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  1. - Top - End - #31
    Ettin in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Trashes & Treasures: Older 3rd Party Sourcebooks, a Walking Tour

    Quote Originally Posted by Kalkra View Post
    It's been a while since I read the Q. Monk, but I recall it having a lot of stuff that was good for characters who aren't Monks, or at most who took a 1-level dip. Monkey Taunts the Emperor, for instance, can be very good for a Crusader lockdown build. Also, I'll mention that I'm pretty sure Clever Monkey Spins the Branch was functionally reprinted in some WotC splatbook with a much more generic name, as a surprising amount of Mongoose stuff was. For that matter, one could argue that the Divisive Strike ACF was inspired by some of the stuff in this book, although who can really say.
    There are certainly inspirations that seem to be taken from parts of this book: the closest thing to Monkey Taunts the Emperor is similar-ish to the Goad feat from Races of Stone. Clever Monkey Spins the Branch was very similar to the PHB 2 feat Short Haft. And yeah, the Mad Devil Staff immediately made me think of Decisive Strike too.

    I didn't really look into the possibilities of how the book's features could be dipped or used in classes other than monks, but I'll be focusing more on that in future. And maybe there is some marginal utility in some of what I saw for dipping or similar.

  2. - Top - End - #32
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Trashes & Treasures: Older 3rd Party Sourcebooks, a Walking Tour

    Quote Originally Posted by Saintheart View Post
    I didn't really look into the possibilities of how the book's features could be dipped or used in classes other than monks, but I'll be focusing more on that in future. And maybe there is some marginal utility in some of what I saw for dipping or similar.
    I think I remember that some of the Quintessential books had a line about how the new uses for skills and whatnot were only meant to be used by that class, while some didn't. Regardless, for the most part the stuff in the books works best with the intended class, but IIRC the feng shui stuff is just generally good, and Monks are so bad that the usual way of evaluating any of that stuff is to wonder how you can make it work with something other than Monk.

  3. - Top - End - #33
    Ettin in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Trashes & Treasures: Older 3rd Party Sourcebooks, a Walking Tour

    The Quintessential Monk II, Mongoose Publishing

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    Summary
    As indicated in my review of the original, this book is a sequel to and companion to Quintessential Monk. Again the idea is that it is meant to be a book that expands options for the monk – feats, class abilities, prestige classes, and the like. It also functions as something of a strategy guide for playing monks throughout the levels.

    Date of Publication and Page Count
    2004, 120 pages. This is dated to and explicitly made for 3.5 edition, and right here I have to correct what I said in my earlier review. Namely, Quintessential Monk 2 does update and overwrite some of the elements of Quintessential Monk 1. Which actually turns out to be something of a pity, because these overwrites don’t always help the actual options. We’ll talk about what in due course, but insofar as there’s good news, it doesn’t overwrite everything, just those elements that crop up in both books. Once again Patrick Younts was the sole author and provides an epilogue about what brought him back to this series, but at the end of the day, well, it’s the same author, so at least there's a bit of continuity there. As at date of review, this book was available on some large RPG market websites.


    Notable Features
    The Enlightened Wizard (multiclass option): If for some mad reason you decide to multiclass with Monk, this book provides you with certain extra abilities depending on which combination of SRD classes you pick. For the Monk/Wizard multiclass, it’s at least interesting: rather than your monk bonus feats, you pick up bonus metamagic feats instead … and just like the oversight with Martial Monk, it doesn’t look like you have to satisfy any of the feats’ prerequisites for these either. In addition, in exchange for flurry of blows, evasion, and improved evasion class features, you can use your WIS and not your INT score when determining bonus spells. This might actually be worth a dip into Monk and then run like hell with Wizard for the rest of the journey.
    Cat Stance (new skill use, Balance): When someone tries to Trip you, make a Balance check of DC 15+opponent’s STR mod+size modifier. If succeeds, opponent loses his STR and size modifiers to the opposed trip check; if fails, monk takes a -2 to his STR or DEX check to resist being tripped. One suspects the language that “a monk, and only a monk character” can use this ability was because of annoyance over characters other than monks using good stuff like this, but nowhere is a multiclass Monk ruled out and this’d be an added bonus if you’re dipping Monk for some other reason.
    Leaping Kick (new skill use, Jump): Make a long jump as a move action and land adjacent to the opponent. If conditions met, single unarmed attack as a standard action, gaining attack bonus of +1 for every 10 feet of distance leaped and +1 damage for every 5 feet of distance travelled. Says ‘a monk,’ but doesn’t say ‘only a monk’, so, again, multiclass or use freely. Appears to work by RAW with Leap Attack except for the question of whether a charge is “a single, unarmed attack”.
    Tumbling Leaf (new skill use, Tumble): Tumble in place, gaining a bonus to AC of 2 + 1 per 5 points you exceed a DC 15. Can attack as a standard action as normal, bonus stacks with fighting defensively and Combat Expertise.
    Light Step (new skill use, Balance): This renders obsolete the somewhat questionable Frog on the Lilypad feat from QM1 – walking across water and such is now a Balance skill check (albeit high).
    Secret Symbol (The Void) (Variant rule): Basically something like a martial adept stance, although this, the highest symbol attainable, isn’t awful: for 1 round per 2 points of WIS mod, you are immune to mind-affecting spells and spell-likes, add WIS to initiative, substitute WIS for STR on attack and damage dice with unarmed attacks, WIS mod to skills and saves rather than other ability modifiers. Exhausted when the effect of the secret symbol ends.
    Climb Giant (new skill use, Climb): What it says on the can. You can try to climb up a Huge, Gargantuan, or Colossal creature. You have to take an AoO, and then make a Climb check, and lose your DEX bonus to AC while doing so. While climbing, can attack using a one-handed Light weapon (I know, I know … I presume that was meant to read ‘Light weapon provided it is wielded in one hand at all times’…) and the climbed character “loses its DEX mod” (one presumes to AC) against those attacks. Which would presumably mean sneak attack triggers. In conjunction with Underfoot Combat (RoTW) this might be interesting, but the fact it’s limited only to Huge targets and above means it’s of limited application.
    Blunted (weapon quality): if you’re critfishing and you’re interested in bypassing forms of energy resistance, this might be worth thinking about. For a +1 price, all the weapon’s damage is nonlethal ( but does ‘no extra damage’ beyond its enhancement bonus, which could be badly used against you without DM interpretation) but the critical multiplier is raised by 1. Nonlethal damage bypasses energy resistance.
    The Magic of Enlightenment and Surviving to Enlightenment (tactics discussion): Basically these are meant to be the strategy guide for monks to choose magic items and a more general tactics guide. There’s some refreshing candour: ‘In a high magic game, meaning one in which magic items are even more common than they are in default Core Rulebooks, the monk and the martial artist are in serious trouble.’ There’s even an all-but-explicit acknowledgment that Mobility sucks. And there is some fairly straightforward advice about how to play a monk (if you’re feeling like suffering in this way.)


    Dreadful Features
    Career Paths (variant rule): This basically is a case of taking a good idea – the Character Template from QM1 – and overbalancing it to the point where it’s pretty much unuseable. One of the frequent complaints about D&D 3.5 is that it’s hard to grow a character organically, one wrong feat choice at an early stage and your character is borked for effectiveness at higher levels. The idea of the Career Path actually leans into this horrible phenomenon. It places what amounts to a further template onto the character’s progression. Whilst this is touted as giving ‘more direction’ to the character (and maybe that might work for a certain kind of player) it’s just needlessly complicated and restrictive for a book that’s meant to be about trying to give people more options to play with, not less. I mean, to go on a Career Path, whenever you level up, in effect, you have to pick a feat from the Path’s advancement options or take an ability increase towards the minimum ability for that path, or increase a skill from that path’s advancement options. When you enter the Career Path, you pick up a benefit but also suffer a disadvantage. For me that was the straw that broke the camel’s back, you’re already suffering a disadvantage in the opportunity cost of keeping to the Path, you shouldn’t be hit with a disadvantage on top of that. Unless you’re very careful about how you build your character, most of the benefits are heavily limited on uses per day and matched with some bothersome penalties that typically are hitting you all day long. I mean, hey, 1/day add your WIS mod to attack and damage for 1 round … in return for losing your WIS bonus to AC for that round. And it really feels like this system was built to stop people dipping Monk, since if you don’t follow the Career Path at each level, this benefit and disadvantage go with it. If you’re going to force someone to stick to a given set of feats, skill selections, or ability increases, the damn benefit had better be good when it first comes online and it had better retain its usefulness across the character’s whole career. I cannot see, amongst any of the benefits given by this variant rule, anything that justifies this.
    Fighting Styles (variant rule): When you get down to it these are essentially feat trees. If you pick all the feats for a given tier in the Style, you get a bonus which doesn’t require a feat slot and/or the effectiveness of some of the feats is improved. First problem: ‘Without specific GM approval, only monk characters can select style technique feats, though any multiclass character has has at least as many monk levels as levels in other classes can select style technique feats freely.’ We’re going to weigh you down with monk levels even if you try and multiclass your way out of this trail of tears, peasant. And the hair-tearing frustration is that absent that stricture, some of the benefits actually aren’t that bad for someone who wants to go unarmed without going monk:
    -- Double Hammer, admittedly for the price of six feats, offers unlimited standard action unarmed touch attacks, stun on a critical hit. Although you have to have a flurry of blows ability. (Particularly annoying is that one of the style feats, Crushing Blow, seems to have been updated from QM1, see my review of that book. Now the feat can likely use magical gear to enhance the movement bonus, but the feat is hidden back behind a couple of prerequisites, making it irritatingly inaccessible.)
    -- Drunken Boxing, for the price of about 7-9 feats: DR 3 when drunk, full flurry of blows at end of charge action, use a full attack to trip multiple people, drink alcohol as a free action, not flankable without less than 3 opponents’ threatened areas, +2 to STR and DEX and no ability score penalties for drunkenness, no matter how sloshed you get
    --Smoke Sword, for the price of 8 feats: add half DEX mod instead of STR mod to all attacks with your chosen weapon (EDIT: I am assuming that was a typo in the book, since Weapon Finesse - one of the required feats - already gives this and more. The RAI was likely half DEX to damage rather than STR mod, which isn't uncommon in default 3.5 space either). Full DEX mod to damage on a critical hit. Improved Initiative gives you +5, not +4. Any single melee weapon is deemed a special monk weapon and can also gain the benefits of Weapon Finesse.
    All the prestige classes in the damn book: No. They occasionally offer something mildly interesting – once per day be treated as if you rolled a 20 (Olympian); use your WIS mod for a class skill rather than any other mod it normally works with (Enlightened One); but the prerequisites for these invariably require a bloody Monk class feature, meaning you generally have to suffer through Monk or find advanced shenanigans to use these. Avoid.
    The Natural Brawler (multiclass option): So if you multiclass Monk and Barbarian (yes, you can here) in a particular way, you pick up (if the DM allows these variant rules) a couple of abilities: raise your DR at Monk 5 or Monk 10 by 1; pick Power Attack or Endurance as the Monk bonus feat (big deal, Martial Monk gets you to do this); or an alternative form of Rage which pushes DEX by +4 and increases your movement speed by +10 feet, but -4 to STR. Because I totally want to be the Angry Dancer who slaps people rather than punches them hard in the face.
    The Street Performer (multiclass option): You’re a Monk 11/Bard 9, does that sound like anything remotely strong to you? I mean, the freaking ‘Recommended Options’ notes for the character say “The street performer is not well suited for direct combat, nor does his strength lie in dungeon exploration…,” you might as well just put “Abandon All Hope, All Ye Who Level Here” and be done with it. But wait! When you multiclass you can pick up an extra ability! Wow, I can Michael Jackson things by being able to stun people with a shout rather than Countersong? Too bad it’s a radius effect centred on me and my allies are not immune to my sudden desire to kiai everyone into a stupor for a round.
    Divine Fist (multiclass option): Monk 11/Cleric 9. You know that kid whose mother was really smart and his father was really dumb? Yeah, that’s this guy. And hey, if you break your code of conduct, you lose your cleric abilities AND your monk abilities as well! He does get a custom domain – Enlightened Warrior – at first level, with the domain power of Skill Focus (Concentration) and True Strike as the first level domain spell, and frankly, he’s gonna need it.
    Explosive Egg (new weapon): Bet you thought you were going to get a slightly more useable Eggshell Grenade with no blinding, huh? Well, you do … it’s dazzling rather than blinding, and the Reflex and Fort save are low. But … each time the bearer of an egg is struck in combat, there’s a 20% chance the egg explodes. Great odds, don’t you agree?
    Stunning Clap (Variant Rule): use Quivering Palm – if you stayed in Monk long enough to get it -- as a cone effect out to 50 feet which causes those in the area of effect to make a “save” (what kind is not specified … sigh …) or be paralysed for 1 round.
    Disgorgement Fist (new skill use, Heal): ‘A monk, and only a monk character’ can undo ingested or inhaled poisons in others on a standard action of preparation and then an attack, or cause an opponent to be nauseated for 1 round. Provokes an AoO from the opponent. No retry. If this updated pressure points from QM1 (it doesn’t say) then it very stupidly nerfed the ability.


    Who it’s best for (Player/GM/both)
    Players, once again.

    Comments, thoughts, and rating out of 10.
    On mechanics: If you hadn’t already detected it from my ranting, the Career Path and Style Feats in particular are just horrible. It’s not like the damn things give over at-will Wish or even (shock horror) give the Monk full damn BAB, they’re basically minor benefits at best and they often come with not-insignificant drawbacks. The prestige classes are also subpar at best and some are bloated at 10 levels rather than 5, with pretty uninteresting features or features that are only of any significance if you actually have a lot of Monk levels, which you won’t. The best elements of the book remain those features that can be utilised by other than monks, or where it’s just a new skill use and not locked behind 5-8 feats. I’ll give it a 0.5/4, and that’s mainly because the good features in the book appear to have happened by accident rather than design.

    On concepts and fluff: The book starts with a caution: ‘the Advanced Tactics series (which QM2 is part of) will not necessarily allow players to make their characters even better but they will be able to do a lot more than they ever thought possible before.’ It helps to keep that idea in mind when reading this thing, because once again insofar as there is a benefit to these 2 books, it springs mainly out of the additional options rather than making the monk any more significantly powerful.

    But to be honest, I was really disappointed by this book in fluff terms, mainly because whilst the desire might have been to try and improve on the ideas from QM1, the result overall is to overload what were good ideas into needlessly complex structures with overly heavy prerequisites that do not produce the returns justifying that structure. The worst exemplar for this was the Career Path, with the Style Feats a close second. Honestly it felt like the author had been shown a bunch of Monk-dipping martial builds built by optimisers who said ‘lol monks suck’ too much, and decided to get even with features that can’t be easily multiclassed out of. The desire to create more ‘focus’ and ‘options’ results in a set of features that are just not interesting enough to take in spite of their mechanical weaknesses. 0.5/4 here, this was just very disappointing compared with QM1.

    On presentation: This is about the best part of the book, albeit it’s no more impressive than QM1: basic readable layout, but still black and white with some nice, evocative pictures. 1/2 here.

    Total: 2/10.


    Next time: The Advanced Bestiary, by Green Ronin Publishing!
    Last edited by Saintheart; 2021-04-14 at 10:07 PM.

  4. - Top - End - #34
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Trashes & Treasures: Older 3rd Party Sourcebooks, a Walking Tour

    I'm pretty sure that Oriental Adventures had martial arts styles, and that was back in 2001, so it seems like Q Monk 2 was reinventing the wheel a bit with the fighting styles.

    I'll also mention that IIRC all of the Quintessential II books had the career paths, so that at least probably wasn't just the author trying to make people take more than one level of Monk, although some of the other stuff might have been.

    Also, while Monks are bad, and this book doesn't change that, there are people in the world who play them (or so I've heard), and if I were to be playing such a character, I would probably use some of the options presented in this book, although maybe not as many as in the previous one. In other words, while the book doesn't give you a reason to play Monk, if you are playing a Monk, you might want the book. It just felt to me like you were being a bit harsh on the book just because Monks are bad.

    On the other hand, I think I remember one of the Q Wizard books having a 2nd- or 3rd-level spell that granted a whole bunch of Monk abilities, so maybe you have a point.

  5. - Top - End - #35
    Ettin in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Trashes & Treasures: Older 3rd Party Sourcebooks, a Walking Tour

    Quote Originally Posted by Kalkra View Post
    In other words, while the book doesn't give you a reason to play Monk, if you are playing a Monk, you might want the book. It just felt to me like you were being a bit harsh on the book just because Monks are bad.
    I'll certainly agree that if you're playing a Monk you might want the book, if only for the reason than that you can't get much worse than vanilla SRD monk , but even then the optionality available out of other 3.5 books really overshadows what you get from this one. I don't think I'm being harsh on the book just because Monks are bad, my main problem with QM2 is that it introduces fairly significant opportunity costs of getting (many of) the options in the book, and those options, while not terrible, are heavily weighed down by said opportunity costs. But I do appreciate the feedback and the different perspective nonetheless!

  6. - Top - End - #36
    Ettin in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Trashes & Treasures: Older 3rd Party Sourcebooks, a Walking Tour

    The Advanced Bestiary, Green Ronin Publishing

    Spoiler
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    Summary
    The title is a bit misleading; while there are sample creatures within that I suppose comprise the bestiary, this book is basically as a repository of templates that can be applied to monsters designed for the d20 system. The templates are themed along a number of different lines with different intents. Primarily designed for DMs, it is intended to increase the variety of monsters that parties meet.


    Date of Publication and Page Count
    2004, 254 pages. This version was explicitly for 3.5 – I am not sure if any 3.0 version ever existed. There was also an edition prepared for Pathfinder, but we’re leaving that aside. Once again we have a sole designer responsible for the work, Matthew Sernett, who as at 2004 was deeply-sunk into third edition. He’d come on board with the inception of 3rd ed, he was the editor-in-chief of Dragon magazine from 316-326 (i.e. right in 3.5’s run) and moved to Paizo with the magazines. He has design credits on a number of third edition works from around the same time this was written – Fiend Folio, MM 3, Spell Compendium, and later on Tome of Battle. How exactly he had time to do all that and write this book for Green Ronin I’ll never know. Either way, in approaching the work I would have expected at least some system mastery from it; in the interview linked it’s indicated that he was keen on just giving players what they wanted in Dragon magazine, which one would hope translated across into this work that’s primarily designed for GMs by the look of it. As at date of review, this book was available on some large RPG market websites.

    Notable Features
    Time Seer template: Apply this template to make a creature able to see imperfectly into the future. Pick up 1/day true strike, augury at will, low Concentration DCs to use. DC 15 Concentration check, 1/round as a free action, potentially get a +4 on its next attack roll, check, or saving throw. DC 10 Concentration check gives it +4 to initiative, Uncanny Dodge (no loss of DEX bonus to AC), WIS +4, CHA -2, +2 dodge bonus to AC, and some racial bonuses on Knowledge and Search checks … although the sting in the tail is that it takes a -5 to Concentration checks, Sense Motive, and Spot checks. It’s also an inherited or acquired template, meaning it’s not hard to pick up as a a player … and it only carries a LA +1 in effect on the base creature. That series of abilities is pretty damn good for a hobbling by one level. One of those templates you’d want to keep off PCs if you can.
    Amalgam template! Slap just about anything together with anything else to make an amalgam creature. The sample creature is an Arrowhawk crossed with a Minotaur for crying out loud. This is the most complicated template in the whole book, but it has been built to take the load and the possibilities may not only be limited by your imagination, but they are amazingly wide, or have contemplated just about every combination you can think of.
    Bipedal Creature template: Not at all a powerful template, but immediately evocative. “Huh. So a four-legged creature can gain arms and stand upright, gets its land speed altered, can wield weapons normally, ho-hum … oh. Wait. The sample creature is quite literally a WALKING NIGHTMARE.’ This is so simple and just so great an option for changing stuff up!
    Broken Soul template: It’s horrifying. Imagine something that is literally covered in scar tissue and which has been tortured and beaten so badly it takes on this template. The special attacks are nothing to sniff at: touch attack and (absent a Fort save), take 2d6 slashing +1d6 DEX. Gaze attack (Fort save) does 1d4 STR, CON and CHA drain. And the gaze can be used again 1 minute later, meaning this is a seriously dangerous beast to have harrying the party over a period of time, say as the haunt of a large ruin where the Broken Soul template can just wear the party down with hit and run. The only saving grace is that it nerfs the CHA score (on which the gaze and touch attacks depend) by 6. CR +2 to base creature, LA +4, which I think is a little much, but the +6 to CON it gives the template sure makes it a good candidate for some sort of bruiser too.
    Celestial-Blessed Creature template: The template is not bad on its own – basically a good outsider inhabits your form and gives you certain powers - but the cool part is the sample creature, where an evil creature basically is inhabited by a hound archon spirit and does terrible things specifically to cause the hound archon deep sorrow. Revulsive, yes, but cool original thinking. And there’s a corresponding Demon-Possessed Creature template too.
    Creature Swarm template: Basically take any Tiny, Dimunitive, or Fine creature and give it the swarm template. Yes, even a swarm of tiny incorporeal ghosts, the book calls this possibility out directly.
    Devil-Bound Creature template: Want an easy-bake Dr. Faust? Here’s how you do it to just any creature with a soul. Contains differing powers depending on which devil a bargain has been made with. Most of the powers come down to doing things that a Devil can and picking up better ability scores depending on the creature chosen. (Also compare the Genie-Bound creature, which is talking about templating up Aladdin!
    Divine Guardian template: Give a monster a scalingly larger list of spell-like abilities for the purpose of guarding a particular site. Double speed, +4 on Initiative, Dimension Door, Fast Healing 5, immune mind-affecting effects, but it loses its template if it leaves the area defined as the holy site it defends. The designers appear to have anticipated Acorn of Far Travel abuse by players, though, so they raise a base creature’s CR by 1 and the LA is +4, which should discourage that sort of silliness.
    Force Creature template: CR +1 and LA +6 should give you some idea of whose hands they wanted to keep this one out of. All of force creature’s natural attacks now do [force] damage. Its natural armor bonus becomes a deflection bonus. And it can negate all magical effects with the force descriptor in 30 feet, provide a sort of retributive strike feature, +20 on Jump checks. The sample creature is a Force Gelatinous Cube, try that one on for size boys and girls.
    Fortune-Spurned Creature template: There’s the Fortune-Blessed template which does some minor rerolls and true strike per day, but this is far more entertaining to contemplate as an easy-bake curse put on the PCs. Lolnope a natural 20 on a saving throw, drop your weapon on a natural 1, take a -2 luck penalty on opposed checks and saves and a -1 luck penalty on attack rolls.
    Four Horsemen: Yep, the four horsemen of the apocalypse … or, possibly, the one horse-elf, the one horse-chuul, the one horse-wight, and the one horse-titan of the apocalypse. Themed templates for war, famine, pestilence and death.
    Gigantean template: It’s Kaiju time! You can stack the template with itself, so here comes the 90-foot-tall Sprite!
    Transforming Construct: AUTOBOTS, ROLL OUT! And yes, the sample creatures do include a Galleon which is a Construct and can turn from a ship to a swimming form.

    Dreadful Features
    None.
    No, really. None at all. There’s nothing here that really boggles the eye or the mind.

    Who it’s best for (Player/GM/both)
    Well, it’s pretty clearly aimed at GMs, although I suppose some player capable of twisting his DM’s arm might be able to get access to this. Still, given Level Adjustment rules are fully in effect with these, one could expect the cost of playing these things to be fairly brutal, so again, much more of use to a GM than a player in general.

    Comments, thoughts, and rating out of 10.
    On mechanics: When looking at this stuff I think it’s important to remember that the process of advancing monsters under D&D 3.5 rules is hard for beginners or even journeyman DMs. Or at least, it is not intuitive, simple, or transparent, and it has a lot of steps at which a DM can get it wrong. Making it worse is that the mechanism meant to best inform how tough or dangerous a monster is – Challenge Rating – is seriously wonky in 3.5, albeit enough time has passed that even the original designers are cool enough to admit now that the original way in which CRs are calculated has a hell of a lot of thumb-ruling and not a lot of mathematics behind it anyway. Let alone the fact that, given the sheer optionality of 3.5 with just the PHB and DMG, it was never going to be anything more than a very rough guess.

    This book does not set out to fix the CR system or make over the template system, so in that very narrow-minded way it is not original. However – and it is a massive however -- what it does do is benefit from having one of the guys who was knee-deep in 3.5 at its helm, and, being a sourcebook, it spends considerably more time than the default books walking a DM through the process of adding templates, and unashamedly offering advice in what are the inevitable grey areas that arise. 12 full pages are spent on how to add templates, alter templates, and create new templates. The specificity gets right down the order of application of changes consequent on the template. Also helpful is that the book rates how difficult its templates are to apply to a base creature, on a scale of 1-3. This is a great feature to help DMs in a hurry. The CR increases are not large – for the vast majority it’s <= +3 to CR, with four templates that go higher. And more importantly, it makes a heroic effort at putting new concepts into game stats that already exist in 3.5.

    I decided to take a small dip into creation for the purposes of this review and by way of comparison. More or less at random, I decided to take a poor, unsuspecting kobold and slap the Swamp Lord template on him. A Swamp Lord is an evil plant creature that inhabits a fen or quagmire. Its body is a mass of vines, moss and pond scum, and has a strong symbiotic relationship with the swamp, demanding the allegiance of any thinking beings in its domain. So maybe our kobold is a degenerated green dragon or something. Anyway!

    Spoiler: Poor, Unsuspecting Kobold Warrior stats
    Show

    Type: Humanoid
    HP 1d8, INIT +1, Speed 30, AC 15/Touch 12/FF 14
    BAB +1, Spear +1, 1d6-3/x3, Ranged +3 1d3-1
    Space/Reach 5x5
    Darkvision 60 feet, light sensitivity
    Fort +2, Ref +1, Will -1
    STR 9 (-1), DEX 13 (+1), CON 10 (+0) INT 10 (+0), WIS 9 (-1) CHA 8 (-1)
    Craft Trapmaking +2, Hide +6, Listen +2, Move Silently +2, Profession (Miner) +2, Search +2, Spot +2
    Alertness
    CR 0.25


    Spoiler: Dreadfully Chopshopped SWAMP LORD Kobold Warrior stats
    Show

    Type: Small Augmented Plant [Aquatic subtype]
    HP 1d8+2, INIT +0, Speed 20, Climb 20, Swim 20 AC 16/Touch 11/FF 16 (+2 Natural Armor)
    BAB +1, Spear +2, 1d6+1/x3, Ranged +2 1d3-1/x3, 2xTentacles +2 1d4+1
    Constrict: automatic tentacle damage on a successful Grapple check.
    Engulf: Can engulf Tiny creatures if not wearing armor and already grappling them
    Improved Grab: if hit with a natural attack, can start a Grapple check as free action.
    Spell-like abilities: Entangle 2/day, Obscuring Mist 2/day (CL 1)
    Space/Reach 5x5 (Tentacles: 10 foot reach)
    Darkvision 60 feet, Low-light vision, light sensitivity, immune mind-affecting effects, poison, sleep, paralysis, polymorph, stunning, critical hits; trackless step.
    Amphibious: can breathe water.
    While in Marsh, can learn facts as if casting Commune with Nature.
    Fast Healing 5
    Energy Resistance 10 (electricity, sonic, and fire)
    Fort +4, Ref +0, Will -1
    STR 13 (+1), DEX 11 (+0), CON 14 (+2) INT 10 (+0), WIS 9 (-1) CHA 8 (-1)
    Climb +8, always take 10 on Climb checks, Hide +12 (in woodland or marsh), Listen +8, Move Silently+5, Search +0, Spot +8, Knowledge Nature +5, Survival +5, Take 10 on Swim checks, use Run action while swimming.
    Alertness, Track
    CR 2.25


    Spoiler: Discussion
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    So how did it turn out on pure CR?

    Well, given how CR is a seriously wobbly metric, the only real way I can make comparisons is to the overall average statistics of monsters by CR under 3.5. By that reckoning, this creation is below the average CR 2 creature on hitpoints, initiative, Ref and Will saves, and BAB. On the other hand, it has Fast Healing 5, and the Energy Resistance 10 means most +1d6 energy weapon features won’t touch it, so the hitpoint count at least is a little misleading, and a kobold is below the average on saves anyway for a CR of 0.25. The 10 foot reach of the tentacles at least allows it to slap characters as it comes in, and the Entangle and Obscuring Mist capabilities give it some good capacity for battlefield control at these levels, and the Plant traits make it a lot harder to bring down with common ECL 2 abilities like sleep or stuns and whatnot. I don’t know if I’d quite rate it CR 2, and in a fight I’d support it with a few very low-level CR thralls; it’s just hard to work out a focus for the creature given what it can and can’t do. That said, this might just be that the template doesn’t work well for small creatures, it’s much more designed for big beefy bruisers it would seem. Still, it was an interesting exercise for creativity if nothing else, and what else are you going to do, hit the party with Greenbound kobolds that can steamroll a level 5-6 party with ease?


    Weighing all of this up, I think they made a pretty solid set of templates. It’s useable fairly easily and there’s a fair amount of guidance to a DM in building a creature with these templates. 3/4.

    On concepts and fluff: As a preface, some of the templates might sound familiar – Unseelie Creature and Dust Creature – but they in fact are not the same as the Unseelie Fey template or the Dustform Creature template. Indeed pretty well every one of the templates supplied is new and unique, i.e. hasn’t been re-used by a later 3.5 book as far as I can tell. So all of them can certainly be described as original, and the Notable Features I’ve mentioned above are not anywhere near the full range of interesting stuff the book sets out. I was particularly delighted with the Feral Dragon template, which is meant to weaken a powerful dragon so you don’t have to wait until the teens in character levels to take on the older dragons. There isn’t a massive amount of fluff attached to each one, leaving it flexible enough to be adapted to campaigns, but the ideas at least are pretty distinctive and aren’t just a case of “Werewolf with a few more hitpoints and a Sonic attack” or similar. They strike me as slightly more complicated or slightly more niche ideas that likely weren’t vanilla or simple enough to go into the run of a standard 3.5 book. It is wholly my supposition, but I would not be surprised if the author originally shopped these ideas at Wizards, they said ‘cool, inventive, but these are blueberries and bran and we publish oatmeal, no thanks with regrets,’ so he decided to find another route to get them published. They really are … well, advanced templates. It’s an advanced bestiary. And it does the best it can to squeeze these concepts into D&D template terms. 3/4.

    On presentation: Black and white interior, colour cover with people fighting stuff. Serif fonts again, and the font for the headers is particularly annoying on the eye. But the layout is pretty clear and the text isn’t too small. Thoughtful inclusion of tables listing the template by CR increase and sample creatures by CR if you just want to do a drag-and-drop of one into a campaign. 1.5/2 on this one.

    Total: 7.5/10.


    Next time: Three Arrows for the King: The Archer's Guide, by Ambient Inc.

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    Now that's the first one of these that I would actually consider adding to my stable. With DM-facing books, I don't have to worry about how they affect character creation for my players, and a collection of interesting templates to use as ad-hoc adjustments to monsters could be very useful.

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    That's great to hear - I'm glad this is providing some benefits :)

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    I don't know how you could leave this part out of your description of the Fortune-Spurned template, though.
    That ability. That picture. It's so good.

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    Man, it's nice to see some creative templates. Most WoTC templates are just +numbers and either a few special abilities or scaling 1/day SLAs, and it all just feels very cookie-cutter for the most part. Not that there aren't a few good ones, but most of them are just boring, at least from a fluff standpoint.

    One thing I'm curious about is if Fortune-Spurned has negative LA, because I've seen that before in some 3rd-party templates and it's pretty much never not broken.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Kalkra View Post
    One thing I'm curious about is if Fortune-Spurned has negative LA, because I've seen that before in some 3rd-party templates and it's pretty much never not broken.
    No, it doesn't. Has no CR increase or LA adjustment, up or down. And my suggestion that it could be put on a PC is, admittedly, speculative - the book doesn't suggest it, it was just a thought I had if you wanted to annoy your players

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    Three Arrows for the King: The Archer’s Guide, Ambient Inc.

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    Summary
    It’s basically a book of new base classes, feats, prestige classes, and equipment for archers. Not a lot of new subsystems introduced, but basically its intent is to bring ‘everything you need’ for archery in d20.

    Date of Publication and Page Count
    2003, 50 pages. Now, where it gets interesting is that it seems in virtually the same year Ambient Inc. published a revised edition to cover when 3.5 came out. Ambient Inc. itself seems to have gone out of business. The revised version is distributed by EN World Publishing. My guess, and it is only a guess, is that the author didn’t realise 3.5 was coming out and thereby shafted himself financially by having to publish an update to keep up with the changeover in rules. We’re going to be looking at the original and the revised, because there are some changes … and not necessarily for the better. The lead author, M Jason Parent, seems to have had one credit on an issue of Dungeon. As at date of review, this book -- the revised version -- was available on some large RPG market websites. Not so much the 3.0 version.

    Notable Features
    Archer 4 (base class): Across 4 levels, you pick up +3 BAB; a +2 competence bonus to your attack rolls which stacks with all other competence bonuses so long as you use your chosen ranged weapon; Point Blank Shot; another archery feat; and a feature that allows you to take full-round actions to line up a shot (Pinpoint Accuracy – see below in Dreadful Features). However, the 4th level flat-out gives an archer a second attack at his highest BAB so long as it’s with his chosen ranged weapon, no penalty like Rapid Shot at all (though it explicitly stacks with the Rapid Shot feat if taken). The author’s own notes in the book state this was a deliberate choice to make the Archer stronger than other characters at low levels with a bow but useless with all other weapons. Unfortunately – and the full story is in the Dreadful Features section below – that is just about all that the Archer has to recommend it. And note the pre-revised version of the Archer gave you most of these features in 2 levels rather than 4, making it a hell of a lot more dippable. An effective +2 to all bow attack rolls across two levels, free Point Blank Shot, and an extra attack on a full attack, at the price of a single BAB, is the sort of option you’d expect recommended in Dictum Mortuum’s Archery Handbook or similar. If you want to play an archer and you can get the pre-revision version in particular, consider yourself both lucky and advantaged.
    Thunderstone (new weapon quality): For a +1 price, turn every stone you fling out of a sling into a thunderstone. Let’s remember thunderstones go for 30 gp each, weigh 1 lb, and are normally just thrown items with a piddly range increment of 20 feet which you would normally waste actions drawing and hurling at a spot on the ground. Every shot you take now forces Fort saves in a 10 foot radius or be deafened. This is notable to the point of almost being dreadful for balance, for a +1.
    Stirge Arrows (new magic item): +2 arrows. When they hit, “the basic damage of the arrow (not including sneak attack, weapon mastery and other bonuses provided by the wielder of the bow) is dealt again each round for 1d4 rounds.” Doesn’t work against creatures immune to critical hits, but good grief, there are no rules about what happens if you do critical-hit something, arguably it’s critical damage again in the next round at least! Let alone that it’s not clear what “the basic damage” is – the damage dice maximised? Do you roll again? Whatever the answers here, I can’t think of any bleeding effect under any magic item in 3.5 which allows you to just smash the target with the same damage dice again quite like this. They’re 800gp each, but if you can get one with a solid enhancement bonus, or some way of recovering the arrows afterward (returning – nothing says the arrow has to stay stuck in the enemy), this might actually be worth considering.
    Akaelos (named magic item): +1 Longbow, but perhaps should be known as “what you use in the first round if you win initiative and the opposing mage hasn’t cast yet.” It’s a spell disruption missile weapon, which (apparently) triggers a counterspell upon any spell within a 5 foot radius for up to 1 round after impact. Nope, no max level, no limit to arcane or divine, just lolnope the first spell. Don’t even shoot at the mage, shoot at a patch of ground behind him at AC 5.
    Stabiliser (new item): Mounted on the front of a bow. Using a bow (not crossbow) reduces “the penalty for shooting at long range” (presumably the range increment penalty of -2) by 1. Depending on the RAW this might well mean all your range increment penalties are in effect halved, which would make it pretty damn good on its own, and even on the likely RAI of “-1 instead of -2 on the first range increment”, I’ll take a -1 over a -2 to get a long shot in any day of the week for 75 gp.
    Armour-Piercing Arrow (new martial ammunition): If a target has any kind of armor bonus – natural, armor, or shield – this arrow gets a +1 to the attack roll. That counts most big horrible creatures and most martial targets, and by RAW spells like Mage Armor which confer an armor bonus may trigger this effect too.
    Far-Seeing Scope (new Wondrous Item): 18,000gp. Did you think this thing would just let you Spot at long range increments or something? Oh, no. First, it grants Far Shot. Second, when you use it with a full attack, you can substitute your weapon’s range increment for the normal 30 foot range limiter “for feats and abilities such as sneak attack and point blank shot.” So now your Point Blank Shot benefit applies outside 30 feet, and you can sneak attack targets at out to 100, 110 feet if you’re using a bow. I have not even begun to go looking for any other abilities that have the 30 foot limit to see how this could be ab/used more widely. This single item, with that single ability, makes it possible for rogues to actually function as snipers since they’re good at Hide and a lack of awareness means a target is usually denied its DEX bonus to AC. It also has the amusing effect of largely obviating levels if not entire prestige classes in this book, specifically the Sniper and to lesser extent the Bloodhunter, i.e. those which allow sneak attack to function at longer ranges.
    Ultrasonic Whistling Arrow (New martial ammunition): Similar to the signal arrow which tells your friends about trouble ahead, this one can only be heard by dogs, who’ll bark ferociously and pursue them, or go quiet (if trained to react to a dog whistle.) 1d4/x3. Not much use, but love the concept.
    Broad head Arrows (new martial ammunition): -15% to the range increment, but you’re rarely fighting at a distance where that’s an issue; on a standard longbow this is 85 feet rather than 100. And this might well be worth it, because broadhead arrows do 1d10 damage rather than 1d8.
    Forked Arrow (new exotic ammunition): Using exotic ammunition requires its own feat, which the book supplies … one feat per type of exotic arrow, so choose wisely, -25% range increment, thus, only really good out to 75 feet on a longbow … but they do 1d12 damage each on said longbow, and shortbow forked arrows do 1d10. Interesting fluff, too: also known as ropecutters or frog-crotch arrows, used for decapitating game birds in some cultures (!). That said, the critical multiplier is lower than a standard arrow at x2.
    Bola Arrow (new exotic ammunition): Hate the whole ‘get all my friends mixed up in plants’ thing with Entangle? Here’s your solution: it’s a Green Arrow-style projectile that separates into a bola when fired, which entangles the target on a hit (NO SAVE). Making a STR or Escape Artist check (DC 18) frees the target, but this is almost worth the price of the Exotic Ammunition feat to use it properly. Shorter range, though, -50% on the range increment. 5 gp each, but it’s a Craft DC 20 check to create one, which makes it even more profitable.
    Alchemist’s Arrow (new exotic ammunition): Can hold any alchemical substance from the Core rules, e.g. Alchemist’s Fire or Acid. Requires only a touch attack to hit, does no damage of itself, but delivers the alchemical weapon to the target.
    Knife-Bearer (Assn 1, Sor/Wiz 2, Archer-Ranger 2 spell): Hour/level, 1 weapon/level, free action draw of a weapon, i.e. it’s Quick Draw in a spell. The Archer-Ranger is a base class introduced in this book, though it’s decidedly mediocre because it tries to graft the Archer (above) onto a 3.0 Ranger chassis and comes out not looking good at all. The book says these spells could be added to the Core ranger’s spell list without a problem, so basically, think of them as new ranger spells.
    Perfect Camouflage (Archer-Ranger 4): 10 mins/level, Invisibility for rangers but it only ends when the duration expires or after the second time the target attacks.
    True Camouflage (Archer-Ranger 2): 10 mins/level, again, invisibility for rangers but only functions outdoors in the wilderness; doesn’t function underground or in urban locations.
    Improved Crossbow Handling (feat): An advance on Rapid Reload, basically any crossbow or crossbow-styled weapon has its reload time dropped by an action type: move action to free action, full round to move action. Also, the penalty for firing a crossbow one-handed drops from -4 to -2.
    Distant Sneak Attack (feat): Ranged weapon sneak attack can happen at 60 feet, not 30. Heavily implied that you can get further +30 feet if you take the feat more than once. Only to be considered if you can’t get the book’s own Far-Seeing Scope.
    Quick-Loading Wrist Crossbow (new exotic weapon): I’m Boba Fett, baby! Move-equivalent action to load, fire with one hand. 1d4/19-20 x2, 30 foot range increment.
    In the Groove (feat): Never get less than a result of 10 on a roll for Initiative ever again. Yes, it’s that simple and that good. Yes, your bonuses still apply to the 10 after that, and given Improved Initiative is one of the prerequisites, perhaps this should read “Never get less than at least a score of 14 for your Initiative ever again.”
    Threaten Zone (feat): When wielding a ranged weapon, you threaten an area up to 20 feet away as if you had reach, able to flank and deal AoOs to opponents in that area with a ranged weapon. Never mind the bow, anyone who has a melee weapon with the throwing weapon quality has a ranged weapon. Mix with Stormguard Warrior as enemies charge in towards you for optimal results. And then take the feat Improved Threatened Zone to increase this by another 10 feet. Can you use this with the Far-seeing Scope and threaten AoOs anywhere in your range increment? No, because the Far-seeing Scope only confers its benefit on a full attack action.
    Perfect Shot (feat): Limited application, but still of interest for sniper archer builds with access to Dragon magazine. Basically, sacrifice your additional attacks in a full attack to get +1d4 damage per attack you give up. (If you take the feat twice, the damage goes up to +1d6 per attack instead). This synergises with one of the most commonly-recommended features of the variant Fighter Targetteer from Dragon 310, which does the same thing but increases the critical threat range of the first shot. In that sense it’s not a bad bit of insurance if the shot is a hit but not a critical hit. And it’s an enhancement if it is a critical hit if your DM agrees this bonus damage is also multiplied on a critical – “if this attack hits, it deals an additional 1d4 damage” is the RAW.
    Bone Archer 1 (Prestige Class): This one is right on the edge of being in the Dreadful Features section for balance, because it might be worth dipping if you’re keen to craft 2 arrows per day that hit at a guaranteed +10. Basically, bone archery allows you use bones as your arrows. Said bone arrows then deliver certain effects that are basically spells. The range of spells are not wide and mostly underwhelming, with a few exceptions: True Arrow at level 1, which confers a +10 profane bonus on attack rolls; Hold Person Arrow at level 3 which, duh, hits you with a Hold Person; Shadow Shaft at level 3 which deals 1d4+1 STR damage and a -2 morale penalty on saves, attacks, and skills for a few rounds; Enervation Arrow at level 5, which confers 1d4 negative levels for 1 hour per Bone Archer level. But of these it’s really the True Arrow which is the standout. The class requires the ability to cast at least 1 level 2 “necromantic” spell and does not advance spellcasting in any other form – and doesn’t allow you to prepare bonus bone arrows per day based on your ability score, the set table is the set table and that’s it. (However, the class also doesn’t specify whether you can prepare an arrow and hold onto it indefinitely, which is why it might be worth dipping and then using in downtime periods to create big batches of True Arrows. The RAI was probably yes, given the ingredients for the bone arrow are free so long as you have a decent supply of bones, which adds a whole new entertaining element to hunting undead at least. The only restriction is how many bone arrows of a given level you can make per day, it does not provide a maximum number of bone arrows craftable.) As said, it’s likely only good for a one level dip, because in 10 levels you get 3 feats drawn from the basics of archery feats, a +3 to your attack rolls, 7/10 BAB and 3 dead levels, which is blech.


    Dreadful Features
    Archer 5-20 (base class): You know it’s going to be a rough evening when the first thing you see for a full martial class is a d8 hit dice and a level 20 BAB of +15. Let’s remember that there’s basically two ways to build an archer in D&D: one-shot critfishing/sneak attacking terror which relies on massive damage on one shot, or volley archery, which relies on getting as many attacks as possible. The way the class tries to mitigate the BAB issue is to give the archer a scaling competence bonus with one bow that’s chosen at the first level in archer, which stacks with Weapon Focus and any other competence bonuses the archer may have, and which gets to +6 at level 20. So really our foundational attack bonus is +21, not +15. And the level 4 (2 in the original version) class feature is making an additional attack at your best attack bonus if you make a full attack action, i.e. that’s the foundation for the volley archer. The problem is that the rest of the class really comes down to little, incremental bonuses – a few points off an enemy’s AC derived from cover, take full round actions to pick up a +6 to an attack roll, Point Blank Shot effectiveness rises to +2, that sort of thing. It probably tells you how little the problem of martial scaling was appreciated given there’s 4 dead levels from 10 to 20, Ranged Disarm is provided at level 18, and the capstone abilities are to get an extra 2 range increments on your shot and that last +2 to your competence bonuses.
    Young Soldier (character background): Similar to Mongoose Publishing’s character backgrounds where you pick up a benefit for a drawback at character creation, this astonishingly balanced feature provides you with 76gp of ranged weapon and ammo, studded leather armour, and a light simple weapon … in return for zero Martial weapon proficiency beyond the ranged weapon he used in the service and a Simple light weapon.
    Pinpoint Accuracy (feat): This damn thing turns up so often as a prerequisite or a class ability in this book you would have to conclude the author thought he was introducing something fantastic to the world. Its usefulness is at best very marginal, albeit maybe if your thing is stealthing and picking fights without getting seen (i.e. practically never). Anyway, if you spend a full-round action during which you do nothing but aim at a target with a ranged weapon get a +2 bonus to attack roll on that target the with the ranged weapon. You can aim for up to 3 consecutive rounds to push this benefit to +6 at maximum. “Oh, great, so all my attacks next round in a full attack get a +6—” Not so fast. Firing after aiming requires you use the full attack action, but you only get to make a single attack. And if you’re threatened or attacked while aiming, you have to start over. So basically blow two rounds of actions for a +2 to one attack roll.
    Master of Intuitive Archery (Prestige Class): Why can’t anyone in D&D seem to make a legendary archer PrC work? Order of the Bow Initiate is horrible, Arcane Archer is horrible-r. This attempt on its face has some very nice features to play with: full BAB, arrows pick up +4 enhancement bonuses, at first level substitute WIS for STR to damage (whether it’s a composite bow you’re using or not), reroll miss chance on concealment, ignore first +4 of AC that comes from cover, double damage on a hit when using Pinpoint Accuracy, True Seeing for 1 minute, inflict 2d6 CON damage in addition to normal damage 3/day, and – the capstone – take a move-equivalent action to add a +20 insight bonus to your attack roll and ignore miss chance due to concealment. The drawbacks, though, are that it takes 10 levels to get all this stuff. And the prerequisites are massive: BAB +8, 7 feats (admittedly mostly the sort of stuff an archer would likely be taking to qualify for archer-y things anyway) and 10 ranks in Concentration. Hilariously, the book’s own Archer base class can’t actually gain all 10 levels in this, since it only gets BAB 8 at level 11!
    Elven Treehunter (Prestige Class): Oh boy, oh boy, we finally get around to the elven stereotype of elves as legendary archers! Yes, it’s only 5 levels! Yes, it’s full BAB! Yes, it’s limited to elf or half-elf! Yes, it only needs 3 feats to qualify! Oh … it requires the ability to cast pass without trace and treeshape and it’s a 2/5 casting class … never mind, what are the abilities? Hmmm. +10 competence bonus on Balance and Climb checks taken in trees, move at full speed in the treetops. +1 bonus to missile attacks when attacking from higher ground, i.e. from tree branches by RAI, but could include anyone flying. +2d6 Brutal Shot when I shoot from above, which stacks with Sneak Attack. If I have a Brutal Shot I can extend the maximum range out to 60 feet … wait, isn’t there some item that helps me out with this? And I also get a spell called transport via plants 2/day as a spell-like ability. Hmm. Probably not enough to blow 5 levels and spellcasting on.
    Sniper (Prestige Class): When you first read it, you get excited. The level 1 class ability, Extended Sneak Attack: a sneak attack can be done with his chosen ranged weapon at up to 5 range increments out. And then you read the ability closer, and realise a rogue’s sneak attack only stacks with the damage off Extended Sneak Attack when you’re shooting at less than 30 feet. So whilst you can sneak attack from literally hundreds of feet away, you’re only doing – at maximum -- +3d6 in sneak attack damage at that range. Argh.
    Bloodhunter (Prestige Class): Pick up CHA-based arcane spellcasting with a very, very limited list (4 spells at first, 3 at second, 2 at third and 1 at fourth) … but given True Strike, Shield, Glitterdust, Greater Magic Weapon, and Improved Invisibility are on that list, it’s not bad I guess if you want very limited casting for some other prestige class. The rest of the features are very pedestrian (and the table simply doesn’t match what the text descriptions say about it). About the only notable feature is that his sneak attack can be pushed out (over 5 levels) to 90 feet rather than 30, but this is completely obviated with the Far-seeing Scope from the same book. D10 hit dice which is better than most prestige classes in the book, and it’s only 5 levels, but I still wouldn’t take it.
    Divine Huntsman (Prestige Class): 5/10 divine spellcasting for Full BAB and gaining Weapon Focus, Pinpoint Accuracy, +1 to damage, Improved Critical, and increased threat range of 2. Pass.
    Siege Artillerist (Prestige Class): Maybe some Large or Huge type character could do something hilarious with this, but as written it is utterly useless unless you’re playing Artillery Officer: The Game.
    Double Nock (feat): Put two arrows on your bow rather than one, at a -5 on the attack roll for both. They must not have heard that the Splitting weapon quality does this for no penalty and doesn’t cost you a feat, which is why it’s the number one recommendation for archer builds.
    Triple Nock (feat): All right now this is just getting stupid.
    Legendary Sharpshooter (Prestige Class) This thing is a sort-of prestige class. It has all sorts of prerequisites including a quest to prove yourself literally the greatest archer in the land before you can qualify for it. But anyway, you need BAB +12, 7 feats (including a Fighter-only Weapon Mastery, haha), and Spot and Craft of 10 and 12. And what mighty, puissant abilities can we access once we ascend to this lofty height? … … … +1 to DEX, +1 to WIS, +4 to Spot checks, +4 to Hide, range increment increased by 30 feet, sneak attack can be taken at +10 feet out, 2/day automatically confirm a critical hit. Although the longer you go in the level, these value increase depend on when you take them: take the DEX option at first level and +1 is as high as it goes and you can’t pick it again, but take the WIS option at third level and you get +3 to WIS. So, restrain yourself for 5 levels and you can push your DEX or WIS by +4 and +5 (or vice versa), and that’s the maximum benefit the class offers. It also doesn’t help that they printed the wrong level/BAB/Save table for the class, so we have no idea what these might be alongside.
    Release (new item): Hand held tool to pull a bowstring back and nock an arrow. Increases your reload time to a move equivalent action on a bow, so it’s already bad. Worse is the benefit: if you have the sparkly Pinpoint Accuracy feat, it increases the maximum aiming time allowed by 1 round (although it doesn’t say by RAW that you get another +2 for this, so it arguably has no effect.) Better and more interesting would have been to make this the sort of thing that allows a weedy type to use a Composite Longbow, as a sort of mechanism that gets around the higher STR needed to draw the string but slows down the reload time, similar to a crossbow winch.
    Staff of Missiles (magic item): Staff that casts Magic Missile, Melf’s Acid Arrow, Flame Arrow. Very cheap at 9,375 gp, and that’s likely because the caster level – breaking the rules for building staves – is 5, not the minimum of 8 that the PHB and DMG specify.

    Who it’s best for (Player/GM/both)
    Look, it’s mostly going to be of use to players since archers traditionally get pretty short shrift in D&D and this book seems to be meant to remedy that. The Bone Archer might be interesting as a sort of one-shot villain, but given the way this is written it’s really more for character builds than setting or mook design.


    Comments, thoughts, and rating out of 10.
    On mechanics: the dominant theme of this is a seeming failure to appreciate the problems that martials generally and archers specifically have when they start hitting the character level teens. I say a seeming failure because I can’t read the author’s mind; it might be that he actually was of the Monte Cook mind that martials should fade into obsolescene as against the magic users, that it was a feature and not a bug. Whichever it is, there seems to be a lack of understanding – common in D&D 3.5 -- that it takes more than just adding a few random +1s to keep a martial competitive outside the sweet spot of levels 6-10, and in particular giving up full-round actions for a +2 to an attack roll is just looney tunes. For archers in particular, it needs a method to get around Wind Wall, a method to scale damage similar to Power Attack (e.g. Peerless Archer’s Power Shot), a method to SAD your combat ability to DEX, and a method to get over Damage Resistance (the latter of which otherwise is a huge pain in the quiver for our typically 1d6+WhoCares arrows). I cannot think of a single item in this book which meaningfully addresses any of these issues deliberately (accidentally is another matter). It is, by and large, all about raising the attack roll.

    At low levels the designs are on a range of not bad to playable, as said. The intent of the Archer is to outright outshine the Fighter with a bow, and if +2s and extra attacks don’t do that I don’t know what will. But it is pretty apparent that the author hasn’t seriously tried these designs anywhere in the high teens. This is particularly a problem with the prestige classes, which are kind-of meant for those levels.

    The equipment and spells in the book are somewhat better and a lot more useful, as the Notable Features section above should indicate. But as said I really doubt the author fully understood the implications of some of the things he was putting together; some of them by bad editing or bad concept are utterly useless, others are so significantly powerful I cannot see how they were written by the same guy. Like I keep saying, the Far-seeing Scope has capacity to basically turn a rogue into a proper sniper, especially if that rogue pumps the range increment of his weapons by using things like Dragonbone Bows and Flight Arrows or similar. But the fact this single item obviates whole prestige class features makes me think the author did not think it through. More balanced is the ammunition that does 1d10, 1d12 damage; it costs you a feat and a lowered range to take it, which might still be overkill on prerequisites. And some of the more general feats I think are pretty unintentionally powerful (Into the Groove, for example.) Weighing all this up, I think it’s not mechanically very well balanced. And I say that with gritted teeth, because I personally love archers and they need a lot more affection in D&D 3.5, no matter what whingers say about how ranged combat makes melee combat useless. A very regretful 0.5/4 here.

    On concepts and fluff: the only thing really note here was the Legendary Class, which at least tried to do something interesting with prestige classes. As in: you can have your +1 to an ability stat now, or if you can survive a few more levels, you can have +4 or +5 DEX instead. But doing so means you have to take other features now, and once taken, they can’t be taken again. This has some capacity to make your character a little more custom and force some hard(er) choices about your character, especially where the abilities chosen are functionally equivalent. It’s a pity we don’t see more of that in D&D. (But hey, the night is young and I’m traveloguing third party, who knows what I’ll turn up?) The author also modified a Mongoose Publishing subsystem for called shots (properly credited, I might add), which I’ll probably get around to when I review The Quintessential Fighter, from where the original derived. The one in this book isn’t particularly strong.

    Otherwise, though, this was all pretty generic and uninspiring. There was a lot of time spent on multiclassing without real ultimate point, and the author spent a lot of time fluffing simple +1 weapons (absent the Akaelos, which is a legit good mage-frustration weapon). There is a short history of real-world archery which is nice and all, but I just didn’t find much of it that inspiring. Again, a very regretful 0.5/4 here.

    On presentation: rejoice, someone remembered sans serif fonts exist! The book is supplied in printable and screen-intended form, which is good, and in a landscape format, allowing three columns per page and therefore more information in the 50 pages of the book. There’s colour headers and footers which also make it easier on the eye. Uninspiring art, but this is one where the readability is actually better than the average WOTC book. 1.5/2 here.


    Total: 2.5/10. Which is a massive vote for style over substance, but I’m all about encouraging readability and useability of a book as much as the math and fluff.


    Next time: Secrets, Alderac Entertainment Group.

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    I am loving this thread. Thanks Saintheart.

    If you've got a copy, Necromancer Games Tome of Horrors might be an interesting read for a monster book.

    Some of the early Kobold Press materials are specifically d20 and not Pathfinder.

    And I'm said Raging Swan Press's materials are all PF. There's some great stuff there.
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    I am thrilled to see this thread, and will be eagerly following it One comment, Saintheart, will you be reviewing any of the multitude of AEG books out there? I personally have both Feats and Relics, and I think they would both deserve a spot on this list (Especially freaking Kinslayer from Relics. A dagger that can literally rewrite all of history, causing two people to swap places, and no one but those two people ever know it happened. Even Greater Deities are fooled by Kinslayer)

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    AEG's Evil and Undead are also worth a read, if only for the large quantity of ideas.

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    Default Re: Trashes & Treasures: Older 3rd Party Sourcebooks, a Walking Tour

    Quote Originally Posted by thorr-kan View Post
    I am loving this thread. Thanks Saintheart.

    If you've got a copy, Necromancer Games Tome of Horrors might be an interesting read for a monster book.

    Some of the early Kobold Press materials are specifically d20 and not Pathfinder.

    And I'm said Raging Swan Press's materials are all PF. There's some great stuff there.
    I'll have a look at Necromancer Games and see if I can find some of that stuff.

    Quote Originally Posted by Aleolus View Post
    I am thrilled to see this thread, and will be eagerly following it One comment, Saintheart, will you be reviewing any of the multitude of AEG books out there? I personally have both Feats and Relics, and I think they would both deserve a spot on this list (Especially freaking Kinslayer from Relics. A dagger that can literally rewrite all of history, causing two people to swap places, and no one but those two people ever know it happened. Even Greater Deities are fooled by Kinslayer)
    Quote Originally Posted by Caelestion View Post
    AEG's Evil and Undead are also worth a read, if only for the large quantity of ideas.
    Yes, I have several AEGs, so I will be looking at them in due course. :)

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    Secrets, Alderac Entertainment Group

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    Summary
    Inside this 160-page book you’ll find the collected works of half a dozen dangerous men.” So sayeth the back cover, and I immediately flipped to see whether there were 6 authors credited as writing the book. Sadly, no. Essentially, it’s themed as a series of secret tomes which supply GMs and players with new races, classes, feats, prestige classes, and five adventure sites to work with.

    Date of Publication and Page Count
    2004, 160 pages. Thus, a 3.5 book. There is the odd accidental reference to a 3.0 feature which doesn’t take away from the work, but it would suggest this had been in the works for a while. Nine authors … and three playtesters, which I’m starting to think is a bit of a bad ratio. As at date of review, this book was available on some large RPG market websites.

    Notable Features
    Barbarian of the Frozen Wastelands (base class): If you’re playing using Frostburn, this is better than the wussy adaptation they give you in that book’s rules for barbarians. The main differences from the standard barbarian come down to: extra bonuses to Survival, Hide, Listen, Move Silently in cold terrain; and moving through snow and ice at normal speed; increasing Resist Cold to 18 maximum; and a variant rage. This rage trades away the CON increase from a default rage in return for keeping the AC intact, +4 to Will saves, and adds an AoE fear effect. Interestingly, the feature says “Those who have witnessed this rage before gain a +2 bonus to their Willpower saving throw”, i.e. the barbarian’s party get a +2 to their Will saves since they’ve been around him before as well!
    Bard of the Black Crow (base class): Why inspire courage in your audience when, like Cacofonix, you can inspire fear instead? “But Saintheart, the Inspire Awe ACF from Dragon Magic …” Well, the Black Crow doesn’t just induce fear (though he can do this, too, as one of his forms of bardic music), he outright demoralises people. As in, if your enemies don’t make a Will save (DC 15 + the Black Crow’s level) then they suffer at least a -1 morale penalty to attack rolls and AC. The progression of this ability basically matches Inspire Courage, i.e. -4 by level 20, and anything that boosts bardic music generally will boost this too. Inspire Competence, Inspire Greatness, Suggestion, are all gone in place of Instilling Doubt (-1 to saving throws); Confusion (as the spell basically); Spook (-2 to attack rolls, damage, AC, and -4 to Will saves, and if he had any temporary HP, they are instantly lost); Croak of Fear (cast fear spell); and Inspire Guile which boosts a party member’s INT and CHA by +4 and gives them +2 to Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, and Sense Motive. And Mass Confusion. If your bard’s going to be a fear-blaster then this might be somewhat better than just ACFing Inspire Awe.
    Seasonal Druid (base class): I’ve put this one in Notable Features being very aware that the moment I start to tell you about it mechanically there will likely be foaming at the mouth. But, if you have any sort of soul, the title of the class alone should tell you what I found inspiring about it: the druid is the defender of the wild, and, being attuned to the wild, the seasonal druid’s powers wax and wane with the seasons. I don’t think you can get a simpler and more thematic idea. But as said it’s the mechanics that are controversial, because seasonal druids don’t get Wild Shape. At all. Or an animal companion. In place of these abilities, they get an Energy Resistance (max 30, becomes immunity) and capacity to summon increasingly more powerful elementals, the type of which are keyed to which season they selected to start with. Summer druids get Fire Resistance and summon Fire Elementals; Spring Druids get Acid resistance and summon Water Elementals; that sort of thing. The elemental acts as the druid’s servant for a certain number of hours per day (20% of the druid’s level + CHA mod, minimum 1 hour) and eventually an Elemental Swarm or Elder Elemental can be summoned. Caster level (only for spell effects, not for determining bonus spells) increases with the favoured seasons and drops to +0 in the opposite season. Druid spellcasting is otherwise left intact. As said, this likely isn’t a fair tradeoff of abilities, but if you hate the near-brokenness of Wild Shape but you still want to preserve some of the druid’s best strengths, forbidding SRD druid and allowing this type instead might mollify players, because it’s thematically a lot more inspiring than the bog-standard druid.
    Charred Chameleon School Monk (base class): Basically it’s a Monk but (from fifth level) can make unarmed sneak attacks, which explicitly function as the Rogue’s sneak attack except useable with unarmed strike. Also gets some Fire Resistance and WIS bonus as an Insight bonus to Hide and Move Silently, which means it stacks with DEX. Maybe some sort of Monk/Rogue multiclass could do something with this.
    Neutral Paladin (base class): Some interesting alternatives: turn outsiders (good, evil, or chaotic) rather than turn undead; some Diplomacy bonuses; remove paralysis, remove curse, immune to fear, +4 to saves vs. undead and chaotic outsiders.
    Ley Lines (variant rules): I find ley lines a bit awkward as a game concept, mainly because it has a lot in common with Node Spellcasting out of 3.5: PCs usually aren’t fixed to one location and as such usually don’t have the opportunity to make frequent use of geographical features that heighten magic. And generally the effects of fixed position stuff like ley lines or nodes aren’t consequential enough that one really needs to lay down a lot of mechanical certainty around them. That is, they’re more like GM scenery or something to change up the odd encounter like a wild magic zone or similar. That being said, if a GM did want to really utilise ley lines as a worldbuilding point, this section of the book probably isn’t a bad foundation either to build on or to provide guidance for building your own system. Ley lines in this one are very rarely the kind that stretch across continents, or rather these are the most powerful ones; the weakest ley lines go only for a quarter of a mile and are 10 feet wide. Ley lines also need to be fed and supported; they are created by the mass will of animals at least all travelling in the same direction (or intelligent beings, provided their intent is very strong and focused, for example a pilgrim route to a very sacred tomb or similar). Where ley lines cross, they are typically places of random magic, places of great power in and of themselves. Clerics of the Travel domain in particular keep a close eye on such places. The powers available as said tend to boost some power that functions only while on the line. There’s a number of themes for ley lines; the Death one is probably most of use to a DM, since any living creature dying from a magical effect on the ley line is under the control of its killer, gains turn resistance, and all summoning effects summon undead. All regeneration effects are negated and attempts to raise the dead fail while the corpse is on the ley line. Death ley lines are the most common because death strikes regularly. One can see the campaign hooks in here presumably.
    Past Life (feats): Hooray, your past life echoes down to you via your feat selections. Probably the strongest optimisation element to the past life feats are for the skillmonkeys: Past Life -> Mastery of Mind -> Inspired Past -> Avatar grants you 6 cross-class skills in which you’re assumed to have 4 skill points (and which increase with the levels); Craft, Knowledge and Profession become class skills and 6 skill points to put into them +2 per level; and finally, all skills become class skills for you and you get 4 more skill points per level to put into them. Other selections (hidden behind at least a feat prerequisite or two) allow you to pick up the odd class-specific ability without having to take a level in it, or other random bits.
    True Names (variant rule): No, not the Truenamer. Simply put, spells cast targeting a creature can use the creature’s true name as an additional Verbal component. When they do, the caster’s WIS modifier is added to his casting level for the spell. Also add the WIS modifier to a skill check on all Bluff, Intimidate and Sense Motive checks when you speak the person’s true name as part of the skill use!
    Chaplain I and II (base classes): Healers without divinities. Not a lot more to be said than that.
    The Keeper of the Pass (NPC): Sorry, but this was a high moment in what was otherwise a pretty pedestrian if not boring adventure site. Keronus, the Avoral Guardinal who happens to inhabit the main pass to a small spring which is the site, doesn’t actually guard the place. The pass is just his home as he spends all his time on the Prime Material Plane. “If anyone wants to get past him to visit the spring, he simply shrugs and lets them pass, not caring one way or another.” For some reason I got a belly laugh out of that.


    Dreadful Features
    Pure Elf (new race): The higher than High Elf. +2 DEX; +2 WIS; +6 CHA; -2 CON; +4 to Will saves; +4 to Listen, Search, Spot, Diplomacy, Sense Motive; Spell Resistance 11+WIS+class levels; lowlight vision; darkvision … along with all other elf traits. Pure Elf with CH 16 or higher can use geas/quest and mass suggestion 1/week. Also, 1/day obscuring mist, see invisibility, detect thoughts, detect magic, read magic. It’s LA +3 and they seriously talk about Pure Elf adventurers, but even then I’d have grave doubts about allowing this bag of features to work as a PC, mainly because it’s too strong for level 4 (where it would be a level 1 Paladin presumably), and probably too weak for level 10 (where it would be a level 6 sorcerer presumably).
    Acts of Faith (Variant rule): Another one where the idea is good but the execution is a bit lacking. It’s something a cleric can do, and at low character levels it’s basically a form of spontaneous casting; blow your top domain slot and be able to do something like Air Walk (Chaotic Good) or Discern Lies (Lawful Neutral). These are okay in that at least you don’t have to spend feats on it, but you get further abilities later on which are much steeper in cost. As an example, Chaotic Evil’s Acts of Faith: if you’re 15th level or above, blow your highest level domain spell and suck 1d4/2 cleric levels of hitpoints out of all living creatures in a 30 foot radius to become temporary hitpoints. Sound good? Sure – until you realise you have to pay 50 XP per living creature to do this. And if you’re a 20th level CE cleric, by blowing your top domain slot for the day, literally kill (no save) any living creature with a melee touch attack. Sound gooder? Sure-r. Until you realise it costs you 100 XP per hit dice of the creature killed to do this. The other alignments have the same model of doing something mildly impressive but costing you big wads of XP to do it.
    Endemic (new race): A species that’s said to have escaped an interplanar prison and via its (limited) shapeshifting abilities is said to be reigning above most of society in a cabal of conspirators I think is probably really punching above its weight to have done all that on +2 INT, +2 CHA, -2 STR, undetectable alignment, +2 to some social skills, a +2 to the casting stat for the purpose of determining bonus spells and DCs, and a couple of random energy resistance qualities.
    Superior Damage Reduction (feat): Question: As a 16th level single-class Fighter, who’s already being laughed at by the magic-users and who can only really look down on the Monk as even more disadvantaged than he is, do you think DR 8/- is worth a total of five feat slots, CON 19, and a grand total of 2,000 XP? No? How about if we remove the Fighter minimum level and CON requirement for several thousand more XP?
    Superior Maiming Strike (feat): Followup question: as a 20th level pure class Fighter, who’s being laughed at because he spent five feat slots and 2,000 XP on DR 8/-, do you think it’s worth DEX 19, INT 15, six feat slots, and 3,750 XP to be able to do a maximum of 1d4+1+STR mod damage to one of an opponent’s ability stats (STR, DEX or CON, pick one, another stat requires another 5 feats) assuming you are wielding a two-handed martial or exotic weapon, or 1d6+1+STR on a critical hit and possibly cripple the target for life (1 ability score point lost permanently?) Oh, bearing in mind you forego doing any normal damage from the blow?
    Distracting Stance (feat): 3 feat slots plus 400 XP and make your opponents in threatened squares suffer -8 to Concentration checks and -2 to Will saves. Sorry, but there was just something about the way this one was written that makes me imagine a Fighter with significant genitals on show in the middle of combat.

    Who it’s best for (Player/GM/both)
    The book is marketed to GMs, and the lion’s share of the book is probably more to motivate, inspire, and feed GMs information. GMs are explicitly told by the book to only dish out the contents of this book in little snippets at a time, typically by a NPC wielding the characteristics against them. And that’s probably the way it should stay for the most part.

    Comments, thoughts, and rating out of 10.
    On mechanics: On this one, along with apeing the WOTC book layout and format, I think they managed to too-successfully ape the WOTC 3.0 and early 3.5 balance, i.e. bleed the Fighter and pretty well every martial class you can find with feat prerequisites until he’s basically dead. Don’t get me wrong, it’s all useable and all very balanced, to the point where you’d wonder why someone would take some of these options at all other than out of inexperience, for the lolz, or because they really, really wanted to play on feel rather than mathematics? Most of the time I’ll be telling you the Notable Features are only a small sample of the stuff I found, but honestly, with this one it was more like anything outside the Notable Features was just so blah or not useful that it didn’t warrant mention either as horrible or good, +1 to caster level for a feat just isn’t good enough to distinguish an option in my book. It’s got the balance of your average WOTC book, which is to say, it deserves a 1/4 in my view.

    On concepts and fluff: When I first read the introduction I admit I smiled. The intro to the book draws the reader’s attention to the fact there’s a chapter missing (or so it seems) and some stuff is not in order where the contents page says it should be. It then says that was deliberate to give you the feeling of looking through a dry, dusty tome for partial secrets here and there, that each major chapter was written in a different style deliberately to reflect a different learned author/madman writing bits and pieces. On reflection, that was a hell of a bar to set for themselves, because this implicitly tells you, the reader, that this is going to be a fun reading experience to inspire you into bringing this sort of stuff into the campaign. And unfortunately, on that score, they failed.

    Maybe it’s because they all but Simulacrum'd WOTC's formatting for the book, right down to big slabs of italics comprising the fluff and the mechanics in very, very similar fonts. It would take a pretty good writer to draw me in under those circumstances, and I’m sorry to say these guys were just not good writers. It was all very bland, very cliché, and very expected, and the black-and-white interior didn’t make the reading much easier. I found myself very quickly exhausted going through this thing. To be fair, this could just be my jaded nature after leafing through dozens of WOTC books formatted a similar way and with the same boring archetypes – maybe a newbie might get more out of this than I did.

    There are occasional nuggets of inspiration. I guess that’s the best you can say about what they do in this book. The question is whether you want to go through all one hundred and sixty pages to find them. I just felt like there wasn’t a lot of effort to really make the concepts shine or feel different, it feels basically like a collection of ideas shuffled together and then with some artificial cobwebs sprayed over them to make them look interesting. Even the five adventure sites are pretty freaking boring, they’re pretty much self-contained worlds with no indication about how a DM is meant to create some conflict out of them or what purpose they’re meant to serve in a campaign. They’re just like little dioramas not really needing an adventurer to trespass on them at all. 1/4 on this one.

    On presentation: They manage to replicate the look and layout of the average 3.5 book, without anything more impressive than that. 1/2 on this front.

    Total: 3/10.

    Next time: When the Sky Falls by Malhavoc Press.

  19. - Top - End - #49
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    Default Re: Trashes & Treasures: Older 3rd Party Sourcebooks, a Walking Tour

    Originally Posted by Saintheart
    But, if you have any sort of soul, the title of the class alone should tell you what I found inspiring about it: the druid is the defender of the wild, and, being attuned to the wild, the seasonal druid’s powers wax and wane with the seasons.
    I like the concept, but it sounds as if the execution is a little underwhelming. Is there any justification for why a druid would focus on one season to the exclusion of all the others? What does a summer druid do all winter?

    Also, is there any allowance for different arrangements of seasons for different geographical regions? Say, a monsoon druid?

    Originally Posted by Saintheart
    Endemic (new race): A species that’s said to have escaped an interplanar prison and via its (limited) shapeshifting abilities is said to be reigning above most of society in a cabal of conspirators I think is probably really punching above its weight to have done all that on +2 INT, +2 CHA, -2 STR, undetectable alignment, +2 to some social skills, a +2 to the casting stat for the purpose of determining bonus spells and DCs, and a couple of random energy resistance qualities.
    Is the race on its own underpowered, or are you classifying it as dreadful based on their backstory?

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    Ettin in the Playground
     
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    Quote Originally Posted by Palanan View Post
    I like the concept, but it sounds as if the execution is a little underwhelming. Is there any justification for why a druid would focus on one season to the exclusion of all the others? What does a summer druid do all winter?

    Also, is there any allowance for different arrangements of seasons for different geographical regions? Say, a monsoon druid?
    There's no allowances for the tropical druid like that, just the classic four season -- but that in itself is really interesting as a concept. As it is, it's really that the druid simply has stronger powers in one season as opposed to the others - in essence, a +4 to caster level in their favourite season, +2 to one of the "sidebar" seasons (like Autumn or Spring as to Summer, for example), and +0 in Winter. The fluff introduction indicates that the reason for the focus on the seasons springs (haha) out of a focus on the flora rather than the fauna of the world (i.e. why they don't get Wild Shape I'm guessing). But this isn't reflected in, say, being better at casting plant-ish spells like Entangle or Plant Growth, it is reflected in the strength of their casting in different seasons and that's it. The concept is not worked through in a lot of detail.


    Quote Originally Posted by Palanan View Post
    Is the race on its own underpowered, or are you classifying it as dreadful based on their backstory?
    A bit of both, to be honest. Secret Shapeshifting Masters Of Society is a well-worn concept, but this one just had nothing out of the ordinary, it's just all "We as a race escaped our interplanar prison ages ago, spurned all our gods, and wormed our way to the top levels of your societies where we puppetmaster events for our own benefit. INT +2, CHA +2, -2 STR, your primary spellcasting stat counts as +2 for calculating bonus spells and caster level, Energy Resistance 5, LA +1, and hey, for some weird reason Endemics are rarely a PC race." In a genre where you're at least a Reptilian Overlord or from Beta Reticuli, this was just ... blah.

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    I really appreciate this thread. I'm going to pull some of the dusty gems, kicking and screaming, out of that trash fire of an archery book for my upcoming rework of archery in my system.
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    typo report : panel 5, "pleather" I presume the p shouldn't be there.
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    Quote Originally Posted by ManicOppressive View Post
    I really appreciate this thread. I'm going to pull some of the dusty gems, kicking and screaming, out of that trash fire of an archery book for my upcoming rework of archery in my system.
    Hope it's of use to you, and thanks for the kind comments. :)

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    When the Sky Falls, Malhavoc Press
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    Summary
    I know every DM has the inclination to pull a ‘rocks fall, everyone dies’ on his campaign from time to time. I don’t know if it inspired this book. Either way, this book basically gives you a framework for building a campaign around a meteor impact on your campaign world. This is one of Malhavoc Press’s ‘Event Books’, i.e. they had three of these meant to help DMs out with planning and worldbuilding for three events that crop up a fair bit in fantasy fiction of the time but which are usually beyond the grasp of most DMs to do fully: a meteor impact; the death of a deity; and the coming of a war. The book provides DM advice on staging one of these cataclysmic events, involving the PCs, and making changes necessary to the campaign as consequences of the event. The book also contains new NPCs, prestige classes, rules, spells, magic items and monsters involved with the event.

    Date of Publication and Page Count
    2003, 66 pages, and from the copyright information seems to be a late 3.0, early 3.5 book. That said, it doesn’t suffer much from the 3.5 update by nature of its content. The author is Bruce R. Cordell, as in, the Bruce Cordell who wrote The Sunless Citadel that many of you either ran or played, as well as the Psionics Handbook and the Heart of Nightfang Spire. Malhavoc Press is essentially Monte Cook’s publishing business, though his books also bear the sigil of Sword & Sorcery, which was basically White Wolf Publishing. The distinctions are more or less meaningless at this point. As at date of review this book doesn't seem to be casually available for purchase as a PDF on large RPG market websites. You may have to go looking for this one elsewhere in the virtual world or the real world.

    Notable Features
    Engram Arks: The three main types of meteor impact the book considers (whilst leaving open lots of other possibilities) are: impact of bog standard space rock; thaumaturgical meteorite, i.e. impact of bog standard magic space rock; and impact of an Engram Ark. Now, I’m a big sucker for ark-style stories, whether it be Battlestar Galactica, Passengers, Superman, or the Autobots’ Ark from Transformers, so in me they got someone who was primed for this, but the Engram Ark is not an alien invasion … as such. The Engram Ark instead contains engrams – memories – patterns of mental energy coded to represent the memories, abilities, and qualities of individuals. The Ark’s homeworld was threatened with a catastrophe and due to space limitations these were the only representations of themselves refugees could hope to survive it. When the ark’s homeworld was destroyed, the Arks were hurled away at random into the void, and when one impacts on a world, the Ark’s precious cargo survives in a structure that is perhaps as magical as technological, a Rune Sea. This Rune Sea is, and I quote, “a morass of glowing engrams, each as intricate and unique as a snowflake. These millions of “runes” (as characters are liable to think of them) merge, separate, leap, flow, and boil within their basin, each no larger than half a hand-span, but in sum making up a sea. Instead of the sound of dripping, lapping water, the Rune Sea gives off a low, basso chant, as if many voices were murmuring and echoing some alien, foreboding refrain.” I love this whole concept. Absolutely love it. Engrams themselves are also useable game effects, which the book sets out in mechanics.
    Memekeeper: Stop giggling, internet memes weren’t a thing back in 2003 when the book was written. The Memekeeper is the guardian of the Rune Sea, a 5 foot spherical construct made of floating crystal and metal shards suspended in orbit around a central sphere. A shattered version of its original self, the Memekeeper can’t reconstitute the minds of the engrams but can communicate with visitors that enter the chamber containing the Rune Sea. Another great concept.
    EMP (effect): No, not electromagnetic pulse – Ethereal-Material Pulse, as in what happens on the impact of a Thaumaturgical Meteorite. The EMP ripples through the Material and Ethereal Planes for a (standard) 30 miles, and hits all creatures and objects in range that isn’t protected by 10 feet of earth and stone or 1 foot of iron or metallic alloy. It hits as if it imposed a targeted Dispel Magic with a Dispel check of 1d20+20!
    Falling Star Rush (new feat): For Knockback Bull Rush builds in particular, this is awesome. You’ll lose a feat on Star Emblem and this one, but the prerequisite otherwise is just Improved Bull Rush. And maybe you only get to use it 0.5xCharacter Level per day, but. But. Get a +4 on the opposed check for the Bull Rush. Nice. If you succeed on the Bull Rush, you push him back double the normal Bull Rush distance. Nicer. And you deal him 1 point of plasma damage, for each. Foot. You. Push. Him. Back. Every square contains 5 feet. It’s not hard to get enemies flying 20 feet through the air without this new benefit, and you literally do him damage as he’s flying through the air, before you start taking into account the hilarity of things like Dungeoncrasher or Shock Trooper which add more damage and utility to enemies billiard-balling around the battlefield.
    Engram Cloak (Clr 8, Sor/Wiz 7) (new spell): There’s a small host of spells related to or triggering off engrams in the book, but this one at least isn’t bad. 1 minute/level, give yourself flat out DR 15/everything and lolnope any spell that targets you (bar Dispel Magic.). It takes Spellcraft checks (DC 25 against melee or ranged attacks, DC 30+spell level in the case of a spell, which allows you to ignore the spell as if you had spell resistance).
    Tap Engram (Sor/Wiz 2) (new spell): Round/level. Casting time is (sigh) “one action”. Next spell you cast has a +4 engram bonus to its save DC.
    Summoning Auxiliary (Clr 0, Drd 0, Sor/Wiz 0) (new spell): Free action spell that gives you permission to summon some of the meteor-born monsters in the book.
    Starmilk (new material): Weapons made from Starmilk inflict targeted Dispel Magic effects (1-2 per day) in addition to normal damage. Armor made from it hugely discounts Arcane Spell Failure chance: -15% for light armor, -30% for heavy armor.
    Plasma (new energy type): You’ll see this come up a lot in the book, both because there’s a fair number of creatures, spells, and feats that allow you to fling around many d6s of this stuff. This form of energy damage is a combination of [fire] and [electricity]. Plasma counts as both when deciding whether a creature has resistance to it, i.e. fire resistance alone doesn’t affect plasma, and neither does electricity damage on its own. Where a creature benefits from one type and is harmed by the other, both effects happen (which could result in a zero sum hit.)
    Lord of Silence (Prestige Class): This is a rogue-themed prestige class, where the rogue has learned the Discipline of the Void (fluff requirement only). Only +3d6 sneak attack across 10 levels, but it’s a full-BAB class and has a few not-bad abilities: first, the ability to auto-generate Silence effects out to about 10 feet which are shapeable and dismissable as a free action, class levels/per day. Second, if the Lord of Silence attacks within one of these zones (or indeed any zone of complete quiet, including spell-based Silence) he gets a +2 to his attack roll and his class level to damage, class levels/day. Third, when he hits with a Sneak Attack, he can send the target mute. Fourth, an effect that basically is a move-action teleport, up to a maximum of [move speed] x 30 feet in one move, class levels/day until the tenth level, when you can use it freely. Upper level abilities amount to 15d6 damage against one target (no save), a self-centred Darkness effect, and finally a +4 to all saving throws. It probably doesn’t warrant taking all 10 levels, but full BAB for a rogue isn’t awful and it might be a little more exciting than vanilla Rogue 6-8 if you can find Improved Uncanny Dodge somewhere else and like most rational people you don’t care about Trap Sense. (Also note you don’t have to enter by rogue. It just requires “Sneak Attack +1d6”, an Assassination weapon or some other form of non-class feature might be enough for that.)
    Stone of Durkon’s Demise: Nah, I just mentioned it because it’s highly unlikely to relate to the Order of the Stick :D
    Checklists! No player benefits here, but really, really good GM assists. Every section has a checklist of stuff you need to think about or at least should think about when you’re introducing something like a meteorite strike into your setting. These are something you simply don’t see in standard WOTC products and the first real, overt attempt to try and help a GM write an adventure featuring the concept, not just sell you a setting.

    Dreadful Features
    Ruin Priest (Prestige Class): You’re a spellcaster who worships the evil powers that sent the campaign’s meteorite down on the world. And for 7/10 spell levels (and full BAB) you can get an extra spell to cast if you sacrifice an intelligent living being. No, you can’t use summoned creatures. No, it has to be INT 5 or above. Capstone ability is to have a seven-day-long ceremony with your buddies and invoke a meteor strike on somewhere you’ve been and haven’t liked. Whilst this probably seems appropriate for a fine Biblical ending to Las Vegas following that weekend you’d like to forget, good grief this is stupid. Oh, and if your spell brings a creature to 0 hitpoints, ‘the priest gets an immediate extra spell attack’ against a creature adjacent to the first, i.e. it’s Cleave for damaging spells. Nope.
    Astromancy (new feat): Star magic and astrology never seems to work out well in D&D. Leaving aside that it’s a gateway feat to other pedestrian feats, it basically allows you (character level/4 times per day) to make a DC 11 flux check (unmodified d20 roll, it’s not a skill, so your odds will always be slightly less than fifty-fifty) to see if your effective caster level is +2 for the current round. Also grants access akin to a domain of unique meteorite spells from the book. However, these are for the most part just direct damage spells of increasing power, i.e. half-decent Mailman builds will outclass them.


    Who it’s best for (Player/GM/both)
    GMs. This is basically a different take on a setting book; it gives you all the bones and muscles of the idea but doesn’t set out how things must be. It is a really interesting mix of worldbuilding assistant and mechanical resources, quite literally a how-to book for bringing on a meteorite impact into the game. As such, it’s for Game Masters more than players.

    Comments, thoughts, and rating out of 10.
    On mechanics: These I found a bit hit and miss. Where it really shines is in the most inventive stuff, which is how it sets out the consequences of an actual meteorite impact (right down to hitpoint loss at a given distance from Ground Zero and even water impact scenarios), changes in how schools of magic operate as a result of a Thaumaturgical Meteorite impact, and how the Engrams work. The rest, however, feels like standard 3.0: hide everything behind feats and believe that multiple d6s of direct damage amounts to something significant in game mechanical terms. The prestige classes (with some possible exceptions) are pretty pedestrian at best; dead levels proliferate, 1 use/day or SomeFractionOfCharacterLevel/day is common on the abilities, and lost caster levels also show up a lot. If it wasn’t for the new concepts and ideas I’d have rated this a ¼, but instead I rate it a 1.5/4.

    On concepts and fluff: And it’s here I give the book a lot of credit. It’s great at introducing inspiring concepts and also taking the GM though a lot of the big questions to be asked when doing the worldbuilding around the event. Sure, you could probably think of many of these questions yourself, but many you wouldn’t, and at the very least it will trigger off ideas or questions about how to build your world ahead of the campaign. For that, then, I rate this a 3/4.

    On presentation: Layout was a lot easier on the eye than the standard WOTC book; lots of white space to break up the textblocks. Serif font, but again the line spacing and kerning makes it easier to handle. Art was black and white but didn’t make me want to claw my own eyes out. Indeed several of the pictures were pretty nice indeed. 1.5/2 here.

    Total: 6/10.


    Next time: Midnight, Fantasy Flight Games.

  24. - Top - End - #54
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Trashes & Treasures: Older 3rd Party Sourcebooks, a Walking Tour

    Nice review.

    Quote Originally Posted by Saintheart View Post
    Next time: Midnight, Fantasy Flight Games.
    Oh, shiny! Main book, main book revised, or the whole dang line?
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  25. - Top - End - #55
    Ettin in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Trashes & Treasures: Older 3rd Party Sourcebooks, a Walking Tour

    Quote Originally Posted by thorr-kan View Post
    Nice review.


    Oh, shiny! Main book, main book revised, or the whole dang line?
    Good lord, man, my eyes would cross if I tried to do the whole line at once. :) Main book revised, i.e. Second Edition.

  26. - Top - End - #56
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    Devil

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    Default Re: Trashes & Treasures: Older 3rd Party Sourcebooks, a Walking Tour

    Does Casting Time: One Action mean a full-round action, or is it just unclear? Also, does the book give options for averting the meteor, or otherwise preventing it from falling and causing damage, or it purely a survival thing?

  27. - Top - End - #57
    Ettin in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Trashes & Treasures: Older 3rd Party Sourcebooks, a Walking Tour

    Quote Originally Posted by Kalkra View Post
    Does Casting Time: One Action mean a full-round action, or is it just unclear? Also, does the book give options for averting the meteor, or otherwise preventing it from falling and causing damage, or it purely a survival thing?
    It's unclear whether it means full-round action or any other kind of action. I would be inclined to say a standard action, but there's no way to really tell. This happened sometimes in the transition from 3.0 to 3.5. Historically, I think 'one action' was meant to mean 'one of the two actions - standard or move - you get each round'.

    As for avoiding the meteor, no, it's pretty much baked into the setting that a meteor hits. You don't have to run a survival game, the book covers any number of possible scenarios including that you're campaigning in the wake of the meteor's hit and the societal changes that hit has caused. The meteor impact generally isn't meant to be a global killer given most of the new materials are stuff that comes from the meteor itself (whatever kind you choose to use, that is.)

  28. - Top - End - #58
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    Default Re: Trashes & Treasures: Older 3rd Party Sourcebooks, a Walking Tour

    I think 1 action in 3.0 = 1 standard action in 3.5, usually.

  29. - Top - End - #59
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    Default Re: Trashes & Treasures: Older 3rd Party Sourcebooks, a Walking Tour

    The third party 3.x books that got my attention were generally those from Mongoose: Monte Cook's Eldritch Might series. (I remember the bolt of conjuration spell which did guaranteed single target damage: No save and no SR and no accuracy roll!)

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    Default Re: Trashes & Treasures: Older 3rd Party Sourcebooks, a Walking Tour

    Quote Originally Posted by Endarire View Post
    The third party 3.x books that got my attention were generally those from Mongoose: Monte Cook's Eldritch Might series. (I remember the bolt of conjuration spell which did guaranteed single target damage: No save and no SR and no accuracy roll!)

    Thankee!
    I'll have a look at those in due course.

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