Old Fezziwig
hell yes bro
Behind the Spells: Animate Dead is the latest entry in Bret Boyd and Ronin Arts's Behind the Spells line. Coming in at five pages, it has the standard format of all products in this line. There is no art, and the layout and editing are solid and professional.*
In the PDF, the animate dead spell is said to be the ancestor of a spell created by a gnoll shaman, Kritak. Obsessed with death and ousted from his tribe by a paranoid shaman, Kritak raised an undead army as a surrogate clan. As with the other PDFs in this line, Behind the Spells: Animate Dead presents a number of plot hooks in its narrative, my personal favorite being the body-jumping gnoll lich (a perfect villain for a campaign).
On the mechanics side, Boyd presents a new weapon ability, one new spell, and two ways to transfer control of animated dead. Last things first, the two methods are interesting — one allows a spellcaster to wrench control of the undead away from their creator, while the other allows a spellcaster to transfer control of the undead to another caster. I found the first idea to be fine mechanically, although having a hp cost to even attempt to gain control of another caster's undead could, when coupled with the 1 hp/HD of monsters "stolen," lay low a mid-level caster very quickly, particularly if he's had trouble establishing contact with the undead. The other, although interesting, would seem to be of limited use to any caster with a low Charisma score, as it relies on Intimidate checks to cow the undead. I'd personally use a caster level check with the DC set the same way, which'd make it easier for a higher level spellcaster to take control of undead given to him by another caster. (That said, I'm pretty sure that tying it into Charisma and Intimidate could be a nod to the mechanics for turning undead.)
The new spell, corspe soldiers, works well as part of a chain with animate dead, and I like the profane bonuses on attack and damage, which help make it more appealing than if it were animate dead, only for more HD. Animating, the new weapon quality, does exactly what it would appear to do — it animates creatures "killed" by the weapon with the feature. I have quotation marks around "killed," because, as written, the wielder of a +1 animating longsword would only need to bring an opponent down to 0 hp for it to be raised as a zombie or a skeleton — this allows the wielder to raise enemies that aren't technically dead yet! This is easily fixed, but, considering that most people that had this weapon quality available to them would be NPCs, I think it's important to note. No players I've ever played with would be happy if I informed them at -1 hp that they were now a zombie.
All things considered, I enjoyed this product, and would happily use the new spell and the plot hooks presented in my campaign as is. The rest of it's useable with very little tweaking. Well worth the cover price.
Score: 4.
* One editing mistake that I did notice was in the identification of open content: "All game mechanics in this PDF is designated as open game content" should be "All game mechanics in this PDF are designated as open game content." For sakes of scoring the product, I'm ignoring this, although it may be useful for the publisher to know.
In the PDF, the animate dead spell is said to be the ancestor of a spell created by a gnoll shaman, Kritak. Obsessed with death and ousted from his tribe by a paranoid shaman, Kritak raised an undead army as a surrogate clan. As with the other PDFs in this line, Behind the Spells: Animate Dead presents a number of plot hooks in its narrative, my personal favorite being the body-jumping gnoll lich (a perfect villain for a campaign).
On the mechanics side, Boyd presents a new weapon ability, one new spell, and two ways to transfer control of animated dead. Last things first, the two methods are interesting — one allows a spellcaster to wrench control of the undead away from their creator, while the other allows a spellcaster to transfer control of the undead to another caster. I found the first idea to be fine mechanically, although having a hp cost to even attempt to gain control of another caster's undead could, when coupled with the 1 hp/HD of monsters "stolen," lay low a mid-level caster very quickly, particularly if he's had trouble establishing contact with the undead. The other, although interesting, would seem to be of limited use to any caster with a low Charisma score, as it relies on Intimidate checks to cow the undead. I'd personally use a caster level check with the DC set the same way, which'd make it easier for a higher level spellcaster to take control of undead given to him by another caster. (That said, I'm pretty sure that tying it into Charisma and Intimidate could be a nod to the mechanics for turning undead.)
The new spell, corspe soldiers, works well as part of a chain with animate dead, and I like the profane bonuses on attack and damage, which help make it more appealing than if it were animate dead, only for more HD. Animating, the new weapon quality, does exactly what it would appear to do — it animates creatures "killed" by the weapon with the feature. I have quotation marks around "killed," because, as written, the wielder of a +1 animating longsword would only need to bring an opponent down to 0 hp for it to be raised as a zombie or a skeleton — this allows the wielder to raise enemies that aren't technically dead yet! This is easily fixed, but, considering that most people that had this weapon quality available to them would be NPCs, I think it's important to note. No players I've ever played with would be happy if I informed them at -1 hp that they were now a zombie.
All things considered, I enjoyed this product, and would happily use the new spell and the plot hooks presented in my campaign as is. The rest of it's useable with very little tweaking. Well worth the cover price.
Score: 4.
* One editing mistake that I did notice was in the identification of open content: "All game mechanics in this PDF is designated as open game content" should be "All game mechanics in this PDF are designated as open game content." For sakes of scoring the product, I'm ignoring this, although it may be useful for the publisher to know.
