Serpent Kingdoms
Messageboard Golem
First Post
[g]Serpent Kingdoms (aka how all the scaly races relate to Lizardfolk)[/g]
“They said he would come from the north. A man of great strength, a conqueror. One who would make himself king by his own hand. One who would crush the snakes of the earth.” “Snakes?! Did you say snakes?!” – Conan, the Barbarian
“Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?” – Indiana Jones.
Snakes is the name of the game in the Wizards of the Coast Forgotten Realms Campaign Accessory: Serpent Kingdoms. And holy carp! This book rocks my socks! You would think that a book about serpent people in the Forgotten Realms would be the dumbest idea since the Time of Troubles. You would expect a book that was terribly executed and filled with so much munchkin crunch that you could throw out your box of grape nuts. But in fact Wizards of the Coast has actually turned out a really nice and usable sourcebook.
The first question when I look at a book is always “Does something I already own do what this book does?” Well, ok, thats really the second question. The first is "Does it look cool?" And indeed it does. Some don't break for the old book look of the Forgotten Realms line, but I do. And the art on the cover is quite nice depicting snakey people doing snakey things. These questins are quickly followed by another: “Is there another book available that does what this book does but better?” As far as I can tell, the answer for both these questions is no. Part of this might be because it IS a Forgotten Realms accessory (and probably the only one thats gonna be published on this topic in this edition.) and so no one else can really make this book. But as a sourcebook on all things scaly, I cannot think of another book that provides as much as this one. The real treat (or the gnashing of teeth depending on your OGL/d20 outlook) of this book is that the authors pretty much stick to the scaly things that are Wizards of the Coasts intellectual property. We are given major sections devoted to the Yuan’Ti, Nagas, and Sarrukh, an elder race of Faerun that made most of the other mean lizards. Obviously the Nagas are in the SRD. How Mongoose got away with making a book on Yuan’Ti I will never be able to fathom. Most of the info in these chapters is dedicated to the Forgotten Realms version of the creature. Among these chapters are two others. One devoted to Lizards, the other devoted to “Hidden Folk.”
In the lizard section we are given more information on the Asabis, Firenewts, Khaastas, Lizard Kings (Jim Morrison would be proud), and a section on Troglodytes and Trens. The hidden one section covers the lizards that hide. That would be the Ophidians, and the Pterafolk.
At this point you are probably saying to yourself “wow, what a lousy review, he left out the Lizardfolk.” No I didn’t. That’s right, there is no section on the Lizardfolk. At first I was disappointed about this too. But then I realized two things. The first is that Mongoose has a book on Lizardfolk and this one won’t really get in the way. The second is that the Lizardfolk are between the lines. If you read about the Yuan’Ti, you read about the Lizardfolk, if you read about the Nagas, you read about the Lizardfolk. What happens if you read about the Ophidians? That’s right, you get more info on the Lizardfolk. Comprende? Trust me, while they don’t have a section, the Lizardfolk are talked about enough. Besides, they got their day in Races of Faerun, if you look there you get a 2 page spread on everyone’s favorite lizards. Sweet! So, all in all we get 62 pages of background on the different reptile races and how they relate to Lizardfolk.
On to the monster section! There are some really cool monsters in this book! (or you may find them incredibly cheesy as is the case with the fandom of RPGs these days) But I think for the most part the monsters kick ass and don’t even think twice about it. You get a bunch of Naga and Yuan’Ti variants, a golem (made of snakeflesh none-the-less), some dinosaurs (Stegosaurus! Yay!), and monster entries for all the races discussed in the book. Spiffy! But the place where the book excels is in the snake section. (Yeah, the reptile house is always my favorite part of the zoo too) My absolute favorite is the Amphisbaena. It’s a Large 2 headed sidewinder that can turn itself into a hoop to better travel long distances!(?) How cool is that! The other is the apparently ubiquitous (well in a sense) Deathcoils. This is a snake that would make Thulsa Doom (the James Earl Jones variant) proud. The Mlarraun is neat. When it is targeted by a spell, this spitting snake hardens and goes to sleep. So it is sort of a possum/armadillo sort of snake. This little torpor has some neat results! The thing is that a lot of these are in the Tome of Horrors by Necromancer Games. Some people have bad blood over that, but those who do are missing out on some really cool versions of the same thing. Only in d20 would yhou have this many choices. Then there are the “normal” snakes of Faerun. We get the Dung Snake, the Glacier Snake, Reed Snake, Sewerm, Tree Python, and the Whip Snake. So with this in mind we can be rest assured that our Tome of Horrors snake table has not yet experienced overlap. But yeah, the snakes are a real treat. By far the coolest humanoid is the Tren, a hybrid of Troglodyte and Lizardman that picks the most powerful aspects of both races. Oh and the Lizard Kings are pretty cool too, cause they are part fiend.
Then we hit the 42 pages of place description. (Notice we have not even gotten to the crunch yet?) This covers everywhere the lizards live. And more. Not much to say here, but if you are a realms fan, you most likely will be happy, unless you are that guy that puts his hopes too high and then blame Wizards for all the problems in gaming when they don’t meet your expectation. If you hate the realms, and you are just looking for crunch, forget about it. If you just hate the realms why are you reading this?
After this there are 8 pages on how to run the Yuan’Ti as bad guys behind the bad guys. Interesting. Think onions. YMMV.
In the next 23 pages are feats, equipment, magic items, spells, and prestige classes. There are some cool general feats like charm resistance, charm immunity, petrification resistance, and petrification immunity. The rest are great for snakes and lizards. The equipment has some cool stuff, my favorite being the Manyfang Dagger. You get 13 spells. The Prestige classes are mostly for Yaun’Ti with one for Yuan’Ti and their servants. However, the coolest I think is the one that does not have a race requirement. It’s the Serpent Slayer. This one is well balanced and very cool.
Then we get 4 short adventures that look pretty cool. I really like the location thing that Wizards is doing these days and I hope they keep it up. An appendix with a scaly timeline, deity descriptions, and a racial traits table follows this.
12.5% of this book is crunch. 87.5% is fluff. This is a good direction for Wizards and other publishers to follow. Over all I would rate the portability of the book at about 42% if you are good at porting locations and adventures. If not then it drops to the crunch base of 12%. As a snake and lizard sourcebook for Forgotten Realms this book is unsurpassed. Its generic appeal is limited as there is not much crunch. However, since it is a campaign accessory for the Forgotten Realms, I am going to count this as an asset. This book is a great purchase for the DM that runs in the realms and is a decent purchase for someone looking for a fluff heavy sourcebook on scaly things.
“They said he would come from the north. A man of great strength, a conqueror. One who would make himself king by his own hand. One who would crush the snakes of the earth.” “Snakes?! Did you say snakes?!” – Conan, the Barbarian
“Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?” – Indiana Jones.
Snakes is the name of the game in the Wizards of the Coast Forgotten Realms Campaign Accessory: Serpent Kingdoms. And holy carp! This book rocks my socks! You would think that a book about serpent people in the Forgotten Realms would be the dumbest idea since the Time of Troubles. You would expect a book that was terribly executed and filled with so much munchkin crunch that you could throw out your box of grape nuts. But in fact Wizards of the Coast has actually turned out a really nice and usable sourcebook.
The first question when I look at a book is always “Does something I already own do what this book does?” Well, ok, thats really the second question. The first is "Does it look cool?" And indeed it does. Some don't break for the old book look of the Forgotten Realms line, but I do. And the art on the cover is quite nice depicting snakey people doing snakey things. These questins are quickly followed by another: “Is there another book available that does what this book does but better?” As far as I can tell, the answer for both these questions is no. Part of this might be because it IS a Forgotten Realms accessory (and probably the only one thats gonna be published on this topic in this edition.) and so no one else can really make this book. But as a sourcebook on all things scaly, I cannot think of another book that provides as much as this one. The real treat (or the gnashing of teeth depending on your OGL/d20 outlook) of this book is that the authors pretty much stick to the scaly things that are Wizards of the Coasts intellectual property. We are given major sections devoted to the Yuan’Ti, Nagas, and Sarrukh, an elder race of Faerun that made most of the other mean lizards. Obviously the Nagas are in the SRD. How Mongoose got away with making a book on Yuan’Ti I will never be able to fathom. Most of the info in these chapters is dedicated to the Forgotten Realms version of the creature. Among these chapters are two others. One devoted to Lizards, the other devoted to “Hidden Folk.”
In the lizard section we are given more information on the Asabis, Firenewts, Khaastas, Lizard Kings (Jim Morrison would be proud), and a section on Troglodytes and Trens. The hidden one section covers the lizards that hide. That would be the Ophidians, and the Pterafolk.
At this point you are probably saying to yourself “wow, what a lousy review, he left out the Lizardfolk.” No I didn’t. That’s right, there is no section on the Lizardfolk. At first I was disappointed about this too. But then I realized two things. The first is that Mongoose has a book on Lizardfolk and this one won’t really get in the way. The second is that the Lizardfolk are between the lines. If you read about the Yuan’Ti, you read about the Lizardfolk, if you read about the Nagas, you read about the Lizardfolk. What happens if you read about the Ophidians? That’s right, you get more info on the Lizardfolk. Comprende? Trust me, while they don’t have a section, the Lizardfolk are talked about enough. Besides, they got their day in Races of Faerun, if you look there you get a 2 page spread on everyone’s favorite lizards. Sweet! So, all in all we get 62 pages of background on the different reptile races and how they relate to Lizardfolk.
On to the monster section! There are some really cool monsters in this book! (or you may find them incredibly cheesy as is the case with the fandom of RPGs these days) But I think for the most part the monsters kick ass and don’t even think twice about it. You get a bunch of Naga and Yuan’Ti variants, a golem (made of snakeflesh none-the-less), some dinosaurs (Stegosaurus! Yay!), and monster entries for all the races discussed in the book. Spiffy! But the place where the book excels is in the snake section. (Yeah, the reptile house is always my favorite part of the zoo too) My absolute favorite is the Amphisbaena. It’s a Large 2 headed sidewinder that can turn itself into a hoop to better travel long distances!(?) How cool is that! The other is the apparently ubiquitous (well in a sense) Deathcoils. This is a snake that would make Thulsa Doom (the James Earl Jones variant) proud. The Mlarraun is neat. When it is targeted by a spell, this spitting snake hardens and goes to sleep. So it is sort of a possum/armadillo sort of snake. This little torpor has some neat results! The thing is that a lot of these are in the Tome of Horrors by Necromancer Games. Some people have bad blood over that, but those who do are missing out on some really cool versions of the same thing. Only in d20 would yhou have this many choices. Then there are the “normal” snakes of Faerun. We get the Dung Snake, the Glacier Snake, Reed Snake, Sewerm, Tree Python, and the Whip Snake. So with this in mind we can be rest assured that our Tome of Horrors snake table has not yet experienced overlap. But yeah, the snakes are a real treat. By far the coolest humanoid is the Tren, a hybrid of Troglodyte and Lizardman that picks the most powerful aspects of both races. Oh and the Lizard Kings are pretty cool too, cause they are part fiend.
Then we hit the 42 pages of place description. (Notice we have not even gotten to the crunch yet?) This covers everywhere the lizards live. And more. Not much to say here, but if you are a realms fan, you most likely will be happy, unless you are that guy that puts his hopes too high and then blame Wizards for all the problems in gaming when they don’t meet your expectation. If you hate the realms, and you are just looking for crunch, forget about it. If you just hate the realms why are you reading this?
After this there are 8 pages on how to run the Yuan’Ti as bad guys behind the bad guys. Interesting. Think onions. YMMV.
In the next 23 pages are feats, equipment, magic items, spells, and prestige classes. There are some cool general feats like charm resistance, charm immunity, petrification resistance, and petrification immunity. The rest are great for snakes and lizards. The equipment has some cool stuff, my favorite being the Manyfang Dagger. You get 13 spells. The Prestige classes are mostly for Yaun’Ti with one for Yuan’Ti and their servants. However, the coolest I think is the one that does not have a race requirement. It’s the Serpent Slayer. This one is well balanced and very cool.
Then we get 4 short adventures that look pretty cool. I really like the location thing that Wizards is doing these days and I hope they keep it up. An appendix with a scaly timeline, deity descriptions, and a racial traits table follows this.
12.5% of this book is crunch. 87.5% is fluff. This is a good direction for Wizards and other publishers to follow. Over all I would rate the portability of the book at about 42% if you are good at porting locations and adventures. If not then it drops to the crunch base of 12%. As a snake and lizard sourcebook for Forgotten Realms this book is unsurpassed. Its generic appeal is limited as there is not much crunch. However, since it is a campaign accessory for the Forgotten Realms, I am going to count this as an asset. This book is a great purchase for the DM that runs in the realms and is a decent purchase for someone looking for a fluff heavy sourcebook on scaly things.
Messageboard Golem
First Post
R. E. Howard is the author who first comes to mind when one thinks of serpents. Most famous for Conan, in his stories of Kull and Valusia, the serpent men were the central antagonists. Given that treatment, it is unsurprising that Conan the Barbarian is the best related work in films, particularly with Snake-cults.
In the Forgotten Realms, these reptilian races were prominently featured in a series of Dungeon magazine adventures, the Mere of Dead Men series. For 3E D&D specifically, I probably don't need to mention the extensive treatment in the series of d20 Freeport modules and supplements. Thus the diversity and depth of the treatment of scaled ones has been quite thorough, and provides plenty of resources to the DM who would build a campaign around the scaled ones.
Now we can add Serpent Kingdoms to that list, a 192 page hardcover, the latest release for the Forgotten Realms setting. The Yuan-ti have been one of my favorite monstrous races for a long time (thanks to Howard). So after FR Underdark and FR Unapproachable East, which I consider two of the best supplements for 3E D&D, I had high hopes for this supplement.
Simply stated, there is both a lot of good and a lot of bad here. Overall, the book has a bias toward fluff, rather than crunch.
The book begins well enough by addressing and indexing all serpentkind, scaled ones, and lizard kind within the D&D system in the Introduction. This compilation of resources is obviously useful for anyone interested in running a campaign focused on the serpentkind. There is also a short overview of the campaign/setting considerations for using these races as primary antagonists.
From here, the supplement breaks into five major sections.
This first section (chapters one through five) consists of extended discussions of the scaled races (Yuan-ti, Nagas, Lizards, "Hidden Folk", and Sarrukh). This consumes 50+ pages, roughly 1/3 of the book. A small but significant portion consists of stat-blocks and NPC descriptions for sample "Ready-to-Use Villains and Allies".
Unsurprisingly, the best chapter was the Yuan-ti. This monster race is the strongest, and has the greatest depth of detail of the races covered here. Included is an extensive description of the several great tribes of Yuan-ti, and how they function as individual power-blocs.
Also introduced here is the Sarrukh, a sort of progmnitor race of serpent men. The Sarrukh are discussed in greater detail later. Nagas, Ophidians, Firenewts, Pterafolk, Lizardmen, etc are also covered, focusing on racial history, society, magic, dieties, and characters of that race. These descriptions tend to be less extensive than that for Yuan-ti. Following the Yuan-ti, Nagas and Sarrukh recieve the most extensive treatment. The other races end up feeling a bit like henchmen for the three prime races, except maybe the Khaasta.
The next major section (Chapter 6) is a monster chapter, 30 pages long. This chapter did not impress me at all. It includes some reprinted monsters (Banelar Naga, Bone Naga), and several stupid monsters. I suppose the rationale for the reprints could be updating to 3.5, but that strikes me as a little weak. An example of a poor monster is the Nifern. Its basically a dog with scales instead of fur, and a stinger.
Then there are the "monsters" that are basically statted Prestige-classed Yuan-ti. And three dinosaurs are included, I suppose as a "representative" sample.
On a better note, the Jaculi and Lizard King make a nostalgic return from the original Fiend Folio, the Lizard King is now presented as a fiendish race. My favorite monsters out of this section were actually the variety of weird snakes, and the new Nagas. Though there is some good stuff here, a lot of this section was a waste.
Chapter seven deals with applying this stuff to the Forgotten Realms, and at 44 pages, is the single longest chapter of the book. This section is essentially a gazetteer of the Serpent Kingdoms of Faerun. Each is distinct, each having a different power structure, monster profile/make-up, history, and relations with neighbors. Some of these are actually conspiracy-kingdoms while in others, Scaled Ones rule openly.
This section is pretty similar to the gazetteer section of the FR Underdark handbook, so if you have that, you can check it for a good idea of what this portion of the manual is like. The most significant difference is the lack of an accompanying overview map focused on the specific regions detailed here.
Chapter eight is a short chapter, dealing with running a Yuan-ti-character-centered campaign, in the now-familiar monsters-as-characters theme. It also includes more detailed notes on using Yuan-ti antagonists in your campaign.
Chapters nine through twelve are what we have come to expect in every such book: the crunch. Feats, Equipment, Spells, and Prestige classes; 24 pages worth.
The feats are predictable: "You can do this with your tail", "You can do this with your poison", "You can do this with your extra limb", etc.
The Equipment chapter was one I really liked. The tentacle-rods-for-serpents from the magic items portion were underwhelming. So were the Yuan-ti grafts. Yes, that should sound familiar if you have the 3E Fiend Folio. Its nearly a word-for-word reprint, the main new addition seems to be a Caster Level requirement.
What makes this chapter so good are the Osssra oils (yesss, thatsss three esssesss). The oils can be burned, or applied as oils. Further, they have beneficial effects for the serpent-kind, and baneful ones for others. The most extreme example is Ulthalasss oil, which is soaked into the reptilian hide, for one bonus, ignited, providing an additional bonus while dealing damage as flaming oil, creating smoke, allowing comrades to receive the primary bonus, while dealing strength damage to all non-reptilians in an area.
Now that's bang for your buck! or gold piece, I guess.
The Spells chapter is four pages long, and a sparse 4 pages at that. While spells fit the theme, for the most part they are uninspiring and unremarkable.
Prestige classes are almost entirely for Yuan-Ti, there are two exceptions, Serpent Slayer and Naga Overlord. Excepting a Yuan-ti campaign, this doesn't really fall into the area of "useful crunch", at least for players. The Ancient Master is actually one of the better monster prestige classes I have seen, being a sort of Yuan-ti overlord class, being as much an expansion of monster levels as an addition of class levels.
Almost one tenth of this manual (18 pages) consists of four adventures. I don't generally think putting adventures into sourcebooks is a good idea, for several reasons. But then, since WotC doesn't really publish adventures anymore, I guess this gets into the realm of taking what you get. The adventures are generally site-based, and place the antagonists in different roles (i.e. covert versus overt). They also convey a representative sample of the internal conflicts between some of the scaled ones described in the Races section of the manual.
The manual ends in a short appendix with a timeline for the reptilian history of the FR, and tables for serpent deities and serpent character races.
My main problem with this book is the Sarrukh. I really don't care for them as a game-world concept and background element. There are several reasons for this. The first is what this does to the Yuan-ti. The Yuan-ti are essentially one of their slave races along with all the other reptilian races. This characterization does much to diminish (at least in my mind) the mystery and horror the Yuan-ti present. This does "make sense" in that the Sarrukh possess the innate ability to shape the flesh of the lesser serpent races, but that doesn't mean the overall concept is a good one. It basically reduces the poly-anatomical Yuan-ti to "They are that way because the Sarrukh can do that to them at will". Oh my, how exciting.
Another reason I don't like the Sarrukh is the way they fit a certain tiresome pattern when it comes to describing intelligent quasi-humanoid monsters. It was impressed most memorably upon me with the Sahuagin in the Sea Devils supplement. While I liked the treatment of the Sahuagin in general, it featured the theme of "they are superior to humans in every respect", but they just don't care about humans enough to make something of it. This was supposed to make them scary. The theme is nearly identically repeated with the Sarrukh, except this time its superior (and therefore scary) serpent-men, instead of fish-men.
I spite of this, the Sarrakh are interesting at points. They have schizmed into heretics and faithful, and there is a secret war between them, each group fighting to exalt or cast down a deity. So there is some useful stuff here. Personally, I'd just have to re-work it before I could like it.
My other major problem with this manual is that it contains significant portions of what I'd call "ancillary material".
For example, while the ruleset/structure of 3E makes creating stat-blocks a headache, did we really need a dozen more? (This does not include the monsters chapter and adventures chapter). The abundance of statted scaled ones gives the book a scaled-ones' Rogues Gallery feel.
I've already mentioned the monsters chapter. I can understand the desire to reprint the serpent specific material here so that it is compiled for easy reference, but you can only see so much of that before you start getting a certain bad feeling.
I am reluctant to call this "padding", since padding is usually a euphemism for useless crap. Nonetheless, it is difficult to escape the feeling that this manual could have been more tightly structured into 128 or 144 pages. That said, the some of the additional material really could ease running such a campaign.
All art is full color, and most pieces are quite nice. Page 17 shows one of the better instances of serpentine architecture, that of a Yuan-ti house interior. The best portrait type is of the Yuan-ti Mageslayer on page 91 and the Master of Vipers on page 164. Many of the monster depictions are excellent as well. There are also two impressive full-page illustrations.
One piece that seemed rather oddly out-of-place was a picture of a city on page 107. It struck me as more of city from sci-fi rather than historical fantasy.
Overall, the art does a good job of portraying alien serpentine architecture, when it does so, and creating the feeling of the alien world of the scaled ones.
An online gallery of the interior art can be found here:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ag/20040709a
Interestingly, it looks like Saurials were dropped from the book after the art was commissioned.
On the downside of presentation, we once again have a campaign resource with no index. Guess space really was at a premium here. I just don't personally like the how the space judgements were made.
Clearly, if you didn't like the Yuan-ti as they were, and you like having a "Grand Unified Theory" for all reptilian races, then you will like this book, and have more use for it than I did. For myself, portions of it will be of little value.
Thats a long way from saying it has no value though, especially when properly adapted. The Yuan-ti have always been one of my favorite monster races. Their bizarreness, their cultic trappings, and the mystery behind them have always seemed quite ripe for exploitation by a devious DM. The book as a whole does do a good job of covering the feeling of conspiracies and hidden machinations that so characterized them in Howard's stories, if thats what you want. But overall, Serpent Kingdoms gives the reader plenty of additional game tools and background information for any campaign involing the Scaled Ones.
In the Forgotten Realms, these reptilian races were prominently featured in a series of Dungeon magazine adventures, the Mere of Dead Men series. For 3E D&D specifically, I probably don't need to mention the extensive treatment in the series of d20 Freeport modules and supplements. Thus the diversity and depth of the treatment of scaled ones has been quite thorough, and provides plenty of resources to the DM who would build a campaign around the scaled ones.
Now we can add Serpent Kingdoms to that list, a 192 page hardcover, the latest release for the Forgotten Realms setting. The Yuan-ti have been one of my favorite monstrous races for a long time (thanks to Howard). So after FR Underdark and FR Unapproachable East, which I consider two of the best supplements for 3E D&D, I had high hopes for this supplement.
Simply stated, there is both a lot of good and a lot of bad here. Overall, the book has a bias toward fluff, rather than crunch.
The book begins well enough by addressing and indexing all serpentkind, scaled ones, and lizard kind within the D&D system in the Introduction. This compilation of resources is obviously useful for anyone interested in running a campaign focused on the serpentkind. There is also a short overview of the campaign/setting considerations for using these races as primary antagonists.
From here, the supplement breaks into five major sections.
This first section (chapters one through five) consists of extended discussions of the scaled races (Yuan-ti, Nagas, Lizards, "Hidden Folk", and Sarrukh). This consumes 50+ pages, roughly 1/3 of the book. A small but significant portion consists of stat-blocks and NPC descriptions for sample "Ready-to-Use Villains and Allies".
Unsurprisingly, the best chapter was the Yuan-ti. This monster race is the strongest, and has the greatest depth of detail of the races covered here. Included is an extensive description of the several great tribes of Yuan-ti, and how they function as individual power-blocs.
Also introduced here is the Sarrukh, a sort of progmnitor race of serpent men. The Sarrukh are discussed in greater detail later. Nagas, Ophidians, Firenewts, Pterafolk, Lizardmen, etc are also covered, focusing on racial history, society, magic, dieties, and characters of that race. These descriptions tend to be less extensive than that for Yuan-ti. Following the Yuan-ti, Nagas and Sarrukh recieve the most extensive treatment. The other races end up feeling a bit like henchmen for the three prime races, except maybe the Khaasta.
The next major section (Chapter 6) is a monster chapter, 30 pages long. This chapter did not impress me at all. It includes some reprinted monsters (Banelar Naga, Bone Naga), and several stupid monsters. I suppose the rationale for the reprints could be updating to 3.5, but that strikes me as a little weak. An example of a poor monster is the Nifern. Its basically a dog with scales instead of fur, and a stinger.
Then there are the "monsters" that are basically statted Prestige-classed Yuan-ti. And three dinosaurs are included, I suppose as a "representative" sample.
On a better note, the Jaculi and Lizard King make a nostalgic return from the original Fiend Folio, the Lizard King is now presented as a fiendish race. My favorite monsters out of this section were actually the variety of weird snakes, and the new Nagas. Though there is some good stuff here, a lot of this section was a waste.
Chapter seven deals with applying this stuff to the Forgotten Realms, and at 44 pages, is the single longest chapter of the book. This section is essentially a gazetteer of the Serpent Kingdoms of Faerun. Each is distinct, each having a different power structure, monster profile/make-up, history, and relations with neighbors. Some of these are actually conspiracy-kingdoms while in others, Scaled Ones rule openly.
This section is pretty similar to the gazetteer section of the FR Underdark handbook, so if you have that, you can check it for a good idea of what this portion of the manual is like. The most significant difference is the lack of an accompanying overview map focused on the specific regions detailed here.
Chapter eight is a short chapter, dealing with running a Yuan-ti-character-centered campaign, in the now-familiar monsters-as-characters theme. It also includes more detailed notes on using Yuan-ti antagonists in your campaign.
Chapters nine through twelve are what we have come to expect in every such book: the crunch. Feats, Equipment, Spells, and Prestige classes; 24 pages worth.
The feats are predictable: "You can do this with your tail", "You can do this with your poison", "You can do this with your extra limb", etc.
The Equipment chapter was one I really liked. The tentacle-rods-for-serpents from the magic items portion were underwhelming. So were the Yuan-ti grafts. Yes, that should sound familiar if you have the 3E Fiend Folio. Its nearly a word-for-word reprint, the main new addition seems to be a Caster Level requirement.
What makes this chapter so good are the Osssra oils (yesss, thatsss three esssesss). The oils can be burned, or applied as oils. Further, they have beneficial effects for the serpent-kind, and baneful ones for others. The most extreme example is Ulthalasss oil, which is soaked into the reptilian hide, for one bonus, ignited, providing an additional bonus while dealing damage as flaming oil, creating smoke, allowing comrades to receive the primary bonus, while dealing strength damage to all non-reptilians in an area.
Now that's bang for your buck! or gold piece, I guess.
The Spells chapter is four pages long, and a sparse 4 pages at that. While spells fit the theme, for the most part they are uninspiring and unremarkable.
Prestige classes are almost entirely for Yuan-Ti, there are two exceptions, Serpent Slayer and Naga Overlord. Excepting a Yuan-ti campaign, this doesn't really fall into the area of "useful crunch", at least for players. The Ancient Master is actually one of the better monster prestige classes I have seen, being a sort of Yuan-ti overlord class, being as much an expansion of monster levels as an addition of class levels.
Almost one tenth of this manual (18 pages) consists of four adventures. I don't generally think putting adventures into sourcebooks is a good idea, for several reasons. But then, since WotC doesn't really publish adventures anymore, I guess this gets into the realm of taking what you get. The adventures are generally site-based, and place the antagonists in different roles (i.e. covert versus overt). They also convey a representative sample of the internal conflicts between some of the scaled ones described in the Races section of the manual.
The manual ends in a short appendix with a timeline for the reptilian history of the FR, and tables for serpent deities and serpent character races.
My main problem with this book is the Sarrukh. I really don't care for them as a game-world concept and background element. There are several reasons for this. The first is what this does to the Yuan-ti. The Yuan-ti are essentially one of their slave races along with all the other reptilian races. This characterization does much to diminish (at least in my mind) the mystery and horror the Yuan-ti present. This does "make sense" in that the Sarrukh possess the innate ability to shape the flesh of the lesser serpent races, but that doesn't mean the overall concept is a good one. It basically reduces the poly-anatomical Yuan-ti to "They are that way because the Sarrukh can do that to them at will". Oh my, how exciting.
Another reason I don't like the Sarrukh is the way they fit a certain tiresome pattern when it comes to describing intelligent quasi-humanoid monsters. It was impressed most memorably upon me with the Sahuagin in the Sea Devils supplement. While I liked the treatment of the Sahuagin in general, it featured the theme of "they are superior to humans in every respect", but they just don't care about humans enough to make something of it. This was supposed to make them scary. The theme is nearly identically repeated with the Sarrukh, except this time its superior (and therefore scary) serpent-men, instead of fish-men.
I spite of this, the Sarrakh are interesting at points. They have schizmed into heretics and faithful, and there is a secret war between them, each group fighting to exalt or cast down a deity. So there is some useful stuff here. Personally, I'd just have to re-work it before I could like it.
My other major problem with this manual is that it contains significant portions of what I'd call "ancillary material".
For example, while the ruleset/structure of 3E makes creating stat-blocks a headache, did we really need a dozen more? (This does not include the monsters chapter and adventures chapter). The abundance of statted scaled ones gives the book a scaled-ones' Rogues Gallery feel.
I've already mentioned the monsters chapter. I can understand the desire to reprint the serpent specific material here so that it is compiled for easy reference, but you can only see so much of that before you start getting a certain bad feeling.
I am reluctant to call this "padding", since padding is usually a euphemism for useless crap. Nonetheless, it is difficult to escape the feeling that this manual could have been more tightly structured into 128 or 144 pages. That said, the some of the additional material really could ease running such a campaign.
All art is full color, and most pieces are quite nice. Page 17 shows one of the better instances of serpentine architecture, that of a Yuan-ti house interior. The best portrait type is of the Yuan-ti Mageslayer on page 91 and the Master of Vipers on page 164. Many of the monster depictions are excellent as well. There are also two impressive full-page illustrations.
One piece that seemed rather oddly out-of-place was a picture of a city on page 107. It struck me as more of city from sci-fi rather than historical fantasy.
Overall, the art does a good job of portraying alien serpentine architecture, when it does so, and creating the feeling of the alien world of the scaled ones.
An online gallery of the interior art can be found here:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ag/20040709a
Interestingly, it looks like Saurials were dropped from the book after the art was commissioned.
On the downside of presentation, we once again have a campaign resource with no index. Guess space really was at a premium here. I just don't personally like the how the space judgements were made.
Clearly, if you didn't like the Yuan-ti as they were, and you like having a "Grand Unified Theory" for all reptilian races, then you will like this book, and have more use for it than I did. For myself, portions of it will be of little value.
Thats a long way from saying it has no value though, especially when properly adapted. The Yuan-ti have always been one of my favorite monster races. Their bizarreness, their cultic trappings, and the mystery behind them have always seemed quite ripe for exploitation by a devious DM. The book as a whole does do a good job of covering the feeling of conspiracies and hidden machinations that so characterized them in Howard's stories, if thats what you want. But overall, Serpent Kingdoms gives the reader plenty of additional game tools and background information for any campaign involing the Scaled Ones.
Messageboard Golem
First Post
By John Grigsby, Staff Reviewer d20 Magazine Rack
Initiative Round
Serpent Kingdoms is a Forgotten Realms supplement from Wizards of the Coast. Cover art by Michael Sutfin depicting a pair of adventurers finding more than they bargained for graces the wrap-around cover of this 190-page full-color hardcover by Ed Greenwood, Eric L. Boyd, and Darrin Drader. Kalman Andrasofszky, Thomas Baxa, Dennis Crabapple, Wayne England, Carl Frank, Ralph Horsley, Jim Pavelec, Richard Sardinha, and Joel Thomas contribute to the interior art. Serpent Kingdoms retails for $29.95.
Serpent Kingdoms introduces us to the sarrukh, a progenitor race that once ruled over all of Faerûn. Today, they are all but a memory, but their legacy lives on, in the form of their numerous creations (and a few surviving members of the original race). The naga, the Yuan-ti, and the lizardfolk are the most well-known of these creations, but there are others, sequestered away in dark, forgotten corners. Ideally, the scaled folk would like to see themselves as rulers once more, with all other races as their slaves. Realistically, they know this isn’t going to happen overnight, so they work in secrecy, taking subtle control of small settlements. They are nothing if not infinitely patient…
The first four chapters of Serpent Kingdoms describe, in great detail, the primary creations of the sarrukh; the Yuan-ti, the nagas, the lizards, and the hidden folk. Each chapter is quite lavish in detail, describing the power structure of the race, subraces, deities, specialized equipment and magic, their relation to other races, and also provides a handful of NPCs. The last two chapters, instead of focusing on a single race, describe several lesser scaled races, including the asabi, firenewts, khaastas (lizardfolk native to the Abyss), lizard kings, troglodytes (and their cousins, the brutish trens), the ophidians, and the pterafolk. The following chapter describes the sarrukh themselves, the progenitors that created all of the others.
A quick perusal of the Monster Manual will revela a variety of scaly menaces for use in your campaign, and with the addition of the Monster Manual II, Monster Manual III, Fiend Folio, and Monsters of Faerûn, that number increases greatly. If you still don’t have enough, then Serpent Kingdoms comes to the rescue with 27 creatures that all revolve around a serpentine theme. A few we’ve seen before, such as the banelar naga, but most are fairly new to the scene or are welcome updates from older editions of D&D.
The Realms chapter details some of the most notorious, important, and incredible realms of the Scaled Ones. Each region or locale is described in the same fashion as the realms in the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, with critical details presented at the beginning of the section, the moving on to life and society, major geographical features, important sites, regional history, and plots and rumors. All of this information is firmly set, of course, in the Forgotten Realms.
The next chapter discusses the prospects for using the Yuan-ti as the major villains in a Forgotten Realms campaign. Rather than having hordes of bloodthirsty Yuan-ti overrunning the land, this campaign focuses on subtlety, intrigue, and espionage. This chapter talks about the many ways of handling such a campaign, and also provides some interesting NPCs to help provide something for the PCs to face.
Serpent Kingdoms offers several new feats, almost all of them devoted to scaled races. In fact, very few non Scaled Folk will be able to make any use of these talents, but they will add greatly to a DM’s ability to inflict fear and suffering upon his party. Not so with the new equipment, magic items, and spells, however. At the discretion of the DM, most any of these could be made available to PCs, though they would do well not to let the Scaled Ones find out.
Of the six new prestige classes described in this volume, five are specific to the Scaled Ones. In fact, three are aimed at solely at Yuan-ti, and one is intended for nagas. The ancient master is a Yuan-ti that has concentrated on enhancing its mind even as its body fails, the coiled cabalist is a member of a secret society devoted to mastering arcane magic, the master of vipers is an outcast Yuan-ti that has taken to dwelling among his lesser cousins, and the naga overlord is an evil mastermind among his kind. Fangs of Sseth can be human, but have chosen to serve the evil Yuan-ti deity. Finally, the serpent slayer is a member of a non-scaled race who has devoted his life to taking the fight to the Yuan-ti directly.
A handful of short adventures involving the Scaled Ones precede an appendix that provides all manner of critical information, including the historical eras of great realms of Faerûn, data on the deities of the Scaled Ones, and a table of racial traits for the new races introduced in this volume.
Critical Hit
Though I don’t run the Forgotten Realms, the Yuan-ti play a large role as the villains in my campaign. I’ve long felt that the drow are overused as villains, and I wanted something different, something that would give not only the characters, but their players, the willies. The Yuan-ti filled that bill perfectly. Thus, this book was a dream come true for me. It’s offered me plenty of fodder for my own setting, as well as some valuable insight into allied races of the Yuan-ti.
Critical Fumble
It’s difficult to find something truly bad to say about this book, but if I had to pick a low point, I’d probably say that it was the adventures. Really, who needs them? I write my own (usually) and I’d rather have seen the space used for more spells, prestige classes, or monsters.
Coup de Grace
If your campaign is not set in the Forgotten Realms, then about a third of this material is going to be of questionable use to you. Of course, it’s easy enough to take even an entire realm wholesale and drop it somewhere else. The modular nature of the scattered kingdoms make it easy to place them into any setting with only a minimum of effort. Make no mistake, however, this is a DM’s book. There is very little here that would be of interest or availability to the players, and it should remain that way.
As an aside, though they are not related, Ssethregore: In the Coils of the Serpent Empire makes a fine companion volume to this one. I pity the poor PCs that run afoul of an entire empire populated by the Scaled Ones, even more so if both of these books are used in conjunction with one another.
Final Grade: B+
Initiative Round
Serpent Kingdoms is a Forgotten Realms supplement from Wizards of the Coast. Cover art by Michael Sutfin depicting a pair of adventurers finding more than they bargained for graces the wrap-around cover of this 190-page full-color hardcover by Ed Greenwood, Eric L. Boyd, and Darrin Drader. Kalman Andrasofszky, Thomas Baxa, Dennis Crabapple, Wayne England, Carl Frank, Ralph Horsley, Jim Pavelec, Richard Sardinha, and Joel Thomas contribute to the interior art. Serpent Kingdoms retails for $29.95.
Serpent Kingdoms introduces us to the sarrukh, a progenitor race that once ruled over all of Faerûn. Today, they are all but a memory, but their legacy lives on, in the form of their numerous creations (and a few surviving members of the original race). The naga, the Yuan-ti, and the lizardfolk are the most well-known of these creations, but there are others, sequestered away in dark, forgotten corners. Ideally, the scaled folk would like to see themselves as rulers once more, with all other races as their slaves. Realistically, they know this isn’t going to happen overnight, so they work in secrecy, taking subtle control of small settlements. They are nothing if not infinitely patient…
The first four chapters of Serpent Kingdoms describe, in great detail, the primary creations of the sarrukh; the Yuan-ti, the nagas, the lizards, and the hidden folk. Each chapter is quite lavish in detail, describing the power structure of the race, subraces, deities, specialized equipment and magic, their relation to other races, and also provides a handful of NPCs. The last two chapters, instead of focusing on a single race, describe several lesser scaled races, including the asabi, firenewts, khaastas (lizardfolk native to the Abyss), lizard kings, troglodytes (and their cousins, the brutish trens), the ophidians, and the pterafolk. The following chapter describes the sarrukh themselves, the progenitors that created all of the others.
A quick perusal of the Monster Manual will revela a variety of scaly menaces for use in your campaign, and with the addition of the Monster Manual II, Monster Manual III, Fiend Folio, and Monsters of Faerûn, that number increases greatly. If you still don’t have enough, then Serpent Kingdoms comes to the rescue with 27 creatures that all revolve around a serpentine theme. A few we’ve seen before, such as the banelar naga, but most are fairly new to the scene or are welcome updates from older editions of D&D.
The Realms chapter details some of the most notorious, important, and incredible realms of the Scaled Ones. Each region or locale is described in the same fashion as the realms in the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, with critical details presented at the beginning of the section, the moving on to life and society, major geographical features, important sites, regional history, and plots and rumors. All of this information is firmly set, of course, in the Forgotten Realms.
The next chapter discusses the prospects for using the Yuan-ti as the major villains in a Forgotten Realms campaign. Rather than having hordes of bloodthirsty Yuan-ti overrunning the land, this campaign focuses on subtlety, intrigue, and espionage. This chapter talks about the many ways of handling such a campaign, and also provides some interesting NPCs to help provide something for the PCs to face.
Serpent Kingdoms offers several new feats, almost all of them devoted to scaled races. In fact, very few non Scaled Folk will be able to make any use of these talents, but they will add greatly to a DM’s ability to inflict fear and suffering upon his party. Not so with the new equipment, magic items, and spells, however. At the discretion of the DM, most any of these could be made available to PCs, though they would do well not to let the Scaled Ones find out.
Of the six new prestige classes described in this volume, five are specific to the Scaled Ones. In fact, three are aimed at solely at Yuan-ti, and one is intended for nagas. The ancient master is a Yuan-ti that has concentrated on enhancing its mind even as its body fails, the coiled cabalist is a member of a secret society devoted to mastering arcane magic, the master of vipers is an outcast Yuan-ti that has taken to dwelling among his lesser cousins, and the naga overlord is an evil mastermind among his kind. Fangs of Sseth can be human, but have chosen to serve the evil Yuan-ti deity. Finally, the serpent slayer is a member of a non-scaled race who has devoted his life to taking the fight to the Yuan-ti directly.
A handful of short adventures involving the Scaled Ones precede an appendix that provides all manner of critical information, including the historical eras of great realms of Faerûn, data on the deities of the Scaled Ones, and a table of racial traits for the new races introduced in this volume.
Critical Hit
Though I don’t run the Forgotten Realms, the Yuan-ti play a large role as the villains in my campaign. I’ve long felt that the drow are overused as villains, and I wanted something different, something that would give not only the characters, but their players, the willies. The Yuan-ti filled that bill perfectly. Thus, this book was a dream come true for me. It’s offered me plenty of fodder for my own setting, as well as some valuable insight into allied races of the Yuan-ti.
Critical Fumble
It’s difficult to find something truly bad to say about this book, but if I had to pick a low point, I’d probably say that it was the adventures. Really, who needs them? I write my own (usually) and I’d rather have seen the space used for more spells, prestige classes, or monsters.
Coup de Grace
If your campaign is not set in the Forgotten Realms, then about a third of this material is going to be of questionable use to you. Of course, it’s easy enough to take even an entire realm wholesale and drop it somewhere else. The modular nature of the scattered kingdoms make it easy to place them into any setting with only a minimum of effort. Make no mistake, however, this is a DM’s book. There is very little here that would be of interest or availability to the players, and it should remain that way.
As an aside, though they are not related, Ssethregore: In the Coils of the Serpent Empire makes a fine companion volume to this one. I pity the poor PCs that run afoul of an entire empire populated by the Scaled Ones, even more so if both of these books are used in conjunction with one another.
Final Grade: B+
John Cooper
Explorer
Serpent Kingdoms
By Ed Greenwood, Eric L. Boyd, and Darrin Drader
Wizards of the Coast product number 965660000
192 pages, $29.95
Serpent Kingdoms is one of the many Forgotten Realms-based books looking at a particular area of the world of Faerûn, although this one has a definite racial cast to it, as it focuses on the scaled races like the yuan-ti, nagas, and lizardfolk. It even introduces a new "progenitor race" in the sarrukh, which is responsible (in the Forgotten Realms, at least) for the creation of many of the scaled races that populate many game worlds.
The cover carries on the "Forgotten Realms look" (one that I heartily approve of), combining the best aspects of both the "feature a painting on the cover" and "make the cover look like an actual tome" camps. While it has the typical leather-bound tome look of all Forgotten Realms books (including leather stitching along the edges), we also get a nice wrap-around painting of the subject matter at hand. On the front, a sarrukh is presented two captives - presumably a human male sorcerer and a female elf ranger, judging by their attire (and nice socks there, sorcerer!) - by a pair of lizardfolk. One the back we get a green-skinned, female yuan-ti holding a staff, with ruins behind her - and if you look closely, what appears to be a male halfling, presumably a companion to the two captives on the front, apparently thinking to himself "Crap! How am I going to rescue those two now?" It's a very nicely done piece, with nice color schemes and great detail, and some of the absolutely best depictions of lizardfolk I've ever seen. Congratulations to cover artist Michael Sutfin on a job well done! The little details really help sell the work: the snakes slithering along the steps in front of the sarrukh, the serpent motif in the crumbling walls of the background, the excellent scale patterns on the reptilian figures. One thing worth pointing out, though, is that this painting differs from most of the other Forgotten Realms cover paintings in that it looks like a painted panel of a comic book rather than a "standard" painting. By that, I mean that the figures look to have all been penciled, inked, and then colored - there are black lines "outlining" all of the figures like you would find in a comic book panel. Not that this is a complaint by any means; the end result is still a striking piece of artwork.
As for the interior art, it consists of 54 full-color paintings (2 of them full-page works, like in the old AD&D 2nd Edition days!) 13 monochrome symbols as chapter headers, and 4 maps by 9 different artists. The artwork is for the most part very well done; I was especially pleased to see that all of the new monsters got an illustration, as did the prestige classes. Furthermore, the monster illustrations all matched well with their written descriptions, which is very high up my own personal list of importance. Not all of the pictures are real winners, though - I wish WotC would drop Dennis Crabapple from their roster of artists, for one, as his work here is at his typically low standard. However, excellent pieces like "the lizard king's feast" on page 43, "the Serpent Sibyl" on page 141, and "yuan-ti house interior" on page 17 (with the reclining yuan-ti bathing in the bowl) help to bring the overall average up. I also wanted to point out that the illustration of the city of Ss'kowlyn'raa on page 107 looks surprisingly modern, if not futuristic - in any case, it looks a bit out of place. Finally, it would have been nice to have the artists' names along the outer edges of the page (like was done with the core rulebooks) for those works that didn't include the artist's initials, so you could tell who did what.
Serpent Kingdoms is laid out as follows:
There are many other things in this book that have been "updated" since the early days of the Forgotten Realms. I notice that the main naga-god, Shekinester, now has five aspects, upgraded from "her" original three. (This is because there are now five main naga races, the four from the Monster Manual and the iridescent naga featured in this book. That surprised me: I had been sure that the "coral naga" from the Wizards of the Coast website would have made an appearance in this book.) I put "her" in quotes a few sentences ago because now all nagas are hermaphroditic; that used to be a feature of just the dark nagas. They also threw out a few incidental facts about the names of groups of creatures, which I found amusing. You know how you have a school of fish, a pride of lions, and a herd of cows? Well, apparently, a group of stirges is called a "thirst," and a group of galeb duhrs (the "rock" equivalent of a treant) is called a "tumble." I found that to be highly amusing.
As for the editing and proofreading, once again the jobs done here could have been much better. It wasn't terrible, just disappointing in a book from the leading RPG company in the world. There were numerous examples of words not being capitalized when they should have been (size categories, the first word in a sentence), spell names not being italicized, missing words in a sentence, extraneous words in a sentence, incorrect pluralization ("naga" is now pluralized normally, as "nagas"), incorrectly attributing items from other books (arms of the naga is from Savage Species, not Magic of Faerûn), incorrect hyphenation of words broken between two sentences, misspelled words and typos ("locothah" instead of "locathah," "the" instead of "they," "striderx" instead of "strider," "theri" instead of "their," "hte" instead of "the" - those last two in the same sentence!), improper comma usage, missing spaces causing unintentional compound words ("magesemploying"), incorrect verb tenses, incorrect apostrophe usage (sadly, this seems like it's becoming a lost skill), one in a set of quotation marks conspicuous in its absence, a five-digit number lost one of its zeroes ("-31,00"), and a couple of places where a title heading was not in bold. Also, for no apparent reason, halfway through the book "yuan-ti" starts to get capitalized in mid-sentence for no reason as many times as not. Again, in most cases it wasn't difficult to figure out what was meant, but I imagine any English teachers reading through Serpent Kingdoms would have been sorely tempted to whip out their red pens!
Then there are the monster stats. I know that many people read my reviews specifically to grab up the "instant errata." I'll do them one better this time, since WotC has already posted Serpent Kingdoms errata on their website. Here's what they already found wrong with their book:
A few final things bothered me about Serpent Kingdoms. To start with, much of the material was taken from uncredited sources. I know I'd seen the scent spell somewhere before; after some digging, I found it in Magic of Faerûn. However, repeating information in a Forgotten Realms book that originally appeared in a different Forgotten Realms book is one thing, taking material from Dragon magazine "Ecology" articles is another. Paul Culotta's "Ecology of the Firenewt and Giant Strider" first introduced the "hammer and anvil" attack strategy employed by firenewt raiders, as well as the lava splash spell (and probably the erupt and lava missile spells as well, although I don't have that issue handy to double-check; I do recall there being three spells in his article, though). Jonathan Richards' "Ecology of the Amphisbaena" is where the two-headed snake first got its pit viper horns (to aid in molting) and first moved by sidewinding. I'm sure these two are pleased that their material is now "official," and would have been thrilled to have their work mentioned on the credits page. There were also a few things that were mentioned with no reference as to where to find further details. Yurians are mentioned in passing on page 117; despite owning the Fiend Folio, I had no recollection of these lobster-men (and looking over their FF entry, it's no wonder - they're eminently forgettable creatures). The "Deities of the Scaled Ones" has entries on the table, but no paragraphs of description, for Laogzed, Sebek, or Sess'inek. My final gripe (and this one is just personal): names like "Ss'dath'in'ssatath," "Ss'that'tiss'ssun," "Ss'kowlyn'raa," "sssartisss," "ts'ous," and "osssra" really started to get on my nerves after awhile. Yes, I get it that serpent races would have many sibilant sounds in their language, but enough's enough already!
Still, despite my rather intimidating list of nit-picks, I still overall liked Serpent Kingdoms. Of course, it helps that I'm a monster fan, and the new monsters appearing in the book are for the most part pretty impressive. (It's kind of a shame that dinosaur fans only get new dinosaur stats in small doses in WotC books, though! The pteranodon made sense here, since pterafolk can polymorph into pteranodons, but the ceratosaur and stegosaurus seemed a bit like non-related filler.) The discussions on the various scaled races were very well done, and made a lot of sense. The feats, spells, equipment, and prestige classes were all logical and for the most part very well thought out, and I really liked the four adventures presented; unlike many adventures that come across as "filler," these are all relevant and look like fun "Side Trek"-length short scenarios each good for a night's game session. (One slight disappointment: I would have liked to have seen a wider spread of party level; as it is, three of the four fall into the 6th-7th level range.) And while I already mentioned my feelings on the 42 pages of "Realms" material, I really can't fault a Forgotten Realms book for going into so much detail about the Forgotten Realms - in fact, despite my own personal preference on the matter, as a reviewer I'd have to fault a Forgotten Realms book for not going into so much detail!
All together, I put Serpent Kingdoms in the high "3 (Average)"/low "4 (Good)." Despite its problems, I think the book is a valuable enough tool that I'm going to bump it into the higher category. While primarily of use to DMs whose campaigns are set in the Forgotten Realms, Serpent Kingdoms would be a valuable addition to any DM looking to focus on the Scaled Ones.
By Ed Greenwood, Eric L. Boyd, and Darrin Drader
Wizards of the Coast product number 965660000
192 pages, $29.95
Serpent Kingdoms is one of the many Forgotten Realms-based books looking at a particular area of the world of Faerûn, although this one has a definite racial cast to it, as it focuses on the scaled races like the yuan-ti, nagas, and lizardfolk. It even introduces a new "progenitor race" in the sarrukh, which is responsible (in the Forgotten Realms, at least) for the creation of many of the scaled races that populate many game worlds.
The cover carries on the "Forgotten Realms look" (one that I heartily approve of), combining the best aspects of both the "feature a painting on the cover" and "make the cover look like an actual tome" camps. While it has the typical leather-bound tome look of all Forgotten Realms books (including leather stitching along the edges), we also get a nice wrap-around painting of the subject matter at hand. On the front, a sarrukh is presented two captives - presumably a human male sorcerer and a female elf ranger, judging by their attire (and nice socks there, sorcerer!) - by a pair of lizardfolk. One the back we get a green-skinned, female yuan-ti holding a staff, with ruins behind her - and if you look closely, what appears to be a male halfling, presumably a companion to the two captives on the front, apparently thinking to himself "Crap! How am I going to rescue those two now?" It's a very nicely done piece, with nice color schemes and great detail, and some of the absolutely best depictions of lizardfolk I've ever seen. Congratulations to cover artist Michael Sutfin on a job well done! The little details really help sell the work: the snakes slithering along the steps in front of the sarrukh, the serpent motif in the crumbling walls of the background, the excellent scale patterns on the reptilian figures. One thing worth pointing out, though, is that this painting differs from most of the other Forgotten Realms cover paintings in that it looks like a painted panel of a comic book rather than a "standard" painting. By that, I mean that the figures look to have all been penciled, inked, and then colored - there are black lines "outlining" all of the figures like you would find in a comic book panel. Not that this is a complaint by any means; the end result is still a striking piece of artwork.
As for the interior art, it consists of 54 full-color paintings (2 of them full-page works, like in the old AD&D 2nd Edition days!) 13 monochrome symbols as chapter headers, and 4 maps by 9 different artists. The artwork is for the most part very well done; I was especially pleased to see that all of the new monsters got an illustration, as did the prestige classes. Furthermore, the monster illustrations all matched well with their written descriptions, which is very high up my own personal list of importance. Not all of the pictures are real winners, though - I wish WotC would drop Dennis Crabapple from their roster of artists, for one, as his work here is at his typically low standard. However, excellent pieces like "the lizard king's feast" on page 43, "the Serpent Sibyl" on page 141, and "yuan-ti house interior" on page 17 (with the reclining yuan-ti bathing in the bowl) help to bring the overall average up. I also wanted to point out that the illustration of the city of Ss'kowlyn'raa on page 107 looks surprisingly modern, if not futuristic - in any case, it looks a bit out of place. Finally, it would have been nice to have the artists' names along the outer edges of the page (like was done with the core rulebooks) for those works that didn't include the artist's initials, so you could tell who did what.
Serpent Kingdoms is laid out as follows:
- Introduction: A short introduction to the material in this book, including helpful lists of abbreviations of other books referenced, as well as the different terms used to denote types of scaled creatures (and in which books to find them, using the abbreviations just mentioned).
- Yuan-ti: Details of the different types of yuan-ti (purebloods, halfbloods, abominations, anathemas, tainted ones, broodguards, mageslayers, and holy guardians), their racial history, outlook, society (including 7 different yuan-ti "Houses"), yuan-ti characters, magic, deities, relationships with other races, equipment, encounters, and 2 fully-statted NPCs ready for immediate use.
- Nagas: Details of the different types of naga (dark nagas, guardian nagas, iridescent nagas, spirit nagas, water nagas, banelar nagas, bone nagas, Faerûnian ha-nagas, and nagahydras), their racial history, outlook, society, naga characters, magic, deities, relationships with other races, equipment, encounters, and 3 fully-statted NPCs ready for immediate use.
- Lizards: Details on the various lizardlike intelligent races (asabis, firenewts and their giant strider mounts, khaastas, lizard kings, troglodytes, and trens), each with further racial sections on each creature's outlook, history, society, characters, magic, deities, relations with other races, and equipment, plus a firenewt NPC.
- Hidden Folk: Details on those lizardlike intelligent races that fall outside of normal Serpent Kingdom society (ophidians and pterafolk), each with sections on racial history, outlook, society, characters, magic, deities, relations with other races, equipment, plus a pterafolk NPC.
- Sarrukh: Details on the sarrukh, including sections on racial history, outlook, society, characters, magic, deities, relations with other races, equipment, encounters, plus a sarrukh NPC.
- Monsters: 27 new monsters, one of them (the bone naga) a template.
- Realms: 42 pages of Forgotten Realms-specific campaign world information, separated by geographical area, each detailing life/society, major geographical features, important sites, regional history, and several plots and rumors.
- Yuan-ti Campaign: How to make the yuan-ti a central (but often behind-the-scenes) enemy in a campaign, with 3 ready-to-use NPCs.
- Feats: 28 new feats, most of them for monstrous races like yuan-ti and nagas.
- Equipment: 3 types of armor, a new weapon, a special substance, 15 poisons, a weapon quality, 3 magic weapons, 2 rings, 3 wondrous items, 3 major artifacts, and 5 yuan-ti grafts.
- Spells: 14 new spells, mostly used by the reptilian races in this book.
- Prestige Classes: 6 prestige classes, 5 for various Scaled Ones and one for those devoted to fighting them.
- Adventures: 4 short adventures, for PCs of levels 6, 7, 7 (again), and 13.
- Appendix: Historical Eras of Faerûn (which kingdoms were active when), Deities of the Scaled Ones (short descriptions of 10 reptilian deities), and 2 tables of racial traits (handy for the DM to see all of the various stat features of the main reptilian creatures in this book).
There are many other things in this book that have been "updated" since the early days of the Forgotten Realms. I notice that the main naga-god, Shekinester, now has five aspects, upgraded from "her" original three. (This is because there are now five main naga races, the four from the Monster Manual and the iridescent naga featured in this book. That surprised me: I had been sure that the "coral naga" from the Wizards of the Coast website would have made an appearance in this book.) I put "her" in quotes a few sentences ago because now all nagas are hermaphroditic; that used to be a feature of just the dark nagas. They also threw out a few incidental facts about the names of groups of creatures, which I found amusing. You know how you have a school of fish, a pride of lions, and a herd of cows? Well, apparently, a group of stirges is called a "thirst," and a group of galeb duhrs (the "rock" equivalent of a treant) is called a "tumble." I found that to be highly amusing.
As for the editing and proofreading, once again the jobs done here could have been much better. It wasn't terrible, just disappointing in a book from the leading RPG company in the world. There were numerous examples of words not being capitalized when they should have been (size categories, the first word in a sentence), spell names not being italicized, missing words in a sentence, extraneous words in a sentence, incorrect pluralization ("naga" is now pluralized normally, as "nagas"), incorrectly attributing items from other books (arms of the naga is from Savage Species, not Magic of Faerûn), incorrect hyphenation of words broken between two sentences, misspelled words and typos ("locothah" instead of "locathah," "the" instead of "they," "striderx" instead of "strider," "theri" instead of "their," "hte" instead of "the" - those last two in the same sentence!), improper comma usage, missing spaces causing unintentional compound words ("magesemploying"), incorrect verb tenses, incorrect apostrophe usage (sadly, this seems like it's becoming a lost skill), one in a set of quotation marks conspicuous in its absence, a five-digit number lost one of its zeroes ("-31,00"), and a couple of places where a title heading was not in bold. Also, for no apparent reason, halfway through the book "yuan-ti" starts to get capitalized in mid-sentence for no reason as many times as not. Again, in most cases it wasn't difficult to figure out what was meant, but I imagine any English teachers reading through Serpent Kingdoms would have been sorely tempted to whip out their red pens!
Then there are the monster stats. I know that many people read my reviews specifically to grab up the "instant errata." I'll do them one better this time, since WotC has already posted Serpent Kingdoms errata on their website. Here's what they already found wrong with their book:
- p. 31, Terpenzi's Stat Block: Terpenzi, the Guardian of Najara, should have a Constitution score of -. This change affects Terpenzi's hit points (221 hp instead of 595 hp), Fortitude save modifier (+13 instead of +24), and Concentration check modifier (+27 instead of +38).
- p. 48, Chassan's Stat Block: Chassan, as written, has both immunity to cold and vulnerability to cold. Delete the reference to "vulnerability to cold" in Chassan's stat block.
- p. 141, The Serpent Sibyl's Stat Block: The Serpent Sibyl's stat block contains an error. Under Full Atk, the bite damage should be 2d6+4, not 1d8+4.
- p. 158, Venomfire Spell: The venomfire spell has two Saving Throw lines. Delete the second line that says "Saving Throw: None."
- p. 162, Fang of Sseth Prestige Class: The fang of Sseth prestige class should gain a number of skill points each level equal to 8 + Int modifier (not 2 + Int modifier, as indicated).
- p. 29, Maharishi, Seer of Procalith, guardian naga sorcerer 6/loremaster 9: Base Attack Bonus should be +15, not +18 (+8 as a guardian naga, +3 as a Sorcerer 6, +4 as a Loremaster 9). Grapple attacks should be at +25, not +27 (+15 BAB, +4 size, +5 Str, +1 loremaster weapon trick). Bite attacks should be at +20 melee, not +23 (+15 BAB, -1 size, +5 Str, +1 loremaster weapon trick). Poison spit attacks should be at +16 ranged touch, not +19 (+15 BAB, -1 size, +2 Dex). Fortitude save modifier should be +14, not +17 (+7 as a guardian naga, +2 as a Sorcerer 6, +3 as a Loremaster 9, +2 from lore of true stamina). Reflex save modifier should be +16, not +17 (+7 as a guardian naga, +2 as a Sorcerer 6, +3 as a Loremaster 9, +2 from secret knowledge of avoidance, +2 from Lightning Reflexes). Will save modifier should be +22, not +25 (+11 as a guardian naga, +5 as a Sorcerer 6, +6 as a Loremaster 9). Finally, under "Spells," Maharishi should cast spells as a 15th-level sorcerer, not 9th (9th for being a guardian naga, plus 6 more levels as a sorcerer).
- p. 30, Ebarnaje, King of Najara, advanced dark naga sorcerer 3/naga overlord 5: Base Attack Bonus should be +22, not +28 (+18 as a 24-HD aberration, +1 for sorcerer 3, +3 for naga overlord 5). Grapple attacks should be at +36, not +32 (+22 BAB, +8 size, +6 Str). Bastard sword attacks should be at +29/+24/+19/+14 melee, not +25/+20/+15/+10 (+22 BAB, -2 size, +6 Str, +3 magic weapon bonus). Eschew Materials should be annotated as a bonus feat.
- p. 31, Terpenzi, the Guardian of Najara, bone Faerûnian ha-naga naga overlord 10:Base Attack Bonus should be +25, not +23 (+18 as a ha-naga, +7 as a naga overlord 10). Grapple attacks should be at +49, not +47 (+25 BAB, +16 size, +8 Str). Coil whip attacks should be at +36 melee, not +34 (+25 BAB, -8 size, +14 Dex due to Weapon Finesse, +5 from +5 amulet of mighty fists). Sting attacks should be at +34 melee, not +32 (same as previous, but with a -2 penalty due to being a secondary attack with Multiattack). Sting damage should not include poison (ha-nagas have poisonous stings, but the bone naga template removes sting poison and adds a poison bite). Bite attacks should be at +34 melee, not +32. There's no Full Atk entry; the Full Atk should be what's listed as the Atk (and the Atk should just be the coil whip attack). SQ shouldn't include chameleon ability, as that comes from a ha-naga's scales, and a bone naga has no scales.
- p. 53, K'rr'zaalt, male pterrafolk cleric 8 of Shekinester: With 12 HD, he should have 5 feats, not 6 - one should be annotated as a bonus feat.
- p. 53, Vassk, male ophidian barbarian 10: Flat-footed AC should be 22, not 18 (he keeps his Dex modifier even when flat-footed as a result of his uncanny dodge). With 13 HD, he should have 5 feats, not just 4.
- p. 61, Pil'it'ith, male sarrukh cleric 15 of Set: Base Attack Bonus should be +25, not +18 (+14 as a 14-HD monstrous humanoid, +11 as a 15th-level cleric). Grapple attacks should be at +30, not +23 (+25 BAB, +5 Str). Claw attacks should be at +30 melee, not +28 (+25 BAB, +5 Str). Longspear attacks should be at +34 melee, not +28 (+25 BAB, +5 Str, +4 magic weapon bonus). He shouldn't get a secondary bite attack under "Atk." However, under "Full Atk," bite attacks should be at +25 melee, not +23 (+25 BAB, +5 Str, -5 for secondary attack), and longspear attacks should be at +34/+29/+24/+19 melee, not +28/+23/+18/+13. Also, the illustration of Pil'it'ith on page 60 is inaccurate, as the creature should be depicted as an albino; those green scales definitely do not belong.
- p. 65, Pteranodon: It has 3 HD, yet Advancement is "6-10 HD (Large)." What happened to 4-5 HD?
- p. 66, Stegosaurus: Hit Dice should be 18d8+183, not 18d10+183 (Animals have d8s as Hit Dice; oddly enough, the average hit points are correct as listed at 264, though). No Level Adjustment given; should be "-"
- p. 66, Jaculi: Under "Speed," 30 ft. does not equal 4 squares; it should either be "30 ft. (6 squares)" or "20 ft. (4 squares)" - take your pick. (I'd recommend 20 ft., the same as a Medium viper as listed in the Monster Manual.) Flat-footed AC should be 13, not 16 (+3 natural - it doesn't get the +3 Dex modifier when flat-footed). Finally, if the animal trance special ability keeps prey motionless (as described), how can it be used to "lure small birds or furred forest creatures into a nest or den" as listed in the "Combat" section?
- p. 74, 6th-level Dark Naga Sorcerer Bone Naga: With HD 9d12+6d12, average hit points should be 90, not 58. Sting attacks should be at +10 melee, not +12 (+9 BAB, -1 size, +2 Str). Bite attacks should be at +5 melee, not +7 (+9 BAB, -1 size, +2 Str, -5 for secondary attack). Poison Fortitude save should be DC 18 (using only racial HD) or DC 21 (using both racial and class level), not DC 17. Spell Resistance should be 26, not 25 (CR+11, or in this case 15+11).
- p. 77, Nagahydra: Hit Dice should be 18d8+93, not 18d8+90 (+3 hp from the Toughness feat). Full Atk should list 5 bites, not 7 - one for each of the creature's five heads.
- p. 79, Nifern: With HD 2d8+4, average hit points should be 13, not 10. Also, the illustration shows the creature with eyes, even though the description of the nifern says it's eyeless.
- p. 81, Serpentflesh Golem: Hit Dice should be 11d10+30, not just 11d10 (Large constructs get 30 bonus hit points).
- p. 84, Glacier Snake: Grapple attacks should be at +4, not +0 (+1 BAB, +3 Str).
- p. 86, Tree Python: Flat-footed AC should be 13, not 16 (+3 natural - it doesn't get the +3 Dex bonus when flat-footed).
- pp. 88-89, Yuan-ti Holy Guardian: Masterwork scimitar attacks should be at +13 melee (+13/+8 melee under "Full Atk"), not +12 (or +12/+7) (+8 BAB, +4 Str, +1 masterwork bonus). Masterwork scimitar damage should be 1d6+4, not 1d6+2 (+4 Str bonus). Masterwork composite bow attacks should be at +10 melee (or +10/+5 under "Full Atk"), not +9 (or +9/+4) (+8 BAB, +1 Dex, +1 masterwork bonus).
- p. 90, Yuan-ti Mageslayer: With HD 8d8+16, average hit points should be 52, not 40. Bite attacks should be at +7 melee, not +5 (+8 BAB, +4 Str, -5 for secondary attack).
- p. 143, Nhyris D'Hothek, male pureblood yuan-ti fighter 3/horned harbinger 1: Scimitar attacks should be at +14 melee, not +12 (+9 BAB, +2 Str, +2 magic weapon bonus, +1 Weapon Focus). Longbow attacks should be at +13/+8 ranged, not +11/+6 (+9 BAB, +2 Dex, +2 magic weapon bonus). Longbow damage should be 1d8+4/x3, not 1d8+2/x3 (+2 Str bonus, +2 magic longbow).
- p. 152, Scourge of Fangs Serpent Lash: Serpent lash damage should be 1d2, not 1d2-2 (-2 Str, +2 magic weapon bonus).
- p. 172, Duskar Flamehaern, male human adept 7: Initiative should be +2, not +4 (+2 Dex).
- p. 172, Esvele, Lhareene, and Rowan Flamehaern, female human tainted one Rogue 5: Short sword attacks should be at +6 melee, not +3 (+3 BAB, +1 magic weapon bonus, +2 Dex due to Weapon Finesse). Alertness should be annotated as a bonus feat (as per the "tainted one" template).
- p. 174, Hendar "Swordshatter" Lhorghin, male Vaasan human fighter 5: As a 5th-level human fighter, Hendar should have 6 feats, not just 4 (one as a human, 2 more as a 5th-level character, and 3 bonus fighter feats).
- p. 183, Prisoners, human Commoner 5: As 5th-level human commoners, these guys should have 3 feats, not 4 (one for being a human, and 2 more for being a 5th-level character).
- pp. 184-185, Kha'ghassta, male lizard king barbarian 2: AC should be 27, not 25 (+5 Dex, +6 natural, +6 +1 breastplate). The same goes for flat-footed AC, since he gets to keep his Dex modifier when flat-footed thanks to his uncanny dodge. Touch AC should be 15, not 13 (+5 Dex). When raging, his normal and flat-footed AC should be 25, not 23, and his touch AC should be 13, not 11.
A few final things bothered me about Serpent Kingdoms. To start with, much of the material was taken from uncredited sources. I know I'd seen the scent spell somewhere before; after some digging, I found it in Magic of Faerûn. However, repeating information in a Forgotten Realms book that originally appeared in a different Forgotten Realms book is one thing, taking material from Dragon magazine "Ecology" articles is another. Paul Culotta's "Ecology of the Firenewt and Giant Strider" first introduced the "hammer and anvil" attack strategy employed by firenewt raiders, as well as the lava splash spell (and probably the erupt and lava missile spells as well, although I don't have that issue handy to double-check; I do recall there being three spells in his article, though). Jonathan Richards' "Ecology of the Amphisbaena" is where the two-headed snake first got its pit viper horns (to aid in molting) and first moved by sidewinding. I'm sure these two are pleased that their material is now "official," and would have been thrilled to have their work mentioned on the credits page. There were also a few things that were mentioned with no reference as to where to find further details. Yurians are mentioned in passing on page 117; despite owning the Fiend Folio, I had no recollection of these lobster-men (and looking over their FF entry, it's no wonder - they're eminently forgettable creatures). The "Deities of the Scaled Ones" has entries on the table, but no paragraphs of description, for Laogzed, Sebek, or Sess'inek. My final gripe (and this one is just personal): names like "Ss'dath'in'ssatath," "Ss'that'tiss'ssun," "Ss'kowlyn'raa," "sssartisss," "ts'ous," and "osssra" really started to get on my nerves after awhile. Yes, I get it that serpent races would have many sibilant sounds in their language, but enough's enough already!
Still, despite my rather intimidating list of nit-picks, I still overall liked Serpent Kingdoms. Of course, it helps that I'm a monster fan, and the new monsters appearing in the book are for the most part pretty impressive. (It's kind of a shame that dinosaur fans only get new dinosaur stats in small doses in WotC books, though! The pteranodon made sense here, since pterafolk can polymorph into pteranodons, but the ceratosaur and stegosaurus seemed a bit like non-related filler.) The discussions on the various scaled races were very well done, and made a lot of sense. The feats, spells, equipment, and prestige classes were all logical and for the most part very well thought out, and I really liked the four adventures presented; unlike many adventures that come across as "filler," these are all relevant and look like fun "Side Trek"-length short scenarios each good for a night's game session. (One slight disappointment: I would have liked to have seen a wider spread of party level; as it is, three of the four fall into the 6th-7th level range.) And while I already mentioned my feelings on the 42 pages of "Realms" material, I really can't fault a Forgotten Realms book for going into so much detail about the Forgotten Realms - in fact, despite my own personal preference on the matter, as a reviewer I'd have to fault a Forgotten Realms book for not going into so much detail!
All together, I put Serpent Kingdoms in the high "3 (Average)"/low "4 (Good)." Despite its problems, I think the book is a valuable enough tool that I'm going to bump it into the higher category. While primarily of use to DMs whose campaigns are set in the Forgotten Realms, Serpent Kingdoms would be a valuable addition to any DM looking to focus on the Scaled Ones.
Vigwyn the Unruly
First Post
I was really looking forward to this book for several reasons. First, the Forgotten Realms line has seen some of the best work that WotC has released for D&D (the FRCS and Silver Marches are both extremely good—if you don’t own them yet, go buy them now). Second, the designers were promising. Ed Greenwood, of course, is a legend and a creative genius. Darrin Drader wrote a nice little 3rd level adventure I really enjoyed running (Dry Spell, available as a free download on the WotC site). Third, I have loved scaly creatures ever since I played against the lizard men of 1e as a young child.
Unfortunately, while there are some nice and interesting things in this book, it was a very disappointing purchase overall.
The Bad:
The first part of this book consists of a detailed examination of the different scaled ones, their history in the Forgotten Realms, and their relationships to one another. The biggest new thing here is the introduction of the sarrukh as a progenitor race for most of the scaled ones on Toril. This is the major theme tying the first part of the book together.
This entire section of the book is very uninspiring, and mostly just frustrating and disappointing. It feels forced and tortuous. It is almost as if the designers were given the task of coming up with a back-story that would tie all the scaled ones together, and this was the best they could come up with off the tops of their heads. The only thing I will use from this part of the book is some of the background info on the yuan-ti.
Something that was a serious disappointment was the fact that so many of the important monsters in this section of the book come with no stat-blocks or write-ups. Instead, you have to refer back to the Monsters of Faerun or the Fiend Folio. So, to properly use this book, you will also need to own the Monsters of Faerun and the Fiend Folio—and, oh yeah—the web enhancements that update the monsters from those other two books to 3.5e. I mean, seriously, this is exactly the kind of thing that people hated about 2e. The write-ups and stat blocks for these monsters, updated for 3.5e, should have been included in this book.
A major problem with the book has to do with the sarrukh. They are supposed to be an “extraordinarily powerful” progenitor race according to the flavor text. In fact, in discussing the idea of playing sarrukh as characters, the book actually says, “all sarrukh with class levels are automatically epic-level characters.” When you turn to the new monsters section, the sarrukh stat block backs this up with a CR of 21. However, reading the actual abilities and special attacks/qualities leaves one to wonder how they came up with CR 21. This CR seems to be very inflated, and a CR of 11 or 12 is probably more appropriate for this monster as it is currently written. Moreover, the Appendix lists their level adjustment as +8!? Things like this usually don’t bother me that much (hey, mistakes happen), but given that the sarrukh constitute the major unifying theme of the book, this dichotomy is a huge and embarrassing flaw. The DM has to either figure out why the sarrukh are so weak now, and somehow weave that into the rest of the back-story, or beef them up. That’s not my job, it’s the job of the designers.
I used to look forward to the artwork in the 3e Forgotten Realms products. The art in this book is mostly pretty bad, though there are some notable exceptions. Some of the worst pieces were turned out by Kalman Andrasofszky; I’m hardly ever a fan of computer generated artwork, and these are actually pixilated—in a print product that just looks cheap. Some of the best pieces in the book were produced by Wayne England, who continues to put out consistently good artwork. Most of the other artists fall into the middle category: they turned out some really nice pieces, but just as many or more poor ones. This group includes Jeremy Jarvis, Thomas Baxa, and Richard Sardinha. I hope that the art directors at WotC will start to be a little more selective in terms of the pieces they accept from these artists. (The full page pieces in this book are a pet peeve of mine; they break up the “old book on parchment” feel of the FR products, and they look like ads.)
Once again, there was no index. Now, a lot of people seem not to mind the lack of an index as long as there is a good table of contents. I am not one of them. I want to be able to use my source books like reference works. They should have an index, and preferably an extensive one like in the FRCS.
The book also lacks maps. The only maps are of very specific small locations (such as a temple or a ruin) in the short “adventures” at the end of the book. I think that a lot of the fun of D&D is in the cartography. What’s more, 3e Forgotten Realms maps have been very nice. You can spend lots of time just looking them over and imagining what it’s like there. Unfortunately, you won’t get that in this book. Maps of the important areas in this book should have been included; specifically, a pull-out map of the Chultan peninsula would have been nice, along with a detailed map of the Najara region, including the Serpent Hills and the Forest of Wyrms.
The feats, PrCs, and spells in this book are all pretty pedestrian. In addition, they are mostly for DM use. You probably won’t use them at all unless you’re inspired to write a scaly themed adventure or campaign, and unfortunately, this book won’t inspire you. PCs will only be able to use most of them if you allow scaled ones as characters.
By far, the biggest problem with this book is that it was poorly edited. This is manifested in a variety of ways. Most obvious are things like frequent misspellings and failure to consistently stick to standard WotC style (such as sometimes not italicizing spells). However, the major problem is the failure to pull the book together as a coherent whole. It reads more like a collection of disorganized notes than a polished final product. This leads to reader confusion and frustration. Even some minor organizational touches would have helped. For example, the book introduces several yuan-ti words, but they are scattered throughout the chapter on yuan-ti. So if you run across the term vrael olo later in the book and you have forgotten what it means, good luck finding it. A table of new words (such as for Draconic in the Draconomicon) would have been very helpful here, as would an index—ahem. This book would have benefited greatly from a strong editorial hand.
The Good:
Once again, Ed Greenwood and crew have come up with a bunch of evocative place descriptions. This is what I really like about the Forgotten Realms—they are just full of interesting places. The chapter on geographical locations is laid out in a format that will be familiar to any readers of 3e FR products. This chapter is a joy to read, and is the only really inspiring part of the book. More, more, give us more. Once again, though, this part of the book would have benefited from some maps.
The book does a pretty good job of fleshing out the yuan-ti. There is a ton of information on their lifestyle, organization, outlook, etc. An entire chapter is devoted to this, and an additional chapter is devoted to ideas and advice for running a yuan-ti based campaign. I think this is the most useful aspect of the book. Much of this could be fairly easily disentangled from the rest of the book and used in basically any campaign setting and without the rest of the sarrukh-based scheme.
The book contains a number of short “adventures” that are really more like detailed location descriptions with ready-made NPCs and maps. In addition, there are many ready-to-use NPCs scattered throughout the book. I have to give WotC kudos on this. I really love getting interesting NPCs, monsters with class levels, advanced monsters, etc., in my books. After all, I buy books so I won’t have to do all of the work myself, and this kind of thing really increases the value of a book. Give me a bunch already made and rules to make more of my own if I want them. Unfortunately, most of the NPCs in the book suffer from being too powerful. One or two very powerful NPCs is OK, because they can be used as background, plothooks, etc., but please give me a bunch that my players can actually defeat or use as less powerful allies.
As always, the physical quality of the book is very good. The pages are of a nice thick stock with a glossy finish. The binding is intact and feels solid. The cover is the standard 3e FR cover, which I like. I want to give WotC kudos here. Many publishers skimp on the physical part of the book and it shows. However, WotC consistently puts out a physically beautiful book with a solid, quality feel. Even though I probably won’t use this book much, I’m proud to have it on my shelf.
Many of the new monsters in this book are pretty cool. There are two things I like to see in collections of monsters. First, give me a lot of low level monsters. They are useful as solo encounters against low level PCs, and as minions or in larger groups against higher level PCs. We need a wider variety of these monsters in D&D. Second, I like to see monsters with interesting special attacks and special qualities. This book has a good selection of both. (As an aside, Monster Manual III also has a bunch of good monsters in it—if you don’t own it yet, you should buy it.)
Finally, the six-page Appendix is very nice. It contains a list of historical eras of the Forgotten Realms, details on the deities of the scaled ones (including a “pantheon-style” table), and a table of racial traits for scaled ones. This last bit is especially useful for PCs. It contains info on 13 scaled ones suitable for use as PCs, including several monsters from other sources (e.g., Monsters of Faerun and Fiend Folio).
Conclusion:
While there are some very nice things in this book, all-in-all it is a pretty big disappointment for me. I almost wrote that I wish I had my $29.95 back. But what I really wish is that this project had been done right. The attempt to tie all of the scaled ones together was completely unnecessary; moreover, it was poorly executed. Unfortunately, I guess it is now “canon” and will become part of FR history.
I would like to give this book a 2.5, meaning that it is a poor book overall, but with some good bits and pieces. However, there is no 2.5 option, so in the grand tradition of D&D I am rounding down.
Unfortunately, while there are some nice and interesting things in this book, it was a very disappointing purchase overall.
The Bad:
The first part of this book consists of a detailed examination of the different scaled ones, their history in the Forgotten Realms, and their relationships to one another. The biggest new thing here is the introduction of the sarrukh as a progenitor race for most of the scaled ones on Toril. This is the major theme tying the first part of the book together.
This entire section of the book is very uninspiring, and mostly just frustrating and disappointing. It feels forced and tortuous. It is almost as if the designers were given the task of coming up with a back-story that would tie all the scaled ones together, and this was the best they could come up with off the tops of their heads. The only thing I will use from this part of the book is some of the background info on the yuan-ti.
Something that was a serious disappointment was the fact that so many of the important monsters in this section of the book come with no stat-blocks or write-ups. Instead, you have to refer back to the Monsters of Faerun or the Fiend Folio. So, to properly use this book, you will also need to own the Monsters of Faerun and the Fiend Folio—and, oh yeah—the web enhancements that update the monsters from those other two books to 3.5e. I mean, seriously, this is exactly the kind of thing that people hated about 2e. The write-ups and stat blocks for these monsters, updated for 3.5e, should have been included in this book.
A major problem with the book has to do with the sarrukh. They are supposed to be an “extraordinarily powerful” progenitor race according to the flavor text. In fact, in discussing the idea of playing sarrukh as characters, the book actually says, “all sarrukh with class levels are automatically epic-level characters.” When you turn to the new monsters section, the sarrukh stat block backs this up with a CR of 21. However, reading the actual abilities and special attacks/qualities leaves one to wonder how they came up with CR 21. This CR seems to be very inflated, and a CR of 11 or 12 is probably more appropriate for this monster as it is currently written. Moreover, the Appendix lists their level adjustment as +8!? Things like this usually don’t bother me that much (hey, mistakes happen), but given that the sarrukh constitute the major unifying theme of the book, this dichotomy is a huge and embarrassing flaw. The DM has to either figure out why the sarrukh are so weak now, and somehow weave that into the rest of the back-story, or beef them up. That’s not my job, it’s the job of the designers.
I used to look forward to the artwork in the 3e Forgotten Realms products. The art in this book is mostly pretty bad, though there are some notable exceptions. Some of the worst pieces were turned out by Kalman Andrasofszky; I’m hardly ever a fan of computer generated artwork, and these are actually pixilated—in a print product that just looks cheap. Some of the best pieces in the book were produced by Wayne England, who continues to put out consistently good artwork. Most of the other artists fall into the middle category: they turned out some really nice pieces, but just as many or more poor ones. This group includes Jeremy Jarvis, Thomas Baxa, and Richard Sardinha. I hope that the art directors at WotC will start to be a little more selective in terms of the pieces they accept from these artists. (The full page pieces in this book are a pet peeve of mine; they break up the “old book on parchment” feel of the FR products, and they look like ads.)
Once again, there was no index. Now, a lot of people seem not to mind the lack of an index as long as there is a good table of contents. I am not one of them. I want to be able to use my source books like reference works. They should have an index, and preferably an extensive one like in the FRCS.
The book also lacks maps. The only maps are of very specific small locations (such as a temple or a ruin) in the short “adventures” at the end of the book. I think that a lot of the fun of D&D is in the cartography. What’s more, 3e Forgotten Realms maps have been very nice. You can spend lots of time just looking them over and imagining what it’s like there. Unfortunately, you won’t get that in this book. Maps of the important areas in this book should have been included; specifically, a pull-out map of the Chultan peninsula would have been nice, along with a detailed map of the Najara region, including the Serpent Hills and the Forest of Wyrms.
The feats, PrCs, and spells in this book are all pretty pedestrian. In addition, they are mostly for DM use. You probably won’t use them at all unless you’re inspired to write a scaly themed adventure or campaign, and unfortunately, this book won’t inspire you. PCs will only be able to use most of them if you allow scaled ones as characters.
By far, the biggest problem with this book is that it was poorly edited. This is manifested in a variety of ways. Most obvious are things like frequent misspellings and failure to consistently stick to standard WotC style (such as sometimes not italicizing spells). However, the major problem is the failure to pull the book together as a coherent whole. It reads more like a collection of disorganized notes than a polished final product. This leads to reader confusion and frustration. Even some minor organizational touches would have helped. For example, the book introduces several yuan-ti words, but they are scattered throughout the chapter on yuan-ti. So if you run across the term vrael olo later in the book and you have forgotten what it means, good luck finding it. A table of new words (such as for Draconic in the Draconomicon) would have been very helpful here, as would an index—ahem. This book would have benefited greatly from a strong editorial hand.
The Good:
Once again, Ed Greenwood and crew have come up with a bunch of evocative place descriptions. This is what I really like about the Forgotten Realms—they are just full of interesting places. The chapter on geographical locations is laid out in a format that will be familiar to any readers of 3e FR products. This chapter is a joy to read, and is the only really inspiring part of the book. More, more, give us more. Once again, though, this part of the book would have benefited from some maps.
The book does a pretty good job of fleshing out the yuan-ti. There is a ton of information on their lifestyle, organization, outlook, etc. An entire chapter is devoted to this, and an additional chapter is devoted to ideas and advice for running a yuan-ti based campaign. I think this is the most useful aspect of the book. Much of this could be fairly easily disentangled from the rest of the book and used in basically any campaign setting and without the rest of the sarrukh-based scheme.
The book contains a number of short “adventures” that are really more like detailed location descriptions with ready-made NPCs and maps. In addition, there are many ready-to-use NPCs scattered throughout the book. I have to give WotC kudos on this. I really love getting interesting NPCs, monsters with class levels, advanced monsters, etc., in my books. After all, I buy books so I won’t have to do all of the work myself, and this kind of thing really increases the value of a book. Give me a bunch already made and rules to make more of my own if I want them. Unfortunately, most of the NPCs in the book suffer from being too powerful. One or two very powerful NPCs is OK, because they can be used as background, plothooks, etc., but please give me a bunch that my players can actually defeat or use as less powerful allies.
As always, the physical quality of the book is very good. The pages are of a nice thick stock with a glossy finish. The binding is intact and feels solid. The cover is the standard 3e FR cover, which I like. I want to give WotC kudos here. Many publishers skimp on the physical part of the book and it shows. However, WotC consistently puts out a physically beautiful book with a solid, quality feel. Even though I probably won’t use this book much, I’m proud to have it on my shelf.
Many of the new monsters in this book are pretty cool. There are two things I like to see in collections of monsters. First, give me a lot of low level monsters. They are useful as solo encounters against low level PCs, and as minions or in larger groups against higher level PCs. We need a wider variety of these monsters in D&D. Second, I like to see monsters with interesting special attacks and special qualities. This book has a good selection of both. (As an aside, Monster Manual III also has a bunch of good monsters in it—if you don’t own it yet, you should buy it.)
Finally, the six-page Appendix is very nice. It contains a list of historical eras of the Forgotten Realms, details on the deities of the scaled ones (including a “pantheon-style” table), and a table of racial traits for scaled ones. This last bit is especially useful for PCs. It contains info on 13 scaled ones suitable for use as PCs, including several monsters from other sources (e.g., Monsters of Faerun and Fiend Folio).
Conclusion:
While there are some very nice things in this book, all-in-all it is a pretty big disappointment for me. I almost wrote that I wish I had my $29.95 back. But what I really wish is that this project had been done right. The attempt to tie all of the scaled ones together was completely unnecessary; moreover, it was poorly executed. Unfortunately, I guess it is now “canon” and will become part of FR history.
I would like to give this book a 2.5, meaning that it is a poor book overall, but with some good bits and pieces. However, there is no 2.5 option, so in the grand tradition of D&D I am rounding down.
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