*Note: We have two staff reviews of this product.
By Brad Mix, Staff Reviewer d20 Magazine Rack
Sizing Up the Target
This review is for the 112-page Bastards & Bloodlines: A Guidebook to Half-breeds written by Owen K.C. Stephens. It is published by Green Ronin Publishing and retails for $19.95.
First Blood
I have never really thought about half-breeds other than the half orc and half elf, except to wonder why there were no half halfings. It stands to reason that almost any two races could be combined to create half-breeds. This book goes a long way to provide some very interesting and useful examples of these new genetic wonders.
Chapter one starts off with information of how to introduce more crossbreeds into a campaign. Deciding on how much interbreeding should be allowed sets the tone for the campaign world. In a world where half beholds are common, this would have to allow all kinds of other creatures as well. Limiting the more obscure half-breeds seems to fit most campaign worlds.
Half-breed archetypes are also introduced. These are a start to give the player some ideas on how to run a character that usually does not feel at home with either parent race. The Drooder hates people and really just wants to be left alone. The Builder has problems with his unusual shape and decides to start making items or building for himself. The Explorer thinks the world is full of stranger things other than the character, we hope, and he decides to go look for them. The Gentle Giant is usually good-natured but don’t get him angry, you wouldn’t like him when he’s angry. Gruff Faker decides not to show his feelings. The Heart of Hate believes that everyone must pay for his condition. The Hunter lives for the hunt. Everything he does revolves around hunting. Killer has the need to kill bred into him. The feral blood is stronger than his will. The Lone Wolf feels more at home being alone than in a crowd. Simpering Cur is the only worried about survival and not getting anyone mad at him. The Survivor has survived life’s difficulties, barely. Plus you have the scars to prove it. The Warlord leads and others follow. There is no problem that can’t be solved with enough soldiers. The Wide-eyed Innocent is new and can’t understand why everyone wants to sell him swampland and bridges. These are meant to give a little bit of a different personality to each character.
Chapter two gets into specific half-breeds. Each one has information about its appearance, demeanor, background, adventures, and racial traits. More on the specific breeds is covered in Critical Hits.
Templates are also included and can be added to almost any race. One of the most interesting is the half titan. This template was added to a minotaur and the picture is really great. A sample of what this new creature’s stats are, is written in text block form and any special modifiers are also listed. The half vampire, half elemental, are also included.
Information on making your own half-breeds and templates is included. Size, type speed, AC, attacks, damage special attacks, and abilities are discussed in detail. The pro’s and con’s of making any new half-breed a PC is discussed.
Bloodline Feats are only available to descendents of a particular race. Like Elven Senses adds +2 to Listen, Search and Spot checks. If the racial ability is all ready +2 then it does not get any higher. Several more like Claws, Mystic Legacy, Prodigy, Scent and Surefooted are included.
The appendix includes several tables that offer the information at a glance. Ability adjustments, Life spans, average height and weight, and new feats. The index gives the page number for each new half-breed.
Critical Hits
There are some great and unusual half-breeds listed. The Elf/Eagle drawn to the sky and has wings to get there. The Blinkling is a blink dog/halfling. Quite unusual but a great protector. The gnome/umber hulk is a one man digging machine. The decataur a centaur elf. A nice twist on the standard centaur. The dwarf/troll is kind of disturbing to think about. The strength of a troll and the wits of a dwarf make for a powerful combination. The Mind Ripper is half humanoid and half mind flayer. The dwarf/gargoyle is truly an imposing figure. While the wings do not allow for true flight great leaps and glides can be accomplished. The Wendigo is a cross between dwarf and winter wolf. Twenty more crossbreeds are also detailed.
Critical Misses
This book is a power gamer's dream. Not there is anything wrong with power gaming, but if that is not your style of play, then be warned about this book. The first thing I noticed is that the best of each race is included. Only a few negatives are listed, usually –2 str for the smaller races. I am reminded of a story I heard about Marilyn Monroe and Albert Einstein. Supposedly the two were talking and Marilyn wished that they two of them could have a child together. With his brains and her looks it would be a true prodigy. Einstein countered that maybe the child could have his looks and her brains. Not a very happy thought. This book takes Marilyn’s approach to genetics.
Take the Alicorn for example. It is an elf/unicorn. The alicorn gains +2 str, +4 dex, +4 con, +4 wis, +6 cha. That’s + 20 to the stats. Then it gains: +2 to natural armor class, low light vision 60’, +1 to spot, search and listen checks, Gains a slam attack for 1d6 damage, Detect evil as a free action, A spell caster of any class can sacrifice a spell of 1st level or higher to cast cure light wounds, and gains a +4 bonus to all saves against poisons and enchantment spells or abilities. The level adjustment is +5. Preferred class is Paladin. A first level character would have an ECL of 6. This presents some serious balance issues. Assigning a high level adjustment does not make up for the super character this will create. The highest level adjustment in the book is 7.
Then if we combine this with the new prestige class Autarkic then we have an uber character. The Autarkic is the master of self-reliance. Here is what he gets. Uncanny dodge at first level. Starting at first level and every other level there after the autarkic can pick a survival trait. These traits are: Damage Reduction, Energy Resistance, Heal Self, Immunity and Regeneration. Then at second level the character gains Evasion. 4th level grants the Will to Live. This little ability allows the character to avoid death by desire alone. The character automatically stabilizes when bleeding to death, gains a +3 on all Fort checks against death effects, and doesn’t die until he is brought down to negative hit points equal to his con score. At 6th level Improved Evasion is gained. At 8th level Defensive roll is added. This ability allows the character to roll with a melee attack and only take half damage. This can only be used once per day and only if the total damage would bring him below 0 hit points. And last but not least is the Spell Resistance. This bonus is 10+autarkic level+con modifier. This could easily result in a 25 spell resistance for the character. The other prestige classes aren’t as overbalanced as this one but are fairly powerful.
Coup de Grace
Overall the ideas and unusual class combinations make for some great roleplaying encounters. There use as PC’s could quickly overbalance any standard party though. The artwork is outstanding through out most of the book. The titan/minotaur picture is awesome. You really get a sense for the creature. The book is well laid out with only a few descriptions flowing into the next page.
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By Bruce Boughner, Staff Reviewer d20 Magazine Rack
Sizing Up the Target
Bastards & Bloodlines: A Guidebook to Half-Breeds is a 111-page soft-cover accessory published by Green Ronin for their Races of Renown series. The author is Owen K.C. Stevens. The cover is done by James Ryman and shows a drow/illithid cross battling a troop of Dwarf/Gargoyle with a fireball and it is available for $19.95.
First Blood
While part of the Races of Renown series, Bastards & Bloodlines: A Guidebook to Half-Breeds is NOT a part of the OGL Interlink with Paradigm Concepts' Races of Legends series. On a recent Mortality.net program, I interviewed Chris Pramas, editor of Green Ronin Publishing about this and he stated that they wanted to pursue other ideas that don’t always fit the OGL Interlink pattern and made sure to mention the next of the series, Fang & Fury: A Guidebook to Vampires would fit that format with Paradigm Concepts doing the opposite number with Lycanthropes.
Owen K.C. Stevens attended a TSR Writer’s Workshop in 1997 and sometime later had his first work published in Dragon magazine #250. He moved his family to Seattle along with the game when absorbed by Wizards of the Coast. He worked on several projects including Star Wars and the Wheel of Time role-playing Game. He returned to his home in Oklahoma and resumed freelance work where he worked on several d20 products including the Everquest Role-playing Game from White Wolf.
I am amazed at this series, it takes a very simple subject and throws enough plot hooks at you to keep you busy for years. Dwarves, Illithids and Drow have graced this series by Green Ronin Publishing in the past and each successive book brings so much to recommend it. New feats, new monsters, new prestige classes and most importantly, learning to think outside of conventional D&D methods and into some of the most interesting ideas to come down the pike in years.
There are only four chapters in this book, a brief introduction challenges Dms and players to thinks outside the norm, in a world where polymorph spells, shapeshifters and divine intervention are commonplace, where unconventional combinations of Centaurs, Chimeras, Griffons, Harpies and Hippogriffs occur as part of common game play, why could these combinations also not exist?
Chapter one opens with a drawing of a pair of giant-beholder crossbreeds annihilating a party of adventurers. The text then delves into how to introduce these wild combinations into your campaign. Some of these ideas are common sense things. One example give is introducing a Half-Troll population into areas already well known to your players is probably not a good idea for continuity. Moving your players into new areas (always a good idea) would solve your problem better. Many of the feats in the book can be used by the standard half-breeds; half-elves and half-orcs and much of the material can be used to flesh out existing PC’s ancestry giving them obscure ancestral blood many generations removed. This can drive future stories at the same time as you introduce the new material of this book. Where do half-breeds come from leads off the next section, going on to expound on the fecund nature of humans. Readers of the Xanth series by Piers Anthony knows all it takes are 2 creatures and a love potion to make half-breeds. Various ideas for using half-breeds follow, backgrounds, in society, as a family or a post-apocalyptic scenario before moving on to arch-types. Brooders, hunters, killers or wide-eyed innocent, half-breeds are every bit the same as any other race for motivations.
Chapter two deals in the breeds them selves, 28 of them in fact. The chapter leads off with how the entries are laid out, name, appearance, demeanor, background, adventurers and racial traits, then moves on to languages before giving a page and a half of half-breed charts. Starting with an Elf/Giant Eagle mix called the Aellar, the chapter explores some expected and unexpected crossbreeds. Alicorns, Elf/Unicorns, mix with Blinklings, Halfling/Blink Dogs and Burrowers (take that Dexter!) Gnome/ Umber Hulk mixes. These classes are fully realized, such as the Burrower’s religious fervor or the Grendle’s, Human or Dwarf/Troll, serious need for self-sufficiency. Each breed demonstrates a niche that makes you go, Hmmm, what if?
Chapter three shows you how to make even more crossbreeds. This is done via the template system. Examples are given to show this process in action such as a Half-Beholder, Half-Creature (biped and quadruped) and Half-Medusa for starters for a total of 9 different templates (more if you break down the Half-Elementals) before launching into rules for the DM to create their own templates.
The last chapter deals in using the half-bloods, in other words, Feats. There are some that could be considered predictable, Claws, Bite and Rake for example but many are unique to the crossbreed, such as Mystic Legacy, Prodigy and Focus Bloodright. Then the chapter adds four new Prestige classes all themed to the bloodline of a crossbreed. Autarkic and Brood Champion are samples of these classes. Crossbreed spells and magic items round out the chapter. The book ends with three pages of charts for the system.
Critical Hits
Great art, great subject matter, crunchy bits, these are becoming a cornerstone of a Green Ronin product and something I come to expect from them. They have come a long way from the Madness at Freeport modules and continue to improve their quality standards. Bastards & Bloodlines: A Guidebook to Half-Breeds shows how far they have come, this could have been a schlock book of slapped together crap and instead it was intelligently presented with some logic to the pairings.
Critical Misses
It is hard to find a reason to knock this book. Granted there are already enough monsters, races, feats, spells and Prestige classes then an average person will ever use, but the quality made this stand out in a crowd of Bestiary and Class books.
Coup de Grace
When I was raving about Hammer and Helm, I didn’t think they would be able to top it but they have and did and continue to do so. I find myself looking forward more and more to each new Green Ronin product each month. Bastards & Bloodlines: A Guidebook to Half-Breeds is a must have for any serious DM’s library.
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