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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JoeGKushner" data-source="post: 2010779" data-attributes="member: 1129">Agents of Faith, Crusaders of the Gods, is a book with one goal. To make all piety count for all player classes and races, not just those with divine spellcasting abilities or ties.For these characters, the faithful, there are rituals that they can undergo to show their devotion to their deity. These rituals are also like ranks in the hierarchy and each one gives the user a bonus divine feat, described latter in this book. Right away, those who scream game balance are right to do so as the role playing elements are the main thing holding the character's power levels back but the good news is that if the character does stray, there are consequences.The movement for non-divine classes continues with PrCs like the Crusader, a warrior who fights and uses example to show the strength of their religion. A strange choice of name as the Crusader name usually is put into either a historical context or a highly religious warrior with a narrow mind.  The Planar Sentinel is like a ranger but they hunt  those who hail from outside the material plane while the Reaper is like a holy warrior with the sole purpose of killing those who've come back from the dead too often or who've raised the dead too often. A few of the PrCs are good fits for clerics, especially NPCs', clerics like the Pacifist and the Proselytizer.The priest's aren't left out in the cold though as the book boasts several new domains, not tied into any setting or specific god. Each has a granted power and 1st-9th level listing of spells with several new spells included and detailed in this section. It's a nice touch that allows a GM to add some classics like Ice, Peace, Poison, Corrosion and Blood as well as some odd ones like Electromagnetism and Vice to the game.  Of course with an Acid Domain, there are a lot of acid spells to damage the foes of the caster and some of them are quite powerful, perhaps too much so in that they could take the limelight away from the mage with spells like Acid Storm, a 5th level Corrosion Spell with the potential for 15d8 points of damage.The divine feats I mentioned earlier are detailed in their own chapter and it's the largest one in the book. The feats are broken up by domain, level, and have the name and page number so at a glance, you can see that Evil's six Feats and the page's their on. The important thing is noted that these fears are unusually very powerful and care will have to be taken by the GM in introducing them. Compared to some material on the market though, some of it seems standard. Take Chaotic Might, a feat where the character has to be 15th level that only allows him to add 1 point of damage per level to an attack or spell as long as he takes that damage as well. The nice thing is that the bonus is doubled against lawful creatures. Powerful? Yes. Too powerful? Looks over my shoulder at AEG's Feats, Swashbuckling Adventures and Mongoose's Ultimate Feats book, I'd say nope.Not too long ago, Spellbound, A Codex of Ritual Magic came out and reintroduced Living Imagination's ritual system to the d20 system with lots of examples and details. More rituals are spelled out here for various domains including the flaw, and korba. If you like the ideas of rituals, especially those noted here, you'll enjoy this section. For those who don't have Spellbound, there is a brief explanation in the Appendix, a wise move on the publisher's part.Since the book is focused on the divine, there are numerous holy magic items here as well. Not all of these are good though, as Childslayer is an evil artifact worthy of almost immediate destruction. The artifacts have backgrounds that can easily be tweaked for individual campaigns. The Boots of Haranur for example, are a gift of the Lord of the Forest, a fairly generic title and type that can be easily switched in most campaigns. My personal favorite is Ironclaw, a 'black, bejeweled gauntlet' that was crafted by fire giants but taken by dwarves but is now lost. The gauntlet's cool power is that it can change size to accommodate different wearer's so the fire giants may gain it again or say even a halfling.The information on Behind the Altar helps the GM with some basic ideas of pantheon construction including size, structure and divine involvement with the mortals but the real meat of this section is on cults. It includes several ratings for different cults as well as how to use them in your campaign. Tied into some material from Call of Cthulhu and the Complete Guide to Beholders, and I'm looking at Cult heaven here. Still, I'd like more details or some sample cults with full personalities listed.The book uses standard two-column layout. The art is the good news/bad news type in that it's all done by Marcio Fiorito so it has a unified look and feel but if you don't like his art, you're not going to be happy with the book. I enjoyed his various illustrations but found that I didn't like his border, which cut into the text at the top of the page and at the bottom, giving the text a jagged look. At 104 pages for $19.95, the book isn't overpriced, but it's not like some of their other books which are bargains due to their sheer volume.This book is not for the DM or player who must have everything in balance. While the bonus feats and artifacts can be balanced, it'd require a lot of front work on the GM's part. This is very similar to those who want to use the various schools or special guild abilities from other publishers. This book is packed with crunch and if you're looking to add some divine flavor to you're campaign, Agents of Faith can go a long way in making every class a pious one.</blockquote>

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