JoeGKushner
First Post
I hate it when novels influence a role playing setting. When novels start telling you as a GM what's going on in your setting, it makes it very difficult to continue straight on your way as you must decide if these events happened, if they happened as written, and if you're even going to bother starting to keep track of new events. The Scarred Lands has taken its first big step into becoming a setting I'm leery of with Faithful and Forsaken, updating the major events of the Dead God Trilogy, the return of Jandaveos, back into the setting.
This is no option event. Well, it's as optional as any event, but it's set in stone that he comes back. Players can help in little ways here and there and the GM can decide what he wants to do, but if you as the GM don't want the return of 'That Which Abides', don't pick up this book because that's what this book does. It patches the Termana hardcover with all of the updates to the High Elves and those who have chosen to remain Forsaken.
Okay, now here are some of my issues with the book.
1.The setting has a history of providing gaming stats for the deities. Not only do they not provide such stats for Jandavoes, but they don't even list his domains.
2.The timeline here goes so far back into prehistory that I just didn't care. There are inconsistencies in the timeline. The timeline is advanced from the Termana hardcover, but doesn't tell you where it stops, using 'Present Day' as an indicator of what's going on now.
3.Too many sweeping changes from Termana to this book.
4.Inconsistent update of other important Forsaken elves. The book Mithril introduced Ith'laen Khemaitas, Captain of the Ghost Maid and his special figurehead on his ship, aren't mentioned in this book despite updates to most of the other locals mentioned in the Dead God Trilogy.
5.The power level is out of control. Many of the NPCs here are 20th level and are world shakers. When such powerful characters are about, it plays havoc with the believability scale. “Well, why did this happen when so and so could've just used X?”
Those are my issues with the book. If you're looking for something to really shake up the campaign, this book is probably your best bet.
Those who are really going to enjoy this book are fans of the Charduni dwarves. They get a bit more personality, background and details to their own history. While I still find it nonsensical that they could be so weak on their own country and then go across the Blood Sea and basically take over Ghelspad, the section on Charduni is worth reading.
It's told in a different way than the elves with their periods and time stamps. Instead, we get a first person account of events, told through the eyes of one of the Charduni. This makes it more personal and doesn't break up their history into bite sized chunks, providing some feeling to the events instead of a timeline.
The Charduni are in essence a slave race to the god, Chardun, and are always working towards the god's will. This means that whatever the god wishes to be done, is done. Events have happened that have turned the face of Chardun away from his people though and there is confusion as to what should be done to gain that favor back. In some areas, the Charduni dwarves have actually taken to worshipping other gods, putting little cracks in the perfect slave race. One of the most interesting aspects, a twist of the title of the book, is that some of the Charduni feel that they are the ones who are forsaken as their god has turned from them and the elves have been rejoined by their own deity.
The book does an excellent job of detailing daily life, marriage, sex, art, religion, military information and other aspects of the culture that enable a GM to get a good feel for the race and to get the most bang for his buck. Another aspect of the Charduni that is different than most standard races is the slaves used for military to mining purposes. The bad news for the dwarves though is that they are reliant on the slaves to perform daily activities like farming and would be sorely pressed to serve themselves should a massive outbreak happen.
Those more interested in game mechanics have some materials that are going to be over and under powered and whose mileage may vary depending on your campaign. For example, the feat, Beautiful Blade allows you to take a penalty, up to -5, on your attack and give a bonus to all allies within 30 feet equal to that penalty so if you took a -3, they'd get a +3. This effects not only attack rolls but saving throws. The section on arrows highly varies. Arrows rely on a good bow as well as the arrow, and are temporary items. Take the Hungry Chrysalis, it encases the target in salt, unless they make a Reflex DC 17. Then, it inflicts 2d6 points of damage with a Fort save of DC 17. The user has to break out with a DC 27 Strength Check, or someone has to destroy the chrysalis (15 hp/5 hardness). Each arrows cost? Only 50 gold.
There are also new Miracle Feats. These feats use one of the user's daily turn attempts. These vary from Blessing of Divine Strength, which gives a +20 sacred bonus to the target's Strength on its next action, to Unction of the Forest Hallowed, which creates a hallow effect as per the spell, effecting a 10' x Cleric's Charisma modifier lasting Charsiam modifier + 3 turns.
Those looking for prestige classes, will flip to the appendix. Here, we have the elf Constellation Weaver, masters of image magic. This allows them to put patterns on items like magic items, causing them to function at higher levels, or even replace somatic components. Those looking for another archer variant, have the Divine Archer, a master of using Divine Bow, which gains holy damage every two levels, much like a sneak attack, but only against evil creatures. Other abilities include Healing Arrows and even Arrow of Life, to return the dead back to life.
Not all PrCs are elf related though as we have Ramriders and White Fists. The former are the cavalry of the Charduni. The rams gain in strength and power, gaining hit dice and tuning themselves into their rider's need, giving them the Link ability, allowing the rams to be handled as a free action. The latter are Chardun's answer to the Corean Paladins. These individuals The thing is though, since Paladins are required to be Lawful Good, and White Fist Lawful Evil, you'd probably be best off taking levels of Cleric to enter the PrC as one of the benefits is increased spell casting ability at every other level starting at 2nd. A fighter could enter this PrC at 5th level with +4 BAB, Knowledge (religion) 3, and Cleave and Power Attack, but with that benefit being wasted, cleric is the more likely candidate.
The layout follows standard with two columns being used. White space use is good until it gets to the prestige classes and the end of chapters, at which point it gets a little out of hand. Cartography by Ed is great and I'm hoping that one day we'll see some new maps of the setting with Ed' s touch over all of them. The price is fair at $19.95 for 112 black and white pages, even though there are three pages of ads. Grey Thonrberry and Jason Walker handle most of the internal art and they do a fair job of bringing the material to life. Not quite on the same level as some other SL books, but better than others.
Overall, if I didn't find the whole Dead God Trilogy incorporation into the setting in such bad taste, this book would score higher. The maps, adventure seeds, and crunch, provide some new opportunities to players of Forsaken Elves and GMs who favor the Charduni. As it is, the heavy handed way of jamming this into the setting, should've been handled in either in an entirely optional manner with the Charduni getting their own book, or someone should've put this information into the core Termana book so that there wouldn't be so many changes and that the timelines and other inconsistencies could've been hammered out beforehand. The Dead God Trilogy was done in 2002, and Termana came out in 2003, well after the trilogy was written. Someone dropped the ball.
This is no option event. Well, it's as optional as any event, but it's set in stone that he comes back. Players can help in little ways here and there and the GM can decide what he wants to do, but if you as the GM don't want the return of 'That Which Abides', don't pick up this book because that's what this book does. It patches the Termana hardcover with all of the updates to the High Elves and those who have chosen to remain Forsaken.
Okay, now here are some of my issues with the book.
1.The setting has a history of providing gaming stats for the deities. Not only do they not provide such stats for Jandavoes, but they don't even list his domains.
2.The timeline here goes so far back into prehistory that I just didn't care. There are inconsistencies in the timeline. The timeline is advanced from the Termana hardcover, but doesn't tell you where it stops, using 'Present Day' as an indicator of what's going on now.
3.Too many sweeping changes from Termana to this book.
4.Inconsistent update of other important Forsaken elves. The book Mithril introduced Ith'laen Khemaitas, Captain of the Ghost Maid and his special figurehead on his ship, aren't mentioned in this book despite updates to most of the other locals mentioned in the Dead God Trilogy.
5.The power level is out of control. Many of the NPCs here are 20th level and are world shakers. When such powerful characters are about, it plays havoc with the believability scale. “Well, why did this happen when so and so could've just used X?”
Those are my issues with the book. If you're looking for something to really shake up the campaign, this book is probably your best bet.
Those who are really going to enjoy this book are fans of the Charduni dwarves. They get a bit more personality, background and details to their own history. While I still find it nonsensical that they could be so weak on their own country and then go across the Blood Sea and basically take over Ghelspad, the section on Charduni is worth reading.
It's told in a different way than the elves with their periods and time stamps. Instead, we get a first person account of events, told through the eyes of one of the Charduni. This makes it more personal and doesn't break up their history into bite sized chunks, providing some feeling to the events instead of a timeline.
The Charduni are in essence a slave race to the god, Chardun, and are always working towards the god's will. This means that whatever the god wishes to be done, is done. Events have happened that have turned the face of Chardun away from his people though and there is confusion as to what should be done to gain that favor back. In some areas, the Charduni dwarves have actually taken to worshipping other gods, putting little cracks in the perfect slave race. One of the most interesting aspects, a twist of the title of the book, is that some of the Charduni feel that they are the ones who are forsaken as their god has turned from them and the elves have been rejoined by their own deity.
The book does an excellent job of detailing daily life, marriage, sex, art, religion, military information and other aspects of the culture that enable a GM to get a good feel for the race and to get the most bang for his buck. Another aspect of the Charduni that is different than most standard races is the slaves used for military to mining purposes. The bad news for the dwarves though is that they are reliant on the slaves to perform daily activities like farming and would be sorely pressed to serve themselves should a massive outbreak happen.
Those more interested in game mechanics have some materials that are going to be over and under powered and whose mileage may vary depending on your campaign. For example, the feat, Beautiful Blade allows you to take a penalty, up to -5, on your attack and give a bonus to all allies within 30 feet equal to that penalty so if you took a -3, they'd get a +3. This effects not only attack rolls but saving throws. The section on arrows highly varies. Arrows rely on a good bow as well as the arrow, and are temporary items. Take the Hungry Chrysalis, it encases the target in salt, unless they make a Reflex DC 17. Then, it inflicts 2d6 points of damage with a Fort save of DC 17. The user has to break out with a DC 27 Strength Check, or someone has to destroy the chrysalis (15 hp/5 hardness). Each arrows cost? Only 50 gold.
There are also new Miracle Feats. These feats use one of the user's daily turn attempts. These vary from Blessing of Divine Strength, which gives a +20 sacred bonus to the target's Strength on its next action, to Unction of the Forest Hallowed, which creates a hallow effect as per the spell, effecting a 10' x Cleric's Charisma modifier lasting Charsiam modifier + 3 turns.
Those looking for prestige classes, will flip to the appendix. Here, we have the elf Constellation Weaver, masters of image magic. This allows them to put patterns on items like magic items, causing them to function at higher levels, or even replace somatic components. Those looking for another archer variant, have the Divine Archer, a master of using Divine Bow, which gains holy damage every two levels, much like a sneak attack, but only against evil creatures. Other abilities include Healing Arrows and even Arrow of Life, to return the dead back to life.
Not all PrCs are elf related though as we have Ramriders and White Fists. The former are the cavalry of the Charduni. The rams gain in strength and power, gaining hit dice and tuning themselves into their rider's need, giving them the Link ability, allowing the rams to be handled as a free action. The latter are Chardun's answer to the Corean Paladins. These individuals The thing is though, since Paladins are required to be Lawful Good, and White Fist Lawful Evil, you'd probably be best off taking levels of Cleric to enter the PrC as one of the benefits is increased spell casting ability at every other level starting at 2nd. A fighter could enter this PrC at 5th level with +4 BAB, Knowledge (religion) 3, and Cleave and Power Attack, but with that benefit being wasted, cleric is the more likely candidate.
The layout follows standard with two columns being used. White space use is good until it gets to the prestige classes and the end of chapters, at which point it gets a little out of hand. Cartography by Ed is great and I'm hoping that one day we'll see some new maps of the setting with Ed' s touch over all of them. The price is fair at $19.95 for 112 black and white pages, even though there are three pages of ads. Grey Thonrberry and Jason Walker handle most of the internal art and they do a fair job of bringing the material to life. Not quite on the same level as some other SL books, but better than others.
Overall, if I didn't find the whole Dead God Trilogy incorporation into the setting in such bad taste, this book would score higher. The maps, adventure seeds, and crunch, provide some new opportunities to players of Forsaken Elves and GMs who favor the Charduni. As it is, the heavy handed way of jamming this into the setting, should've been handled in either in an entirely optional manner with the Charduni getting their own book, or someone should've put this information into the core Termana book so that there wouldn't be so many changes and that the timelines and other inconsistencies could've been hammered out beforehand. The Dead God Trilogy was done in 2002, and Termana came out in 2003, well after the trilogy was written. Someone dropped the ball.
