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Title: Savage Species: Playing Monstrous Characters (Dungeons & Dragons Supplement) by David Eckelberry, Jennifer Clarke Wilkes, Rich Redman, Sean K Reynolds ISBN: 0-7869-2648-1 Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Pub. Date: 14 February, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.06 (17 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Delivers exactly what it promises.
Comment: I picked Savage Species up the first day it hit the shelves of my local bookstore. I've been wanting to throw monster characters into my campaign but all the PCs are under level 5 so my options for PC monsters are kind of limited. This book has provided a way for me to throw a child to that fire elemental they just killed without a thought---a mere innocent---into the game as an NPC that they somehow have to deal with. (Hopefully not by killing it) More importantly, if they so choose, they can adventure alongside a fire elemental as it grows into its powers.
The book itself is well organized and has a little of everything and a lot of some things. For DMs who don't want to go through the work of interpolating an ECL 15 Mind Flayer into fifteen separate levels, each acquired at standard experience point intervals, or even *determine* the ECL for a Mind Flayer, you don't have to. Many monster races have entire monster class levels separated for you. For those that don't, there are guidelines both for determining level adjustments and breaking up effective levels into actual levels, i.e. "W00t, I'm now a level six Drider! I get spell resistance!"
There's a lot of stuff in this book. New spells (some good for non-monster PCs, too), new equipment (Including the Gloves of Man, so your paws/tentacles can grip those pesky crossbows or lock picks), new feats (Area Attack lets your colossal Mountain Giant smack a whole bunch of PCs when he swings a stone column), new prestige classes (Illithid Savant, for...well...eating brains for self-improvement), new templates (The illustration for the example Gelatinous Bear is great) and, of course, more.
A lot of people are highly interested in the artwork in Dungeons & Dragons books, and if that's what they want out of the book, they'll be disappointed. I personally don't need illustrations to accompany descriptions for how an Ogre Mage advances to ECL 12 because I already know what they look like. This book is almost devoid of reprinted material, but much of it is being presented in ways far and beyond what Monster Manual I (or II) ever planned. This small paradox makes a great number of illustrations unnecessary relative to most books with so much new material. Drawings of all the weird weapons and equipment are comparable to those in the Player's Guide and other books. It's really pretty irrelevant, though, because if you took the pictures out of the second half of the book it would still be wonderful, if rather drab.
One of the more reassuring touches is a tiny list at the beginning of the book that mentions a few changes from Monster Manual I that are/will also be in the revised Monster Manual I. No one wants a book that will be obsolete in just a few months.
Savage Species is a great book, and has almost everything you could possibly want in it. What it doesn't have, it offers guidelines for working out on your own. Dungeon Masters who spend fifteen hours planning sessions will be able to do anything they want, but if you just want to create an poor little orphaned fire elemental, you can do it as quickly as any other NPC. As a player's book, the pre-made monster classes will help provide some variety, even if the game is starting from level one. Pre-made=easier DM approval, too. Of course, *buying* your DM the book would help your case, but I would *never* condone such bribery...
Just...keep the fire elemental outta my bar, will ya?
Rating: 2
Summary: Great concept gone horribly wrong
Comment: Well, the book starts out with a great concept- Monster races as PC's and how to balance them. It also introduces the idea of "monster class progression"- which allows one to start a beginning campaign with a "first level rakshasa" if one gets DM OK.
How did this brilliant idea go so very wrong? First is the literaly scads of typos & mistakes. Nearly every "monster class" has several very significant errors (the Rakshasa does not have any natural armour listed, for instance). WotC has also failed to do any Errata on this book- so far (and it seem doubtful- see next paragraph).
But worse is the timing and planning. The book was pushed as being compliant with 3.5, but after the 3.5 MM came out, it was clear that Savage Species was anything but. Thus, a fairly expensive book became mostly obsolete within months of it's publication.
Still, there is an extensive system the DM can use to design his own "monster classes", and this remains useful. But the timing & errors make this book a bad buy for the player who has updated to 3.5.
Rating: 3
Summary: A Mixed Result
Comment: Though this text is a handsome volume, packed with cool ideas and tons of crunchy bits, and moreover though I happen to like it quite a lot, it does not fully overcome the charges levelled against it, namely:
--it is a partial rehashing of 2E's *Complete Book of Humanoids* (which is less serious than the following, since 3E is basically just a rehashing of 2E in general),
--its unfortunate partial obsolescence (3.5E does indeed provide LA for each "playable" creature in the most recent *MM*--though *Savage Species* will ultimately consider all creatures to be "playable," whereas *MM* clearly does not), and
--the sad fact that WotC invests what must be approaching $0 in copyediting.
Those reservations noted, it must be said that the text opens up in 3E a new vista; instead of relying on the vanilla races of the *PH*, one can now, say, run a party of harpy infiltrators, a band of trollish barbarians, a medusa rogue, or (gods forbid it) a hive of illithids, demons, or some other uberpowerful beasties as PCs. (Though the *DMG* hints at such a vista, its suggestions proved to be unwieldy, incomplete, and generally confusing to most of us gamer-geeks.)
The text has many virtues in this regard:
1) new feats, spells, items, and prestige classes for monstrous folk, all generally well conceived.
2) some fair-to-middling notes on how to run a campiagn centered on the misadventures and cross accidents inevitably encountered by a group of bugbear PCs, for instance.
3) loads of bombass templates (these really are worthy of attention).
4) the reconceptualization of the game system entirely in terms of class--now, everything is a matter of class--no more monster advancing by the nebulous Hit Die (but this still doesn't resolve the bizarre aspect that Hit Die never correlated with CR; recall that level in a PC class always correlates with CR--why the inconsistency?).
5) tons and tons of statistical tables (the true value of the text). These also come with a set of guidelines to produce similar "class template" tables for any monster in the system--a very high degree of diversity for any game, which is surely a plus.
6) the introduction of both the "half-ogre" and "anthropomorphic animal" standard PC races (very good additions to the rules).
7) some very fine artwork
In these respects, there is value here, but unfortunately the aforementioned problems will limit its appeal and utility.
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Title: Arms and Equipment Guide (Dungeons & Dragons Accessory) by Eric Cagle, Jesse Decker, Jeff Quick, Rich Redman, James Wyatt ISBN: 078692649X Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Pub. Date: 05 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: Complete Warrior (Dungeons & Dragons Accessory) by Andy Collins, David Noonan, Ed Stark ISBN: 0786928808 Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Pub. Date: 03 December, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: Fiend Folio (Dungeons & Dragons Accessory) by James Wyatt, Eric Cagle, Jesse Decker, James Jacobs, Erik Mona, Matthew Sernett, Chris Thomassen ISBN: 0786927801 Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Pub. Date: 03 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: The Draconomicon (Dungeons & Dragons) by Andy Collins, James Wyatt, Skip Williams ISBN: 0786928840 Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Pub. Date: 14 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
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Title: Book of Exalted Deeds (Dungeons & Dragons Supplement) by James Wyatt, Darrin Drader, Christopher Perkins ISBN: 0786931361 Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Pub. Date: 29 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $32.95 |
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