes no sense. Ritual casting is a feature spellcasters us to cast utility spells without expending spell slots. But cantrips do not expend spell slots. So there's absolutely no explanation for this.

Then there's the new class, the Spirit Chanter. This class makes use of an important aspect of the setting, that the 'spirit' of creatures can be bound to objects to make quick and simple magic items. They require attunement to work, so even at their best they aren't game breaking. This system is quick and easy, though it's limitations aren't entirely well explained. The class, instead of being neccesarily focused on making a huge amounts of these objects, focuses on having a personal vessel they can bind spirits to. What isn't very clear is that this vessel doesn't directly have these bonuses, and instead you can spend points to give allies bonuses from these objects temporarily. In theory this allows for some versatility, but the bonus only applies until the start of your next turn. This means any bonus is quite small and very temporary at a resource that the spirit chanter can get quick from just killing stuff, but sadly lacks the wide range of versatility spellcasting has for, I feel, not much reward. The class has 1d10 sized hit dice and gains extra attack at 5th level, but its features don't all support it as a martial class except in vague ways, and the class doesn't even have access to martial weapons or medium or heavy armor, instead gaining light armor and shields. I think I see what they're going for, a sort of spiritual wildsman, but the biggest issue is how it spends spirit points. I think the biggest hit to the class is not being able to give the bonuses to yourself in any easy way or an extended period of time without just crafting the items, and any spellcaster can do that pretty easily with some monster hunting.

The class also regains its resource at a rate of 1d6 after a long rest, instead of using the main ability of the class, Wisdom. The document is full of weird not-quite-contradictory stuff, like how the two skills needed to craft stone and wood armor use constitution, but then you just learn a cantrip that auto-succeeds what you want to do anyway. Oh, and that isn't even getting into the fact that one of its first level featires RAW is basically useless until second level. And then there's a 5th level feature for one of the subclasses that gives proficiency in a new skill, hunting, when anyone can gain proficiency in the skill by making three successful checks without proficiency. So if you've already got proficiency, it's a bit of a dead feature compared to the other ones.

Having said that, if you're willing to put up with all the jank, there's a cool system and a REALLY good setting. This simple 'wild' setting puts wanderlust in me. I can't say I regret helping kickstart this, but if you're going to play with this take it with a handful of salt as you look through everything and be ready to houserule some stuff. I'm going to be trying to redesign the Spirit Chanter, because it's such a neat idea that none of my players want to play.