Face the wrath of the storm!
Stormwrack
Written by Richard Baker, Joseph D. Carriker, Jr., Jennifer Clarke Wilkes
Published by Wizards of the Coast
www.ziards.com/dnd
ISBN: 0-7869-3689-4
224 full color pages
$34.95
Stormwrack is the third book in the environmental series from Wizards of the Coast. The book uses standard two-column layout and format. For tables, instead of boxing the tables, they use a tan color to indicate spaces. Works well and looks much better than boxed tables which always tend to look on the amateur side to me.
Art is handled by some of the best in the business. David Griffith for example, handles the top art that introduces each chapter. Michael Phillippi brings his awesome talents to play with illustrations like the legendary captain, an elf blooded warrior in green hued mail on page 59 or brave Soveliss charging his horse into a river with a storm of arrows at his back. This doesn’t count the talents of others like Wayne England or Sam Wood, nor others like Jim Nelson and Fred Hooper. Suffice it to say that for the most part, I was impressed with the art here.
In terms of set up, the book is broken down into eight chapters. Starting with “Into the Malestorm”, the book covers various facets of adventuring on the waves. This first chapter covers a wide variety of topics. One thing it starts with, is where would water based adventurers occur. While we have the standard coasts and islands, and the big bodies of water like seas, oceans, rivers and lakes, it also covers things like marine caverns and sea caves, as well as watery environments on the planes.
While the elemental plane of water is the best known, it’s not the only one. For example, how about the fifth layer of the Nine Hells, Stygia? Or how about the realm of Demogorgon, Abysm or the fifth layer of Carceri, Porphatys. Each gets a paragraph of detail and is there more to showcase the unique aspects of the planes rather than act as a guide to them.
Other adventuring issues are covered. For example, rules on drowing, referring to page 304 of the DMG, but covering situations like being stunned or dazed. How about the distance light illuminates in water, or the dangers of hypothermia?
Like previous books, it also covers the dangers players would rather not face, things like unique diseases like sea rot and new marine poisons like the dreade sea snake venom with a 1d6 Con initial and secondary damage. Other dangers like airless water, a pocket of water that water breathing and air-breathing creatures cannot breath in, or maelstroms, supernatural whirlpools.
One thing I liked about chapter one, was talking about naval combat. “Most ship-to-ship battles are resolved in one of two ways; by devastating battle magic, or by grappling and boarding.” Quickly followed by “the faster you can get to this decisive (boarding action) stage of the encounter, the better.”
It’s something I agree with. While it does include details for narrative combat, things to get character moving into each other quickly, it’s something I’m not really concerned about. For those who want things like special maneuvers for ships, including grappling, ramming, and shearing, it’s included. Heck, it even notes which forms of attack are useful against a ship, and how siege engines and magic can be used to up the stakes in naval combat. This includes little things like which spells can start a fire, or what certain effects mean against a ship. For example, Evard’s Black Tentacles don’t attack ships, but they do attack crewmembers that pass within reach.
The second chapter, races of the seas, introduces an old friend and some new ones, as well as providing brief modifications for standard races to make them sea worthy. The good thing is that almost all of them are +0 level adjustment save for the aquatic elf.
The races start with the aventi, no ability adjustments and any favored class, the main benefit of the aventi is that they are amphibious and can be in air or water equally well. Sure, they have a minor ability with water magic, casting it at +1 level if the spell ahs the water descriptor, and they are considered to have human blood, but the main benefit is that they are in essence water breathing humans minus the bonus feat and skill points.
One of my favorite races here, the darfellan, are hunters on the run. Once a peaceful people hunted to near extinction by the sahuagin, they’ve since become hunters with their own strengths. They have the good old strength boost, but a dexterity penalty. While they aren’t amphibious and can’t survive being submerged forever, they can hold their breath for 8 x Consitituion score before risking drowning. They also have a natural bite attack, a racial hatred towards sahuagin giving them +2 to attack and damage, as well as echolocation abilities.
Another great thing, and perhaps it’s just because all the illustrations of the darfellans are so well done, is that they look unique being mostly black with white spots or markings. Some plot elements are even thrown in as the book notes that those who are born entirely black or wholly white, are often special children and great events and things are expect to happen. Perfect for that player who wants something a little different.
The elf aquatic doesn’t do anything for me. Maybe because I’ve seen so many varieties of them, or just because there are too many varieties of elf, but these aquatic creatures seem too limited for a land based campaign suffering Constitution damage if out of the water too long.
No, my other favorite race is the hadozee, the simianlike humanoids who were once a part of the old Spelljammer setting. Here they’ve become a race filled with wanderlust who are good natured and love to work aboard ships exploring the world. With a bonus to dexterity and a penalty to charisma, the hadoze can use their arm-flaps to glide, making them very useful on a ship as they work the rigging. Add in their racial bonus to balance and climb checks and their naturals of a ship. It doesn’t hurt that their favored class is rogue either!
One nice thing about the take on races, is that they discuss some seafaring cultures and what game effects that has. For example, dwarves have a seacliff cousin that gains strong swimming but lose their racial bonus to hit orcs and goblinoids. Wavecrest gnomes gain a bonus on attack rolls against locathah and sahuagin, as well as new spells to use, replacing the standard kobold and goblinoid attack and standard spell like abilities.
These little switches are good ideas and provide the Gm with some examples of how they may wish to alter other, non-official races to fit into different campaign models without making a class overpowered.
Chapter three, classes, introduces more options for the core character classes. For example, clerics have new deities that they can select. The deities include alignment, domains, and favored weapon. New domains like ocean ,seafolk, blackwater, and storm are included. One thing that surprised me here, was that several of the non-core classes, like scout, were also included. A nice change of pace to see what role a warmage might play in such a campaign, or how the swashbuckler fits appropriately into the shipboard life due to their use of light armor and weapons. Heck, arcane and divine spellcasters also have new options when it comes to their familiars or animal companions.
Still, I suspect more people will be interested in the new PrCs. Each PrC features a quote, background details, how to become the PrC, entry requirements, class features, appropriate role playing information, including combat, advancement, and resources, as well as how the class fits in the world, and what in the game. For example, a knifhgt of the peal in the game, is most often a aventi paladin. Also included are bits of lore and a sample encounter.
I’m not too crazy about the layout of the hit dice and skills, as they’re jammed right now to the class tables. It’s not too bad when everything fits into one column, like for the legendary captain, but is more annoying when it’s a full page progression like the sea witch, where hit dice are kind of just floating there and skills are stretched out under the class progression table.
I’m not going to talk about all the PrCs, but here’s a quick list: Knight of the pearl, legendary captain, scarlet corsair, leviathan hunter, wavekeeper, sea witch, and stormcaster.
My favorite is the leviathan hunter. While it’s supposed to be a sea based class, this five level PrC hunts down large creatures and uses their bodies for tropies that can protect the hunter from creature of that type with an armor class bonus. In addition, the hunter gains “fell the leviathan”, which is extra attack damage dice against certain types of monsters of huge or greater size.
Those looking for more ways to customize their characters, will want to flip to chapter four, skills and feats. Instead of just starting off with a listing of new options for skills, the chapter starts off with a section of what roles crewmembers have on a ship and what skills they should have to fill those roles. For example, a captain is usually an expert with ranks in profession, sailor, as well as ranks in knowledge, geography, and nature, as well as survival and bluff, diplomacy and intimidate.
Because crews are a specific type of genre in their own right, even in the greater world of D&D, it’s nice to have a list like this. Of course because of the limits of D&D, in terms of being a class and level game, those weaknesses show through more here as some of these roles would have to have a few levels in them as opposed to just being skilled as they would in another game like GURPS or HERO.
After that, we get into the special uses of skills in a water based campaign. For example, maintaining your balance on a ship becomes a little more difficult on a wet deck or on a ship that’s rolling back and forth in a storm. The expanded sues of knowledge and profession, makes me wish that WoTC would come out with a book that covers a much broader range of knowledge, craft, and profession skills so that a GM who wants to have things like profession soldier, or craft bowmaker, could have it all in one spot as opposed to going from book to book looking for example professions and their DC checks to see what they can do.
The new feats feature a lot of heavily involved water based feats. Many of them revolving around the uses of skills in limited fashions. For example, sea legs provides a +2 bonus on shipboard balance and tumble checks, but also a +1 initiative. Is it worth the bonus being limited to shipboard to gain the +1 initiative bonus? Opinions will wary. How about Sailor’s Balance that grants a +5 bonus on shipboard balance checks? Should that be an example that other similar feats should be raised? For example, should Combat Casting be +5 to the concentration check?
Other feats, like Blackwater Invocation, are more supernatural. For example, this allows you to spend a daily rebuke undead attempt to cause the water around you in a 30-foot radius to become infused with negative energy that inflicts nonlethal damage to those that enter it if they fail a DC 15 Fortitude save. Steam Magic allows you to ignore the spellcaster check when using spells or spell-like abilities with the fire descriptor as you burn the water to steam as opposed to fire.
Now that you’ve got your character, how does she move into the waves? That would be handled in chapter five, ships and equipment. We get a wide variety of boats including small inexpensive ones like the rowboat at 50 gold pieces, to the raft, a 100 gold piece ship. Of course those with the funds to do so will want something a little more useful like the 25,000 gp dromond warship or the magically powered Theurgeme, a colossal vehicle that comes in at 80,000 gold pieces.
While not each ship is illustrated, the ones that are have better illustrations than their counter parts in the Explorer’s Handbook. They seem more gritty or slightly more realistic while those in the EH seemed like illustrations on graph paper. The views of the dhow and elf wingship by Wayne England also look top notch.
But what’s a ship without some ballista or firebombs? What’s a warship without it’s great bombards or it’s firespouts? To handle those issues, there are new weapons to aid a crew in dealing with opposing ships. The firespout must be a nod to the old weapons of lore as it shots out gouts of alchemist’s fire onto other enemy ships. Bombards use gunpowder, but a sidebar notes that you can use the mystic smokepowder substitude or just make it unavailable.
That’s fine for the ship, but what about the characters on the ship? For them, there are new armors and weapons. Some of these weapons are old favorites like the cutlass, others are designed for water use like the aquatic crossbow or the stingray whip. The harpoon might not be an old favorite, but it’s certain appropriate for the watery campaigns.
The armor section consist of some light armors like cord and sharkskin, but also shell, chitin, and living coral variants. Interestingly enough, when looking at the living coral, as well as other places, the 3.0 book, Arms and Equipment Guide, is referenced. A last ditch effort to sell some of the old books before coming out with an Expanded Arms and Equipment Guide, or ?
The new spells in chapter six, spells and magic items, include new domains for clerics, as well as spells from 1st to 9th level for sorcerers and wizards. Spells are broken down by class and level, and for arcane users, by school. As with other sources, the higher the level of spell, the fewer we have. For example, we have ten second level arcane spells, but only one ninth level one. Non-core classes are not covered here, including those PrCs with their own spell list found in the DMG like assassin, and black guard. A little disappointing as they made the original effort to include them up front but not in the spell selection.
Spells cover a lot of options for water and many of them either augment the target of the spell in the water, or give the target some ability of another native. For example, the 3rd level bard spell detect ship, well, detects and identifies ships. The 3rd level druid spell Scalres of the Sealord gives you extra swim movement or a swim speed, and natural armor. It’s a good selection, but like the feats, seems even more limited than the previous environmental books.
One nice touch is that there are even a few new psionic powers here including Helmsman, a 2nd level seer ability that makes the psion attune to his ship and can increase the ship’s speed and gains a bonus when making sailor checks.
For new magic items, we have new material like pearlsteel and riverine. The former is light, weighing a quarter less than normal, and reduces the penalty of weapons in water to –1 instead of –2. A nice touch and not too powerful, but unless the campaign is mainly underwater, I doubt anyone will want to add the 1,500 gold piece cost. The latter on the other hand, changes half the armor class bonus from armor and shields into a deflection bonus. More impressive is that it can be used to create walls and containers and is immune to all damage and unaffected by most spells. How they get it into that initial form though is beyond me. Anyway, the only way to take it down at that p0oint is a disintegrate spell or a few other high powered options like a rod of cancellation, sphere of annihilation or a Mordenkainen’s disjunction spell.
We have a few specific weapons and some new armor and weapon special abilities. Want a weapon that inflicts acid damage that doesn’t wash away? Then you want corrosive. Want armor that you won’t have to ditch when the boat goes down? You want buoyant armor.
The items sometimes include caster cost and experience points, and sometimes do not. For example, the wondrous items, and rings don’t, but the weapons do.
Now that you’re character has his new race, his new PrC, and equipment, both magical and mundane, what about the poor GM? Well, he gets a lot of new monsters to throw at
the players. In terms of game stats, it looks like fellow reviewer
John Cooper has found a ton of mistakes. The other thing that’s going to sound weird, is I don’t see a breakdown of creatures by CR anywhere. While there is a list of encounters latter on in the back of the book, that incorporates monsters from various resources. I’d like to be able to look over a list of CR’s and find the name and page number in a flash.
The monsters themselves though, outside of the stat block errors, have some interesting potential uses. I can see using the anguillians, a medium aberration that’s in essence a humanoid eel, as a long term foe as it’s only a CR 2 and advances by character class. More importantly though, if I want to run wild with a conversion of White Plume Mountain, I now have monstrous crabs ranging from small to colossal! Between this and the earlier illustration of a skeleton rising in a trapped room filling with water, I have to appreciate the nods to the older editions. Another old favorite, the hippocampus makes its return, along with the feared seawolf and the Nereid, a water based fey.
That creature on the cover beating on some of the core characters is a scyllan, an aquatic outsider native to Stygia of the Nine Hells and comes in at an impressive 13 CR, one of the more powerful creatures in the book.
One nice treat is the table that adds new creatures on the summoned monster list showing which creature is appropriate for which list, and what it should replace.
But how does a time pressed GM get any use out of this book? Chapter eight, adventure locals, would be the way to go. It includes four sample locations that can be used as the basis for aquatic adventures. The Sable Drake is appropriate for EL 5, Shatterhull Isle for EL 6, The Lost Temple of Sekolah for EL 9, and the Tamorean Vast for EL 12.
Each section includes maps and notes on how the adventure might be run. For example, the Sable Drake has notes on the crew, including it’s wereat goblin captain, Naki, as well as typical crew members, the secret pirate base, a map of the Sable Drake, and notes on how the crew would defend their ship and when they might retreat and where they go to do so. For standard monsters or those found in the book, a page reference is included. For example, Tamoreus, a sotrm giant, has a reference to page 125 of the Monster Manual, while hammerclaws are referenced to page 152 of this book.
The encounter tables in the appendix are a nice touch. This includes different groups ranging from a sahuagin patrol to a warship with a listing of soldiers, officiers, and captain. Tables are broken down by water type, cold, temperate, warm, cold lakes and rivers, temperate lakes and rivers, warm lakes and rivers, and even include upperdark waters, middeldark waters, and lowerdark waters. Each table is then further broken down into a range of EL. Each table has a % roll for specific EL. For example, on the middledark Water EL 3-7, there are four different tables to roll on and it breakdown the EL by CR.
For example, if rolling on the EL 3 chart and getting lacedon ghoul, you’d have three of them for an EL of 3. For an EL of seven with the same result, you’d need eight of them.
There are some minor things that could be tweaked here. For example, at this stage in the game, I don’t think we need to see the new races repeated in the monster section for example. I’d also rather not have three pages of advertising, but hey, what other company is making full color books that clock in at over two-hundred pages for $34.95? While I honestly didn’t notice about 85% of the game mechanical errors that John Cooper did, I’d still like to see WoTC, the originator of the d20 license and all that, do a better job with it.
Those minor things aside, a campaign that’s going to be hitting the waves will get a lot of use out of this book ranging from the new races and options for races and classes, to the new PrCs, spells, and feats. DMs will enjoy the new monsters and the time saving encounters at the back of the book and of course, can always modify their own NPCs to take advantage of these new features.
