Alzrius
The EN World kitten
Player’s Companion – Getting More Out of Your PHB is a sourcebook from Technomancer Press. While not a d20 or OGL product, this book is meant to supplement your PHB, filling in the blanks of what that book didn’t deal with.
Inside the first page is a note talking about the Technomancer Press approach to RPG books: that they use a plain cover and cheap (low-cost) binding on purpose to lower the retail price. After all, it’s about the text, not about the cover winning an art show. At 94 pages long, the Player’s Companion is soft-cover, with the covers being a bright orange. The back cover is blank (except for the sticker with the price, ISBN, and barcode), while the front has the title, company logo, and a Parthenon-like image done in black. The book isn’t perfect-bound, but uses a glue-based binding. Surprisingly, this glue-binding actually works quite well; there are no pages falling out, nor glue runoff.
Paralleling the 3.5 PHB, the Player’s Companion is divided up into eleven chapters, each of which covers the same material that its PHB counterpart covers. A brief introduction is given, citing the reasons for this book, followed by a short guide for what’s in each chapter. The book has sporadic black-and-white artwork throughout its pages.
Chapter One covers the six ability scores. Each ability score is examined for additional information regarding checks it can be used for, and/or additional situations that’d have an effect on it. For example, the section on Dexterity lists the maximum Dex bonus you can use if you’re bound (say, by manacles). After all, you can still move around in chains, just not as well.
Chapter Two gives information on new races. If the main six races in D&D (as laid out in the PHB) are humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, and orcs, then there are a total of fifteen possible crossbreeds between these races. The PHB covers two, the human/elf and human/orc – the Player’s Companion gives us the remaining thirteen. Each race is given full PHB-style treatment, listing their personalities, physical description, etc. along with their game statistics. This chapter did an excellent job fleshing out the noticeably-absent half-races; why no one else thought of treating these races the same way the PHB does seems like an obvious question now. However, this chapter did fall down in that it didn’t list tables for each half-race’s height, weight, and age. While this information (height and age) was mentioned in each race’s description, tables at the end of the chapter would have been better.
Chapter Three covers classes. Unlike with the PHB, two prestige classes are also given here, though they come after four new base classes. The four base classes are the Magnifico, nobles, rulers, and influential members of society; the Friar, divine spellcasters who are dedicated to poverty and service to the people; the Inventor, a character who excels in building more and more complex non-magical devices; and the Exemplar, a martial character who is dedicated to mastering a single weapon. The two new prestige classes are the Swift, who trains purely for speed and endurance while running, and the Guerilla, who relies on a broad but shallow resistance network as he seeks to overthrow an institution.
Chapter Four covers skills. This chapter goes over every skill in the PHB, listing alternate uses for each one. While in many cases these are meant to be more thought-provoking than give new rules, several of them do offer hard-and-fast new rules for skill checks, such as a table of DCs for using Disable Device to rig objects to fail or otherwise not function.
Chapter Five gives two dozen new feats. These cover a wide variety of things, but all are useful, and quite innovative. Two Shields lets you gain AC bonuses from using two shields, and to shield bash with each. Likewise, Victual Magic is an item creation feat that works like Brew Potion, but you make magic food instead of magic potions.
Chapter Six is the description chapter. It’s only a single page long, and refers you to HeroMachine, a software program that lets you make custom character art.
Chapter Seven gives several pages’ worth of new equipment. As in the PHB, new weapons are given first, followed by new armor, and new equipment (most of which are alchemical items and triggers for traps). After this, discussion is given to the volume and mass of items. Here you’ll find things like how many coins actually fit in your belt pouch.
Chapter Eight details combat. This section is perhaps the most innovative, covering the combat situations that weren’t in the PHB, but do come up. What happens if you bull rush someone into a wall? That’s here. What are the bonuses and penalties of jumping down from above to attack someone? That’s here. This chapter alone helps to greatly improve the pace of the game, because the issues presented here do come up.
Chapter Nine: Adventuring covers a lot of material that, while not specific to combat, are things adventurers will ask about. This chapter covers things such as visibility distance (and at various elevations too), how far you fall in a round, and catching things (or people) that are falling.
Chapter Ten covers magic (not to be confused with spells, which are next chapter). Focusing specifically on spell research, the style presented in the DMG is labeled here as being “inductive” spell research. This places it in contrast for the two new types of spell research given here: deductive, and experimental.
Chapter Eleven, the final chapter of the book, presents twenty-seven new spells. Many of these are variants on existing PHB spells, such as Tenser’s Improved Disk, but many are also totally new, such as Mask Spell. All of them, however, do a great job of rounding out the spells in the PHB.
Altogether, the Player’s Companion lives up to its name. Presenting high-quality new material, as well as innovative new uses of existing material, the Player’s Companion is the definitive companion volume to the Player’s Handbook.
Inside the first page is a note talking about the Technomancer Press approach to RPG books: that they use a plain cover and cheap (low-cost) binding on purpose to lower the retail price. After all, it’s about the text, not about the cover winning an art show. At 94 pages long, the Player’s Companion is soft-cover, with the covers being a bright orange. The back cover is blank (except for the sticker with the price, ISBN, and barcode), while the front has the title, company logo, and a Parthenon-like image done in black. The book isn’t perfect-bound, but uses a glue-based binding. Surprisingly, this glue-binding actually works quite well; there are no pages falling out, nor glue runoff.
Paralleling the 3.5 PHB, the Player’s Companion is divided up into eleven chapters, each of which covers the same material that its PHB counterpart covers. A brief introduction is given, citing the reasons for this book, followed by a short guide for what’s in each chapter. The book has sporadic black-and-white artwork throughout its pages.
Chapter One covers the six ability scores. Each ability score is examined for additional information regarding checks it can be used for, and/or additional situations that’d have an effect on it. For example, the section on Dexterity lists the maximum Dex bonus you can use if you’re bound (say, by manacles). After all, you can still move around in chains, just not as well.
Chapter Two gives information on new races. If the main six races in D&D (as laid out in the PHB) are humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, and orcs, then there are a total of fifteen possible crossbreeds between these races. The PHB covers two, the human/elf and human/orc – the Player’s Companion gives us the remaining thirteen. Each race is given full PHB-style treatment, listing their personalities, physical description, etc. along with their game statistics. This chapter did an excellent job fleshing out the noticeably-absent half-races; why no one else thought of treating these races the same way the PHB does seems like an obvious question now. However, this chapter did fall down in that it didn’t list tables for each half-race’s height, weight, and age. While this information (height and age) was mentioned in each race’s description, tables at the end of the chapter would have been better.
Chapter Three covers classes. Unlike with the PHB, two prestige classes are also given here, though they come after four new base classes. The four base classes are the Magnifico, nobles, rulers, and influential members of society; the Friar, divine spellcasters who are dedicated to poverty and service to the people; the Inventor, a character who excels in building more and more complex non-magical devices; and the Exemplar, a martial character who is dedicated to mastering a single weapon. The two new prestige classes are the Swift, who trains purely for speed and endurance while running, and the Guerilla, who relies on a broad but shallow resistance network as he seeks to overthrow an institution.
Chapter Four covers skills. This chapter goes over every skill in the PHB, listing alternate uses for each one. While in many cases these are meant to be more thought-provoking than give new rules, several of them do offer hard-and-fast new rules for skill checks, such as a table of DCs for using Disable Device to rig objects to fail or otherwise not function.
Chapter Five gives two dozen new feats. These cover a wide variety of things, but all are useful, and quite innovative. Two Shields lets you gain AC bonuses from using two shields, and to shield bash with each. Likewise, Victual Magic is an item creation feat that works like Brew Potion, but you make magic food instead of magic potions.
Chapter Six is the description chapter. It’s only a single page long, and refers you to HeroMachine, a software program that lets you make custom character art.
Chapter Seven gives several pages’ worth of new equipment. As in the PHB, new weapons are given first, followed by new armor, and new equipment (most of which are alchemical items and triggers for traps). After this, discussion is given to the volume and mass of items. Here you’ll find things like how many coins actually fit in your belt pouch.
Chapter Eight details combat. This section is perhaps the most innovative, covering the combat situations that weren’t in the PHB, but do come up. What happens if you bull rush someone into a wall? That’s here. What are the bonuses and penalties of jumping down from above to attack someone? That’s here. This chapter alone helps to greatly improve the pace of the game, because the issues presented here do come up.
Chapter Nine: Adventuring covers a lot of material that, while not specific to combat, are things adventurers will ask about. This chapter covers things such as visibility distance (and at various elevations too), how far you fall in a round, and catching things (or people) that are falling.
Chapter Ten covers magic (not to be confused with spells, which are next chapter). Focusing specifically on spell research, the style presented in the DMG is labeled here as being “inductive” spell research. This places it in contrast for the two new types of spell research given here: deductive, and experimental.
Chapter Eleven, the final chapter of the book, presents twenty-seven new spells. Many of these are variants on existing PHB spells, such as Tenser’s Improved Disk, but many are also totally new, such as Mask Spell. All of them, however, do a great job of rounding out the spells in the PHB.
Altogether, the Player’s Companion lives up to its name. Presenting high-quality new material, as well as innovative new uses of existing material, the Player’s Companion is the definitive companion volume to the Player’s Handbook.
