blackshirt5
First Post
Hey, haven't finished my full review, but I figured I'd put this up here to help out the boys and girls from FFG.
Dawnforge is simply the best Campaign Setting I've seen in a great while. While I've looked before at Forgotten Realms(too slapdash and High NPC for my taste), Kingdoms of Kalamar(too dry, although that was just personal experience), Dragonlance(felt like I was playing through the books), Scarred Lands(cool and creative, but it just didn't spark my interest that much), and Dungeonworld(No Comment beyond "I'd rather let my puppy bite the keyboard for days while on MS Word, and run a campaign in what I can discern from that"), none of them have I been willing to run a campaign in, instead sampling from them for a homebrew that never quite came together properly and ended up being quite messy.
Dawnforge changed all that. I cracked open the front cover and was mentally assaulted by a fully solid book. Great art, great writing, and great work on the crunch AND the fluff. The races, featuring racial talents(extra powers that they can pick up, such as extra arcane or divine spell slots or spells per day, spell-like abilities, and others) and racial transformations(such as darkvision, spell resistance, and others) really help set apart the various races(4 human subraces: Highlanders, Lowlanders, Saltbloods, and Truebloods, Doppelgangers, Ogres, Orcs, Minotaurs, Gnomes, Halflings, Dwarves, Tieflings, Yuan-Ti Thinbloods, and 2 Elven subraces, Dawn and Night), and along with the increases to stats at 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th levels, help make the game seem very epic; you can face higher level challenges sooner, and that, to me, is a good thing. Who wants to spend a lot of time fighting goblins and kobolds in the mud with sticks? This is an Age of Legends!
The 4 new classes are cool; The Disciple replaces the Cleric and The Shaman replaces the Druid, and both seem well balanced. The Shaper is a spontaneous divine caster with access to Domains(which the Disciple does not get); they seem well balanced and I'd happily allow any of the 3 in a party. The fourth new class, though, deserves some special attention: The Spirit Adept. They get a d10 Hit Die, Rogue BAB progression, and high saves all around, along with a slew of cool powers, so it seems a little bit unbalanced; I'd probably either drop the Hit Die down to d8 or houserule the saves down to midlevel progression(from non D&D standards; it ends on +9), but other than that incredibly flavorful, it reminds me of anime or pulp; in fact, were I to do a build for Kenshin Himura or Conan of Cimmeria, I would make them Spirit Adepts.
The setting information is great. It's divided into several chapters and each provides enough information to tantalize and run a game within that area, yet doesn't read like a textbook a la KoK. These chapters are bursting with story ideas; I can't read through a setting chapter without coming up with more ideas for stories than I could use in any one campaign. This is definitely a highlight of the book.
The legendary monsters at the back are one of my absolute favorite ideas I've ever seen in a D20 book. They are unique versions of a few monsters from mythology(The Chimera, The Basilisk, The Hydra, The Medusa) which are more powerful than their Monster Manual equivalents(although it does include the caveat that the MM versions could be the progeny of these original monsters). Fabulous.
The only complaints I've got with the book are minor ones. One, under the entries for Immortals(living beings who take the place of the gods for disciples; in Dawnforge there are no gods as defined in D&D), The Storm King is missing his spells that he should have as a level 11 Ranger; minor gripe. Two, I really think the book would've benefited from a DM Chapter that helped explain how to properly run an epic, high-magic world like Dawnforge, and possibly listing off sources to read, like Beowulf, The Silmarillion, and others; I think that it would've helped out immensely, especially for newbies to DMing. Third, another minor gripe, the book makes mention of Psionics, but from what I've seen(although I will admit that I might have overlooked it), while it talks about psionics being unfamiliar and deadly and the magic using tieflings being unprotected against the psionics of the yuan-ti, it never does tell you whether it operates under the "Psionics are Different" rules set, but again, it's a very minor gripe.
All in all, I think this book is definitely worth the 35 dollar cover price. If you're looking for a good campaign setting in which to run an epic(with the lowercase "e") campaign, one should look no further than this.
Dawnforge is simply the best Campaign Setting I've seen in a great while. While I've looked before at Forgotten Realms(too slapdash and High NPC for my taste), Kingdoms of Kalamar(too dry, although that was just personal experience), Dragonlance(felt like I was playing through the books), Scarred Lands(cool and creative, but it just didn't spark my interest that much), and Dungeonworld(No Comment beyond "I'd rather let my puppy bite the keyboard for days while on MS Word, and run a campaign in what I can discern from that"), none of them have I been willing to run a campaign in, instead sampling from them for a homebrew that never quite came together properly and ended up being quite messy.
Dawnforge changed all that. I cracked open the front cover and was mentally assaulted by a fully solid book. Great art, great writing, and great work on the crunch AND the fluff. The races, featuring racial talents(extra powers that they can pick up, such as extra arcane or divine spell slots or spells per day, spell-like abilities, and others) and racial transformations(such as darkvision, spell resistance, and others) really help set apart the various races(4 human subraces: Highlanders, Lowlanders, Saltbloods, and Truebloods, Doppelgangers, Ogres, Orcs, Minotaurs, Gnomes, Halflings, Dwarves, Tieflings, Yuan-Ti Thinbloods, and 2 Elven subraces, Dawn and Night), and along with the increases to stats at 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th levels, help make the game seem very epic; you can face higher level challenges sooner, and that, to me, is a good thing. Who wants to spend a lot of time fighting goblins and kobolds in the mud with sticks? This is an Age of Legends!
The 4 new classes are cool; The Disciple replaces the Cleric and The Shaman replaces the Druid, and both seem well balanced. The Shaper is a spontaneous divine caster with access to Domains(which the Disciple does not get); they seem well balanced and I'd happily allow any of the 3 in a party. The fourth new class, though, deserves some special attention: The Spirit Adept. They get a d10 Hit Die, Rogue BAB progression, and high saves all around, along with a slew of cool powers, so it seems a little bit unbalanced; I'd probably either drop the Hit Die down to d8 or houserule the saves down to midlevel progression(from non D&D standards; it ends on +9), but other than that incredibly flavorful, it reminds me of anime or pulp; in fact, were I to do a build for Kenshin Himura or Conan of Cimmeria, I would make them Spirit Adepts.
The setting information is great. It's divided into several chapters and each provides enough information to tantalize and run a game within that area, yet doesn't read like a textbook a la KoK. These chapters are bursting with story ideas; I can't read through a setting chapter without coming up with more ideas for stories than I could use in any one campaign. This is definitely a highlight of the book.
The legendary monsters at the back are one of my absolute favorite ideas I've ever seen in a D20 book. They are unique versions of a few monsters from mythology(The Chimera, The Basilisk, The Hydra, The Medusa) which are more powerful than their Monster Manual equivalents(although it does include the caveat that the MM versions could be the progeny of these original monsters). Fabulous.
The only complaints I've got with the book are minor ones. One, under the entries for Immortals(living beings who take the place of the gods for disciples; in Dawnforge there are no gods as defined in D&D), The Storm King is missing his spells that he should have as a level 11 Ranger; minor gripe. Two, I really think the book would've benefited from a DM Chapter that helped explain how to properly run an epic, high-magic world like Dawnforge, and possibly listing off sources to read, like Beowulf, The Silmarillion, and others; I think that it would've helped out immensely, especially for newbies to DMing. Third, another minor gripe, the book makes mention of Psionics, but from what I've seen(although I will admit that I might have overlooked it), while it talks about psionics being unfamiliar and deadly and the magic using tieflings being unprotected against the psionics of the yuan-ti, it never does tell you whether it operates under the "Psionics are Different" rules set, but again, it's a very minor gripe.
All in all, I think this book is definitely worth the 35 dollar cover price. If you're looking for a good campaign setting in which to run an epic(with the lowercase "e") campaign, one should look no further than this.
